New Releases 8/13/13

Hardcovers

A Clockwork Heart by Liesel Schwarz

Description from Amazon.

FOR BETTER OR CURSE. That might as well have been the wedding vow of Elle Chance and her new husband, the ex-Warlock Hugh Marsh in the second book of this edgy new series that transforms elements of urban fantasy, historical adventure, and paranormal romance into storytelling magic.

As Elle devotes herself to her duties as the Oracle—who alone has the power to keep the dark designs of Shadow at bay—Marsh finds himself missing the excitement of his former life as a Warlock. So when Commissioner Willoughby of the London Metropolitan police seeks his help in solving a magical mystery, Marsh is only too happy to oblige. But in doing so, Marsh loses his heart . . . literally.

In place of the flesh-and-blood organ is a clockwork device—a device that makes Marsh a kind of zombie. Nor is he the only one. A plague of clockwork zombies is afflicting London, sowing panic and whispers of revolution. Now Elle must join forces with her husband’s old friend, the Nightwalker Loisa Beladodia, to track down Marsh’s heart and restore it to his chest before time runs out.

Paperbacks

A Nomad of the Time Streams - The Steel Tsar by Michael Moorcock

Description from Amazon.

THE FINAL NOVEL IN SF GRANDMASTER MICHAEL MOORCOCK'S EPIC STEAMPUNK TRILOGY - BACK IN PRINT FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER 10 YEARS!

Bastable encounters an alternate 1941 where the Great War never happened and Great Britain and Germany became allies in a world intimidated by Japanese imperialism. In this world's Russian Empire, Bastable joins the Russian Imperial Airship Navy and is subsequently imprisoned by the rebel Dugashvii, the 'Steel Tsar', also known as Joseph Stalin.

E-books

Cayos in the Stream by Harry Turtledove

Description from Amazon.

You're the greatest writer of the age, gone to ground and subsiding into drink. You always said you wanted to catch some of those Nazi bastards in the waters around your beloved Cuba. What happens when you actually get your wish?

Picking Up Plans In Palma by Matthew Quinn

Description from Amazon.

A slightly different Dutch War of Independence led to the establishment of a colony on the Cape of Good Hope in 1576. As the United States of America spread across North America the exiles who became the Afrikaners established their own empire in the Indian Ocean.

Fast forward to 1998. The Afrikaner Confederation and the United States, champions of hierarchical conservatism and egalitarian democracy respectively, have faced each other in a Cold War whose battlefields extend all the way the Moon. Treason in the Office of Strategic Services has left Connor Kelly, disgraced by his affair with an Afrikaner émigré, as the one man who can penetrate the Afrikaner Confederation. The prize? The plans for the Afrikaners’ powerful new battle-station.

But to bring back these vital plans Kelly must survive police, angry fathers, sadistic secret agents, and a brutal run for the shark-infested Indian Ocean...

Fans of “Coil Gun” (DIGITAL SCIENCE FICTION #3: PRESSURE SUITE) will appreciate this second foray into the world of the Afrikaner Confederation.

Audiobook

Hearts of Iron: A Foreworld SideQuest by Scott James Magner

Description by Amazon.

When The Italian Job meets the Knights of the Round Table, the ultimate medieval heist caper is born.

It is the summer of AD 1035, and three sons of Tancred de Hauteville are in ambivalent service to Guimar, Prince of Salerno. The three men, who have been trained by their father in the art of war since childhood, spend the sweltering afternoons practicing swordplay, trading barbs, and thinking of how many men they would need to take the prince's poorly fortified castle for themselves.

But when a mysterious agent asks the prince for the brothers' services in obtaining a gilded chest, eldest brother William recognizes an opportunity to strengthen the Hauteville legacy. When he assembles a crew of skilled mercenaries, loyalties are tested and truths revealed. Among the group, there is a traitor, a spy, and the carrier of a long-held secret. The trust William places in each of his men will decide the future for himself and his family.

A bold new SideQuest in the Foreworld Saga, Hearts of Iron shows a different side of the Middle Ages, but with all the deft-sword play, historical accuracy, and political intrigue you would expect from the series that brought you The Mongoliad trilogy.

Computer Games

Europa Universalis IV by Paradox Interactive

Description from Amazon.

Fulfill your quest for global domination

Paradox Development Studio is back with the fourth installment of the game that defined the Grand Strategy Genre. Europa Universalis IV gives you control of a nation to guide through the years in order to create a dominant global empire. Rule your nation through the centuries, with unparalleled freedom, depth and historical accuracy.

