New Releases 12/30/14

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Paperbacks

For a Few Souls More by Guy Adams

The thrilling conclusion to the Heaven's Gate Trilogy!

The uprising in Heaven is at an end and Paradise has fallen, becoming the forty-third state of America. Now angels and demons must learn to get along with humans.

The rest of the world is in uproar. How can America claim the afterlife as it’s own? It’s certainly going to try as the President sets out for the town of Wormwood for talks with its governor, the man they call Lucifer.

Hell has problems of its own. There’s a new evangelist walking its roads, trying to bring the penitent to paradise, and a new power is rising. Can anyone stand up to the Godkiller?

Hunter of Sherwood: The Red Hand by Toby Venables

Guy of Gisburne, knight and agent to Prince John, is all that stands between England and anarchy, fighting a shadow battle to protect the kingdom from those who would destroy it.

Returning to England after foiling a plot to destroy Jerusalem, Guy of Gisburne is arrested and hauled to the Tower of London; John, England's regent in the absence of its monstrous King, needs his knight once more. A killer has broken into the Prince’s most secure castle in the north and left a message, drawn on the skin of one of his victims: 'the circle is closing,' signed with a handprint in blood. Is the threat genuine? Who or what is the Red Hand? Someone is killing John's men, and the obvious culprit – the most dangerous man in the Kingdom, Hood himself – has an alibi even Guy can't deny.

Macaque Attack! by Gareth L. Powell

The Spitfire pilot monkey Ack-Ack Macaque faces a world on the brink in this adventure, the conclusion to his astonishing, award-winning trilogy.

In the thrilling conclusion of the Macaque Trilogy, the dangerous but charismatic Ack-Ack Macaque finds himself leading a dimension-hopping army of angry monkeys, facing an invading horde of implacable killer androids, and confronting the one challenge for which he was never prepared: impending fatherhood! Meanwhile, former journalist Victoria Valois fights to save the electronic ghost of her dead husband and reclaim his stolen soul from the sands of Mars.

E-books

The Corridors of Time by Poul Anderson

A young man from the twentieth century is recruited to fight in a war that rages throughout time in a classic science fiction adventure from a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning master

College student, ex-marine, and martial artist Malcolm Lockridge is in prison awaiting his trial for murder when he receives an unexpected visit from an extraordinarily beautiful woman named Storm. Claiming to be a representative of the Wardens, a political faction from two thousand years in the future, Storm offers the astonished young man a proposition: freedom in return for his assistance in recovering an unspecified lost treasure. But it is not long before Malcolm realizes that, in truth, he’s been recruited as a soldier in the Wardens’ ongoing war against their rivals, the Rangers. And this war is different from any that has ever been fought, because the battlefield is not a place but time itself.

Traveling backward and forward through corridors connecting historical epochs separated by thousands of years, Malcolm is soon embroiled in a furious conflict between the forces of good and minions of evil. But the deeper he is pulled into this devastating time war, the clearer Malcolm’s ultimate role in humankind’s destiny becomes, causing the troubled young soldier from the twentieth century to question whether he’s been chosen to fight on the side of good or evil . . . and if such a distinction even exists.

A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson

A fantastic tale of intrigue, love, war, magic, and swashbuckling adventure set in an alternate universe where fairies mingle freely with Englishmen and all of Shakespeare’s fictional characters are real

Welcome to an alternate civil-war-torn seventeenth-century England—a world where Hamlet once brooded and Othello jealously raged. Here faeries and sprites gambol in English woods, railroads race across the landscape while manned balloons float above the countryside, and the most respected historian of all is one William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.

The year is 1644, and the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. When Rupert, nephew of King Charles I, is taken captive by Cromwell’s troops and imprisoned in a Puritan home, he is immediately smitten with the beautiful Jennifer Alayne, his captor’s niece. Escaping with the help of his newfound beloved and the loyal trooper Will Fairweather, Rupert leads Jennifer deep into the forest, where the faerie folk who dwell there have a vested interest in the outcome of the great and bloody conflict. Though the lovers must soon part—with the prince undertaking a dangerous mission for his magical benefactors that could turn the tide of war—Rupert and his lady love will be forever joined by the rings presented to them by King Oberon and Queen Titania. And despite the strange, twisting pathways and turbulent seas they are destined to encounter, they will always be able to find each other again . . . as long as their love remains true.

