New Releases 2/12/13

Hardcover

The Afrika Reich by Guy Saville

Description from Amazon.

Africa, 1952. More than a decade has passed since Britain’s humiliation at Dunkirk brought an end to the war and the beginning of an uneasy peace with Hitler.

The swastika flies from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. Britain and a victorious Nazi Germany have divided the continent. The SS has crushed the native populations and forced them into labor. Gleaming autobahns bisect the jungle, jet fighters patrol the skies. For almost a decade an uneasy peace has ensued.

Now, however, the plans of Walter Hochburg, messianic racist and architect of Nazi Africa, threaten Britain’s ailing colonies.

Sent to curb his ambitions is Burton Cole: a one-time assassin torn between the woman he loves and settling an old score with Hochburg. If he fails unimaginable horrors will be unleashed on the continent. No one – black or white – will be spared.

But when his mission turns to disaster, Burton must flee for his life.

It is a flight that will take him from the unholy ground of Kongo to SS slave camps to war-torn Angola – and finally a conspiracy that leads to the dark heart of The Afrika Reich itself.

Check out Seb's review and his conversation with Guy in the comment section.

Paperback

Homunculus by James P. Blaylock

Description from Amazon.

It is the late 19th century and a mysterious airship orbits through the foggy skies. Its terrible secrets are sought by many, including the Royal Society, a fraudulent evangelist, a fiendish vivisectionist, an evil millionaire and an assorted group led by the scientist and explorer Professor Langdon St. Ives.

Can St. Ives keep the alien homunculus out of the claws of the villainous Ignacio Narbondo?

The Mirage by Matt Ruff

Description from Amazon.

11/9/2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners. They fly two into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers. The United Arab States declares a War on Terror. Arabian and Persian troops invade the Eastern Seaboard and establish a Green Zone in Washington, D.C. . . .

Summer, 2009: Arab Homeland Security agent Mustafa al Baghdadi interrogates a captured suicide bomber. The prisoner claims that the world they are living in is a mirage—in the real world, America is a superpower, and the Arab states are just a collection of "backward third-world countries." Other captured terrorists have been telling the same story.

The gangster Saddam Hussein is conducting his own investigation. And the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee—a war hero named Osama bin Laden—will stop at nothing to hide the truth. As Mustafa and his colleagues venture deeper into the unsettling world of terrorism, politics, and espionage, they are confronted with questions without any rational answers, and the terrifying possibility that their world is not what it seems.

Check out Brian's review of the novel.

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories edited by Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link

Description from Amazon.

Imagine an alternate universe where tinkerers and dreamers craft and re-craft a world of automatons, clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that never were. Visionaries Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant have taken a genre already rich, strange, and inventive and challenged fourteen masters of speculative fiction, including two graphic storytellers, to embrace its established themes and refashion them in surprising ways and settings. The result is an anthology that defies its genre even as it defines it.

Audio

1635: The Papal Stakes by Charles E. Gannon and Eric Flint

Description from Amazon.

Rome in the year 1635 finds Frank Stone and his pregnant wife Giovanna in the clutches of Cardinal Borgia, whose political machinations and papal assassins may soon elevate him to Pope Borgia. Now Frank, along with Harry Lefferts and his infamous Wrecking Crew, must protect Pope Urban VII from all manner of treachery.

The Beast of Calatrava by Mark Teppo

Description from Amazon.

After a battle left Ramiro Ibáñez de Tolosa¿s face terribly disfigured, the knight of the Order of Calatrava abandoned his sword for a pastoral existence. But his beastly appearance horrifies all those who cross his path - with the exception of his adoring and pregnant wife. Can he keep Louisa and their unborn child safe from the war that is coming to Iberia?

As Ramiro prepares for his child¿s birth, Brother Lazare of the Cistercian order searches for a means to inspire men as he travels with the crusading Templars. He seeks swords of legend - named blades carried by heroes of old - believing such symbols have the ability to rally men in a way no king could ever accomplish. But when he learns of the stories told of the mysterious monster that haunts the Iberian battlefields, he wonders what sort of power this new legend might contain - the legend of a man whose scarred face and cold demeanor cannot hide his heroic soul.

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.

* * *

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 Press, Jake'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.

New Releases 10/30/12

New paperback

Himmler's War by Robert Conroy

Description from Amazon.

Only days after Normandy, Hitler is taken out of the equation and Heinrich Himmler, brutal head of the SS, assumes control of the Reich.  On the Allied side, there is confusion.  Should attempts be made to negotiate with the new government or should unconditional surrender still be the only option?  With the specter of a German super-weapon moving closer to completion and the German generals finally allowed to fight the kind of war at which they are masters, the Allies are pushed toward a course of accommodation or even defeat.  Will the soldiers of the Grand Alliance find the courage and conviction to fight on in the face of such daunting odds?  And can the Allied leaders put into place a new plan in time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by the German war machine?  A new and terrible battle for the free world is on.

