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Tor Essentials presents new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles of proven merit and lasting value, each volume introduced by an appropriate literary figure. In 1941 the European war ended in the Farthing Peace, a rapprochement between Britain and Nazi Germany. The balls and banquets of Britain's upper classes never faltered, while British ships ferried "undesirables" across the Channel to board the cattle cars headed east.In three brilliant novels set between the late 1940s and the early 1960s of this alternate world, Jo Walton explores how a free society can become an unfree one, how easily traditional powers-that-be can accommodate themselves to tyranny, and what a difference a few courageous men and women can make. Alternately charming, heartstopping, and astonishingly deft, this trilogy is a work of total relevance to our modern age.This new Tor Essentials edition of the Small Change trilogy includes a new introduction by J. Bradford de Long, author of Slouching Toward Utopia and one-time Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.

In 1941 the European war ended in the Farthing Peace, a rapprochement between Britain and Nazi Germany. The balls and banquets of Britain's upper class never faltered, while British ships ferried undesirables across the Channel to board the cattle cars headed east. Peter Carmichael is commander of the Watch, Britain's distinctly British secret police. It's his job to warn the Prime Minister of treason, to arrest plotters, and to discover Jews. The midnight knock of a Watchman is the most dreaded sound in the realm. Now, in 1960, a global peace conference is convening in London, where Britain, Germany, and Japan will oversee the final partition of the world. Hitler is once again on British soil. So is the long exiled Duke of Windsor - and the rising gangs of British Power streetfighters, who consider the Government soft, may be the former king's bid to stage a coup d' tat. Amidst all this, two of the most unlikely persons in the realm will join forces to oppose the fascists: a debutante whose greatest worry until now has been where to find the right string of pearls, and the Watch Commander himself.

Eight years after they overthrew Churchill and led Britain into a separate peace with Hitler, the upper-crust families of the Farthing set are gathered for a weekend retreat. Among them is estranged Farthing scion Lucy Kahn, who can't understand why her and her husband David's presence was so forcefully requested. Then the country-house idyll is interrupted when the eminent Sir James Thirkie is found murdered - with a yellow Star of David pinned to his chest.Lucy begins to realize that her Jewish husband is about to be framed for the crime - an outcome that would be convenient for altogether too many of the various political machinations underway in Parliament in the coming week. 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 underdogs - and prone to look beyond the obvious as a result.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.