Alternate Fiction

Lieutenant Commander Matthew Reddy, along with the men and women of the U.S.S. Walker, are once again at war. Having sided with the peaceful Lemurians against the savage, reptilian Grik, they now find themselves scrambling to prepare for the attack that is sure to come, searching for resources to support their forces - even as they look for allies to join their struggle.

The forests of home lie far behind. Nyriaana is now the captive of Khalvir, the Wove raider she mistakenly trusted with her life. Gripped by the agony of betrayal and the dire consequences her naïvety wrought, the thirst for revenge alone keeps Nyriaana breathing. Surrounded by predators, both human and animal alike, not everything is as it seems in this vast and perilous world beyond her homeland. Nyriaana must learn who to trust and learn fast if she is to survive the journey through enemy territory.

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.

Commander Matt Reddy and his crew are afraid it may finally be the end of the USS Walker. Ever since their ship was transported to another world, and they became embroiled in a deadly conflict between the Lemurians and the vicious Grik, the Walker has been taking a pounding. With Walker out of commission for repairs, Reddy takes command of a different ship and joins a desperate battle to block the Grik swarm.

Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer. So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case.

Mary Robinette Kowal continues the grand sweep of alternate history begun in The Calculating Stars. The Fated Sky looks forward to 1961, when mankind is well established on the moon and looking forward to its next step: journeying to, and eventually colonizing, Mars. Of course the noted Lady Astronaut Elma York would like to go, but there’s a lot riding on whoever the International Aerospace Coalition decides to send on this historic - but potentially very dangerous - mission. Could Elma really leave behind her husband and the chance to start a family to spend several years traveling to Mars?

Hurtling past the downtrodden communities of Depression-era America, painter Val Welch travels westward to the rural town of Dawes, Wyoming. Through a stroke of luck, he’s landed a New Deal assignment to create a mural representing the region for their new Post Office.

It is six months since the Battle of Hawaii. The war to defend Taiwan has become World War III, and the surviving pilots of a rested and refitted Aggressor Inc. are thrown back into the fight as it moves across multiple fronts. On Japanese Kunashiri Island, the crew of a single Japanese Infantry Fighting Vehicle tries to hold back an entire Russian airborne company, while marauding Russian fighters pour into the skies overhead.

In a world where an anti-aging cure is available worldwide, immortality comes with its own unique problems. John Farrell is about to get "The Cure". Old age can never kill him now. The only problem is, everything else still can.

Beginning the Star Force Phase 2 timeline, the Mak'to'ran serial details the defeated V'kit'no'sat fleet commander's days following the attack on Earth and the fallout within the Dinosaur empire that results from it. For as bad as the treason regarding the Humans and the bastardized Hadarak is, and the implications that one of the two founding V'kit'no'sat races are behind it, a much larger rift within the empire is being exposed that has the potential to do what neither the Zak'de'ron culling nor the Rit'ko'sor rebellion accomplished. A full Dinosaur civil war.

March 14, 2003, was the day the world changed forever. A wave of energy slammed into North America and devastated the continent. The U.S. military, poised to invade Baghdad, was left without a commander in chief. Global order spiraled into chaos. Now, three years later, a skeleton U.S. government headquartered in Seattle directs the reconstruction of an entire nation---and the battle for New York City has begun.

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.

We've secretly lived among the humans for centuries. Anonymity is our weapon of choice. But that's about to change. An altercation between were-animals was caught on video and went viral. Now a vital member of our pack is sitting in jail, and if I can't get him out before he shifts during the full moon, then our existence will be discovered. If we are outed, there is a risk we'll take the rest of the supernaturals with us. They'll do anything to prevent this from happening, including ridding the world of were-animals. We were once a pack of hunters. Now we are the hunted.

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.

"All the women of my family had gone to war... Now my turn had come... So, it is the custom that a free woman leave her mother's house to bind herself and those of her blood to a neighboring clan, either by the sword or by the cradle." So begins the story of young Tamras, as she embarks on her journey to become a warrior's apprentice. This epic story is not about battles and armor, but rather about relationships, coming of age and wisdom, and deep insights into the human experience.

Set in the same universe as the Worldwar series, the Colonization series brings us to Earth in the 1960s, where four superpowers rule: the United States, Russia, Nazi Germany, and the aliens of the Race.

Dracula. A name of horror, depravity and the darkest sensuality. Yet the real Dracula was just as alluring, just as terrifying, his story not of a monster but of a man - and a contradiction. For the one they called 'The Devil's Son' was both tyrant and lawgiver, crusader and mass slaughterer, torturer and hero, lover and murderer. His tale is told by those who knew him best. The only woman he ever loved, who he must sacrifice. His closest comrade and traitor.

In London and Germany, strange beings are reanimating themselves. They are the Erstwhile, the angels that failed to protect the Tree of Knowledge, and their reawakening will have major consequences. In Africa, the colonial town of Essenwald has fallen into disarray because the timber workforce has disappeared into the Vorrh. Now a team of specialists are dispatched to find them. Led by Ishmael, the former cyclops, they enter the forest, but the Vorrh will not give them back so easily. To make matters worse, an ancient guardian of the forest has plans for Ishmael and his crew.

Ever since the USS Walker came from another world war to defy the terrifying Grik and diabolical Dominion, Matt Reddy and his crew have given their all to protect the oppressed Lemurians. But with the Walker in desperate need of repairs just as the Grik's first general is poised to strike, Reddy is desperate. With more enemies than ever before arrayed against them, the crew of the Walker needs new allies. That means combing the lethal wilds of Madagascar to find the Lemurians' fabled ancestors.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.