Northern Lights Girls ƒ

"The alternate world of Northern Lights is dominated by a revisionist Church, and the collective Magisterium holds a great deal of wealth and power. The world is considerably less technologically advanced than ours, the society in England reminiscent of the Victorian era. However in basic sciences (such as particle physics) and some technologies it appears to be on the same level as - and in some areas much more advanced than - our own (nuclear weapons exist in this world and so do interdimensional bombs that can destroy targeted individuals anywhere in the multiverse)."

"The Vikings believed that the Northern Lights were the reflections of the Ghosts of Virgins."

"Roberts shines again with a nuanced tale of the Alaskan wilderness and the appealing eccentrics who cluster there. Former Baltimore cop Nate Burke accepts the unlikely post of police chief of Lunacy, Alaska (pop. 506), to stave off the depression caused by divorce and the traumatic death of his partner, for which he holds himself partly responsible. His early days in the close-knit town are quiet except for minor disturbances and a dalliance with a feisty bush pilot, Meg Galloway. Then Meg's father, who disappeared 16 years before, is found frozen in a remote mountain cave, an ice ax in his chest. The discovery that Pat Galloway was murdered—most likely by a local—shakes up the town and drives his murderer to commit a second, cover-up killing. Though state authorities dismiss that death as suicide, Nate pursues it as a crime—a decision that puts him at odds with many outspoken Lunatics, as the townspeople call themselves. With quiet inexorability he fields the flak, uncovers long-forgotten events and finds a tough but loving balance with the fiercely independent Meg."