Farthing
Jo Walton
Macmillan
<span>One summer weekend in 
1949--but not our 1949--the well-connected "Farthing set", a group of 
upper-crust English families, enjoy a country retreat. Lucy is a minor 
daughter in one of those families; her parents were both leading figures
 in the group that overthrew Churchill and negotiated peace with Herr 
Hitler eight years before.<br>&nbsp;<br>Despite her parents' evident 
disapproval, Lucy is married--happily--to a London Jew. It was therefore
 quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband David found 
themselves invited to the retreat. It's even more startling when, on the
 retreat's first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found 
gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was 
ritualistic.<br>&nbsp;<br>It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David
 were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major 
political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in 
Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to
 university graduates. But whoever's behind the murder, and the 
frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard
 being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with 
outcasts…and looking beyond the obvious.<br>&nbsp;<br>As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out--a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.</span>