I’m surprised my favorite title in the genre hasn’t been mentioned yet: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.
I know taste is an individual thing, but I liked Resurrection Day.
Thanks a lot chaps. I’m going to have a look through all of these.
Arguably, Jasper Fforde’s output qualifies as “alt-history”, although it’s much more tongue-in-cheek than most stories of this genre. His Thursday Next books (starting with “The Eyre Affair”) are definitely worth reading; the two “Nursery Crime” books in the series may be skippable if you’re not that into it but the first four-book arc is pretty good on its own, and there are a couple more after that.
He’s done other weird alt-history stories, but he seems to have abandoned his “Shades of Grey” trilogy after one book (which I did enjoy, although it took a couple of readings to “get” it) and I found “Early Riser” less appealing. I haven’t read his new one “The Constant Rabbit” but it’s in the same broad weird alt-history genre.
His older books are better, I think he started off with much stronger editing. And his short stories are especially good, they really pack a punch and there isn’t enough length to get bogged down in. I agree that his newer stuff and especially longer serieses tend to turn into a big quagmire of useless side plots, reintroduction of characters, and outright repitition. I gave up on him during the Great War series when I saw a title from the series in a bookstore that I didn’t recognize, turned to the middle of the book to see whether I recognized this book or not, and couldn’t tell if I had read it before or not.
I would recommend his short story collections to people looking for alt-hist, they’re IMO much stronger than the long slog through novels.