Alternate Fiction

Orphaned since the death of her parents when she was three, Lizzie has spent years praying for someone to rescue her and her sisters from a life of drudgery in their isolated convent. She knows they were meant for greater things, and if only the right person were to discover their suffering, they would once again be treated like the princesses they were born to be.

After Grand-mere Ursule gives her life to save her family, their magic seems to die with her. Even so, the Orchires fight to keep the old ways alive, practicing half-remembered spells and arcane rites in hopes of a revival. And when their youngest daughter comes of age, magic flows anew. The lineage continues, though new generations struggle not only to master their power, but also to keep it hidden. But when World War II looms on the horizon, magic is needed more urgently than ever.

Ten years ago, the Empath known as the Black Death battled the Legion of Heroes and laid waste to a continent. Infused with the blood of countless superhuman victims, he struck down the Legion one by one, until only its leader, Captain Dawn, remained. When the smoke finally cleared, the Black Death was vanquished—but at a terrible cost to both Captain Dawn and the world . . . Now, the students and staff of Morningstar Academy hope Matt Callaghan, who they believe is a clairvoyant, will lead them to a bright and glorious future.

Lisey lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a 25-year marriage of profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, best-selling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey knew there was a place Scott went - a place that both terrified and healed him, could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live. Now it’s Lisey’s turn to face Scott’s demons, to go to that terrifying place known as Boo’ya Moon.

The people of the principality of Liechtenstein have long wished for independence, but the Empire has always had its own plans for the country. The neighboring states, meanwhile, have kept a constant eye on the principality, as if it were their own property. What's more, the internal conflicts between the country's aristocrats have shown no sign of abating. Was it really a good idea to stir up this hornets' nest? Well . . . they only have themselves to blame!

Celebrating its 75th anniversary, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men remains one of America's most widely read and beloved novels. Here is Steinbeck’s dramatic adaptation of his novel-as-play, which received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play in 1937-1938 and has featured a number of actors who have played the iconic roles of George and Lennie on stage and film, including James Earl Jones, John Malkovich and Gary Sinise.

Alvin is a Maker, the first to be born in a century. Now a grown man and a journeyman smith, Alvin has returned to his family. He will share in their isolation, work as a blacksmith, and try to teach anyone who wishes to learn the knack of being a Maker. For Alvin has had a vision of the Crystal City he will build, and he knows that he cannot build it alone. But he has left behind true friends as well as enemies. And his ancient foe, the Unmaker, has found new hands to do his work of destruction.

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.

When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes its precious cargo - an unhatched dragon egg - fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle.

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.

Considered the first full-length detective novel in the English language, T.S. Eliot described The Moonstone as 'the first and greatest English detective novel'. The stone of the title is an enormous yellow diamond plundered from an Indian shrine after the Siege of Seringapatam. Given to Miss Verinder on her 18th birthday, it mysteriously disappears that very night. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who have been seen in the neighbourhood. Sergeant Cuff is assigned to the case....

When Brenda’s internet goes out right before an important scholarship deadline, she stumbles right into Kat’s family’s coffeeshop. Brenda is swept away by cool, confident Kat, who actually cares about Brenda’s 19-step plan to save the world through science. Meanwhile, Kat can’t stop thinking about Brenda, who is smart, passionate, and doesn’t seem to care that Kat is the prophesized Chosen One.

The day arrived. Full-scale nuclear war erupted. Iran launched the first missile followed by North Korea. The US and NATO responded. Then Russia and China fired. Terror became a new lifestyle. Evil rolled across the globe like a red carpet. Human trafficking skyrocketed. The despicable commerce of bodies and souls didn’t wilt and die in the fires of the nuclear holocaust, it bloomed. Once contributors to the problem, Kade Bishop and Jesse Matthews fight to change their ways by helping a group of captive women escape the clutches of an evasive man named Knox.

The Black Death is dead. After hiding in plain sight for more than a decade under the guise of Captain Dawn, the most powerful empathic mimic who ever lived stepped out from the shadows once more to unleash terror and destruction upon the world. But in his moment of apparent triumph, when all hope seemed lost, the Black Death was defeated by Matt Callaghan and Jane Walker, now known to everyone as Matt the Human and Lady Dawn.

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war - and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.

A dreamlike tale of haunting melodies and visions of alternate worlds.

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey, slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island. These are the facts. Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

What if...for the first time in the history of the United States we took a social and economic nose dive into oblivion? The Between Times is just such a scenario. A story that reads like a folk tale from the past, but in reality is a fantastic possibility based on the choices available to us today.

Matt Callaghan is alive—barely. Having escaped the destruction of the home he shared with Jane Walker after an attack by political assassins, he's back with the young superheroes of Morningstar Academy—and back in the center of a conspiracy that's unraveling the world around him. A cult still pursues him; governments still want his powerless human blood. Any hopes he once held of living a normal life seem dead and buried, and it's all Matt and Jane can do to try and ensure he doesn't end up the same way. But there's no time to rest or recover.

Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life - except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. Then one morning she returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the fault lines begin to open: on the block, at her job, especially in her marriage.