New Releases 9/20/16

You can support The Update by clicking the banner to your right or the links below if you are purchasing through Amazon!

Hardcovers

The Apostle Killer by Richard Beard

Set in a hazy Middle East that seems at once ancient and modern, The Apostle Killer features Gallio, an aging, hardboiled investigator who has one last chance to save his career: He’s got to prove Christ’s resurrection was a hoax.

To uncover the conspiracy behind the so-called resurrection, Gallio figures all he needs is for one of the apostles to crack. The only problem is that one by one, the apostles keep dying—and in ever more grotesque ways—just before Gallio gets to them.

Racing to save both his case and the witnesses he needs to solve it, Gallio begins to suspect he’s become the unwitting pawn in the plot to kill the apostles . . . but who’s behind it? And to what end? As Gallio realizes even his own superiors are not to be trusted, The Apostle Killer transforms from a dazzling literary experiment into a moving, haunting work of art.

Paperbacks

The Guild Conspiracy: A Chroniker City Story by Brooke Johnson

In the face of impossible odds, can one girl stem the tides of war?

It has been six months since clockwork engineer Petra Wade destroyed an automaton designed for battle, narrowly escaping with her life. But her troubles are far from over.  Her partner on the project, Emmerich Goss, has been sent away to France, and his father, Julian, is still determined that a war machine will be built. Forced to create a new device, Petra subtly sabotages the design in the hopes of delaying the war, but sabotage like this isn’t just risky: it’s treason. And with a soldier, Braith, assigned to watch her every move, it may not be long before Julian finds out what she’s done.

Now she just has to survive long enough to find another way to stop the war before her sabotage is discovered and she’s sentenced to hang for crimes against the empire. But Julian’s plans go far deeper than she ever realized . . . war is on the horizon, and it will take everything Petra has to stop it in this fast-paced, thrilling sequel to The Brass Giant.

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.

* * *

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, DeviantArt and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.

Rewriting History for Your Entertainment

Guest post by Brooke Johnson.

In 1882, Chroniker City did not exist. There was no known conspiracy to start a war between the British Empire and the French. There was no Guild of Engineers. There were no floating warships, no overland war machines, no taking of Calais, no battle of Amiens. There was no Chroniker University, no clockwork engineer named Petra Wade.

But I’m not writing about our world—not as it was, anyway.

History is a vast playground for the writer willing to delve into it, rich with the rise and fall of empires, conflict and tension between nations, numerous wars and battles ripe for the picking, political leaders both good and evil, and a variety of cultures spread across every possible geographical landscape, stretching back to the beginning of recorded time. With millions of stories hidden in the depths of the past, there is no limit to the number of novels you could write, whether those stories are true to history as we know it or mere speculation based on what little historical information we can find on a subject.

And altering that history opens up even more potential for story fodder. You can unravel the very fabric of the past and shift the threads to your will, unfolding a tapestry of endless possibilities. Change one thing in our history, and you have the opportunity to create a slightly different world from our own. Change several things, and it could be unrecognizable.

We writers of alternate history have the coveted key to the time machine and the means to change the course of the future. Whether that means rewriting the victors of World War II, changing the tragic fate of a historical legend, or building a city of inventors off the coast of Wales, we get to imagine how the world might be different if only history had taken a different course. We get to change the rules, and it’s up to us to see just how far that path takes us into the unknown, into the untraveled and untested waters of a different time.

What would happen if a man did build a technologically advanced city and then founded a guild of engineers to run it? What course would modern technology take? How quickly would it advance compared to our own time? Now, what would happen if a man rose to power in that city, a man with a vision for a different kind of future? What if he had the tools to see it done? What would it take to start a war between two countries already in conflict over international affairs? What would the First World War have looked like on the front lines if it had taken place thirty years sooner, with the hyper-advanced technology of the late Victorians?

How easy it is to change the course of history.

All it took was an idea—a man and his vision for the future—and by extrapolating on that idea, by exploring the consequences and asking what if, a story emerged.

But my work doesn’t end there. Writing alternate history comes with its own quirks and challenges, especially for those of us who strive for authenticity. Despite the differences in my alternate worlds, I try to include as much truth and fact as can be managed so that the story feels real. I may have changed history, but it’s still our world—a different one, to be sure, but similar enough to be familiar.

And that leads to one very important thing: RESEARCH. Lots and lots of it.

