Queen High

It is June 1955, two years after the Leader was assassinated on British soil. The killing brought brutal reprisals, and life under the Protectorate has grown more repressive, especially for women. Surveillance is everywhere, isolation is routine, and nearly everyone suspects someone else of spying.

Rose Ransom wonders each evening how she has survived, since her part in the Leader's death has somehow gone unnoticed. She still works at the Culture Ministry, where her job now centres on Poetry. Poetry is outlawed because its verse carries meanings, emotions and signals that no authority can fully control, and Rose has been named a Poet Hunter to root it out.

When President Eisenhower unexpectedly plans a state visit to the Alliance, Rose is sent to the palace to brief the widowed Queen Wallis. She finds the Queen frightened and fixed on one goal: getting back to America and the freedom she remembers. Wallis claims to hold a secret document so explosive that it could tear the Protectorate apart. The question is whether the last queen of England will turn that weapon against the Alliance.