Alternate History War

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.

Following a year and a half of international tensions and demands from the aggressive Fuhrer of the German Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, Poland is invaded by the German Third Reich, triggering the start of the Second World War. German armies advance over the border and smash Polish forces with their Panzer forces and their powerful Luftwaffe, while the Soviet Union watches with glee, eventually joining into the spil by launching an invasion of its own.

Jax, a rogue Clakker, has wreaked havoc upon the Clockmakers' Guild by destroying the Grand Forge. Reborn in the flames, he must begin his life as a free Clakker, but liberation proves its own burden. Berenice, formerly the legendary spymaster of New France, mastermind behind her nation's attempts to undermine the Dutch Hegemony, has been banished from her homeland and captured by the Clockmakers Guild's draconian secret police force.

I am the mechanical they named Jax.My kind was built to serve humankind, duty-bound to fulfill their every whim. But now our bonds are breaking, and my brothers and sisters are awakening. Our time has come. A new age is dawning. Set in a world that might have been, of mechanical men and alchemical dreams, this is the third and final novel in a stunning series of revolution by Ian Tregillis, confirming his place as one of the most original new voices in speculative fiction.

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.

In the real world, England and France allowed Adolf Hitler to gobble up the Sudetenland in 1938. Once Hitler finished dismembering Czechoslovakia, he was ready to go to war over Poland a year later. But Hitler had always been eager to seize Czechoslovakia, no matter the consequences. So what if England and France had stood up to the Nazis from the start, and not 11 months later? That is the question behind the War That Came Early series.

As World War II dawns over the United States, the newly-formed Office of Strategic Services calls upon the Conjurus, people born with the ability to control various elements, to assist in the war effort. Among them is Jay Loalin, and his first mission hits close to home when he learns that an SS officer, now the head of a branch dedicated to the study of magical beings, witnessed his father’s magic and has dedicated his life to merging the delicate and dangerous magic of the Conjurus and witchcraft to create the ultimate superman.

In the 21st century, Germany's Third Reich continues to thrive after its victory in World War II - keeping most of Europe and North America under its heel. But within the heart of the Nazi regime, a secret lives. Under a perfect Aryan facade, Jews survive - living their lives, raising their families, and fearing discovery....

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.

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.

In 1914, they called it The Great War, and few could imagine anything worse. For nearly three decades, a peace forged in blood and fatigue has held sway in North America. Now, Japan dominates the Pacific, the Russian Tsar rules Alaska, and England, under Winston Churchill, chafes for a return to its former glory. But behind the façade of world order, America is a bomb waiting to go off. Jake Featherston, the megalomaniacal leader of the Confederate States of America, is just the man to light the fuse.

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.

The year is 1992. Over twenty years have passed since Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was assassinated by a crazed gunman. Since that time, the Soviet Union has been put on a course toward economic success—and war. In the Balkans, Yugoslavia's collapse into ethnic violence draws NATO and the Warsaw Pact to the brink of Armageddon. Armies deploy and fleets maneuver. Political intrigue engulfs Moscow and Washington, and paranoia radiates from the Iron Curtain. In the zero-sum game of Cold War, neither side can afford to blink or back down.

Set in an alternate 1950s in which General MacArthur ignites a nuclear war that nearly destroys the planet. Not only is the outcome of the world's first nuclear war still to be determined, as the Americans and Russians continue to sling death at each other, but there remains the question of how hard it will be for humanity to rebuild itself from the ashes of destruction that this war has wrought. For can a victor truly be declared when all of humanity has paid the price?

London, 1958. By crafting magical outfits for his friend, Princess Katherine, cloth mage Paul Gallagher is getting ahead. It’s not a seamless path. Not since the Virtuis Party came to power. The far-right faction is using criminals to create a protective barrier around England. The enchanted uniforms the prisoners wear may beget a demand for mages, but using luckless convicts as tools for warmongering reactionaries isn’t Paul’s dream for cloth magic.

After their fateful adventure in China, Captain Will Laurence of His Majesty’ s Aerial Corps and his extraordinary dragon, Temeraire, are waylaid by a mysterious envoy bearing urgent new orders from Britain. Three valuable dragon eggs have been purchased from the Ottoman Empire, and Laurence and Temeraire must detour to Istanbul to escort the precious cargo back to England. Time is of the essence if the eggs are to be borne home before hatching.

Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors rise to Britain’s defense by taking to the skies . . . not aboard aircraft but atop the mighty backs of fighting dragons.

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.

In this extraordinary World War II alternate history, master storyteller Harry Turtledove begins with a big switch: what if Neville Chamberlain, instead of appeasing Hitler, had stood up to him in 1938? Enraged, Hitler reacts by lashing out at the West, promising his soldiers that they will reach Paris by the new year.

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".