From the style of British military uniforms to the intricacies of clockwork mechanics; the street layout of a small port town to the operation of early telephones; storm patterns and shipping routes and the time of a sunrise in the early days of June—that much remains the same.

Tapping into that realism makes for some very detailed Google searches (bless you, internet) and lots of combing through historical records, maps, images, and other documents to find what I need to know to bring that authenticity to the story. Sometimes, I run into a problem—yeah, that airship flight I thought would take just a few hours to complete actually takes ten hours if I use the maximum recorded speed of dirigible flight around that time in our history—which means I just have to get a little more creative in order to make the story work within the confines of my historical rules.

Sometimes, that means fudging the details or rewriting another facet of history to fit the story. Sometimes, it means revising the story to fit history. But at the end of the day, writing with real world history, changing it, making it my own… there’s no greater feeling than figuring out how to marry fiction and reality in a way that serves both the story and the history I’ve chosen to include.

My job is to create that bridge, and hopefully tell an entertaining story in the process.

* * *

Brooke Johnson is a stay-at-home mom and tea-loving author. As the jack-of-all-trades bard of the family, she journeys through life with her husband, daughter, and dog. She currently resides in Northwest Arkansas but hopes one day to live somewhere a bit more mountainous.

New Releases 8/9/16

You can support The Update by clicking the banner to your right or the links below if you are purchasing through Amazon!

Hardcovers

Eterna and Omega by Leanna Renee Hieber

Leanna Renee Hieber's gaslamp fantasy series continues and the action ramps up in Eterna and Omega.

In New York City, fearing the dangers of the Eterna Compound--supposedly the key to immortality--Clara Templeton buries information vital to its creation. The ghost of her clandestine lover is desperate to tell her she is wrong, but though she is a clairvoyant, she cannot hear him.

In London, Harold Spire plans to send his team of assassins, magicians, mediums, and other rogue talents to New York City, in an attempt to obtain Eterna for Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria. He stays behind to help Scotland Yard track down a network of body snatchers and occultists, but he'll miss his second-in-command, Rose Everhart, whose gentle exterior masks a steel spine.

Rose's skepticism about the supernatural has been shattered since she joined Spire's Omega Branch. Meeting Clara is like looking into a strange mirror: both women are orphans, each is concealing a paranormal ability, and each has a powerful and attractive guardian who has secrets of his own.

The hidden occult power that menaces both England and America continues to grow. Far from being dangerous, Eterna may hold the key to humanity's salvation.

The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville

A thriller of war that never was—of survival in an impossible city—of surreal cataclysm. In The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines true historical events and people with his daring, uniquely imaginative brand of fiction, reconfiguring history and art into something new.

“Beauty will be convulsive. . . .”

1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever.

1950. A lone Surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city, he must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse.

But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties—to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself.

E-Books

The Guild Conspiracy: A Chroniker City Story by Brooke Johnson

In the face of impossible odds, can one girl stem the tides of war?

It has been six months since clockwork engineer Petra Wade destroyed an automaton designed for battle, narrowly escaping with her life. But her troubles are far from over.  Her partner on the project, Emmerich Goss, has been sent away to France, and his father, Julian, is still determined that a war machine will be built. Forced to create a new device, Petra subtly sabotages the design in the hopes of delaying the war, but sabotage like this isn’t just risky: it’s treason. And with a soldier, Braith, assigned to watch her every move, it may not be long before Julian finds out what she’s done.

Now she just has to survive long enough to find another way to stop the war before her sabotage is discovered and she’s sentenced to hang for crimes against the empire. But Julian’s plans go far deeper than she ever realized . . . war is on the horizon, and it will take everything Petra has to stop it in this fast-paced, thrilling sequel to The Brass Giant.

Audio

Ack-Ack Macaque by Gareth Powell

In 1944, as waves of German ninjas parachute into Kent, Britain's best hopes for victory lie with a Spitfire pilot codenamed Ack-Ack Macaque. The trouble is, Ack-Ack Macaque is a cynical, one-eyed, cigar-chomping monkey, and he's starting to doubt everything, including his own existence.

A century later, in a world where France and Great Britain merged in the late 1950s and nuclear-powered Zeppelins circle the globe, ex-journalist Victoria Valois finds herself drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the man who butchered her husband and stole her electronic soul.

Meanwhile, in Paris, after taking part in an illegal break-in at a research laboratory, the heir to the British throne goes on the run. And all the while, the doomsday clock ticks towards Armageddon.

