Alternate Fiction

Adopted by Brahma Corp's Assassin Guild and raised as one of their own, Malina Hayes is about to make her 50th kill. After bringing down 49 of London's worst criminals, this latest job shouldn't be a big deal. But if Malina is successful, she'll receive her first milestone mark. Ascension in the ranks, better pay, and a swanky flat in Soho all sound like very good reasons to make this kill count. But fate and destiny have different plans for Malina. Seconds away from receiving the coveted milestone mark, Malina is torn away from the world she knows.

On a secret military base tucked in a remote desert mountain, a dangerous machine lies hidden from the American public. Known as the Actuator, this machine is capable of transforming entire communities into alternate realities. In theory, these often terrifying realities are reversible. The scientists in charge of this machine employ operatives called Machine Monks, who attune their minds to manifest single ideas from the realms of fantasy and science fiction.

Bathsheba is a woman who longs for love. With her devout husband away fighting the king's wars for many months at a time, discontent and loneliness dog her steps - and make it frighteningly easy to succumb to King David's charm and attention. Though she immediately regrets her involvement with the powerful king, the pieces are set in motion that will destroy everything she holds dear. Can she find forgiveness at the feet of the Almighty? Or has her sin separated her from God - and David - forever?

One of the great works of the 20th century, Kafka's The Trial has been read as a study of political power, a pessimistic religious parable, or a crime novel where the accused man is himself the problem. In it, a man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. Faced with this ambiguous but threatening situation, Josef K. gradually succumbs to its psychological pressure.

Is there more than one history of the world? This is the question Pierce Moffett is seeking to answer when, jilted and newly jobless, he gets off a bus by chance in the Faraway Hills and steps unawares into a story that has been awaiting him there. His search will bring him into contact with Rosie Rasmussen, another seeker marked by loss. And it will lead them both on a path toward the longed-for country of our oldest dreams and most unanswerable desires, toward a magnificent discovery.

This world is trying to kill Lily Proctor. Her life-threatening allergies keep her from enjoying experiences that others in her hometown of Salem take for granted, which is why she is determined to enjoy her first high school party with her best friend and longtime crush, Tristan. But after a humiliating incident in front of half her graduating class, Lily wishes she could just disappear. Suddenly, Lily is in a different Salem - one overrun with horrifying creatures and ruled by powerful women called Crucibles.

History and fiction collude in Sub Rosa America: A Deep State History, a four-book series pivoting around the fallout from two historical occult rites performed at the 33º parallel in White Sands, New Mexico, and Dallas, Texas: the creation and destruction of primordial matter in 1945, and one moon node later, the killing of the king. No brotherhood has been held accountable for either rite. Instead, the brothers responsible have been rewarded and protected under every administration.

The origins of the outbreak were never in dispute, although at first almost no one believed the dead were actually rising. When the island nation of Haiti was struck by wave after wave of violent earthquakes killing thousands, the Z-virus lurched spectacularly to life. Early reports of cannibalism from inside the country were disregarded until shocking live video splashed across the world's television and computer screens. Suddenly everyone was a believer.

In the small Tuscan town of Collodi, a lonely woodcarver longs for the companionship of a son. One day, "as if the wood commanded me", Giuseppe - better known as Geppetto - carves for himself a pinewood boy, a marionette he hopes to take on tour worldwide. But when his handsome new creation comes magically to life, Geppetto screams...and the boy, Pinocchio, leaps from his arms and escapes into the night.

It is 1847, and almost a full year after being shipwrecked on another, far stranger and more dangerous Earth on their way to fight Santa Anna in the Mexican-American War, Lewis Cayce and his small group of artillerymen, infantrymen, and dragoons have made friends in the Yucatán, helped build an army, and repulsed the first efforts of the blood-drenched Holy Dominion to wipe their new friends out.

The Providence Rider is the fourth installment in the extraordinary series of historical thrillers featuring Matthew Corbett, professional problem solver. The narrative begins in the winter of 1703, with Matthew still haunted by his lethal encounter with notorious mass murderer Tyranthus Slaughter. When an unexplained series of explosions rocks his Manhattan neighborhood, Matthew finds himself forced to confront a new and unexpected problem. Someone is trying - and trying very hard - to get his attention.

It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought nine years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching 40s, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to find calm in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour.

The USA Today best-selling author of In Another Time reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she’d made a different choice.

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.

Two years in Afghanistan; four years working for MI5, the British security service; and the death of both of his parents from cancer. At the age of 34, Callum thought he'd experienced the worst that life could throw at him. That was until his boss ordered him to open a buried file on his desk and to take it seriously. His new assignment: to detain and question a pregnant woman and her ailing husband - and, if need be, to stop them from returning to medieval Wales.

Rudi Mackenzie has won the battle that expelled the enemy from the new High Kingdom of Montival. Now he must free the people who live in the state once known as Idaho from occupation by the legions of the Church Universal and Triumphant and pursue them to their lair over the mountains. There he will finally confront the forces behind the Church - the Powers of the Void.

Jaxon had just one job—to return three baby dragons to the realm of magic. But when he got there, only two dragons were left in the bag. His best friend's sister, Kavita, is a dragon thief! Kavita only wanted what was best for the baby dragon. But now every time she feeds it, the dragon grows and grows! How can she possibly keep it secret? Even worse, stealing it has upset the balance between the worlds. The gates to the other realm have shut tight! Jaxon needs all the help he can get to find Kavita, outsmart a trickster named Blue, and return the baby dragon to its true home.

Set in a world in which the Roman Empire never fell, Clash of Eagles finds Praetor Gaius Marcellinus leading his 33rd Legion into Nova Hesperia. But there his conception of the world is challenged by encounters with the Powhatani, Iroqua, and Cahokiani tribes.

In the real world, Reinhard Heydrich, the number-two man in the SS and an architect of the Holocaust, was assassinated in Czechoslovakia in May 1942. In The Man with the Iron Heart, Heydrich survives that fated assassination attempt, only to hatch an insurgency as insidious as anything conceived by Osama bin Laden.

Franklin Roosevelt is the assistant secretary of defense. Thomas Dewey is running for president with a blunt-speaking Missourian named Harry Truman at his side. Britain holds on to its desperate alliance with the United States' worst enemy while a holocaust unfolds in Texas. In Harry Turtledove's compelling, disturbing, and extraordinarily vivid reshaping of American history, a war of secession has triggered a generation of madness. The tipping point has come at last.