New Releases 6/19/2012

New CDs

Clockwork Angels by Rush

Description from Amazon.

Legendary rock band Rush have unveiled details of its highly anticipated 2012 album, Clockwork Angels. The recording of Clockwork Angels began with Grammy Award winner Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Deftones) who collaborated with the band on their 2007 studio album, Snakes and Arrows - and Rush co-producing. Lyrically, Clockwork Angels chronicles a young man's quest across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy as he attempts to follow his dreams. The story features lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnival, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life. With more than 40 million records sold worldwide and countless sold-out tours, Rush - Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart - is not only one of the most inventive and compelling groups in rock history, but remains one of the most popular.

New Paperbacks

English-Turn by Thomas Christian Williams

Description from Amazon.

We Live in a World of Unexpected Big Events English-Turn, Détour-Anglois isn’t just an alternative fiction novel. It’s a metaphor for the modern day—Clash of Civilizations. Religious Conflict. The Rise of Capitalism, Democracies and Free Trade. The Emergence of the Arab Spring—all these contemporary events are folded into a single mind-warping history-changing epic adventure: New Orleans, 1802: Queen Marcella, a mixed-blood voodoo priestess, finds herself swept into a hurricane vortex of international intrigue, personal ambition and religious strife as Volney, an agoraphobic French revolutionary, and Napoleon Bonaparte, Premier Consul of the French Republic, challenge Thomas Jefferson for control of Louisiana. Empires Rise if Government Allows Enlightened Self-Interest to Flourish In the early days of the French Revolution, Constantin-Francois Volney, a member of the first National Assembly and friend of Thomas Jefferson, published Ruins of Empires, a post-Enlightenment review of human history. The book’s central premise, italicized above, represents not only a refutation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract—and hence Socialism—but also provides the basis for a solution to the world’s enduring religious conflicts. Jefferson liked the book so much he translated it into English. But he also insisted on complete anonymity due to the book’s controversial religious content. This little known but well-documented fact becomes the fulcrum event of the English-Turn story—the slight tweak to historical events that result in Napoleon Bonaparte’s decision to sail to New Orleans and change the destiny of the world.

New E-books

Bottled Demon by Matthew Rossi

Description from Amazon.

Like his first work, Things That Never Were (Monkeybrain Books, 2004) Matthew Rossi's Bottled Demon is a collection of speculative essays asking What If and answering Why Not, more at home playing with ideas than trying to convince itself or anyone else of any truths. Alternate history, weird fiction, and never was scenarios collide with each other and their only goal is to romp all over each other.

North Reich by Robert Conroy

Description from Amazon.

American military forces are focused on fighting Japan after Pearl Harbor. Hitler's army has taken Stalingrad, defeated opposing countries in Western Europe, England has surrendered, and German troops, including the terrifying Gestapo, now control Canada, with a puppet government in Ottawa.

Many historians consider Hitler's greatest blunder was declaring war on the United States in 1941. Award-winning author Robert Conroy presents an exciting alternate history scenario, where Hitler did not declare war on the U.S. and American armed forces stayed out of the European conflict, focusing its military might on the Pacific.

In NORTH REICH, border skirmishes with Nazi-occupied Canada and saboteur efforts within U.S. escalate into a Nazi invasion. This novel presents a moving picture of Nazi-occupied Canada, what the U.S. response might have been, and how warfare on American soil could have played out.

The Unholy Grail by M.E. Brines

Description from Amazon.

Special Ops Captain Stuart Mackenzie is good at what he does and what he does is kill. But he no longer sees the medals on his chest, only the blood on his hands. He is convinced Nazi victories are due to their possession of the Spear of Destiny, the very one plunged into the side of Christ at the crucifixion and believed to have tremendous occult powers. Hitler has used it first to conquer half of Europe and now to stave off otherwise certain defeat. Stuart is convinced that the war will drag on indefinitely with ever-increasing casualties until someone wrests control of the spear from Hitler.

But his superiors dismiss his fantastic claims as combat fatigue. Dejected that his fiancé has been arrested by the Gestapo (and presumed dead) and convinced that he can never redeem himself in the eyes of God for all the killing he has done in his military service, Stuart nonetheless is convinced the fate of the world rests on his undeserving shoulders. He takes matters into his own hands, subverting his assigned mission into a quest for the Unholy Grail. But along the way, will he find absolution?

He recruits a crew of misfits including a naive college professor, a Negro cook, a drunken coward and two thieves. With obsolete cast-off weapons and equipment, they set out into the middle of the fiercest fighting of the Battle of the Bulge. Their assigned mission: find and secure advanced enemy technology. But Stuart’s real self-assigned mission is to locate and secure control of the spear.

But can mundane weapons defeat an enemy armed with supernatural powers summoned from the very pit of Hell? Or does any hope of an Allied victory depend on Captain Mackenzie and his quest for the Unholy Grail?

New Short Stories

Like a DUKW to Water by Erik Henriksen

Description from Amazon.

What if "The War to End All Wars" never ended? The great Global War lasted for decades until an armistice was signed creating the Global Armed Forces (not unlike the League of Nations or the U.N.) to police the world’s hot spots. In order to do so, they initiated the Terra Games, an Olympic like event used to determine the best of the best land, air and sea military units from around the world. These units are to become part of the greatest military force the world has ever known. Now three friends, each from a different branch of the U.S. military, use their combined inventiveness to give their country an edge in the upcoming games.

The Sisters by Judy Corner Franklin

Description from Amazon.

Alternate history short story about Col. and Mrs. George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of Little Big Horn.

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 at gmail dot com.  We are looking for works of alternate history, counterfactual history, steampunk, historical fantasy, time travel or anything that warps history beyond our understanding.

*       *       *

Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a volunteer editor for the Alt Hist magazine and a contributor to Just Below the Law. One of his short stories will be published in the upcoming Echelon Press anthology, Once Upon a Clockwork Tale (2013). When not writing he works as an attorney in the state of Illinois and enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana.