Currently I'm reading 'Farthing' by Jo Walton, an alternative history novel.  The novel was nominated for a 2007 Nebula award, and I figure it's a good enough primer for the author.  I've never read anything by Walton before and her newest novel 'Among Others' just this year won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, usually a good indicator that a book is pretty good.

Normally I'm not very in to the sub-genre of alternative history but 'Farthing' seems pretty good so far.  I also took this as an opportunity to write a review of Philip K. Dick's 'The Man in the High Castle.'  If you're going to be talking about alternative history you should probably start with the grandaddy of them all, and many would say the best as well.  I think High Castle might be one of the reasons I've never been able to get excited about other alt. history novels, if you're going to talk about alternate realities go ahead and make it about alternate realities, don't just set the novel in a world where the Russia got the bomb first and make it about life at home.  Though that's really just me saying that I wish more novels were like High Castle,  I'll reserve judgement on 'Farthing' until I'm complete, hopefully it will open my mind a little more to what alternative history can be.