Alternate History Fiction

For 500 years we've been looking at the Mona Lisa, and it turns out that she's been looking right back at us. Over the centuries, few could hear her voice, but now we are let into the secret, as she tells us her story in her own words - a tale of rivalry, murder and heartbreak. And a mystery of Leonardo's greatest lost painting. Weaving through the years, she takes us from the dazzling world of da Vinci's Florentine studio to the French courts at Fontainebleau and Versailles, and into the 20th century.

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 Murder is obsolete.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.

Lidia Yuknavitch has an unmatched gift for capturing stories of people on the margins—vulnerable humans leading lives of challenge and transcendence. Now, Yuknavitch offers an imaginative masterpiece: the story of Laisvė, a motherless girl from the late 21st century who is learning her power as a carrier, a person who can harness the power of meaningful objects to carry her through time. Sifting through the detritus of a fallen city known as the Brook, she discovers a talisman that will mysteriously connect her with a series of characters from the past two centuries.

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.

In an alternate Renaissance Italy where the church regulates magic and licenses magicians, fiery Fiametta Beneforte wants to be more than her goldsmith-mage father's unpaid apprentice. But when the Duchy of Montefoglia is laid under military and magical siege, she unexpectedly must join with Thur Ochs, a young Swiss miner and foundryman, to tap their skills in both metalwork and necromancy to rescue her father's soul and combat an evil sorcerer.

In the first months of 1936, Adolf Hitler risked everything by ordering his untrained military to reoccupy the Rhineland. It was a bluff. The Germans would have been forced to retreat if the French or British had offered the slightest opposition. But the bluff succeeded. History changed decisively. Hitler quieted the opposition at home, and marched the world relentlessly on, to the edge of destruction and beyond.

The invaders are coming; the Posleen, a seemingly unstoppable horde who have conquered one star system after another, literally feeding on their conquests. Earth's dubious allies, the Darhel, have given the humans a number of highly-advanced technological devices, including a process for rejuvenating the aged, including trained and proven soldiers who otherwise would be too old to fight. Rejuvenation may give a critical edge, since to survive, the Earth must use every resource at hand.

London, 1946. The Nazis have conquered and now occupy Great Britain. John Henry Rossett, a decorated British war hero and former police sergeant, has been reassigned to the Office of Jewish Affairs. He now answers to the SS, one of the most powerful and terrifying organizations in the Third Reich. Now assigned a job he did not ask for and cannot refuse: rounding up Jews for deportation. But they are not the only victims, for the war took Rossett's wife and son, and shattered his own humanity.

Ariane has found refuge in Illinois, and now plans her rightful return to vampire society. She must stay in control while hiding in nature, while foes old and new converge on her territory.

The Ark was built to save the lives of the many but rapidly became a refuge for the elite, the entrance closed without warning. Years after the Ark was cut off from the world - a world much like our own, but in which slavery has never existed - a chance of survival within the Ark's confines is granted to a select few who can prove their worth. Among their number is Markriss Denny, whose path to future excellence is marred only by a closely guarded secret: Without warning, his spirit leaves his body, allowing him to see and experience a world far beyond his physical limitations.

When the Far Stars came under imperial attack, Astra Lucerne - the daughter and successor of the Far Stars’ greatest conqueror - Marshal Augustin Lucerne - rallied her father’s confederation forces to defend their worlds. They were joined in the fight by former imperial general Arkarin Blackhawk, a warrior whose skills and brutality made him infamous, and who has, for two decades, sought the redemption he knows is unreachable.

Seattle, 2019. After a severe injury, ace mecha designer and pilot Reiko Morikawa is recruited to a secret organization plotting a revolt against the corrupt governor (and Nazi sympathizer) of the United States of Japan. When their plan to save the USJ from itself goes awry, the mission is only saved from failure because the governor is killed by an assassin known as Bloody Mary. But the assassin isn't satisfied with just the governor.

It's 1974, and Jerry Stieglitz is a grad student in marine biology at UCLA with a side gig selling short stories to science fiction magazines, just weeks away from marrying his longtime fiancée. Then his life is upended by grim-faced men from three-letter agencies who want him to join a top-secret "Project Azorian" in the middle of the north Pacific Ocean—and they really don't take "no" for an answer. Further, they're offering enough money to solve all of his immediate problems.

It is 1954, but not the same way the history books would have it. Events and characters swirl in a vortex of fragments and chance connections. Brisbane celebrates the young Queen Elizabeth II's arrival on her first royal tour of the commonwealth. Meanwhile the future is being shaped behind closed doors, laying the foundations for the 21st century...

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.

It is 1943, the third summer of the new war between the Confederate States of America and the United States, a war that will turn on the deeds of ordinary soldiers, extraordinary heroes, and a colorful cast of spies, politicians, rebels, and everyday citizens. The CSA president, Jake Featherston, seems to have greatly miscalculated the North's resilience. But as new demonic tools of killing are unleashed, secret wars are unfolding.

This is the New World. Born of chaos and madness. Remember that if nothing else. Jed Culver, President Kipper’s right hand man, knows that what is right and what is best, is rarely the same thing. Can he go against the President’s wishes? Mad Jackson Blackstone, rogue governor of the Republic of Texas, is slowly but surely destroying the new United States of America. In New York, Caitlin Monroe came within a hair’s breadth of vengeance. Is her old nemesis still alive? Lady Julianne Balwyn is being hunted, and Sofia Pieraro is completely alone, revenge her only reason to stay alive.

In 1936, there are paranormal abilities that have slowly seeped into the world, brought to the surface by the suffering of the Great War. The research to weaponize these abilities in England has lagged behind Germany, but now it's underway at an ultra-secret site called Monkton Hall. Kim Tavistock, a woman with the talent of the spill - drawing out truths that people most wish to hide - is among the test subjects at the facility. When she wins the confidence of caseworker Owen Cherwell, she is recruited to a mission to expose the head of Monkton Hall.

Allan Karlsson hat keine Lust auf seine Geburtstagsfeier im Altenheim. Obwohl der Bürgermeister und die Presse auf den 100jährigen Jubilar warten, steigt Allan kurzerhand aus dem Fenster und verduftet. Bald schon sucht ganz Schweden nach dem kauzigen Alten, doch der ist es gewohnt, das Weltgeschehen durcheinander zu bringen und sich immer wieder aus dem Staub zu machen.

"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.