Hystopia: A Novel by David Means

At the bitter end of the 1960s, after surviving multiple assassination attempts, President John F. Kennedy is entering his third term in office. The Vietnam War rages on, and the president has created a vast federal agency, the Psych Corps, dedicated to maintaining the nation's mental hygiene by any means necessary. Soldiers returning from the war have their battlefield traumas "enfolded" - wiped from their memories through drugs and therapy - while veterans too damaged to be enfolded roam at will in Michigan, evading the government and reenacting atrocities on civilians.

This destabilized version of American history is the vision of 22-year-old Eugene Allen, who has returned from Vietnam to write the book-within-a-book at the center of Hystopia. In conversation with some of the greatest war narratives, from Homer's Iliad to the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter", David Means channels the voice of Allen, the young veteran out to write a novel that can bring honor to those he fought with in Vietnam while also capturing the tragic history of his own family.

The critic James Wood has written that Means' language "offers an exquisitely precise and sensuous register of an often crazy American reality". In Hystopia, his highly anticipated first novel, David Means brings his full talent to bear on the crazy reality of trauma, both national and personal. Outlandish and tender, funny and violent, timely and historical, Hystopia invites us to consider whether our traumas can ever be truly overcome. The answers it offers are wildly inventive, deeply rooted in its characters, and wrung from the author's own heart.

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.

* * *

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.

New Releases 6/23/15

You can support The Update by clicking the banner to your right or the links below if you are purchasing through Amazon!

Hardcovers

The Long Utopia by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

The fourth novel in Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s internationally bestselling “Long Earth” series, hailed as “a brilliant science fiction collaboration . . . a love letter to all Pratchett fans, readers, and lovers of wonder everywhere” (Io9).

2045-2059. Human society continues to evolve on Datum Earth, its battered and weary origin planet, as the spread of humanity progresses throughout the many Earths beyond.

Lobsang, now an elderly and complex AI, suffers a breakdown, and disguised as a human attempts to live a “normal” life on one of the millions of Long Earth worlds. His old friend, Joshua, now in his fifties, searches for his father and discovers a heretofore unknown family history. And the super-intelligent post-humans known as “the Next” continue to adapt to life among “lesser” humans.

But an alarming new challenge looms. An alien planet has somehow become “entangled” with one of the Long Earth worlds and, as Lobsang and Joshua learn, its voracious denizens intend to capture, conquer, and colonize the new universe—the Long Earth—they have inadvertently discovered.

World-building, the intersection of universes, the coexistence of diverse species, and the cosmic meaning of the Long Earth itself are among the mind-expanding themes explored in this exciting new installment of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's extraordinary Long Earth series.

Paperbacks

The Brass Giant: A Chroniker City Story by Brooke Johnson

Sometimes, even the most unlikely person can change the world

Seventeen-year-old Petra Wade, self-taught clockwork engineer, wants nothing more than to become a certified member of the Guild, an impossible dream for a lowly shop girl. Still, she refuses to give up and tinkers with any machine she can get her hands on, in between working and babysitting her foster siblings.

When Emmerich Goss—handsome, privileged, and newly recruited into the Guild—needs help designing a new clockwork system for a top-secret automaton, it seems Petra has finally found the opportunity she's been waiting for. But if her involvement on the project is discovered, Emmerich will be marked for treason, and a far more dire fate will await Petra.

Working together in secret, they build the clockwork giant, but as the deadline for its completion nears, Petra discovers a sinister conspiracy from within the Guild council…and their automaton is just the beginning.

E-Books

1636: The Cardinal Virtues by Eric Flint and Walter H. Hunt

Book #19 in the multiple New York Times best-selling Ring of Fire series. After carving a free state for itself in war-torn 17th century Europe, citizens of the modern town of Grantville, West Virginia must contend with France's infamous Cardinal Richilieu, who is determined to keep his grip on power no matter what history says.

France, 1636 . . . It has been twenty years since King Louis took Aña Maria Mauricia, daughter of Spain's King Philip III, as his wife, and their union has not yet produced an heir. Under the guidance of his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, a plan is developed to remedy that situation. Once she is with child, Queen Anne goes into seclusion to guard her health and protect her from those who would prefer that the child is never born—France’s foreign enemies as well as schemers such as Monsieur Gaston d’Orleans, the King’s younger brother and heir. When the Crown’s opponents make their move, factions inside and outside France must choose sides and help determine the future and fate of the Kingdom.

