New Releases 5/10/16

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Hardcovers

Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

The bestselling author of the groundbreaking novels Under Heaven and River of Stars, Guy Gavriel Kay is back with a new book, set in a world inspired by the conflicts and dramas of Renaissance Europe. Against this tumultuous backdrop the lives of men and women unfold on the borderlands—where empires and faiths collide.

From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request—and possibly to do more—and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman, posing as a doctor’s wife, but sent by Seressa as a spy.

The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he’s been born to live. And farther east a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif—to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming.

As these lives entwine, their fates—and those of many others—will hang in the balance, when the khalif sends out his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world...

We Stand on Guard Deluxe Edition by Brian K Vaughan, Matt Hollingsworth and Steve Skroce

SAGA writer BRIAN K. VAUGHAN teams with artistic legend and Hollywood storyboard artist STEVE SKROCE for a subversive, action-packed military thriller. Set 100 years in our future, WE STAND ON GUARD follows a heroic band of Canadian civilians turned freedom fighters who must defend their homeland from invasion by a technologically superior opponent...the United States of America. Collecting all six issues of the controversial hit miniseries.

Paperbacks

DMZ Book One by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli

Writer Brian Wood (DEMO, The Massive) and artist Riccardo Burchielli (John Doe, DIAL H) come together to tell their critically acclaimed story of desperation and hope among those trapped in the most unlikely battlefield of them all: New York City.

For five years, the United States of America has battled the anti-establishment uprising of Middle America’s so-called “Free States.” This second civil war has done damage across the nation, but no place has been hit harder than New York City. With the U.S. controlling everything to the east and the Free States surrounding from the west, the island of Manhattan has become the hotly contested borderland known as the DMZ.

And that’s exactly where aspiring photojournalist Matty Roth has just landed.

The Glory of the Empire: A Novel, a History by Jean D'Ormesson

The Glory of the Empire is the rich and absorbing history of an extraordinary empire, at one point a rival to Rome. Rulers such as Basil the Great of Onessa, who founded the Empire but whose treacherous ways made him a byword for infamy, and the romantic Alexis the bastard, who dallied in the fleshpots of Egypt, studied Taoism and Buddhism, returned to save the Empire from civil war, and then retired “to learn to die,” come alive in The Glory of the Empire, along with generals, politicians, prophets, scoundrels, and others. Jean d’Ormesson also goes into the daily life of the Empire, its popular customs, and its contribution to the arts and the sciences, which, as he demonstrates, exercised an influence on the world as a whole, from the East to the West, and whose repercussions are still felt today. But it is all fiction, a thought experiment worthy of Jorge Luis Borges, and in the end The Glory of the Empire emerges as a great shimmering mirage, filling us with wonder even as it makes us wonder at the fugitive nature of power and the meaning of history itself.

E-Books

Agent Lavender: The Flight of Harold Wilson by Tom Black and Jack Tindale

Harold Wilson dominated British politics for almost two decades. His political skill saw him make powerful enemies and bitter rivals, both inside the Labour Party and out. Conspiracy theorists, some in very high places, even circulated rumours that he was an agent of the Soviet Union. In reality, of course, there was not a shred of truth to these malicious claims.

But what if there had been?

In Agent Lavender, Harold Wilson flees Whitehall in the dead of night, with MI5 and the police soon in hot pursuit. Taking place in late 1975 in a Britain weary of trade union disputes and fearful of military coups, the Establishment must move quickly to restore order without appearing heavy-handed. But then again, the Prime Minister has just been outed as a communist spy…

Part-historical epic, part-pulpy thriller, and featuring a cavalcade of 1970s public figures from Enoch Powell and Gerald Ford to Jack Jones and Michael Bentine, Agent Lavender takes readers into a maelstrom of intrigue, civil disobedience, satire, Cold War tensions, and downright farce.

The winner of eight Turtledove Awards including Best Story, Best Cold War Timeline and multiple Best Character awards, this acclaimed alternate history novel blends politics with espionage and adds a sprinkle of the absurd.

Chosen of the Valkyries (Twilight Of The Gods Book 2) by Chris Nuttall

Germany, 1985.

