My favorite book of the summer has been Ben Winter’s Underground Airlines. This imaginative thriller is set in present day America, the history of which is very much the same except Lincoln was assassinated before he could become President and the Civil War never happened. As a result the country is still a union but very much divided because slavery exists in four Southern states, the “Hard Four.” Modern day slave labor is here making cheap exports and the abolitionists have their work cut out for them with 3 million of it’s citizens legally enslaved or “bound persons.” If the premise doesn’t sell this book the story will. You won’t be able to figure out all the twists and turns or put it down until the very end.