New Releases 6/5/2012

New Hardcover

1636: The Kremlin Games by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

Description from Amazon.

#14 in the multiply bestselling Ring of Fire Series. After carving a place for itself among the struggling powers of 17th century Western Europe, the out-of-time modern town of Grantville, West Virginia must fight for its life in a war-torn Europe just emerging from medieval skulduggery.

1636. Grantville has bounced back and established its new mission and identity, but it seems some have been left behind—people like Bernie Zeppi, courageous in the battle, but unable to figure out what to do with himself in a world that’s utterly changed. Then Russian emissary Vladimir Gorchacov arrives in Grantville and hires Bernie to journey to Moscow and bring the future to a Russia mired in slavish serfdom and byzantine imperial plots. Bernie jumps at the chance. He figures it to be an easy gig, complete with high pay and hot-and-cold running women.

But one thing Bernie hasn’t counted on is the chance to find his purpose in Mother Russia, from fighting the needless death of children from typhoid to building the first dirigible in Russian history. And then there’s love. Just as Bernie realizes his feeling for a certain Russian noblewoman may have gone way beyond respect, he finds them both enmeshed in the deadly politics of Kremlin power struggles.

War with Poland is afoot and Russia itself is about to get a revolution from within–three centuries early. Bernie Zeppi, former Grantville auto mechanic, is going to have the chance to prove he’s not the loser he believed himself to be. For now Bernie’s task is to save the woman he loves and the country he has come to call his own from collapse into a new Dark Age.

New E-books

Down Other Tracks: Alternate Outcomes of the 19th Century by Alexander Rooksmoor

Description from Amazon.

The world we know today was founded in the 19th century. Many of the countries in existence, our knowledge of the world and the technology we are familiar with came during this century of change. In the latest ‘what if?’ history book from Alexander Rooksmoor, he looks at how things could have turned out differently for the 19th century if history had gone down different turns at the points.

The book starts with the industrial revolution and reaches up to the end of the First World War, the conflict which finally marked the end of 19th century culture and the real beginning of the 20th. He considers a different career path for Napoleon Bonaparte and the vast impact this would have meant for Europe and the rest of the world. Assassinations of Napoleon III, Queen Victoria and King Edward VII are considered and conversely, a longer reign for Kaiser Friedrich III. The derailing of the processes of German and Italian unification and the creation of Belgium are looked at in terms of their local and international impacts. Finally, the book investigates different outcomes for conflicts, whether the Taiping Rebellion could have succeeded; what would have happened in the event of an Anglo-Russian War of 1878 and the implications for the First World War if the Schlieffen Plan had worked, if the British and Americans had stayed out of the conflict or mutinies had spread right through the Allied forces. As with Alexander Rooksmoor’s previous books, this is bound to interest anyone with an interest in how our world has turned out the way it did and all of those who wonder how different it could have been.

The book is written by Alexander Rooksmoor, author of Other Paths: Alternate Outcomes of the Second World War, Other Americas: Alternate Outcomes for the USA in the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries and Other Exits from the Maze: Alternate Outcomes for Tudor and Stuart Monarchs. It particularly complements Other Americas. His books draw on Alexander’s twenty years’ experience in researching and teaching history and in exploring and discussing a whole range of ‘what if?’s.

New References

The Slavery Attractor by Gorg Huff

Description from Amazon.

When I started writing "The Sewing Circle" my first story for the Grantville Gazette. I had no real notion of what economics was, except it was boring and not all that important and perhaps a bit less scientific than astrology. I didn't know what the Federal Reserve did, or even what effect banks and banking had on the economy. I hadn't read Smith, Keynes, Marks or Friedman and I hadn't even heard of Hayek or Ricardo. Ah, the good old days.

But my characters needed to deal with the economics of their situation, so I had to figure out how it would affect them. I had to know what economics dealt with so I could see how it would affect the story. And, as it turned out, I needed to know the same thing for later stories. So for the last ten years I have been studying economics on my own. Reading what the great minds of the field thought. In that reading I learned that a lot of the assumptions in economics were based on looking at the field through the prism of statistical analysis.

The Slavery Attractor is a look at economics through the lens of chaos theory, and I have worked rather hard to make it as short and as clear as I could manage. The article is only around eight thousand four hundred words and makes very little reference to hallowed experts. This is not a learned discourse on what the experts have said about economics. It's a simple look at economics and how they work.

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.

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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.