Five top "What If?" books

Karen Thompson Walker is author of the debut novel The Age of Miracles.

For The Daily Beast, she tagged her five favorite "What If?" books -- "books that envision our world having undergone a great change."

One title on her list:

Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro

Sad, lovely and layered, this book about young people doomed to brief lives is made all the more moving because of the restrained, stoic style of the narrator’s voice.

First sentence: “My name is Kathy H.”

Read about the other books on the list.

Never Let Me Go is on Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories and John Mullan's list of ten of the best sentences as titles.

--Marshal Zeringue