The Reich Council has fallen and the Reich is sundered in two, but the uneasy peace will not last long. To the east, Karl Holliston - now styling himself the Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich - is planning the conquest of Berlin and the destruction of the rebels, while to the west Germany’s former satellites are planning a bid for independence and the North Atlantic Alliance is uneasily considering just what will happen to the Reich’s vast arsenal of nuclear weapons.

As the civil war begins, as the Panzers begin their advance on Berlin, the rebels are forced to fight to save their revolution ...

... Or watch helplessly as a jackboot stamps down on Germany, forever.

Dislocated to Success by Iain Bowen

Iain Bowen's 'Arose from the Azure Main' is one of the most popular and acclaimed timelines on AlternateHistory.com. Beginning with the dislocation of the United Kingdom from 1980 to 1730, the effects are predictably enormous.

In 'Dislocated to Success', Norman St John-Stevas, Viscount Fawsley, one of the story's best loved characters, looks back on the extraordinary event and what followed it, in 'memoirs' written fifteen years after what has become known as 'the Dislocation'.

Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes

In the novel, Adolf Hitler wakes up in 2011 from a 66-year sleep in his subterranean Berlin bunker to find the Germany he knew entirely changed: Internet-driven media spreads ideas in minutes and fumes celebrity obsession; immigration has produced multicultural neighborhoods bringing together people of varying race, ethnicity, and religion; and the most powerful person in government is a woman. Hitler is immediately recognized . . . as an impersonator of uncommon skill. The public assumes the fulminating leader of the Nazi party is a performer who is always in character, and soon his inevitable viral appeal begets YouTube stardom, begets television celebrity on a Turkish-born comedian's show. His bigoted rants are mistaken for a theatrical satire-exposing prejudice and misrepresentation-and his media success emboldens Hitler to start his own political party, and set the country he finds a shambles back to rights.

With daring and dark humor, Look Who's Back skewers the absurdity and depravity of the cult of personality in modern media culture.

Not An English Word by Tom Anderson

HE’S BACK IN TOWN

With the Liberal Democrats facing electoral annihilation, Nick Clegg resorts to desperate measures. He plots to use a forbidden Celtic ritual to resurrect one of the Victorian Prime Ministers who made the Liberal Party great. But he gets more than he bargained for when a mysterious MP named Harry Church appears on the scene to turn British politics – and the world – upside down…

Featuring creative live news subtitles, the importance of choosing a cheap colour dye for cult outfits, penguins in microwaves and the Second Crimean War.

This book can be enjoyed alone but also comes with a soundtrack: each chapter has a suggested, thematically related song in a footnote which may be played alongside it to enhance the reading

The Road to the Sea by Joseph T Major

On the world scale, the Allied powers mass their forces and prepare to confront the Axis on their home grounds.

On the individual scale, the newlyweds try to build a life together while the shattered groom tries to repair his spirit.

The home front sees more stringencies and more pressures while the fighting men and women have to prepare themselves to confront themselves and their foes.

However, some of the plans can have great effects, or great catastrophies, and as ships, planes, and poor bloody infantry slog it out across the world, the pressure of secret knowledge can be too much to bear.

The Year of the Prince (The House of Stuart Sequence Book 1) by George Kearton

The Jacobite Uprising of 1745 is one of those parts of British history that we all think we know a little bit about. The romantic story of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” and his gallant Highlanders invading England, only to turn back at Derby and subsequently be defeated at Culloden is part of the cultural glue that holds ‘Great Britain’ together.

But what if things had turned out differently?

What if a broken carriage wheel and an inattentive Royal Navy officer had changed the course of history? Could the Prince and his Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English supporters have reached London, deposed George II and driven him into exile in Hanover? And how would our history have changed if the House of Stuart had been restored to the British throne in 1745?

Presented as a historical text, 'The Year of The Prince' tells the tale of a history which might have been and chronicles a successful Jacobite Uprising with many different consequences for Great Britain. It is the first of five volumes in 'The House of Stuart Sequence'. Future volumes will tell of the ongoing effects of a Stuart Restoration on the history of Great Britain, Europe, the Americas and beyond. The whole series will travel the years from 1745 to 1900 by which time we discover 'A World Turned Upside Down'.

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 for Amazing Stories, a volunteer interviewer for SFFWorld and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not exploring alternate timelines he 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, Tumblr and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.