Alternate Fiction

"I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness." So begins Paul Auster's brilliant, devastating tale about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us. Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would prefer to forget—his wife's recent death and the murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend.

Thomas Hansard is a brilliant historian at a small New England college. He specializes in Christopher Marlowe. But Hansard has a second secret career with The White Group, a “consulting agency” with shadowy government connections. There, he is a genius at teasing secrets out of documents old and new - to call him a code-breaker is an understatement. When Hansard’s work exposes one of his closest friends as a Russian agent, and the friend then dies mysteriously, the connections seem all too clear.

The most popular alternate history series of all continues. When a cosmic disturbance hurls your town from twentieth-century West Virginia back to seventeenth-century Europe-and into the middle of the Thirty Years War-you have to adapt to survive. And the natives of that time period, faced with American technology and politics, need to be equally adaptable. Here's a generous helping of more stories of Grantville, the American town lost in time, and its impact on the people and societies of a tumultuous age.

King Raven has brought hope to the oppressed people of Wales - and fear to their Norman overlords. Deceived by the self-serving King William and hunted by the treacherous Abbot Hugo and Sheriff de Glanville, Rhi Bran is forced again to take matters into his own hands as King Raven. Along the way Friar Tuck has been the stalwart supporter of the man behind the legend - bringing Rhi Bran much-needed guidance, wit, and faithful companionship. Aided by Tuck and his small but determined band of forest-dwelling outlaws, Rhi Bran ignites a rebellion that spreads through the Welsh valleys.

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?

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.

The coldest shadows. Arcano-archaeologist Elijah knows that digging into the past can be its own reward - or peril. When he’s hired to find an ancient map purported to lead to a mysterious location at the bottom of the world, his professional curiosity is more than roused. But his quest to simply get his hands on the map is more dangerous than he expected - even for a shadowrunner. He and his own team of runners - including everything from a goblin rigger to a troll street samurai - follow a murky trail that takes them from the ruins of Chicago to the jungles of Amazonia.

Scotland, the 11th Century. Born in a noble household and granddaughter of a forgotten Scottish king, a young girl carries the guilt of her mother’s death and the weight of an unknowable prophecy. When she is married, at fifteen, to the Mormaer of Moray, she experiences firsthand the violence of a sadistic husband and a kingdom constantly at war. To survive with her young son in a superstitious realm, she must rely on her own cunning and wit, especially when her husband’s downfall inadvertently sets them free.

President Herbert Hoover has failed America. The Great Depression that rose from the ashes of the 1929 stock market crash still casts its dark shadow over the country. Despairing and desperate, the American people hope one of the potential Democratic candidates - New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt and California congressman Joe Steele - can get the nation on the road to recovery.

Christmas 1292. Time travel has meant many things to Meg, David, and Anna over the years. But regardless of the circumstances, it's always been about saving lives: their own, their family members', and their friends'. This time, it's a combination of all three.

Ocyrhoe, a young, cunning fugitive from Rome, safeguards a chalice of subtle but great power. Finding herself in France, she allies with the persecuted, pacifist Cathar sect in their legendary mountaintop stronghold, Montségur. There she resists agents of the Roman Church and its Inquisition, fights off escalating, bloody besiegement by troops of the King of France, and shields the mysterious cup from the designs of many. Percival, the heroic Shield-Brethren knight from The Mongoliad, consumed by his mystical visions of the Holy Grail, is also drawn to Montségur - where the chalice holds the key to his destiny.

Even as they mourn the loss of their colleague, psychic Nan Killian, medium Sarah Lyon-White, and Elemental Masters John and Mary Watson must be vigilant, for members of Moriarty’s network are still at large. And their troubles are far from over: in a matter of weeks, two headless bodies of young brides wash up in major waterways. A couple who fears for their own recently-wedded daughter hires the group to investigate, but with each new body, the mystery only deepens. The more bodies emerge, the more the gang suspects that there is dangerous magic at work.

Born into a respected Irish-Anglo family in 1860, Charles loves his native land and its long-suffering but irrepressible people. As a healer, he travels the countryside dispensing traditional cures while soaking up stories and legends of bygone times - and witnessing the painful, often violent birth of land-reform measures destined to lead to Irish independence. At the age of 40, summoned to Paris to treat his dying countryman - the infamous Oscar Wilde - Charles experiences the fateful moment of his life.

In Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff's "Poor Little Rich Girls," we follow the continuing adventures of the teenage tycoons begun by Huff in "The Sewing Circle" (Gazette #1) and "Other People's Money" (Gazette #3). The focus in this story, however, is on the younger siblings - the so-called Barbie Consortium - and their down-timer associates and enemies.

Camelot was a land of beauty and splendor. A kingdom stable in its rule with its great king and noble knights of the round table. Except for the fact that Arthur and his knights were vampires. When he decided he wouldn't be used as a puppet for the evil Merlin any longer, Arthur set off to break free from his curse and form an army to take down the sorcerer. Along the way, he went up against blood mages, werewolves, and a secret order of dark magic. He formed his coven and rose to a new level of greatness. This is his tale.

A former Magistrate in the grim world of post-holocaust America, Kane cuts his ties to the ruling order and its launched on a reluctant quest to uncover the truth about a bitter enmity that haunts humanity. He knows the answer is out there - beyond the garrisoned cities, the Outlands' hell zones, the ancient seats of planetary power. Barely ahead of a Grudge task force, Kane and his fellow exiles venture from Cerberus redoubt to the hell zones and other global hot spots via the Mat-trans units.

Time Travel is open to the public. For a resource-depleted world, the breaking news offers a glimmer of hope as humanity disperses throughout the eras. For siblings Mia and Derek Hayes, the news presents a welcome diversion from the mundane trajectory of their lives.

Germany, late summer 1945. The war is over, but the country is in ruins. Millions of refugees and holocaust survivors strive to rebuild their lives in displaced persons camps. Millions of German soldiers and SS men are held captive in primitive conditions in open-air detention centres. Everywhere, civilians are desperate for food and shelter. No one admits to having voted Nazi, yet many are unrepentant. Adolf Hitler is said to have killed himself in his Berlin bunker. But no body was found - and many people believe he is alive.

When President McCain dies and Sarah Palin becomes president, the listener, along with the nation, stumbles down a terrifyingly credible path toward theocracy, realizing too late that the Christian right meant precisely what it said. In the spirit of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, one of America’s foremost lawyers lays out in chilling detail what such a future might look like: Constitutional protections dismantled; all aspects of life dominated by an authoritarian law called “The Blessing.”

In the thrilling conclusion to Generation Z, Peter Meredith has created a work of unsurpassed vision, power, and imagination. The Queen Unchained transports us to a world filled with zombies that are unlike any we have ever experienced before. But there are worse things than the undead. The Black Captain emerges victorious at every turn.