Showing posts with label CJ Samsom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CJ Samsom. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

New Releases 1/28/14

Hardcovers

Dominion by CJ Sansom

Description from Amazon.

Winner of the 2012 Sidewise Award.

1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany. The global economy strains against the weight of the long German war against Russia still raging in the east. The British people find themselves under increasingly authoritarian rule--the press, radio, and television tightly controlled, the British Jews facing ever greater constraints.

But Churchill's Resistance soldiers on. As defiance grows, whispers circulate of a secret that could forever alter the balance of the global struggle. The keeper of that secret? Scientist Frank Muncaster, who languishes in a Birmingham mental hospital.

Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, a spy for the Resistance and University friend of Frank's, is given the mission to rescue Frank and get him out of the country. Hard on his heels is Gestapo agent Gunther Hoth, a brilliant, implacable hunter of men, who soon has Frank and David's innocent wife, Sarah, directly in his sights.

C.J. Sansom's literary thriller Winter in Madrid earned Sansom comparisons to Graham Greene, Sebastian Faulks, and Ernest Hemingway. Now, in his first alternative history epic, Sansom doesn't just recreate the past--he reinvents it. In a spellbinding tale of suspense, oppression and poignant love, DOMINION dares to explore how, in moments of crisis, history can turn on the decisions of a few brave men and women--the secrets they choose to keep and the bonds they share.

Paperbacks

Disenchanted & Co. by Lynn Viehl

Description from Amazon.

In the Provincial Union of Victoriana, a steampunk America that lost the Revolutionary War, Charmian “Kit” Kittredge makes her living investigating crimes of magic. While Kit tries to avoid the nobs of high society, she follows mysteries wherever they lead.

Unlike most folks, Kit doesn’t believe in magic, but she can’t refuse to help Lady Diana Walsh, who claims a curse is viciously wounding her while she sleeps. As Kit investigates the Walsh family, she becomes convinced that the attacks are part of a more ominous plot—one that may involve the lady’s obnoxious husband.

Sleuthing in the city of Rumsen is difficult enough, but soon Kit must also skirt the unwanted attentions of a nefarious deathmage and the unwelcome scrutiny of the police chief inspector. Unwilling to surrender to either man’s passion for her, Kit struggles to remain independent as she draws closer to the heart of the mystery. For the truth promises to ruin her life—and turn Rumsen into a supernatural battleground from which no one will escape alive.

Siege Perilous by E.D. deBirmingham

Description from Amazon.

Ocyrhoe, a young, cunning fugitive from Rome, safeguards a chalice of subtle but great power. Finding herself in France, she allies with the persecuted, pacifist Cathar sect in their legendary mountaintop stronghold, Montségur. There she resists agents of the Roman Church and its Inquisition, fights off escalating, bloody besiegement by troops of the King of France, and shields the mysterious cup from the designs of many.

Percival, the heroic Shield-Brethren knight from The Mongoliad, consumed by his mystical visions of the Holy Grail, is also drawn to Montségur—where the chalice holds the key to his destiny.

Arrayed against Percival and Ocyrhoe are enemies both old and new who are determined to reveal the secrets of the Shield-Brethren with the hope of destroying the order once and for all.

Alive with memorable characters, intense with action and intrigue, Siege Perilous conjures a medieval world where the forces of faith confront the forces of fear. Choices made by characters in The Mongoliad reach their ultimate conclusion in this fifth and concluding novel—and all of Christendom is at stake.

Wicked After Midnight by Delilah S. Dawson

Description from Amazon.

An electrifying paranormal romance . . . with a twist!

Only rebellious Demi Ward could be bored with her life as a contortionist in Criminy Stain’s magical traveling circus. But being a cabaret star in the City of Light is dangerous . . . especially for an audacious Bludman.

After Demi’s best friend, Cherie, is brutally kidnapped en route to Paris by a roving band of masked slavers, passionate highwayman Vale Hildebrand shows up to save the day. With his help, Demi rises to the top of the cabaret scene as part of her plot to find Cherie—but what she really discovers is a taste for Vale’s kisses. Meanwhile, wealthy suitors vie for a night of her charms, crowding the glittering club where Demi commands the stage with a host of colorful daimons. She is soon seduced by a smoldering portrait artist whose ties to a secret society could be the break she and Vale need on their hunt. But—unlike the Paris that Demi read about in college on Earth—the Paris of Sang is full of depraved pleasures and deadly surprises...