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.

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

New Releases 6/9/15

You can support The Update by clicking the banner to your right or the links below if you are purchasing through Amazon!

Hardcover

The Iron Assassin by Ed Greenwood

On an Earth that is not our own, Victoria never ascended the throne; the House of Hanover held England only briefly before being supplanted by the House of Harminster. It is a time of gaslamps and regularly-scheduled airship flights, of trams and steam-driven clockwork with countless smoke-belching stacks. London the capitol of the Empire of the Lion, is a filthy, crowded, fast-growing city where a series of shocking murders threatens the throne itself. Energetic young inventor Jack Straker believes he has created a weapon to defend the crown: a reanimated, clockwork-enhanced corpse he can control. He introduces 'the Iron Assassin' to the highly-placed Lords who will decide if Straker's invention becomes a weapon of the Lion - or something to be destroyed. It quickly becomes apparent that the Iron Assassin is more self-willed than Straker intended, and that the zombie's past life is far more sinister than the Straker thought. Has he created a runaway monster? Or the best guardian the Lion could ever hope for?

Paperbacks

Beneath London by James P. Blaylock

The collapse of the Victoria Embankment uncovers a passage to an unknown realm beneath the city. Langdon St. Ives sets out to explore it, not knowing that a brilliant and wealthy psychopathic murderer is working to keep the underworld’s secrets hidden for reasons of his own. 

St. Ives and his stalwart friends investigate a string of ghastly crimes: the gruesome death of a witch, the kidnapping of a blind, psychic girl, and the grim horrors of a secret hospital where experiments in medical electricity and the development of human, vampiric fungi, serve the strange, murderous ends of perhaps St. Ives’s most dangerous nemesis yet.

Born of Deception by Teri Brown

Perfect for fans of Libba Bray and Anna Godbersen, this thrilling historical suspense novel—and sequel to Born of Illusion—tells the story of a teen illusionist who must harness her special powers and navigate the underworld of magic before her murderous enemies catch up with her.

After scoring a spot on a European vaudeville tour, Anna Van Housen is moving to London to chase her dream and to join an underground society for people like her with psychic abilities. But when Anna arrives, she finds the group in turmoil—one of its members has been kidnapped, and members of the society are starting to turn on one another. Her life in danger and her relationship with her boyfriend, Cole, fizzling, can Anna track down the kidnapper before he makes her his next victim—or will she be forced to pay the ultimate price for her powers?

Lovers of historical fiction and stories filled with romance and intrigue will fall for Born of Deception and its world of magic set in Jazz Age London.

The Clockwork Crown by Beth Cato

Rich in atmosphere, imagination, and fun, the action-packed, magic-filled sequel to The Clockwork Dagger is an enchanting steampunk fantasy, evocative of the works of Trudi Canavan and Gail Carriger.

Narrowly surviving assassination and capture, Octavia Leander, a powerful magical healer, is on the run with handsome Alonzo Garrett, the Clockwork Dagger who forfeited his career with the Queen’s secret society of spies and killers—and possibly his life—to save her. Now, they are on a dangerous quest to find safety and answers: Why is Octavia so powerful? Why does she seem to be undergoing a transformation unlike any witnessed for hundreds of years?

The truth may rest with the source of her mysterious healing power—the Lady’s Tree. But the tree lies somewhere in a rough, inhospitable territory known as the Waste. Eons ago, this land was made barren and uninhabitable by an evil spell, until a few hardy souls dared to return over the last century. For years, the Waste has waged a bloody battle against the royal court to win its independence—and they need Octavia’s powers to succeed.

Joined by unlikely allies, including a menagerie of gremlin companions, she must evade killers and Clockwork Daggers on a dangerous journey through a world on the brink of deadly civil war.

RUSH's Clockwork Angels: The Graphic Novel by Neil Peart and Kevin J. Anderson

The graphic novel adaptation of the unprecedented concept album and novel from the multi-platinum, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame music legends RUSH and NY Times Bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson!

Owen Hardy, like all the people of Albion, has lived his whole life under the rule of The Watchmaker. His entire life has been planned down to the exact second. But what happens when a young boy decides that things should not always goes as planned? Rush’s CLOCKWORK ANGELS is a testament to the band’s creative versatility—it has been successful as a concept album, novel, and international tour. Now, Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart and New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson are bringing the story of CLOCKWORK ANGELS to comics, where newcomer artist Nick Robles will bring the journey of Owen Hardy to visual life! Die-hard Rush fans have longed for Peart’s narrative songwriting to be adapted into comic book form for decades, but fans of steampunk fantasy will enjoy journeying into the world of Albion thanks to Anderson’s skilled storytelling. Collects the complete story originally published in CLOCKWORK ANGELS #1-#6.

E-Books

Agent of Byzantium by Harry Turtledove

A dashing master spy takes on the enemies of the Byzantine Empire and discovers impossible inventions like gunpowder and telescopes in a magnificent romp from the maestro of alternate-history science fiction

In another, very different timeline—one in which Mohammed embraced Christianity and Islam never came to be—the Byzantine Empire still flourishes in the fourteenth century, and wondrous technologies are emerging earlier than they did in our own. Having lost his family to the ravages of smallpox, Basil Argyros has decided to dedicate his life to Byzantium. A stalwart soldier and able secret agent, Basil serves his emperor courageously, going undercover to unearth Persia’s dastardly plots and disrupting the dark machinations of his beautiful archenemy, the Persian spy Mirrane, while defusing dire threats emerging from the Western realm of the Franco-Saxons. But the world Basil so staunchly defends is changing rapidly, and he must remain ever vigilant, for in this great game of empires, the player who controls the most advanced tools and weaponry—tools like gunpowder, printing, vaccines, and telescopes—must certainly emerge victorious.

A collection of interlocking stories that showcase the courage, ingenuity, and breathtaking derring-do of superspy Basil Argyros, Agent of Byzantium presents the great Harry Turtledove at his alternate-world-building best. At once intricate, exciting, witty, and wildly inventive, this is a many-faceted gem from a master of the genre.

The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump by Harry Turtledove

In an alternate America that runs on magic, a potential environmental disaster plunges an overworked bureaucrat into a deadly conspiracy of evil gods and darkest sorcery

David Fisher pushes paper for the EPA in a world that’s a lot like ours . . . only different. In this California—and throughout the alternate United States—all gods are real, science doesn’t exist, and magic rules everything, running imp-driven computers and creating anxiety-inducing bumper-to-bumper flying-carpet rush hours. Unfortunately, unchecked magic use can leave dangerous residues, creating hours of mind-numbing deskwork for David and his fellow bureaucrats at the Environmental Perfection Agency. Now a leakage at a toxic spell dump in Angels City is about to complicate David’s life in ways he never imagined, unleashing vampires, werewolves, and soulless babies. Even the actual spooks at the CIA concerned. But looking too closely into what might be more than just an accident could have David stepping on the toes of some very nasty deities indeed, imperiling his future on the Other Side . . . and on this one, as well.

When it comes to creating alternate histories—and worlds—no one does it better than the great Harry Turtledove. The multiple-award-winning master of the fantastic carries readers on a droll thrill ride through a richly detailed, ingeniously imagined fantasy reality where the impossible is mundane—and absolutely anything can happen.

A Different Flesh by Harry Turtledove

In this classic work of alternate history, acclaimed Hugo Award–winning author Harry Turtledove explores a different America in which a primitive race of Neanderthals are enslaved by Homo sapiens from across the ocean

What if mankind’s “missing link,” the apelike Homo erectus, had survived to dominate a North American continent where woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers still prowled, while the more advanced Homo sapiens built their civilizations elsewhere? Now imagine that the Europeans arriving in the New World had chanced on these primitive creatures and seized the opportunity to establish a hierarchy in which the sapiens were masters and the “sims” were their slaves.

This is the premise that drives the incomparable Harry Turtledove’s A Different Flesh. The acclaimed Hugo Award winner creates an alternate America that spans three hundred years of invented history. From the Jamestown colonists’ desperate hunt for a human infant kidnapped by a local sim tribe, to a late-eighteenth-century contest between a newfangled steam-engine train and the popular hairy-elephant-pulled model, to the sim-rights activists’ daring 1988 rescue of an unfortunate biped named Matt who’s being used for animal experimentation, Turtledove turns our world inside out in a remarkable science fiction masterwork that explores what it truly means to be human.

The Mechanical Theater: A Chroniker City Novella by Brooke Johnson

Petra Wade's older brother, Solomon, has always dreamed of being an actor. Instead, he works grueling shifts in the clockwork city's boiler rooms to help support his large adopted family. When Le Theatre Mecanique holds an open call for their upcoming performance, he decides to audition. However, the only role he is suitable to fill is that of the theater's custodian.