True exploration, trade, warfare and diplomacy will be brought to life in this epic title rife with rich strategic and tactical depth.

Main Features:

• Make your own decisions: Nation building is flexible. Decide your own form of government, the structure of your society, trade politics and more. The possibilities are endless
• Use your Monarch Power: Experience the new system of monarch power where your choices are influenced by the caliber of the man you have at the top. Do you have a warrior King? Then it is time to make war
• Experience history come to life: The great people and personalities of the past are on hand to support you. Thousands of historical events guide you, creating a unique atmosphere depending on the country you play
• The world is now your playground: Players can enjoy over 300 years of gameplay with a lush topographic map in full 3D. Lead any one of more than 250 countries that originally existed during the game’s extensive time span
• Experience the all new trade system: The trade system adds a new dimension to the great trade empires of the period. Seize control of key ports to expand your trade, support it with your powerful fleet and the wealth of the world will flow to you
• Bring out your diplomatic skills: Deeper diplomatic gameplay with coalitions, threats, fleet basing rights and detailed support for rebels. Featuring a new unilateral opinion system that, for example, allows a country to dislike you while you remain neutral towards them
• Engage in Multiplayer: Battle against your friends or try the co-operative multiplayer mode that allows several players to work together to control a single nation with up to 32 players. Featuring hotjoin, improved chat, new matchmaking servers and support for a standalone servers
• Create your own history & customize your game: Europa Universalis IV gives you the chance to customize and mod practically anything your heart may desire

To fans, authors and publishers...

Is you 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 story "The Enchanted Bean" can be found in Once Upon a Clockwork Tale from Echelon Press. 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 8/6/13

Paperback

Absinthe and Arsenic by Raven Dane

Description from Amazon.

In rural England, zombies attack a sleepy Yorkshire village … a Thames-side urchin falls foul of a vengeful spirit … a plot to mix arsenic and absinthe goes horribly wrong … ghostly spectres haunt the streets of gaslit London … and a clockmaker becomes obsessed with the passing of time. Welcome to the dark and fantastical world of Raven Dane, where a curse brings with it a fatal chill and an aging relative is a demon in disguise. 16 TALES OF VICTORIAN HORROR, STEAMPUNK ADVENTURES AND DARK, DEADLY, ONSESSION.

Breath of Iron: A Novel of the Clockwork Agents by Kate Cross

Description from Amazon.

Sworn to protect England from all enemies, the Wardens of the Realm are ever vigilant. But not all battles are fought on a battlefield…sometimes they are fought in the heart.

As chief surgeon for the Wardens, Evelyn Stone fears her own life is on the line when she is kidnapped by a band of pirates—only to discover that the airship captain is Gavin “Mac” MacRae—her former lover. The man whose life she once saved. The man she abandoned.

Since Evelyn left, Mac made his mark as both a pirate and a pilot. But his true allegiance isn’t known. So when he asks Evie for help with a wounded woman onboard, he tells Evie that the woman is his wife—even if his feelings for Evie have never waned…

As the days pass, however, the unease between Evie and Mac gives way to the old comfort they used to have. Yet, their newly ignited romance is complicated by conflicting loyalties and desires, and a betrayal that may cost them both their love and their lives.

Pirates of the Timestream by Steve White

Description from Amazon.

Pirates of the Caribbean meets times traveling heroes and godlike aliens. Sequel to Sunset of the Gods and Blood of Heroes.

Special operations officer Jason Thanou of the Temporal Regulatory Authority must once again plunge into Old Earth’s blood-drenched past to combat the plots of the Transhumanist underground to subvert that past and create a secret history leading up to the fulfillment of their mad dream of transforming humanity into a race of gods and monsters.

Jason and his companions travel to the seventeenth century to encounter the real pirates of the Caribbean—including a beautiful she-pirate who turns out to be Transhumanist renegade. To Jason’s horror, he also learns that the Teloi aliens who were the grim reality behind the pagan pantheons of antiquity—aliens Jason believed he’d successfully destroyed—are still active, and aiding the Transhumanists in founding an unspeakable cult. What’s more, these are a different—and far more dangerous—breed of Teloi than before.

Jason must somehow thwart the plans of the sinister allies while at the same time preventing reality itself from falling into chaos. In the end he finds himself venturing into space with a totally unexpected  ally: Henry Morgan.

The Vengeance of Rome: The Fourth Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet by Michael Moorcock

Description from Amazon.