E-books

The Sharp End: Alternate History Zombie Apocalypse by Joseph Nassise

Description from Amazon.

The zombie apocalypse meets World War One in this exciting prequel story to BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES, book one in the Great Undead War alternate history series!

March 1921. The War to End All Wars continues, with no foreseeable end in sight. The Central Powers control most of Europe, with only a thin stretch of French coastline still in Allied hands. A beleaguered Britain fights resolutely on, but everyone knows that without the continued support of the United States it would fall within weeks. Even that may not be enough to defeat the brilliance of the Central Powers' scientists and the advantages their advanced weapons give their troops as wave after wave of zombie soldiers are sent against the Allied front lines...

On May 1st, 2012 HarperVoyager released BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES, the first book in the new zombie steampunk alternate history series known as The Great Undead War by internationally bestselling author, Joseph Nassise.

Here, for the first time, is the story behind the story. Follow the hero of The Great Undead War zombie apocalypse series, Captain Michael "Madman" Burke, leader of Burke's Marauders, in the early days of the war, when the Germans are just beginning their field tests of a new weapon.

A weapon that will eventually come to change the face of the war itself, that will resurrect the bodies of the dead, both friend and foe alike, and turn them into flesh-eating monsters. A weapon that will come to be known as corpse gas.

To fans, 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. His new short story "Road Trip" can be found in Forbidden Future: A Time Travel Anthology. 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.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

New Releases 12/3/13

Hardcovers

1920: America's Great War by Robert Conroy

Description from Amazon.

By the author of breakout WW II era alternate history Himmler’s War and Rising Sun, a compelling alternate history thriller.  After winning WW I, Germany invades America in 1920, marching through California and Texas as a desperate nation resists.

Consider another 1920: Imperial Germany has become the most powerful nation in the world.  In 1914, she had crushed England, France, and Russia in a war that was short but entirely devastating.

By 1920, Kaiser Wilhelm II is looking for new lands to devour.  The United States is fast becoming an economic super-power and the only nation that can conceivably threaten Germany.  The U.S. is militarily inept, however, and is led by a sick and delusional president who wanted to avoid war at any price.  Thus, Germany is able to ship a huge army to Mexico to support a puppet government.

Her real goal: the invasion and permanent conquest of California and Texas.

America desperately resists as the mightiest and most brutal army in the world in a battle fought on land, at sea, and in the air as enemy armies savagely marched up on California, and move north towards a second Battle of the Alamo.  Only the indomitable spirit of freedom can answer the Kaiser's challenge.

Balfour and Meriwether in The Incident of the Harrowmoor Dogs by Daniel Abraham

Description from Amazon.

When a private envoy of the queen and member of Lord Carmichael's discreet service goes missing, Balfour and Meriwether are asked to look into the affair. They will find a labyrinth of dreams, horrors risen from hell, prophecy, sexual perversion, and an abandoned farmhouse on the moors outside Harrowmoor Sanitarium. The earth itself will bare its secrets and the Empire itself will tremble in the face of the hidden dangers they discover, but the greatest peril is the one they have brought with them.

Balfour and Meriwether in the Incident of the Harrowmoor Dogs is the first novella length work in the Balfour and Meriwether stories by Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominated author Daniel Abraham.

The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Fowl and Filthy Fiends by Robert Rankin

Description from Amazon.

Darwin, the Educated Ape, sets off on another madcap adventure through time, space, and
chickens

Robert Rankin, the master of far-fetched fiction, presents, for the first time, a book written in "the first monkey." Sure to be taken up as the newest of literary fads, Darwin, the Educated Ape here tells his life story to his legions of fans. Featuring: Chickens! Martians! Doodlebugs! The Far Future! The Distant Past! Sherlock Holmes! Winston Churchill! Dynamite! More Monkeys than you can shake a stick at! Barmen! Pubs! The End of the World and more! The fourth in Robert Rankin's series of steampunk-tinged Victoriana novels featuring the master detective Cameron Bell (who has an unfortunate fondness for blowing up major landmarks) and his companion Darwin, the Educated Ape, this is another masterpiece of comic fiction and SF.

Paperbacks

Assassin's Creed: Black Flag by Oliver Bowden

Description of Amazon.

It’s the Golden Age of Piracy—a time when greed, ambition and corruption overcome all loyalties—and a brash young captain, Edward Kenway, is making his name known for being one of the greatest pirates of his time.

In the brilliant new novel, Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, discover the story of how Edward, a young privateer, became one of the world's most deadly pirates and was drawn into the centuries-old battle between the Templars and the Assassins.

Clockwork Chaos edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail  and Neal Levin

Description from Amazon.

FINDING ORDER IN CHAOS

History, invention, the power of deduction...Clockwork Chaos is more than goggles and gears. It is about order and structure and timing striving for mechanical perfection. But in an era where mass production does not yet exist, the unique machinery brought forth into the world is at times bound to fall short of the goal. This chaos turns the science into mayhem and when the gears spring forth this mechanical viscera is indicative of a world turned inside out. Join us in our journey through the shine of society to the dark steamy underbelly of grit and crime.

Thirteen stories of steam-driven genius plumb the depths of human intrigue even as they raise our vision to the skies. Patrick Thomas's Spellpunk tale Deadly Imitation turns the Ripper into a tourist attraction. Gail Gray's The Foxglove Broadsides uses the power of the press to bring down the political machine. And Jeff Young's Ambergris in Ice gets to the grist of the matter on the issue of smuggling. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but read on to discover how mods make the man.

Featuring the work of Jeff Young, Richard Marsden, Matt Dinniman, Bernie Mojzes, R. Rozakis, Patrick Thomas, Angel Leigh McCoy, Gail Gray, Patricia Puckett, James Chambers, N.R. Brown, C.J. Henderson, and James Daniel Ross.

Audiobooks

Dominion by CJ Sansom

Description from Amazon.

1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany after Dunkirk. As the long German war against Russia rages on in the east, the British people find themselves under dark authoritarian rule: the press, radio and television are controlled; the streets patrolled by violent auxiliary police and British Jews face ever greater constraints. There are terrible rumours too about what is happening in the basement of the German Embassy at Senate House. Defiance, though, is growing. In Britain, Winston Churchill's Resistance organization is increasingly a thorn in the government's side. And in a Birmingham mental hospital an incarcerated scientist, Frank Muncaster, may hold a secret that could change the balance of the world struggle for ever. Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, secretly acting as a spy for the Resistance, is given the mission by them to rescue his old friend Frank and get him out of the country. Before long he, together with a disparate group of Resistance activists, will find themselves fugitives in the midst of London's Great Smog; as David's wife Sarah finds herself drawn into a world more terrifying than she ever could have imagined. And hard on their heels is Gestapo Sturmbannfuhrer Gunther Hoth, brilliant, implacable hunter of men ...At once a vivid, haunting reimagining of 1950s Britain, a gripping, humane spy thriller and a poignant love story, with DOMINION C. J. Sansom once again asserts himself as the master of the historical novel.

Tyr's Hammer by Michael "Tinker" Pearce and Linda Pearce

Description from Amazon.

SideQuests are stand-alone stories or novellas that chronicle the heroes, villains, and adventures in The Foreworld Saga across numerous eras and ages. They can be read in any order with or without prior knowledge of The Foreworld Saga. In this quick-witted and action-packed addition to The Foreworld Saga series, the leader of the Shield-Brethren has dispatched two of his men northward to secure land for a new citadel. When Tyr and his companion come upon the perfect spot, they discover that it is owned by Voldrun, a northern king with a questionable sense of justice. Although he welcomes the travelers, the king’s true motives eventually become clear. Determined to be compensated for his hospitality, Voldrun subjects the duo to several challenges, culminating in a game more dangerous than either warrior could ever have imagined. Steadfast and brave to the end, Tyr must draw upon all of his considerable skill and cunning as he endeavors to outwit the sly Voldrun and strives to secure a bright future for the order.

