New Releases 3/15/16

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Hardcovers

A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar

The novel that stunned—and scandalized—Europe comes to America

Wolf, a low-rent private detective, roams London’s gloomy, grimy streets, haunted by dark visions of a future that could have been—and a dangerous present populated by British Fascists and Nazis escaping Germany. Shomer, a pulp fiction writer, lies in a concentration camp, imagining another world. And when Wolf and Shomer's stories converge, we find ourselves drawn into a novel both shocking and profoundly haunting.

At once a perfectly pitched hard-boiled noir thriller (with an utterly shocking twist) and a “Holocaust novel like no other” (The Guardian), A Man Lies Dreaming is a masterful, unforgettable literary experiment from “one of our best and most adventurous writers” (Locus).

Neo-Victorian Freakery: The Cultural Afterlife of the Victorian Freak Show by Helen Davies

Neo-Victorian Freakery explores the way in which contemporary fiction, film, and television has revisited the lives of nineteenth-century freak show performers. It locates the neo-Victorian freak show as a crucial forum for debating the politics of disability, gender, sexuality and race within the genre more broadly.

Paperbacks

Jani and the Great Pursuit by Eric Brown

Jani and her stalwart companions Lieutenant Alfie Littlebody and Anand Doshi find themselves chased from India, via Greece, to London by the British authorities, Russian spies and a Hindu priest - who all want what Jani carries, the ventha-di: the key that will open the door to other worlds. In London she attempts to rescue the imprisoned alien Mahran - the only person who might help her save the Earth from the invasion of the merciless Zhell, the self-styled Masters of the Cosmos. But will she escape London and reach Tibet before the forces of evil capture her - and before she is betrayed by someone she considers loyal to her cause?

Ides of March by Bob Mayer

What does it take to change history and destroy our reality? The same date; six different years.

44 BC. Caesar heads to the Senate for his date with death.

1493 AD: Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after ‘discovering’ the New World. But more than acclaim awaits him.

1917 AD: The Last Czar, Nicholas II, abdicates. He, and his family, are supposed to be taken prisoner; but some have other plans.

493 AD: The First King of Italy, Odoacer, is executed by Theodoric, an event considered the end of the Western Roman Empire. But if the sword goes the other way?

480 BC: A massive Persian Army is invading Greece. Standing in its way: King Leonidas and 300 Spartans. And whispering in Leonidas’ ear is a priestess from the Oracle of Delphi. But what is she telling him?

The Time Patrol must send an agent back to each day, with just each having 24 hours to defeat the Shadow’s plan to disrupt our time-line, creating a time tsunami and wiping our present out.

E-Books

Dreams of the Space Age by Ian Sales

Yuri Gagarin goes to Mars. The Voyager 1 space probe carries an astronaut to the edge of the Solar System. The first man in space is an American boxer. These are just some of the re-imaginings of the Space Race contained in this slim collection of tautly-written tales. Rigorously researched, they feature rocket sleds, Space Age fashion and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programmes. This is the Right Stuff, it put twelve men on the Moon and could have put a husband and wife on Mars. But all that ended in 1972, when the crew of Apollo 17 splashed down in the Atlantic. All we have now is nostalgia, a slowly fading yearning for more adventurous and optimistic times. All we have now are... DREAMS OF THE SPACE AGE.

Union Forever by William R. Forstchen

The defeat of the Tugar horde by Andrew Keane, his Civil War regiment and soldiers from the now-liberated Russian city Rus was cause for great celebration (RALLY CRY, Book 1 in The Lost Regiment series). However, Andrew once again must mobilize his American and Russian troops, as another terrifying horde called the Merki have attacked Roum, with the help of human troops from Cartha, a Carthaginian city hostile to Rome back on Earth before both Romans and Carthaginians were transported to this strange planet.

Andrew Keane insists the existing alliance of Rus and Roum must be honored, and so the army of Rus and American soldiers begins a long march towards Roum to help defend it. While Andrew’s troops are successful in saving Roum with the help of the Patrician Marcus and his freed slaves, Andrew and his colleagues realize they’ve been tricked. The Horde’s strategy was to divert the Rus/American army, sending them South, so the horde and their Cartha allies can destroy Rus. It’s a race against time as Andrew and his army of Rus, Roum and American soldiers struggle to return in time.

Politics – Rus, Roum and Merki – add to the fun of this brilliantly-conceived alternate world novel.

To readers, authors and publishers...

Is your story going to be published in time for the next New Releases? Contact us 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 blogger on Amazing Stories and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the day when travel between parallel universes becomes a reality. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.