[Check out Chris Nuttall's review of the novel.]

New e-books

American Indian Victories by Dale Cozort

Description from Amazon.

Have you ever wondered what would have ever happened if events in the past had gone differently? Have you ever wished that the American Indians hadn’t gotten the short end of the stick? American Indian Victories delivers over twenty realistic, well researched alternative history scenarios where the American Indians do significantly better than they did historically, along with a fiction excerpt set in world where Europeans never reached the New World and a novelette set in New England’s most bitter Indian war. Scenarios include:

 What if the advanced Indian civilizations of Mexico and Peru had exchanged technology and ideas before Columbus?
 What if a civilization equivalent to the Aztecs and Incas developed in eastern North America?
 How could one shipwrecked sailor change the fate of a continent?
 What if Carthage had colonized Mexico before the Punic Wars?
 What if the Spanish conquistadors had set up independent kingdoms?
 What if the ice age animals of the New World had survived to be domesticated?

Fair warning: The scenarios make up around 80% of the book and they do assume a fair amount of interest in and knowledge of history. The fiction should work for most science fiction readers.

[Check out my interview with Dale where he discusses the novel.]

The Big Boer Bonanza by A.D. Rose

Description from Amazon.

The Big Boer Bonanza is a comic reimagining of history set in the early 21st Century but asking the question, what would life be like if the Boer War had never ended? Esther Hawkes, librarian at Tunbridge Wells public library, is plunged into a world of the fantastic. She has to contend with saving the world from the machinations of Gregory Mourningstar, a vindictive warlock let out from prison early on good behaviour and now hell-bent on regaining his powers. She also has to prevent a deadly virus from falling into the wrong hands, evade the Tunbridge Wells Mafia, help Arthur Conan-Doyle with his writer’s block, attend her Mother’s awful garden parties where she’s forced to meet “eligible bachelors” and oh, try to stop a little thing called the Boer War. Tunbridge Wells will never be the same again.

The Lion in Chains by Mark Teppo and Angus Trim

Description from Amazon.

Many were displeased with the “peace” King Richard of England brokered in the Holy Land, and his return from the Crusades wasn’t greeted with cheers, but rather shackles. Now a “guest” of the Holy Roman Emperor, the Lion-Hearted is being held for an exorbitant ransom…so much money that it seems unlikely that the silver will make its way from Britain to Germany.

For converging on the caravan are a number of groups with very different motives: French troops who want the silver to continue their war with the English, mercenaries intent on causing chaos, English longbowmen looking to protect their country’s future, and Shield-Brethren hoping to ensure King Richard’s freedom.

With a surprising cast of characters, The Lion in Chains is a Foreworld SideQuest that illuminates a decisive moment in European history in an unexpected way, revealing another secret in the long-reaching narrative of the Shield-Brethren.

The Sauder Diaries - A Bloodier Rose by Michel Vaillancourt

Description from Amazon.

Set in the summer of 1888, "A Bloodier Rose" is the second book in The Sauder Diaries series. Picking up where "By Any Other Name" left off, Hans, Annika and the rest of the crew of the pirate airship "Bloody Rose" are once again called upon by the Allied Empires. An ancient weather weapon is at risk of falling into the hands of the Russian Empire, and the pirates are in a race against time, traveling from Europe to America then North Africa, to uncover it's location and unlock it's secrets. Along the way, the unthinkable happens and Hans Sauder is forced to rethink his very place within the crew, and the life he has chosen as an airship pirate. The choices he makes, as the Bloody Rose finds herself trapped between two empires inching towards war, will affect the lives of his friends and crewmates forever.

Twice Upon A Time by Allen Appel

Description from Amazon.

Alex Balfour returns to the past in Allen Appel's 2nd book in the Pastmaster series. Here, Balfour travels back to 1876, visits the Centennial Exposition, takes a raft trip with Mark Twain (inadvertently inspiring some of Twain's books) and joins Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn. In the present, Alex's girlfriend Molly Glenn is captured by a crazed renegade American Indian who believes he is the reincarnation of Crazy Horse.

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.

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is a long-time fan of alternate history, founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a volunteer editor for Alt Hist magazine. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and The Masquerade Crew. 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 9/25/12

New paperbacks

By Force of Arms by Billy Bennett

Description from Amazon.

