A single alternate history novel can ask “what if?” A series has room to answer it. Over several books, a changed battle becomes a changed border, then a changed economy, then a generation of people who have never heard of the history we know.
This guide covers the best alternate history series in print, from Harry Turtledove’s sprawling multi-volume wars to tighter trilogies you can finish in a month. For each one, you will find how many books it runs to, where the history breaks from ours, the real events behind the change, and which book to start with.
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What Makes a Great Alternate History Series?
The best series share three things. First, a divergence rooted in a real moment, whether a lost order, a failed peace, or a battle that nearly went the other way. Second, consequences that grow over time rather than resetting between books. Third, characters who carry the reader through the years it takes those consequences to play out.
Every pick below keeps history at the center of the story. Series where the history is just a backdrop for fantasy or steampunk adventure are left out. If you prefer standalone novels, start with our list of the best alternate history books, or browse the full Alternate History hub.
Quick Comparison
| Series | Author | Books | Era | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southern Victory | Harry Turtledove | 11 | 1862 to 1945 | Complete |
| World War and Colonization | Harry Turtledove | 8 | 1942 to 2031 | Complete |
| The War That Came Early | Harry Turtledove | 6 | 1938 to 1944 | Complete |
| Temeraire | Naomi Novik | 9 | 1805 to 1815 | Complete |
| Small Change | Jo Walton | 3 | 1949 to 1960 | Complete |
| Lady Astronaut | Mary Robinette Kowal | 4 | 1952 to 1960s | Ongoing |
| Ring of Fire (1632) | Eric Flint and others | Dozens | 1631 onward | Ongoing |
| Axis of Time | John Birmingham | 3 | 1942 to 1944 | Complete |
| The Hammer and the Cross | Harry Harrison and John Holm | 3 | 9th century | Complete |
| Nantucket | S.M. Stirling | 3 | c. 1250 BC | Complete |
| Stars and Stripes | Harry Harrison | 3 | 1861 to 1860s | Complete |
The Best Alternate History Series
1. Southern Victory: How Few Remain (1997)
By: Harry Turtledove
Books: 11 (1997 to 2007)
Divergence: The Confederacy wins its independence in 1862
Southern Victory is the most ambitious alternate history series ever written. It begins when Robert E. Lee’s campaign orders for the invasion of Maryland are never lost, allowing the Confederacy to win the Civil War. The following ten books carry two hostile American nations through a second war in the 1880s, a Great War fought on North American soil, a depression, the rise of a Confederate fascist movement, and a second world war.
The scale is enormous, with dozens of point-of-view characters ranging from generals and presidents to farmers, factory workers, and soldiers in the trenches. What keeps it readable is Turtledove’s habit of rooting huge events in small, personal stories.
The real near-miss is Special Order 191. In September 1862, Union soldiers found a copy of Lee’s orders wrapped around three cigars near Frederick, Maryland. That discovery led to Antietam and, shortly after, the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Turtledove’s entire eighty-year history grows from that one piece of paper staying in Confederate hands.
Start with: How Few Remain, which works as a standalone and won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. See our Southern Victory series reading order for the complete sequence.
2. Worldwar and Colonization: In the Balance (1994)
By: Harry Turtledove
Books: 8 (1994 to 2004)
Divergence: An alien invasion interrupts the Second World War in 1942
In the middle of the Second World War, a reptilian alien species called the Race arrives to conquer Earth. Their technology is far ahead of ours, but they expected to find medieval knights, not tanks and radar. The Allies and the Axis are forced into an uneasy cooperation to survive.
It sounds like pure science fiction, but the series is really a study of the 1940s. Churchill, Stalin, Patton, and the scientists of the Manhattan Project all appear, and the tension comes from real wartime politics under pressure. The four Worldwar books cover the war itself, while the three Colonization books and Homeward Bound follow the uneasy peace into the 1960s and beyond.
The grounding is the state of the world in 1942. The atomic bomb was still a theory, Fermi’s first chain reaction in Chicago was months away, and the outcome of the war was far from certain. Turtledove asks what happens when the race for the bomb becomes a race for survival.
Start with: In the Balance. Our Worldwar series reading order covers all eight books.
3. The War That Came Early: Hitler’s War (2009)
By: Harry Turtledove
Books: 6 (2009 to 2014)
Divergence: The Second World War began in 1938 over Czechoslovakia
In this timeline, the Munich crisis ends in war rather than appeasement. After the Sudeten German leader Konrad Henlein was assassinated, Hitler attacked Czechoslovakia in 1938, a year before he was ready in our history. Britain and France are dragged in, and the war that follows looks very different from the one we know.
