Underground airlines (2016)

The Civil War never takes place, and slavery survives in four states of a recognisably modern America. Victor, a Black man working as a federal fugitive hunter, exposes the arrangements keeping that system functioning. Winters makes the divergence visible in policing, commerce and the evasions of people outside the slave states. This tense thriller is useful for readers who want the consequences to reach beyond a changed map; its moral pressure comes from everyday complicity.