Underground Airlines

Reviews

"A top-flight thriller that's as emotionally searing and tragically plausible as anything in contemporary fiction."—Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians "Underground Airlines is like nothing I have ever read before. I know it will be a pivot point in my reading life. Thought you'd wrestled sufficiently with the stain of Slavery? Have a seat. You'll only need the edge. By spinning a pounding thriller in a past that did not happen, Winters has somehow wrapped his hands around the catastrophe that did. This is how it might have been, I kept thinking, if history had gone that way. But the moral shock at the heart of the book: Winters's rabbit hole is not strange enough, the gulf between that and this is not wide enough. Underground Airlines does what all great speculative fiction wants to do - show the reader that Everything is possible. That's the good news and bad. The novel's many-named narrator descends from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man - his voice is mesmeric, it comes from any corner, it can boil with savagery, sing with grace or do pretty much anything in between. Oh, and he descends from Jason Bourne as well; he has mad field skills. So does Winters. You're set down in motion on a tilted mirror and then it's turn after gripping turn - my every next hour depended on which way he went."—David Shafer, National Bestselling author of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot "[Underground Airlines] is powerful, suspenseful, and devastating-hard to put down, even harder to forget."—Family Circle "It is a rare thing when a writer has a fresh new provocative idea - and then executes it beautifully. This is what Ben H. Winters has done in his novel Underground Airlines. Imagine an America in which slavery still exists. Now imagine a dramatic telling of the story."—James Patterson "Underground Airlines is bold, brilliant, and beautiful -- everything you could want from a novel, Ben Winters delivers ten-fold. He's a writer to watch, one of exceptional vision and imagination whose characters draw the reader in to the point that an alternate history seems not only plausible, but the only one that counts until the final page."—Michael Koryta, author of Those Who Wish Me Dead "Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man meets Blade Runner in this outstanding alternate history thriller. . . . The novel's closing section contains several breathtaking reversals, a genuinely disturbing revelation, and an exhilarating final course of action for Victor."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Astonishing . . . A timely novel focusing on race and equality . . . Winters handles the controversial topic with sensitivity, yet isn't afraid to ask some bold questions along the way."—BookPage "Explosive, well plotted, and impossible to put down, this alt-hist by the Edgar Award-winning author of the "Last Policeman" trilogy will attract readers of all genres. . . . Fast paced and filled with menace, the story has an ambience that makes it special."—Library Journal (starred) "Brilliantly written, terrifyingly conceived, Underground Airlines had me from the first page to the last. Many writers might have been content to set a few characters loose in the middle of the kind of powerful premise - slavery in four states never ended -put to work here, but Winters gives us gripping plot, clear-eyed social commentary and chilling implications. This may be alternate history, but what it has to say about actual, enduring race and racism cuts awfully close to the 21st century American bone."—Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome "Strange, modern . . . [A] genre-bending detective yarn"—Oprah.com "An immersive thriller as well as a provocative alternative history, 'Underground Airlines' showcases a fully realized central character who believes his own disturbing past can be kept safely buried. But history has a way of bubbling to the surface of the present."—Jean Zimmerman, New York Times Book Review "A daring and very well constructed novel"—Booklist "The novel succeeds so well in part because its fiction is disturbingly close to our present reality... Winters has written a book that will make you see the world in a new light."