North America 1869: It has been six years since the South won the Civil War on the bloody fields of Gettysburg. An icy peace has descended across the continent. In the economically devastated North, war hero William Tecumseh Sherman has just been elected President of the United States. He is determined to pick up where the North left off six years ago, and restore the Union no matter the cost. Using Confederate and French military involvement in Mexico as a pretext for war, Sherman lights the fuse that once again causes America to explode into the fires of battle. The fragile peace is shattered and armies in blue and gray once again slaughter one another on an epic scale. In the South, the aging Confederate President Robert E Lee once again summons his daring strategic mind, his audacious spirit and his last reserves of strength to once again lead the embattled Confederacy. But the weapons of war have grown evermore terrible. The introduction of breech loading rifles and lethal Gatling Guns has made the battle field deadlier and more horrendous than ever before in history. By Force of Arms is an epic novel of the Second American Civil War. From Ironclads battling in the Gulf of California to the horrors of trench warfare in Virginia, from black Buffalo soldiers fighting for the Union in the wild west to Confederate partisans in Missouri led by the notorious and daring outlaw Jesse James, By Force of Arms shows the most horrible war in American history through the eyes of those forced to fight it. With the fate of a nation, a continent and ultimately the world itself in the balance, both sides struggle to win the victory by force of arms.

The Sacred Protocol by Hylton H. Smith

Description from Amazon.

The Sacred Protocol is the first volume in the Evilution Series. It is an alternate reality crime thriller. Two pivotal events in history have a very different outcome. The first is the Spanish Armada. The story swiftly moves to the all-embracing Iberian Republic in 2016, when the internet collapses suddenly. The crumbling of banks and regional governments is prevented by the somewhat miraculous appearance of a new, impregnable system. A slide to dystopian culture is averted. However, after a few years, investigation of a number of mysterious deaths of protestors against the new system is warranted. There appears at first to be little evidence to link the cases, but when progress is made, the deaths take a sinister twist. It becomes a race against time to prevent global implications of unimaginable consequence. The various investigating bodies must reluctantly work together as zero point approaches.

New e-books

Dreamer: A Prequel to the Mongoliad by Mark Teppo

Description from Amazon.

During the Fifth Crusade, the bloody siege of Damietta grinds to a stalemate and a young Christian soldier begins having visions…

Raphael of Acre, a young initiate of the Shield-Brethren, becomes a war hero during a vicious battle for control of a Muslim stronghold. One of his companions, Eptor, is wounded in the battle and falls under the influence of strange hallucinations. When a superior plots to manipulate Eptor’s visions into war propaganda, Raphael struggles between duty to the cause and duty to his faith. Unable to reconcile his roles as Christian and soldier, Raphael seeks out an unlikely source of counsel—the great pacifist Francis of Assisi.

Part of the Foreworld Saga, Dreamer confronts the paradox of using sword and fist in an effort to spread a message of humility and compassion.

A note on this story: Dreamer is included in The Mongoliad: Book Two Collector's Edition.

Gettysburg Redux by John R. Stuart

Description from Amazon.

An alternative version of the American Civil War!

For three bloody days in July 1863 two great American Armies pounded each other to pieces in Gettysburg. This novel follows the exploits of the military elite of both the Confederate and Federal high command and chronicles the hell on earth that was experienced by seven common Rebel soldiers. Could a single bullet change the course of history?

The Mongoliad: Book One by various authors

Description from Amazon.

With bonus material! This Kindle edition features extra content only found in the Collector’s Edition of The Mongoliad: Book One, including an illustrated character glossary, a Foreworld map, and Sinner, a prequel to the Mongoliad series.

The first novel to be released in The Foreworld Saga, The Mongoliad: Book One, is an epic-within-an-epic, taking place in 13th century. In it, a small band of warriors and mystics raise their swords to save Europe from a bloodthirsty Mongol invasion. Inspired by their leader (an elder of an order of warrior monks), they embark on a perilous journey and uncover the history of hidden knowledge and conflict among powerful secret societies that had been shaping world events for millennia.

But the saga reaches the modern world via a circuitous route. In the late 19th century, Sir Richard F. Burton, an expert on exotic languages and historical swordsmanship, is approached by a mysterious group of English martial arts aficionados about translating a collection of long-lost manuscripts. Burton dies before his work is finished, and his efforts were thought lost until recently rediscovered by a team of amateur archaeologists in the ruins of a mansion in Trieste, Italy. From this collection of arcana, the incredible tale of The Mongoliad was recreated.

Full of high adventure, unforgettable characters, and unflinching battle scenes, The Mongoliad ignites a dangerous quest where willpower and blades are tested and the scope of world-building is redefined.

A note on this edition: The Mongoliad began as a social media experiment, combining serial story-telling with a unique level of interaction between authors and audience during the creative process. Since its original iteration, The Mongoliad has been restructured, edited, and rewritten under the supervision of its authors to create a more cohesive reading experience and will be published as a trilogy of novels. This edition is the definitive edition and is the authors' preferred text.

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.

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a volunteer editor for Alt Hist and a contributor to Just Below the Law. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and his own writing blog. When not writing he works as an attorney and enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana.