A stunning speculative fiction debut -- and a refreshing change from spaceships and swords -- is Karen Lord's novel Redemption in Indigo.

Having finished Connie Willis' Nebula-winning time travel opus, Blackout and All Clear, it seems to me that All Clear corrects Blackout's foibles, and makes them both worth reading.

In Connie Willis' Blackout, an otherwise ho-hum time travel story is saved by a vivid portrait of the Londoners who carried on during The Blitz -- Nazi Germany's bombing campaign of Great Britain in the early days of World War II.