Alternate Fiction

In 1938, two men held history in their hands. One was Adolf Hitler. The other was British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who, determined to avoid war at any cost, came to be known as "the great appeaser". But Harry Turtledove, the unrivaled master of alternate history, has launched a gripping saga that springboards from a different fateful act: What if Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler? How would the war have unfolded and changed our world?

This time the stage is one of the greatest sea battles ever fought: the Battle of Salamis, 306 BC. The small, free, and independent polis of Rhodes is trying to stay neutral between the local great powers, each ruled by one of Alexander the Great’s marshals: one-eyed Antigonos, who controls Asia Minor, and Ptolemaios, ruler of Egypt. As tensions between the great powers escalate, Menedemos and Sostratos are trying to resolve their own problems, oblivious to the fact that one of the greatest navel fleets in ancient history is about to set sail.

There is no magic on Prospect Hill—or anywhere else, for that matter. But just on the other side of the veil is the world of the Fae. Generations ago, the first farmers on Prospect Hill learned to bargain small trades to make their lives a little easier. Much of that old wisdom was lost as the riverboats gave way to the rail lines and the farmers took work at mills and factories. Alaine Fairborn’s family, however, was always superstitious, and she still hums the rhymes to find a lost shoe and to ensure dry weather on her sister’s wedding day.

The spirit of Prince John, the brother of Crown Princess Orlaith, has fallen captive to the power of the Yelolow Raja and his servant, the Pallid Mask. Prince John's motley band of friends and followers, led by Captain Pip of Townsville and Deor Godulfson, the bard and master of magic, must lead a quest through realms of shadow and dream to rescue Prince John from a threat far worse than death. Meanwhile, Reiko and Orlaith muster their kingdoms for war, making common cause with the reborn Kingdom of Hawaii.

The immortal knight battles an unstoppable horde of Mongol vampires. AD 1253. The immortal William de Ferrers sits at the right hand of the great Mongol Khan while his hordes conquer Persia and Syria. Soon, nothing will separate them from Christendom itself. And so Richard of Ashbury must cross the barbarian wilderness to destroy the threat to Christendom and fulfill his oath of vengeance.

What if mankind's "missing link", the apelike Homo erectus, had survived to dominate a North American continent where woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers still prowled while the more advanced Homo sapiens built their civilizations elsewhere? Now imagine that the Europeans arriving in the New World had chanced on these primitive creatures and seized the opportunity to establish a hierarchy in which the sapiens were masters and the "sims" were their slaves.

In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antediluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle was an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire. Leaving an America now ruled by religious fundamentalists, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine.

Jonathan Lambshead stands to inherit his deceased grandfather’s overstuffed mansion - a veritable cabinet of curiosities - once he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. But the three soon discover that the house is filled with far more than just oddities: It holds clues linking to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley has stormed back to life on a magic-fueled rampage across a surreal, through-the-looking-glass version of Europe replete with talking animals (and vegetables).

The Fall of Tartaria by Michael Finney is a short story that takes place in an alternative reality to bring the Tartarian Empire to life. Ominous warnings are emerging from various factions within the empire but will they remain unheeded?

In modern, beautiful Green City, the capital of Southwest Asia, gender selection, war, and disease have brought the ratio of men to women to alarmingly low levels. The government uses terror and technology to control its people, and now females must take multiple husbands to have children as quickly as possible. Yet there are some who resist, women who live in an underground collective and refuse to be part of the system. Secretly protected by the highest echelons of power, they emerge only at night....

When spring comes, the people leave their winter cave, foraging for honey and shoots, bulbs and grubs, the hot richness of a deer's brain. They awaken the fire to heat their naked bodies, lay down their thorn bushes and share pictures in their minds. But strange things are happening - inexplicable scents, sounds and violence - and, suddenly, unimaginable creatures are half-glimpsed in the forest: an upright new people of bone-faces and deerskins. What the early people don't know is that their season is already over....

The 'Wasting' (HIV) has caused devastating destruction throughout the known world and severely limited the development of technology as well, creating a mid-nineteenth century England and London almost unrecognizable to us. This is the world Viola is born into. Extremely intelligent and growing up in a house full of medical books which she reads, she dreams of traveling to far-off places, something she can only do via books since her actions and movements are severely restricted by law custom.

Master storyteller Walter Wangerin Jr. sweeps you into the life and times of the man who brought Christianity to the world. Here is Paul the person, viewed through the eyes of his contemporaries.

Alaska, 1989. In a world where Alaska is still a Russian possession, charter captain Grigorivich Plesnett has a stained past - as a major in the Czar's Troika Guard, he was cashiered for disobeying a direct order. Now, 10 years later, Grig charters out to a cossack and discovers his past has not only caught up with him but is about to violently change his future, and the future of all nine of the nations of North America as well. Spanning Alaska from the Southeastern Inside Passage to the frozen Yukon, this is an epic tale of one man's journey of redemption and courage.

In Kingsley Amis’s virtuoso foray into virtual history, it is 1976, but the modern world is a medieval relic, frozen in intellectual and spiritual time ever since Martin Luther was promoted to pope back in the sixteenth century. Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice.

2080: At a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers, and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment. Their goal: to make a tiny alteration to the past, averting a global catastrophe while at the same time leaving recorded history intact. To make the experiment work, they just need one last recruit: an ageing schoolteacher whose late mother was the foremost expert on the mathematics of paradox. 2028: A young woman goes into surgery for routine brain surgery.

From the end of the 18th century, Americans traveled west to find new homes and new lands. They brought with them the magics of plain people. It is from these roots of the American dream that award-winning writer Orson Scott Card has crafted what the Charlotte Observer called "a uniquely American fantasy." Using the lore and the folk magic of the men and women who settled a continent, and the beliefs of the tribes who were here before them, Card has created an alternate frontier America.

The latest release in the Christian Epic series is an exciting novel that takes place shortly after Christ's death and resurrection. Basil is called to design the case which will hold the silver cup that Christ and His disciples drank from at the Last Supper, and plans to sculpt their likenesses upon it. As he seeks out these followers of Christ, he encounters grave danger.

In 17th-century London, two forces rule the people: the color powers and the Stone Plague. Brown masks can manipulate wood. Black masks control the night. And red mask...well, red is the color of blood. Thomas Fawkes needs a gray mask so he can remove the stone that has invaded his body and will ultimately take his life. But when he fails his color test, his only hope is to track down his father, the infamous Guy Fawkes, and demand his color mask.

The Soviet Blitzkrieg in Germany has been beaten to a bloody halt along the Rhine River. The Reds rush masses of teenage conscripts and rusty reservists to the front, while NATO scrambles to mount a killing blow against their reeling nemesis.