From Publishers Weekly

Set in a future world where the Soviet Union won the Cold War, Turtledove's absorbing fourth Crosstime Traffic novel (after 2005's In High Places) is the best yet in this SF series with substantial YA crossover. The two main characters are particularly well drawn: 17-year-old Annarita Crosetti and 16-year-old Gianfranco Mazzilli, students at Enver Hoxha Polytechnic in a Milan that's part of the quasi-Stalinist Italian People's Republic. Gianfranco is a fairly hopeless student, until he discovers a new game shop called the Gladiator, where he's delighted to play a game, Rails Across Europe, that improves his algebra scores. When the security police close down the shop for teaching capitalism, the head clerk, who's a friend of Gianfranco's and a marooned outtimer, goes on the lam. Fans of Turtledove's unambiguously adult alternative history (_Days of Infamy_, etc.) will find this effort up to his usual high standard. (June)
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From

Young Socialist Leaguer Annarita and apparatchik's son Gianfranco have grown up together in Milan after the Soviet Union won the cold war. Gianfranco discovers the Gladiator, a game shop whose fascinating wares teach him to think differently. Suddenly, the shop is closed. The regime realized that the games teach capitalism. The proprietors have vanished, and nowhere are their fingerprints registered. Annarita and Gianfranco run into former shop staffer Eduardo, who admits being an accidentally abandoned trader from another time line. The only way home for Eduardo involves getting to another crosstime transfer point--just ahead of the police. The fifth Crosstime Traffic yarn is a barn burner. Frieda Murray
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