To fans, 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. His new short story "Road Trip" can be found in Forbidden Future: A Time Travel Anthology. 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.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

The Winner of the No Americans Contest is...

Well guys the No Americans writing contest is finally over. We had a lot of great entries and in case you forgot here they are below in the order they appeared:

"Cherry Blossom in the Spring" by Rachel Saunders

"The Holy Land" by Kieran Colfer

Review: Dominion by C.J. Sansom (submitted by Alison Morton)

A Nation Once Again: An Alternate History of the Easter Rising by Andrew Schneider

Industria, Tecnologia, Potenza: An Italy AAR Chapter 1 by Tyler Bugg

"The Boy Who Dribbled" by Dimas Aditya Hanandito

"The Anointed One" by A.J. Nolte

It was difficult to make a final decision about who would win an e-book copy of Chris Nuttall's novel The Royal Sorceress, published by Elsewhen Press. Kieran's "The Holy Land" was a great read, as was Andrew's counterfactual essay on the Easter Rising. Plus, it is always good to see new faces like Rachel and Dimas. I hope we can read more alternate history from you all in the future.

However, rules are rules, and as I said in the initial announcement: "the person who generates the most page views will win the book." So the winner of the No Americans writing contest is...

ALISON MORTON.

Yes Alison's review of Dominion produced the most page views out of all of the entries, with "The Holy Land" and "A Nation Once Again" coming in second and third place respectively.

In the future I think I am going to have separate categories for fiction, non-fiction and reviews, but for now I am sticking with the winner take all format. So congrats to Alison and expect to be contacted soon about how you can retrieve your prize. For everyone else, thank you for participating and I hope to see your new entries for the the Balkanize Me contest and stay tuned for the announcement of the March contest.

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger on Amazing Stories and a volunteer editor for Alt Hist magazine. His fiction can be found at Echelon PressJake's Monthly and The Were-Traveler. 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.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Review: Dominion by C.J. Sansom

Guest post by Alison Morton.
A tough and powerful word, but an appropriate title for C J Sansom's new book. Famous for his Shardlake Tudor series, here Sansom brings us to 1952 in an alternate, authoritarian Britain which made peace with Hitler in 1940. Not formally occupied, Britain is nevertheless dominated by the Nazi regime. Its home-grown "milice" - a vastly expanded and violent Special Branch working hand-in-hand with the Gestapo dispensing brutality from the basement of the German Embassy at Senate House - patrols the dismal and dirty streets.

Germany is still fighting a bitter, savage war against Russia, the British press, radio and television are filled with propaganda and British Jews face ever greater constraints.

The hero, David Fitzgerald, is a civil servant hiding his Jewishness and trying to preserve his marriage which is collapsing under the pressure of his secret life as a spy for the Resistance. The antagonist, Gunther Hoth, a Gestapo policeman hunting Fitzgerald and his Resistance colleagues, is neither stupid nor inexperienced and almost becomes a sympathetic character. This is no "Dick Barton" adventure with clear-cut lines.

Dense with detail that makes its portrayal of everyday life so vivid, the action starts slowly, but by the end, the tension is almost unbearable. Real events like Great Smog of 1952 are woven in to ramp up the threatening atmosphere and clever details about the alternate 1950s are grafted onto real ones, such as British Corner Houses replacing Lyons Corner Houses (Joe Lyons was, of course, Jewish).

The characters are beautifully, often painfully, drawn and fleshed out with past histories full of awkward relations, tiresome colleagues, happy and painful childhoods. Complex, sometimes very frightened, the characters are always human. Their dialogue mirrors this as well as driving the story forward.

Although interacting with the characters' story, the overarching political plot does not reply upon their actions. The seeming important secret is of negative importance. In one way, this is unsatisfactory, in another it emphasises how the actions of ordinary people do not impact or contribute to the bigger one. In this book, that would have been too pat.

Part adventure, part espionage, all encompassed by terrific atmosphere, this is an exciting, but moving account of people who become heroic but remain very human.

* * *

Alison Morton writes Roman-themed thrillers with an alternative history setting and hopes to publish the first of a trilogy early next year. She muses on writing, Romans and alternate/alternative history at her blog.