Michael Moorcock's most infamous antihero continues his epic and hilariously distasteful escapades in this fantastic fourth installment of the Pyat quartet. Picking up where Jerusalem Commands left off, bisexual, cocaine-loving, Jewish anti-Semite Pyat enthusiastically embraces Fascism and manages to insinuate himself into Mussolini’s inner circle. Sent by the fascist dictator on a secret mission to Munich, he becomes embroiled in Nazi Party intrigue and ultimately finds himself in the Dachau concentration camp. Thirty years later, having incredibly survived both Dachau and the Spanish Civil War, Pyat’s tale winds down as he recounts his adventures to a writer named Moorcock. From Pyat’s friendships with murderous dictators to his perverted sex acts with Nazi storm troopers, this book serves up a deliciously iconoclastic feast for fans of speculative fiction.

E-books

DOCTOR TRIPPS: Kaiju Cocktail by Kit Cox

Description from Amazon.

After dropping a devastating bomb on London Docklands, Doctor Tripps goes underground for twelve years while he formulates an evil plan to destroy diesel technology. With the help of a mermaid and a fly-monkey butler he devises a mysterious cocktail.

Meanwhile a young engineer, mistaken for his master and drawn into a mysterious, old and very secret society becomes an unlikely hero.

In London, the NANI agency sends out their newest recruit, Nanny Honey, to protect the children of the Russian Tsar.

As Tripps' Kaiju Cocktail is fed out into the world, weird and devastating mutations begin to occur that threaten the very fabric of society.

A NEOVICTORIAN WORLD WHERE STEAM IS PITTED AGAINST DIESEL ... WHICH SIDE WILL WIN?

The Mysterious Case of Mr. Strangeway by Karina Cooper

Description from Amazon.

A St. Croix Chronicles novella

Although I have only been part of Society for two years, I am already desperate to escape its confines and eager for adventure. The world my deceased parents have left me is nothing more than a gilded prison, and I will do anything to escape the boredom, even become a collector of bounties.

My name is Cherry St. Croix, and I may be young, but I am old enough to know when I am in over my head. My first collection seemed easy: Mr. Strangeway's debts have come due, and the purse for his capture is hefty. Yet the wastrel remains one step ahead of me, and my efforts are hampered by another collector after the same coin. What's more, a simple hunt becomes the forefront of a conspiracy that leads me on a chase through London's low-class streets.

Not only does my pride demand success, but the well-being of many rests upon the choices I make—failure is not an outcome I can live with.

Übermensch by Matthew Quinn

Description from Amazon.

As a college student in Atlanta, Andrew Patel discovered Friedrich Nietzsche during a late-night study session. In the decade since, he has striven to live by the philosopher's principles, upgrading his body with cybernetics to transcend the merely human and using the local underworld as his scaffolding to join a more select race of beings. Life is good.

But the costumed hero Silverbolt threatens all this with his war against the gangs employing Patel’s expertise in merging man and machine. Cornered in a gang safe-house one night, Patel must fight to protect this threat to his lifestyle, but he may not be the only übermensch in Atlanta...

Superheroes get all the glory. Time to see things from a different point of view.

To fans, authors and publishers...

Is you 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 story "The Enchanted Bean" can be found in Once Upon a Clockwork Tale from Echelon Press. 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 4/16/13

Paperbacks

The Land Leviathan by Michael Moorcock

Description from Amazon.

A brand-new edition of the second novel in Moorcock's acclaimed steampunk series.

Oswald Bastable visits an alternate 1904. Here, he discovers that most of the Western world has been devastated by a short, yet horrific, war fought with futuristic devices and biological weapons. An Afro-American Black Attila is conquering the remnants of the Western nations, destroyed by the wars, in an attempt to bring civilization and social order.

Audiobooks

Dinocalypse Now by Chuck Wendig

Description from Amazon.

An invasion...from prehistory!

When the Century Club is called in to prevent the assassination of FDR, its just another day on the job - but what they discover puts not just the president, but the entire world in jeopardy.

With psychic dinosaurs taking over Manhattan and beyond, its up to Sally Slick, Jet Black, Mack Silver, and the other Centurions to save humanity - from extinction!

Games

Victoria II: A Heart of Darkness

Description from Amazon.

Victoria II: Heart of Darkness, the second expansion for the grand strategy/political simulator focuses on the Scramble for Africa as you compete with other colonial powers and experience international crises which require Great Power mediation if the world is to avoid war. Become a truly great power by the dawn of the 20th century in Victoria II, an experience crafted by Paradox Development Studio, the masters of Grand Strategy.

To fans, authors and publishers...

Do you want to see your work given a shout out on 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 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.