New Releases 4/24/2012

New Books (paperback and e-book)

The Mongoliad by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, E.D. deBirmingham, Cooper Moo and Mark Teppo

Description from Amazon.

The first novel to be released in The Foreworld Saga, The Mongoliad: Book One, is an epic-within-an-epic, taking place in 13th century. In it, a small band of warriors and mystics raise their swords to save Europe from a bloodthirsty Mongol invasion. Inspired by their leader (an elder of an order of warrior monks), they embark on a perilous journey and uncover the history of hidden knowledge and conflict among powerful secret societies that had been shaping world events for millennia.

But the saga reaches the modern world via a circuitous route. In the late 19th century, Sir Richard F. Burton, an expert on exotic languages and historical swordsmanship, is approached by a mysterious group of English martial arts aficionados about translating a collection of long-lost manuscripts. Burton dies before his work is finished, and his efforts were thought lost until recently rediscovered by a team of amateur archaeologists in the ruins of a mansion in Trieste, Italy. From this collection of arcana, the incredible tale of The Mongoliad was recreated.

Full of high adventure, unforgettable characters, and unflinching battle scenes, The Mongoliad ignites a dangerous quest where willpower and blades are tested and the scope of world-building is redefined.

New Books (paperback)

Bitter Seeds by Ian Tegillis

Description from Amazon.

It’s 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between.

Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.

When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities—a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present—Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.

Alan Furst meets Alan Moore in the opening of an epic of supernatural alternate history, Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis is a tale of a twentieth century like ours and also profoundly different.

I, Putin by Jennifer Ciotta

Description from Amazon.

Gosha Golubev is the personal aide of President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for twelve years in the Russian Federation. As Putin is re-elected for his third term as president, Gosha struggles with his role as boss' shadow. He has watched Putin evolve into the cold, stoic figure he is in 2012. But Gosha remembers the first few months of his first presidency, where an event shook Putin to his very core, nearly costing him the presidency and changing him into the leader the world knows today. As Putin dictates his memoirs in first person to Gosha, the event reveals itself: It is August 12, 2000. Putin is the president of Russia. To commemorate the anniversary of his father’s death, he journeys to Narva, Estonia to unravel the elder’s mysterious World War II past. As he begins his journey, an unexpected crisis rocks the Russian Federation. Explosions rip through the prized submarine of the Russia navy, the Kursk. 118 sailors are now in a fight for their lives, trapped in a steel crypt. Putin returns to Moscow, where violent protesters await him and cause him to flee. He is now a man on the run and Russia is in complete chaos with a looming threat of a shift in power. Will Putin save the sailors and take back his beloved Russia, or will he end up as he started–alone and powerless?

New Books (e-book)

Future History by Ronald Washburn

Description from Barnes & Noble.

A scientist from the future and his Daughter are plunged back in time where they are recruited to assassinate Adolph Hitler at the height of World War II. Of course it's bit more complicated than that...

New Short Stories (e-book)

The Sharp End by Joseph Nassise

Description from Amazon.

March 1921. The War to End All Wars continues, with no foreseeable end in sight. The Central Powers control most of Europe, with only a thin stretch of French coastline still in Allied hands. A beleaguered Britain fights resolutely on, but everyone knows that without the continued support of the United States it would fall within weeks. Even that may not be enough to defeat the brilliance of the Central Powers' scientists and the advantages their weird science gives to their troops as wave after wave of zombie troops are sent against the Allied front lines...

On May 1st, 2012 HarperVoyager will publish BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES, the first book in the new zombie steampunk alternate history series known as The Great Undead War by internationally bestselling author Joseph Nassise.

Here, for the first time, is the story behind the story. Follow the hero of The Great Undead War series, Captain Michael "Madman" Burke, leader of Burke's Marauders, in the early days of the war, when the Germans are just beginning their field tests of a new weapon.

A weapon that will eventually come to change the face of the war itself, that will resurrect the bodies of the dead, both friend and foe alike, and turn them into flesh-eating monsters. A weapon that will come to be known as corpse gas.

Contains:
* The Sharp End - a prequel story introducing the characters and events of the Great Undead War series
* A Timeline of the Great Undead War, identifying major events and military battles
* The first two chapters of BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES, the first book in the Great Undead War series

To fans, authors and publishers...

Do you want to see your work given a shout out on our New Releases segment? Contact Mitro at ahwupdate@gmail.com.  We are looking for works of alternate history, counterfactual history, steampunk, historical fantasy, time travel or anything that warps history beyond our understanding.