Leaving the well-paying boiler job behind him, Solomon immerses himself in the theater--watching rehearsals, studying the performances, and working with an emerging young actress to improve his skills. But back at home, his family feels the sting of their reduced income when his younger sister Emily develops pneumonia and the only treatment is too expensive.

Solomon will be forced to make a difficult choice: fulfill his dreams of stardom, or help save his younger sister.

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.

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

Building Chroniker City

Guest post by Brooke Johnson.

When I sat down to write a steampunk novel, I knew that I wanted the setting to be unique, to differentiate itself from the settings of other steampunk novels and fill the absence that I felt was missing in steampunk fiction—an industrial techno-hub of science and engineering. Most of the other steampunk novels I had read up to this point blended steampunk elements with fantasy, or were of the adventure and exploration variety, where the characters traveled the world on an airship.

There was a painful lack of science in these novels, many of the authors seemingly ignoring all the invention and innovation of the Victorians that propelled the human race into the modern world. Where were the engineers? The mechanics? The scientists? I yearned for a story that brought the mechanical to life, that dug into the greasy guts and gears of extraordinary machines, and focused on engineers instead of posh society, but for all my searching, I could not find it. That’s when I knew that I had to be the one to write it.

Dissatisfied with the lack of gadgetry and science in the genre, I decided to create a steampunk setting that was neither paranormal fantasy or steampunk travelogue. No werewolves or vampires or fairies. No fantastic science. And no world-travelling airships. I wanted to create a steampunk setting based in reality, with real science and plausible machines that very well could have existed in a technologically advanced world, a city where society venerated engineers above all else, creativity and innovation were valued more than lineage or wealth, and mechanical inventions permeated every aspect of daily life.

And so Chroniker City was born.

Chroniker City sits twenty miles off the southern coast of Wales, built onto a small island of rock eight miles west of Grassholm. In our world, a remote lighthouse stands there, built in the late 1850s by the Trinity House after they bought out the previous leaseholders in the 1830s. However, in my alternate timeline, that was not the case. Instead, a wealthy German engineer by the name of Gumarich Chroniker purchased rights to build on that land and employed  engineers from all over Europe to help him construct his most ambitious engineering project—a mechanical, self-sustaining city that would become the foundation for the technological center of modern Victorian science.

It was from this point onward in my alternate history that the world diverged from our timeline. The construction of Chroniker City—and the addition of its prestigious polytechnical University—ushered in a swift advancement of scientific progress. The machines are made primarily of clockwork and steam, yes, but also include electricity and wireless technology, combustion enginery, and even electromagnetic designs.

The city proper sits atop a sprawling mechanical subcity, which houses the turbines, steam boilers, water reserves, and mechanical drives that deliver power to the city above. Above ground, the city itself hosts a number of innovative technologies unique to the setting—a trolley-lift for transporting passengers from the second-quadrant streets to the upper reaches of its illustrious shops and restaurants, automatic ventilation systems to remove smog from the air, a theater renowned for its mechanically operated stage and orchestra of musical automatons—as well as more ordinary inventions such as cranes, elevator lifts, wired power tools, and electric lights. Of course, the depths of the subcity hold their own secrets as well…

By creating my own city instead of taking over an existing one, I granted myself the freedom to establish my own rules, to explore avenues of the story and the setting that would have been next to impossible in a steampunk London or Paris. I was able to build a city that served the story, instead of the other way around. Had I chosen to set the story in a real-world location, I would have needed to restrict myself to a certain layout or history—or else transform the city into something unrecognizable to achieve the same fictional effect. Instead, I saved myself a lot of research and unnecessary complication while still managing to maintain a lot of the Victorian sociopolitical atmosphere of the world at that time.

With Chroniker City, I wanted to create the quintessential steampunk setting, an alternate history with the pinnacle of Victorian science at its core, and it’s my hope that as readers delve into the pages of The Brass Giant, they experience same fascination with the science and machinery of the city that I had while building it.

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Brooke Johnson is the author of The Brass Giant, the first novel in the Chroniker City steampunk series for young adults. She is a stay-at-home mom and tea-loving writer, and as the jack-of-all-trades bard of the family, she journeys through life with her husband, daughter, and dog. She currently resides in Northwest Arkansas but hopes to one day live somewhere more mountainous. Follow her on Twitter @brookenomicon.

