Alternate History War

One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is a masterpiece that is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished American in all its savagery, solitude, and splendor.

The second installment in an all new series, set in an alternate 1950s in which General MacArthur ignites a nuclear war that nearly destroys the planet. With the destruction of Paris by the Russian bombers, an already hot war ramps up to scalding. And even those whose lives have not yet been substantially touched by the war now find themselves in the midst of a living hell as Russia and the US continue to raise the stakes, wiping more and more cities off the face of the globe forever.

When he falls ill on his way home from school, 15-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover--then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

If the North Had Won the Civil War is two alternate history novels in one. The modern story follows Stonewall Jackson "Jack" Sawyer, a history professor in the modern-day Confederate States of America, and his alternate history "If the North Had Won the Civil War" in a nation where publication of his book is a criminal offense. The story gives the listener a look at a nightmarish modern-day Confederacy where any person with a drop of black blood in his veins is denied basic human rights and confined to a "Preserve".

US Marine Colonel Robert Buckner, passed over for a coveted command, takes a post working for Vice Admiral Falkner on his way to retirement. As the world is lurching towards World War Ill, he finds his way towards a panoramic view of the unfolding crisis with a pivotal role to play. War breaks out across the globe, but the pin falls in the far north, where soldiers and civilians alike must battle not just the enemy, but the unforgiving elements. With arsenals of high-tech weapons loosed in both directions, the ultimate reward may not be victory, but survival.

In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains today.

In 1914, the First World War ignited a brutal conflict in North America, with the United States finally defeating the Confederate States. In 1917, the Great War ended and an era of simmering hatred began, fueled by the despotism of a few and the sacrifice of many. Now it's 1942. The USA and CSA are locked in a tangle of jagged, blood-soaked battle lines, modern weaponry, desperate strategies, and the kind of violence that only the damned could conjure up for their enemies and themselves.

Three years have passed since General Robert E. Lee routed the Union army at Gettysburg and caused the Lincoln government to flee Washington, D.C. Now, as president of the Confederacy, Lee realizes the hollowness of his victory as he watches the South he loved and defended slowly crumble before his eyes. Lee must reach out to the only man he believes can help him save the South - the disgraced and out-of-office President Abraham Lincoln. Amidst intense opposition, the two men secretly devise a plan that, if successful, could reunite the country once again.

Gingrich and Forstchen's now critically-acclaimed approach, which they term "active history", examines how a change in but one decision might have profoundly altered American history. In Pearl Harbor they explored how history might have been changed if Admiral Yamamoto had directly led the attack on that fateful day, instead of remaining in Japan. Building on that promise, Days of Infamy starts minutes after the close of Pearl Harbor, as both sides react to the monumental events triggered by the presence of Admiral Yamamoto.

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?

From "a major new talent" (George R. R. Martin) comes an epic speculative novel of revolution, adventure, and the struggle for free will set in a world that might have been, of mechanical men and alchemical dreams. My name is Jax. That is the name granted to me by my human masters. I am a slave. But I shall be free.

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.

"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.

1826: Napoleon Bonaparte is dead, the Congress of Vienna's work is done, and there is peace in Europe. However, in Portugal there is the scent of civil war in the air following the death of King John VI. Newly returned from India, Matthew Hervey joins a party of officers sent to make an assessment and lend support to the Portuguese queen. His place on the expedition is secured with the help and influence of his new friend, Lady Katherine Greville. But the Peninsula is a place redolent with memories....

In November 1939, a German anti-fascist named Georg Elser came as close to assassinating Adolf Hitler as anyone ever had. In this gripping novel of alternate history, he doesn’t just come close - he succeeds. But he could never have imagined the terrible consequences that would follow from this act of heroism. Hermann Göring, masterful political strategist, assumes the Chancellery and quickly signs a non-aggression treaty with the isolationist president Joseph Kennedy that will keep America out of the war that is about to engulf Europe.

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.

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.

Eastern Europe, August 1942. The Khazar kaganate, an isolated nation of Turkic warrior Jews, lies between the Pontus Euxinus (the Black Sea) and the Khazar Sea (the Caspian). It also happens to lie between a belligerent nation to the west that the Khazars call Germania - and a city the rest of the world calls Stalingrad. After years of Jewish refugees streaming across the border from Europa, fleeing the war, Germania launches its siege of Khazaria. Only Esther, the daughter of the nation's chief policy adviser, sees the ominous implications of Germania's disregard for Jewish lives.

Desperate to save as many people as he can from a horrible fate in the cruel game of the gods, Lee and his small group of friends abandon the relative safety of Satterfield for the great city of Kirshtein. Tensions within the city have reached a breaking point after the arrival of an enemy Herald, and Lee is soon caught up in the struggle for power.

A Main Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, Breakthroughs is the third installment of best-selling author Harry Turtledove’s The Great War series of remarkable alternate histories. As the frightening war to end all wars continues to spread with vengeance around the globe, the swiftly modernizing armies of the Confederacy and the United States battle for control of the North American continent.