The series follows soldiers, pilots, sailors, and civilians across every front, from the Spanish Civil War to the Soviet border. Alliances shift in surprising ways, and the result is a genuinely unpredictable war.
The real near-miss is Munich itself. In September 1938, Hitler was privately furious at being denied his war, and a group of German officers around Hans Oster was reportedly prepared to move against him if fighting broke out. Czechoslovakia also had strong border fortifications that Germany would have had to assault head-on. Turtledove explores what a 1938 war might have meant for all sides.
Start with: Hitler’s War. The six books should be read in order, ending with Last Orders (2014).
4. Temeraire: His Majesty’s Dragon (2006)
By: Naomi Novik
Books: 9 (2006 to 2016)
Divergence: Dragons exist and serve as the air forces of the Napoleonic Wars
Captain Will Laurence of the Royal Navy captures a French ship carrying a dragon’s egg. When the dragon hatches and chooses him, Laurence has to leave the navy for the Aerial Corps, and his bond with the dragon Temeraire becomes the heart of a nine-book saga across Europe, China, Africa, Australia, and South America.
Temeraire is the most character-driven series on this list. Novik writes in a style inspired by Jane Austen and Patrick O’Brian, and her dragons are fully realized personalities who begin to question their place in human society. Along the way, the series takes on slavery, colonialism, and the treatment of soldiers.
The grounding is Napoleon’s real plan to invade Britain. Between 1803 and 1805, he assembled a huge army at Boulogne, waiting for a chance to cross the Channel, and only British naval power stopped him. Novik’s first book imagines that invasion taking to the air.
Start with: His Majesty’s Dragon (published as Temeraire in the UK). See our Temeraire series reading order and Naomi Novik author page. Fans of the naval side should also try Patrick O’Brian.
5. Small Change: Farthing (2006)
By: Jo Walton
Books: 3 (2006 to 2008)
Divergence: Britain makes peace with Nazi Germany in 1941
Eight years after Britain agreed to a “Peace with Honour” with Hitler, a group of aristocratic politicians known as the Farthing set gather at a country house. When one of them is murdered, Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard is sent to investigate, and the case pulls him into a plot that will change the country.
Each book pairs a classic British mystery with a slide into authoritarianism. The chapters alternate between Carmichael and a first-person female narrator, and the cozy surface makes the political darkness underneath more chilling. The trilogy continues with Ha’penny (2007) and Half a Crown (2008).
The grounding is Rudolf Hess’s real flight to Scotland in May 1941, when Hitler’s deputy parachuted into Britain, apparently hoping to negotiate peace. In Walton’s history, there were people in London willing to listen.
Start with: Farthing. It also appears on our list of the best alternate history WWII books.
6. Lady Astronaut: The Calculating Stars (2018)
By: Mary Robinette Kowal
Books: 4 so far (2018 to 2025)
Divergence: A meteorite destroys Washington, D.C. in 1952
On March 3, 1952, a huge meteorite strikes the East Coast of the United States, wiping out most of the federal government. Mathematician and former wartime pilot Elma York realizes that the impact will trigger runaway climate change and that humanity will have to leave Earth. The space race becomes a race to save the species.
Elma wants to go to space herself, but the program is run by men who see women as calculators rather than astronauts. The series is about ambition, anxiety, sexism, and racism in 1950s America, and about what it takes to change an institution from the inside. Later books include The Fated Sky (2018), The Relentless Moon (2020), and The Martian Contingency (2025).
The grounding is two real stories. Women known as “human computers,” including Katherine Johnson, did the mathematics behind early American spaceflight. And in the early 1960s, a group of women pilots passed the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts, only to have the program shut down. Kowal gives those women the mission they were denied.
Start with: The Calculating Stars, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards, plus the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.
7. Ring of Fire: 1632 (2000)
By: Eric Flint (with many co-authors)
Books: Dozens of novels and anthologies (2000 onward)
Divergence: A modern West Virginia town is transported to Germany in 1631
In April 2000, the coal-mining town of Grantville, West Virginia, is suddenly transported to the middle of the Thirty Years’ War, one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. Led by union leader Mike Stearns, the townspeople must survive, then decide what kind of society they want to build on a continent tearing itself apart.