New Releases 5/5/15

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Hardcovers

1882: Custer in Chains by Robert Conroy

NATIONALLY BEST-SELLING AUTHOR. A world where Custer survives Little Bighorn and becomes president goes seriously awry.

Following his unlikely but decisive (and immensely popular) 1876 victory over Sitting Bull and the Sioux at the Little Big Horn, George Armstrong Custer is propelled into the White House in 1880.

Two years later, he finds himself bored and seeks new worlds to conquer. He and his wife Libbie fixate on Spain’s decaying empire as his source for immortality. What President Custer doesn’t quite comprehend is that the U.S. military isn’t up to such a venture. When a group of Americans on a ship headed for Cuba is massacred, war becomes inevitable—and unless calmer, patriotic citizens and soldiers can find a way to avoid debacle, this war may be America's last stand!

Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes

"What would happen if Adolf Hitler woke up in modern-day Berlin? In a bestselling satirical novel, he'd end up a TV comedy star . . . [Look Who's Back] has unsurprisingly sparked debate in a country that has grappled for decades with Hitler's unconscionable legacy."
-Time

Timur Vermes' record-breaking bestseller Look Who's Back is a satirical novel that imagines what would happen if Hilter were reborn in present-day Germany. The book was a massive success in Germany, selling more than 1.5 million copies. It was subsequently published for the first time in English by Quercus in the UK to strong sales and even stronger media attention.

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.

A Long Time Until Now by Michael Z Williamson

Book 1 in a new series from the creator of the best-selling Freehold Universe series.  A military unit is thrust back into Paleolithic times with only their guns and portable hardware.

Ten soldiers on convoy in Afghanistan suddenly find themselves lost in time. Somehow, they arrived in Earth's Paleolithic Asia. With no idea how they arrived or how to get back, the shock of the event is severe. They discover groups of the similarly displaced: Imperial Romans, Neolithic Europeans, and a small cadre of East Indian peasants. Despite their technological advantage, the soldiers only have ten people, and know no way home. Then two more time travelers arrive from a future far beyond the present. These time travelers may have the means to get back, but they aren't giving it up. In fact, they may have a treacherous agenda of their own, one that may very well lead to the death of the displaced in a harsh and dangerous era.

Straits of Hell: Destroyermen by Taylor Anderson

New York Times bestselling author Taylor Anderson’s phenomenal alternate history Destroyermen series continues as a game-changing conspiracy throws the hope of honor, trust, and survival into chaos....

Matt Reddy’s old Asiatic Fleet destroyer USS Walker has been mysteriously transported to an alternate version of earth. Here WWII is no longer raging, and Reddy and his crew have been trying to find a new place for themselves in this strange new world.

Now, along with the felinoid Lemurians and Imperial allies, they fight to keep the reptilian Grik, a race growing in supremacy, from reconquering the Lemurians’ ancestral home on Madagascar. Reddy and his crew are exhausted, far from reinforcements, and wildly outnumbered, so the odds seem greater than ever before. As for the fate of the Americas, Don Hernan and the evil Dominion have gathered to annihilate the forces behind the walls of Fort Defiance as a shadowy power with an agenda all its own rises with chilling resolve.

As the war teeters on a knife-edge, a tipping point may have been reached at last—and cold steel and hot-blooded valor will remain the ultimate weapons.

Paperbacks

Aurelia by Alison Morton

Late 1960s Roma Nova, the last Roman colony that has survived into the 20th century Aurelia Mitela is alone - her partner gone, her child sickly and her mother dead - and forced to give up her beloved career as a Praetorian officer. But her country needs her unique skills. Somebody is smuggling silver - Roma Nova's lifeblood - on an industrial scale. Sent to Berlin to investigate, she encounters the mysterious and attractive Miklós who knows too much and Caius Tellus, a Roma Novan she has despised and feared since childhood. Barely escaping a trap set by a gang boss intent on terminating her, she discovers that her old enemy is at the heart of all her troubles and pursues him back home to Roma Nova...

The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys

As he bore a vague resemblance to the Emperor, the  sailors on board the Hermann-Augustus Stoeffer had nicknamed him Napoleon. And so, for convenience, that is what we shall call him.

Besides, he was Napoleon. . . .

