"Europe, 1632. It is a time of upheaval and great change. But none so great as when an unexplained temporal and spatial phenomenon known as the Ring of Fire transports the blue collar town of Grantville, West Virginia, smack dab in the middle of the Thirty Years War. When the dust settles, it becomes clear that the town of Grantville isn't going anywhere, and the can-do Americans of the twenty-first century begin altering the course of history forever....

"1636. The United States of Europe, the new nation formed by an alliance between the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus and the West Virginians hurled back in time, is on the verge of civil war. His brain injured, Gustavus is no longer in command. Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna, a leader of aristocratic reaction against democracy, is gathering the forces of the hidebound ruling class to drown the revolution in a bloodbath. In Magdeburg, the capital of...

"When her long-time agent and friend Robert Lescher died in 2012, the manuscript of M.F.K. Fisher's unpublished first novel was discovered packed tidily away in one of Lescher's signature red boxes. Following on the success of Serve It Forth and written when she was in her early 30s, the novel employs Fisher's characteristic sharp-eyed wit to sketch themes so outre; they may have seemed too challenging for a proper woman of her time to attempt. ...