The 1632 series grew into a huge shared universe, with main novels, spin-offs, and anthologies written by Flint and a wide team of collaborators. The core appeal is watching ordinary Americans, their knowledge, and their democratic ideals collide with seventeenth-century Europe.
The grounding is the real Thirty Years’ War and its central figure, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. In our history, the Swedish king’s intervention reshaped the war before his death at Lützen in 1632. In Flint’s series, he becomes Grantville’s most important ally.
Start with: 1632, followed by 1633 (with David Weber). Flint died in 2022, but the universe continues with other writers.
8. Axis of Time: Weapons of Choice (2004)
By: John Birmingham
Books: 3 (2004 to 2007)
Divergence: A 21st-century naval task force appears in the middle of the Pacific War in 1942
A scientific experiment goes wrong, and a multinational fleet from the 2020s is thrown back in time into the waters off Midway in June 1942, right on top of the American fleet preparing for battle. The two navies mistake each other for enemies before anyone understands what has happened.
What follows is less about the battles and more about the culture shock. Modern sailors of every background meet the segregated, deeply conservative world of 1942, and the Allies and Axis both scramble to exploit the future’s technology. The trilogy continues with Designated Targets (2005) and Final Impact (2007).
The grounding is the Battle of Midway, one of the most decisive and luckiest American victories of the war. A handful of minutes in the timing of the dive-bomber attacks changed the course of the Pacific War, making it a natural place for history to break.
Start with: Weapons of Choice.
9. The Hammer and the Cross: The Hammer and the Cross (1993)
By: Harry Harrison and John Holm
Books: 3 (1993 to 1996)
Divergence: The Vikings, and a new faith, triumph over the Church in ninth-century England
Shef is a thrall in ninth-century England, the son of an English mother and a Viking father. As the Great Heathen Army sweeps across the country, he rises to become a leader, an inventor, and the champion of the Way of Asgard, a new form of Norse paganism that challenges the power of the Christian Church.
The trilogy blends battles and politics with engineering, as Shef rediscovers lost technologies and changes the way wars are fought. The books continue with One King’s Way (1994) and King and Emperor (1996), spreading the conflict across Europe. John Holm is a pen name for the medieval scholar Tom Shippey, and the period detail shows it.
The grounding is the real Viking invasion of England, beginning in 865. The sons of Ragnar Lothbrok conquered most of the English kingdoms, and in 878 Alfred of Wessex was reduced to hiding in the marshes of Athelney. England came very close to becoming a Scandinavian country.
Start with: The Hammer and the Cross. For more Viking-era fiction, see our list of the best Viking historical fiction.
10. Nantucket: Island in the Sea of Time (1998)
By: S.M. Stirling
Books: 3 (1998 to 2000)
Divergence: The island of Nantucket is transported to the Bronze Age
In March 1998, Nantucket Island and everyone on it is thrown back to around 1250 BC. With a Coast Guard training ship and its captain, Marian Alston, the islanders have to feed themselves, trade with Bronze Age peoples, and stop one of their own, a renegade officer named William Walker, from carving out an empire with modern weapons.
The trilogy is a big, action-heavy saga that sweeps across Bronze Age Britain, Greece, and the Near East. It continues with Against the Tide of Years (1999) and On the Oceans of Eternity (2000). The same event also launched Stirling’s Emberverse, which shows the world the islanders left behind.
The grounding is the Late Bronze Age world at its peak, shortly before the collapse that brought down many of its great civilizations. Stirling’s islanders arrive in an era of Mycenaean kingdoms and trading networks that were about to fall apart on their own.
Start with: Island in the Sea of Time.
11. Stars and Stripes: Stars and Stripes Forever (1998)
By: Harry Harrison
Books: 3 (1998 to 2002)
Divergence: Britain goes to war with the Union in 1861
When a U.S. warship seizes two Confederate envoys from the British mail ship Trent, Prince Albert dies before he can soften Britain’s response. A grieving Queen Victoria backs the war, and the British invade. Faced with a foreign enemy, North and South begin to find common cause.
The trilogy is fast, adventurous, and more optimistic than most on this list. It continues with Stars and Stripes in Peril (2000) and Stars and Stripes Triumphant (2002), taking the reunited nation into a global conflict with the British Empire.
The grounding is the Trent Affair of November 1861. A gravely ill Prince Albert really did revise the British ultimatum to give Lincoln’s government room to back down, and he died on December 14, 1861. Harrison asks what would have happened if he had died a few weeks sooner.