Napoleon has escaped from St. Helena, leaving a double behind him. Now disguised as the cabin hand Eugène Lenormand and enduring the mockery of the crew (Na­po­leon, they laughingly nickname the pudgy, hopelessly clumsy little man), he is on his way back to Europe, ready to make contact with the huge secret organization that will return him to power. But then the ship on which he sails is rerouted from Bordeaux to Antwerp. When Napoleon disembarks, he is on his own.

He revisits the battlefield of Waterloo, now a tourist destination. He makes his way to Paris. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and mishaps conduct our puzzled hero deeper and deeper into the mystery of Napoleon.

Deadly Shores: Destroyermen by Taylor Anderson

The Destroyermen series continues from the New York Times bestselling author of Straits of Hell.

The ambitious, long-planned raid on the Grik Empire has grown dangerously ill defined. Only Matthew Reddy, commander of the old destroyer USS Walker, seems focused on the original intent.

While many Lemurians see an opportunity to reconquer their stolen homeland, others—Lemurian and human—have their own agendas, which could compromise the Alliance. Complicating matters further is Reddy’s suspicion that his task force is being stalked by some unknown power bent on aiding the Grik for reasons of its own.

As the raid begins and chaos reigns, Reddy has no choice but to risk everything in a desperate act that results in a sprawling, nightmare battle on the beaches of “Grik City,” on the very decks of Walker, and in the labyrinthine passageways of the Celestial Palace itself. The final cost could be more than Matt Reddy—or the Alliance—can bear.

Unseemly Science: The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire, Book 2 by Rod Duncan

In the divided land of England, Elizabeth Barnabus has been living a double life - as both herself and as her brother, the private detective. Witnessing the hanging of Alice Carter, the false duchess, Elizabeth resolves to throw the Bullet Catcher's Handbook into the fire, and forget her past. If only it were that easy!

There is a new charitable organisation in town, run by some highly respectable women. But something doesn't feel right to Elizabeth. Perhaps it is time for her fictional brother to come out of retirement for one last case...? Her unstoppable curiosity leads her to a dark world of body-snatching, unseemly experimentation, politics and scandal. Never was it harder for a woman in a man's world...

The Venusian Gambit: Book Three of the Daedalus Series by Michael J Martinez

[Editor's Note: Check out my review over at Amazing Stories.]

The last chapter of the dimension-spanning Daedalus series brings the 19th and 22nd centuries together for an explosive finale in the jungles of Venus!

In the year 2135, dangerous alien life forms freed in the destruction of Saturn's moon Enceladus are making their way towards Earth. A task force spearheaded by Lt. Cmdr. Shaila Jain is scrambling to beat them there while simultaneously trying to save crewmember Stephane Durand, who was infected during the mission to Saturn and is now controlled by a form of life intent on reopening a transdimensional rift and destroying the human race. But Jain doesn’t realize that the possessed Stephane has bigger plans, beaming critical data to other conspirators suspiciously heading not for Earth, but for Venus…

In 1809—a Napoleonic era far different from our own—the French have occupied England with their Corps Eternélle, undead soldiers risen through the darkest Alchemy. Only the actions of Lord Admiral Thomas Weatherby and the Royal Navy have kept the French contained to Earth. But the machinations of old enemies point to a bold and daring gambit: an ancient weapon, presumed lost in the jungles of Venus.

Now, Weatherby must choose whether to stay and fight to retake his homeland or pursue the French to the green planet. And Shaila must decide if it’s possible to save the man she loves, or if he must be sacrificed for the good of two dimensions. In the dark, alien jungles of Venus, humanity's fate in both dimensions hangs in the balance—forcing past and present to once again join forces against an ancient terror.

E-books

The Brass Giant: A Chroniker City Story by Brooke Johnson

Sometimes, even the most unlikely person can change the world

Seventeen-year-old Petra Wade, self-taught clockwork engineer, wants nothing more than to become a certified member of the Guild, an impossible dream for a lowly shop girl. Still, she refuses to give up, tinkering with any machine she can get her hands on, in between working and babysitting her foster siblings.

When Emmerich Goss--handsome, privileged, and newly recruited into the Guild--needs help designing a new clockwork system for a top-secret automaton, it seems Petra has finally found the opportunity she's been waiting for. But if her involvement on the project is discovered, Emmerich will be marked for treason, and a far more dire fate would await Petra.

Working together in secret, they build the clockwork giant, but as the deadline for its completion nears, Petra discovers a sinister conspiracy from within the Guild council ... and their automaton is just the beginning.

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 and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.