Alternate History Fiction

November 5, 1605. By noon, the Catholic conspirators pray Guy Fawkes will have done his job and King James, together with his lords and parliament, will be blown into oblivion. Join the men who would change history in the final 24 hours of the most infamous plot in English history.

It is July 10, 1863, and Baltimore is in the hands of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee. Shattered remnants of the Army of the Potomac have fallen back into Washington, digging in, preparing to make a desperate stand. Six days earlier, General Ulysses S. Grant and his army of 60,000 had taken Vicksburg. The last telegram out of Washington before the rebels cut the line changed all that.

On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad, as the world waits for war, a miles-high energy wave cordons a vast area from southern Canada to northern Mexico. In a moment, 99 percent of the U.S. population has been wiped from the face of the earth.

When an inexplicable wave of energy slammed into North America, millions died. In the rest of the world, wars erupted, borders vanished, and the powerful lost their grip on power. Against this backdrop, with a conflicted US president struggling to make momentous decisions in Seattle and a madman fomenting rebellion in Texas, three women are fighting their own battles - for survival, justice, and revenge.

When an inexplicable cosmic disturbance hurls your town from 20th century West Virginia back to 17th century Europe - and into the middle of the Thirty Years War - you'd better be adaptable to survive. And the natives of that time period, faced with American technology and politics, need to be equally adaptable.

Loss is a thing of the past. Murder is obsolete. Death is just the beginning. In 1938, death is no longer feared but exploited. Since the discovery of the afterlife, the British Empire has extended its reach into Summerland, a metropolis for the recently deceased. Yet Britain isn’t the only contender for power in this life and the next. The Soviets have spies in Summerland, and the technology to build their own god. When SIS agent Rachel White gets a lead on one of the Soviet moles, blowing the whistle puts her hard-earned career at risk.

Time is running out for planet Earth. Marseria, the insidious Martian plague, has been infecting our planet for over twenty years and has resisted every human effort to eradicate it. With all life on Earth facing extinction, the only solution left is to directly access a specific piece of Martian technology. But, according to diaries left behind by Ogilvy the astronomer, the Martians have hidden it at the lake on the moon.

Considered Keith Roberts' masterwork, this novel consists of linked short stories (six measures and a coda) of a 20th century in which the Roman Catholic Church controls the Western world, and has done so since Queen Elizabeth of England was assassinated in 1588. The Protestant Reformation never happened, and the world is kept in a Dark Age of steam-power transportation, with no allowance for electrical power, by a tyrannical Rome.

In an alternate history timeline, World War II never takes place. Instead, a plan is put into effect by Hitler and the Nazi party to drain the Mediterranean Sea. They promise fertile land, millions of jobs and endless energy, new land to be settled, and living space for a crowded continent. To realize this new world, all of Europe came together and signed a treaty called ‘The Atlantropa Articles’. Nazism survives in a new Europe. By promising to bring endless energy through hydro-electricity and employing millions to build the dams, fascism only cements itself as a mainstream ideology.

The year is 1895. London is scared. A killer haunts the city's streets. The poor are hungry. Crime bosses are taking control. The police force is stretched to the breaking point. The rich turn to Sherlock Holmes, but the celebrated private detective rarely visits the densely populated streets of South London, where the crimes are sleazier and the people are poorer. In the dark corner of Southwark, victims turn to a man who despises Holmes, his wealthy clientele, and his showy forensic approach to crime: Arrowood.

In the hallowed halls of Oxford’s Merlin College, the most talented - and highest born - sons of the Kingdom of Britain are taught the intricacies of magickal theory. But what dazzles can also destroy, as Gray Marshall is about to discover.… Gray’s deep talent for magick has won him a place at Merlin College. But when he accompanies four fellow students on a mysterious midnight errand that ends in disaster and death, he is sent away in disgrace - and without a trace of his power.

The Soviet sneak attack crippled America, breaking the United States into an array of warring factions ruled by dictators, thugs, and thieves. In the western territories, democracy has survived—thanks to the efforts of Major Hawk Hunter, the greatest fighter pilot of his time, and the Pacific American Air Corps. After narrowly stopping a Soviet ground invasion, Hunter resolved himself to restoring his beloved country—and he will begin by reclaiming Football City.

Sudden Death begins with a brutal tennis match that could decide the fate of the world. The bawdy Italian painter Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo battle it out before a crowd that includes Galileo, Mary Magdalene, and a generation of popes who would throw Europe into the flames. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII behead Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time.

Dr. Jack Greer's startling discovery beneath the Gulf of Mexico proved to the world we were not alone in the universe. But when images from the Voyager One space probe reveal an alien doomsday ship hurtling toward the Earth, the human race seems marked for extinction. As news of the approaching ship spreads panic around the globe, signs of a sinister plot begin to emerge - one that threatens to unravel the already fragile fabric of society and everything Jack and Dr. Mia Ward have fought for.

As Irene tries to manage a fraught Fae-dragon truce and her overbearing parents, she’s given a hot new mission. The world where she grew up is in danger and only one book can save it. This is held by Mr Nemo, secretive Fae villain and antique dealer, so Irene and Kai travel to his Caribbean retreat to strike a deal. But in return for the book, they must steal a painting from 21st century Vienna. They’ll join a team of dragons, Fae gamblers and thieves, so their greatest challenge may be one another.

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.

It's 1945. The Red Army tears through Europe towards Berlin, exacting vengeance, while the British and the Americans close in from the west. Victory over Hitler seems certain. But inside the Kremlin, Stalin worries about a new enemy. When the war is over, how will the Soviet Union protect itself against the American behemoth? Meanwhile Hitler knows he needs a miracle to avoid an humiliating defeat. For both, the atom bomb is the answer....

A dashing master spy takes on the enemies of the Byzantine Empire and discovers impossible inventions like gunpowder and telescopes in a magnificent romp from the maestro of alternate-history science fiction.

America is Gone. It’s 2003 and American forces are assembled in Kuwait for the invasion of Iraq. In Paris an assassin wakes from a coma, in the Cascades a lone hiker watches a plane fly into a mountain and just north of the Equator a modern-day pirate, a rogue-Tasmanian, is witness to the unspeakable. In one instant an inexplicable wave of energy has changed the world. From Canberra to Cairo things will never be the same.

Twice before, mysterious cosmic catastrophes have sent portions of the Earth across space and back in time - first, with the Grantville Disaster in West Virginia, and then again with a maximum security prison in southern Illinois. Now, the planet is struck with yet another such cataclysm, whose direct impact falls upon the Queen of the Sea, a cruise ship in the Caribbean. When the convulsions subside, the crew and passengers of the ship discover that they have arrived in a new and frightening world. They are in the Mediterranean now, not the Caribbean.