Start with: Stars and Stripes Forever. For more Trent Affair fiction, see our list of the best alternate history Civil War books.
Honourable Mentions
Days of Infamy: Days of Infamy (2004)
By: Harry Turtledove
A two-book series in which Japan follows up the attack on Pearl Harbor with an invasion of Hawaii. The story covers the occupation from the points of view of American soldiers, Japanese officers, and Hawaii’s civilians. Japanese planners really did discuss a Hawaiian invasion in 1941 before rejecting it. The duology concludes with End of the Beginning (2005).
The Gettysburg Trilogy: Gettysburg (2003)
By: Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen
Lee takes James Longstreet’s advice at Gettysburg and maneuvers around the Union army rather than attacking it head-on. The trilogy follows that change through Grant Comes East (2004) and Never Call Retreat (2005). It is the most detailed pure military history on this page.
Which Alternate History Series Should You Start With?
- For the biggest, most complete world: Southern Victory
- For WWII with a twist: Worldwar or The War That Came Early
- For character and emotion: Temeraire
- For mystery readers: Small Change
- For award winners: Lady Astronaut
- For a series you will never run out of: Ring of Fire
- For a short commitment: The Hammer and the Cross or Axis of Time
How to Read a Long Alternate History Series Without Getting Lost
Long alternate-history series ask more of readers than most historical fiction does. You are tracking a large cast, a map that keeps changing, and a history that slowly drifts further from the one you learned in school. A few habits make the journey easier.
Know the real history first. You do not need to be an expert, but a basic grasp of the period makes every divergence land harder. Before starting Southern Victory, for example, it helps to know roughly what happened at Antietam and why it mattered. Before The War That Came Early, a quick read on the Munich crisis pays off.
Read in publication order. Every series on this list was written to be read in sequence, and later books assume you remember earlier events. Our reading order pages for Southern Victory, Worldwar, and Temeraire lay out the full sequence for each.
Take breaks between arcs. Many of these series divide naturally into shorter runs. Southern Victory breaks into four sub-series, and Worldwar splits cleanly between the war and the Colonization books. Stopping at those points and reading something else keeps a long commitment from turning into a chore.
Try the first book as a standalone. If you are unsure, start with the opener and see how it feels. How Few Remain, His Majesty’s Dragon, and The Calculating Stars all tell complete stories on their own.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best alternate history series?
Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory is the most widely recommended alternate history series thanks to its scale and ambition. Readers who prefer character-driven stories often choose Naomi Novik’s Temeraire, while Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut series is the most decorated, with Hugo, Nebula, and Locus wins for its first book.
What is the longest alternate history series?
Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire universe, which began with 1632, is the largest, with dozens of novels and anthologies by Flint and many collaborators. Among single-author series, Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory runs to eleven books.
Which Harry Turtledove series should I read first?
Start with How Few Remain, the first Southern Victory book, if you want the Civil War and its long aftermath. Start with In the Balance if you want the Second World War. Both series are complete, so you can read them all the way through.
Is Temeraire alternate history or fantasy?
It is both. Temeraire adds dragons to the Napoleonic Wars, but the history of the period, from Trafalgar to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, drives the story. That is why it sits comfortably in the alternate history genre.
Are there alternate history series with female protagonists?
Yes. Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut series follows mathematician and pilot Elma York, and Jo Walton’s Small Change trilogy alternates between a police inspector and a series of female narrators. Temeraire also features several major female characters in the Aerial Corps.
Do I need to read these series in order?
Yes. Every series on this list builds on the events of earlier books, so reading in publication order is strongly recommended. The first books of Southern Victory, Temeraire, and Lady Astronaut work well as standalones if you want to test a series before committing.
Which alternate history series are complete?
Southern Victory, Worldwar and Colonization, The War That Came Early, Temeraire, Small Change, Axis of Time, The Hammer and the Cross, Nantucket, and Stars and Stripes are all complete. Lady Astronaut and the Ring of Fire universe are still ongoing.
Related Content
- Best Alternate History Books
- Best Alternate History WWII Books
- Best Alternate History Civil War Books
- Southern Victory Series Reading Order
- Worldwar Series Reading Order
- Temeraire Series Reading Order
- Harry Turtledove: Complete Guide to Books & Series
- Naomi Novik: Complete Guide to Books & Series
- Best Historical Fiction Series