Showing posts with label Scott James Magner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scott James Magner. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

New Releases 4/1/14

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Hardcovers

The Revolutions by Felix Gilman

Following his spectacularly reviewed Half-Made World duology, Felix Gilman pens a sweeping stand-alone tale of Victorian science fiction, arcane exploration, and planetary romance.

In 1893, young journalist Arthur Shaw is at work in the British Museum Reading Room when the Great Storm hits London, wreaking unprecedented damage. In its aftermath, Arthur’s newspaper closes, owing him money, and all his debts come due at once. His fiancé Josephine takes a job as a stenographer for some of the fashionable spiritualist and occult societies of fin de siècle London society. At one of her meetings, Arthur is given a job lead for what seems to be accounting work, but at a salary many times what any clerk could expect. The work is long and peculiar, as the workers spend all day performing unnerving calculations that make them hallucinate or even go mad, but the money is compelling.

Things are beginning to look up when the perils of dabbling in the esoteric suddenly come to a head: A war breaks out between competing magical societies. Josephine joins one of them for a hazardous occult exploration—an experiment which threatens to leave her stranded at the outer limits of consciousness, among the celestial spheres.

Arthur won’t give up his great love so easily, and hunts for a way to save her, as Josephine fights for survival...somewhere in the vicinity of Mars.

Paperbacks

Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War by Peter G. Tsouras

The first volume in an extraordinary trilogy of alternative history.

In this, the first volume of renowned author and historian Peter G. Tsouras’s alternative history trilogy, Great Britain’s support for the Confederacy takes it to the brink of war with the Union. The escape of a British-built Confederate ironclad finally ignites the heap of combustible animosities and national interests. When the US Navy seizes it in British waters, the ensuing battle spirals into all-out war. Napoleon III eagerly joins the British and declares war on the United States. Meanwhile, treason uncoils in the North as the antiwar Democrats, known as Copperheads, plot to overthrow the US government and take the Midwest into the Confederacy.

Britannia’s Fist brilliantly describes not just a war of stroke and counterstroke but one in which new technologies—repeating weapons, observation balloons, advances in naval ordnance and armament—become vital factors in the struggle of the young country against the Old World’s empires. For one of the great missed stories of the Civil War was not the advance of military technology but its impediment by incompetence, disorganization, and in some serious cases outright refusal to contemplate anything innovative. Britannia’s Fist is the compelling story of powerful historical personalities who come together as the Union goes into total war mobilization in the fight for its life.

A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril by Peter G. Tsouras

The second volume in Britannia’s Fist, a remarkable trilogy of alternative history.

A Rainbow of Blood continues the epic, exciting story that began in Peter G. Tsouras’s previous alternate history, Britannia’s Fist. The Great War accelerates during a few desperate weeks in October 1863. From the bayous of Louisiana to the green hills of the Hudson Valley, from Chicago in flames to the gates of Washington itself, the conflict uncoils in ropes of fire. French and British armies are on the march, and heavy reinforcements have put to sea. Copperheads have risen in revolt to drag the Midwest into the Confederacy as a vital Union army stands starving and under siege in Tennessee.

The Union staggers under these blows. While the Grenadier Guards march into glory in upstate New York’s apple orchards, from the second story of a shot-up Washington hotel Abraham Lincoln watches a forest of the red flags of rebellion waving over a Confederate column rushing across the Long Bridge. To stop them is a war-worn regiment of New York soldiers. To their backs Washington burns. But new technologies and the art of intelligence are thrown onto the scales, while Russia plans to enter the war to avenge its humiliation in the Crimean War.

A Rainbow of Blood brings forward the Great War from its outbreak to the first great crisis of the embattled republic. Peopled with remarkable personalities of the age, the book rattles with the tramp of armies marching down one of the most intriguing roads not taken—or even imagined—until now.

E-books

Altered America edited by Martin T. Ingham

21 exciting tales of Alternate History!

What if fate had turned out differently in these United States?

What if the Louisiana Purchase never happened?
What if George Washington had been a Loyalist?
What if a billionaire cloned the Founding Fathers?
What if the Vikings had settled North America?
What if the Apollo 11 moon landing had failed?

These and many other scenarios are explored in
Atlered America!

Featuring stories by Jackson Kuhl, Dan Gainor, Bruno Lombardi, Edmund Wells, Sam Kepfield, Brad Hafford, Erik Bundy, Dusty Wallace, Owen Morgan, Ryan McCall, Jason Sharp, Sean Menken, William R.D. Wood, Jeff Provine, James S. Dorr, Martin T. Ingham, Lauren A. Forry, Cyrus P. Underwood, Charles Wilcox, and Philip Overby.

Pandora's Memories: A Usurper's War Short Story by James Young

December 1943. Adolf Hitler is dead. Queen Elizabeth II reigns on the Commonwealth throne while a usurper sympathetic to the Nazis inhabits Buckingham Palace. Having turned aside the Soviet Union's initial assault into the Greater Reich, the Wehrmacht is now stymied at the gates of Moscow. With the Red Air Force bloodied, the Kremlin under steady blows from the Luftwaffe, and Joseph Stalin comatose, the desperate Soviet Triumvirate turns to the United States in a plea for aid against the mutual Nazi foe. Indifferently equipped, the young men of the American Air Expeditionary Force (AAEF) are thrown into action in order to keep the Soviet Union in the war.

December 1965. Tabitha Cobb, a Masters student at Berkley University, sets out to learn the truth about the AAEF and the scars it left on its survivors. Attempting to earn a scholarship, Tabitha quickly learns that sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.

"Pandora's Memories" is an alternate history short story that is the first in the Usurper's War series.

Audio

Blood and Ashes: A Foreworld SideQuest by Scott James Magner

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 listened to in any order with or without prior knowledge of The Foreworld Saga. As Mt. Vesuvius rumbles ominously, Pompeiian Councilor Valerius needs assistance in performing rituals to protect the city from the wrath of the fire-god, Vulcan. But his agenda is far from benevolent, as he cares less about quieting the volcano than taming it and taking the power for himself. Now it's up to Horatius, a former legionnaire and gladiator, to prevent Valerius's sinister rites from coming to fruition. But with Vesuvius looming over the city - and the dead rising to defend the corrupt councilor - the warrior might have fled a troubled past only to have entered a doomed future...

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. 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.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

New Releases 2/25/14

If you are planning to buy any of these books, please click on the links to Amazon below and support The Update!

Hardcovers

Influx 
by Daniel Suarez

What if our civilization is more advanced than we know?

The New York Times bestselling author of Daemon--"the cyberthriller against which all others will be measured" -Publishers Weekly) --imagines a world in which decades of technological advances have been suppressed in an effort to prevent disruptive change.

Are smart phones really humanity's most significant innovation since the moon landings? Or can something else explain why the bold visions of the 20th century--fusion power, genetic enhancements, artificial intelligence, cures for common disease, extended human life, and a host of other world-changing advances--have remained beyond our grasp? Why has the high-tech future that seemed imminent in the 1960's failed to arrive?

Perhaps it did arrive...but only for a select few.

Particle physicist Jon Grady is ecstatic when his team achieves what they've been working toward for years: a device that can reflect gravity. Their research will revolutionize the field of physics--the crowning achievement of a career. Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social upheaval sudden technological advances bring. This Bureau of Technology Control uses the advanced technologies they have harvested over the decades to fulfill their mission.

They are living in our future.

Presented with the opportunity to join the BTC and improve his own technology in secret, Grady balks, and is instead thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison built to hold rebellious geniuses like himself. With so many great intellects confined together, can Grady and his fellow prisoners conceive of a way to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age?

And when they do, is it possible to defeat an enemy that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making?

Paperbacks

A Clockwork Heart: Book Two in The Chronicles of Light and Shadow
by Liesel Schwarz

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.

The Clockwork Wolf (Disenchanted & Co.) 
by Lynn Viehl

As the proprietor of Disenchanted & Co. in a steampunk version of America, Charmian “Kit” Kittredge makes her living solving magical crimes. But when a snobbish lady begs for help, saving her reputation might very well cost Kit her life.

Doing a favor for deathmage Lucien Dredmore, Kit agrees to interview a newly widowed lady as a potential client. Upon meeting, however, she learns that the woman in question is none other than Lady Eugenia Bestly, president of the Rumsen Ladies Decency Society— someone who once led a vicious campaign to ruin Kit’s life. Ironically Lady Bestly now lives in fear herself, for the press is about to unmask her husband as the savage “Wolfman” who died while terrorizing the city.

As monstrous rampages continue to occur, Kit soon determines there is more than one Wolfman, and that they may themselves be victims of evil players. While avoiding both mechanized assassins and attempts by Dredmore and Chief Inspector Tom Doyle to take her under their protection, Kit follows a tangled path that leads from a prestigious gentlemen’s club fronting a hellish secret to a vengeful native tribe and dangerous, ancient magics.

E-books

Blood and Ashes: A Foreworld SideQuest (The Foreworld Saga) 
by Scott James Magner

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.

As Mt. Vesuvius rumbles ominously, Pompeiian Councilor Valerius needs assistance in performing rituals to protect the city from the wrath of the fire-god, Vulcan. But his agenda is far from benevolent, as he cares less about quieting the volcano than taming it and taking the power for himself.

Now it’s up to Horatius, a former legionnaire and gladiator, to prevent Valerius’s sinister rites from coming to fruition. But with Vesuvius looming over the city—and the dead rising to defend the corrupt councilor—the warrior might have fled a troubled past only to have entered a doomed future…

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, August 13, 2013

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.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

New Releases 5/14/13

Paperback

Ha'penny by Jo Walton

Description from Amazon.

Before Jo Walton won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her stunning Among Others, she published a trilogy set in a dark alternate postwar England that had negotiated “Peace with Honor” with Nazi Germany in 1941. These novels—Farthing, Ha’penny, and Half a Crown—are connected by common threads, but can be read in any order.

In Ha’penny, England has completed its slide into fascist dicatorship. The last hopes of democracy seem extinguished. Then a bomb explodes in a London suburb.

The brilliant but compromised Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard is assigned the case. What he finds leads him to a conspiracy of peers and communists—of staunch King-and-Country patriots and hardened IRA gunmen—to murder the Prime Minister and his ally, Adolf Hitler.

Against a background of domestic espionage and suppression, a band of idealists blackmails an actress who holds the key to the Fuhrer's death. From the ha'penny seats in the theatre to the ha'pennys that cover dead men's eyes, the conspiracy and the investigation swirl inexorably to a stunning conclusion.

E-books

Hearts of Iron: A Foreworld SideQuest by Scott James Magner

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.

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

It is the summer of 1035 AD 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.

To fans, authors and publishers...

Is you next alternate history work 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 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.