Nominated for the World Fantasy Award and winner of the Mythopoeic Award, Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest is a titanic achievement—a delightful alternate-history fantasy that brings the fictional worlds of Shakespeare’s plays to breathtaking life with style, wit, and unparalleled imagination.

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.

New Releases 10/15/13

Hardcovers

Luminous Chaos by Jean-Christophe Valtat

Description from Amazon.

Book two in The Mysteries of New Venice, the steampunk adventure series The Guardian called a "magnificent achievement"

It's 1907 in the icily beautiful New Venice, and the hero of the city's liberation, Brentford Orsini, has been deposed by his arch-rival -- who immediately assigns Brentford and his friends on a dangerous diplomatic mission to Paris.

So, Brentford recruits his old friend and louche counterpart, Gabriel d'Allier, underground chanteuse and suffragette Lillian Lake, and the mysterious Blankbate--former Foreign Legionnaire and leader of the Scavengers, the city's garbage collecting cult--and others, for the mission.

But their mode of transportation--the untested "transaerian psychomotive"--proves faulty and they find themselves transported back in time to Paris 1895 ... before New Venice even existed. What's more, it's a Paris experiencing an unprecedented and crushingly harsh winter.

They soon find themselves involved with some of the city's seediest, most fascinating inhabitants. But between attending soirees at Mallarmé's house, drinking absinthe with Proust, trying to wrestle secrets out of mesmerists, and making fun of the newly-constructed Eiffel Tower, they also find that Paris is a city full of intrigue, suspicion, and danger.

For example, are the anarchists they encounter who are plotting to bomb the still-under construction Sacre Coeur church also the future founders of New Venice? And why are they trying to kill them?

And, as Luminous Chaos turns into another lush adventure told in glorious prose rich in historical allusion, there's the biggest question of them all: How will they ever get home?

The Osiris Curse: A Tweed & Nightingale Adventure by Paul Crilley

Description from Amazon.

Steampunk Sherlock Holmes meets The X-Files with a dash of romantic tension and a large dose of adventure.

When Nikola Tesla is murdered and blueprints for his super weapons are stolen, Tweed and Nightingale are drawn into a global cat and mouse chase with his killers. What's more, it seems that the people who shot Nikola Tesla are the same people responsible for Octavia's mother's disappearance. As the two cases intertwine, Tweed and Nightingale's investigations lead them to a murdered archeologist and a secret society called The Hermetic Order of Osiris. Fleeing the cult's wrath, they go undercover on the luxury airship, The Albion, setting out on her maiden voyage to Tutankhamen's View, a five star hotel built in the hollowed-out and refurbished Great Pyramid of Giza.

In Egypt, the duo begin to unravel the terrible truth behind Tesla's death, a secret so earth-shattering that if revealed it would mean rewriting the entire history of the world. But if the cult's plans aren't stopped, Britain may lose the future.

Paperbacks

Hunter of Sherwood: Knight of Shadow by Toby Venables

Description from Amazon.

Guy of Gisburne has a story, one the liar Robin Hood has obscured for centuries. In legend he was the Sheriff of Nottingham's henchman, the man who could not defeat Hood. But this errant knight, spy for the crown and hunter of Sherwood was never anyone's accomplice, or petty hoodlum. This thrilling reinvention of the Robin Hood legend is the beginning of a major new series. As George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman reinvented a character from Tom Brown's Schooldays, so Toby Venables finds Guy of Gisburne a character in the most thrilling episodes of his age.

England, 1191. Richard the Lionhearted, cutting a swathe through the Holy Land in his quest for glory, has left the realm bankrupt and leaderless. Only Prince John, his name blackened by the lies of his enemies, seems willing to fight back the tide of chaos that threatens the heart of England – a wave of anarchy embodied by the traitorous troublemaker known as 'the Hood'. • But John has a secret weapon: Guy of Gisburne – outcast, mercenary, survivor of Hattin, and now knight – a man wronged by Hood, disavowed, disinherited and all but destroyed by Richard. As an agent of John, he is sent to do his bidding and outwit enemy agents bent on England's destruction. With his world-weary squire Galfrid in tow, and equipped with some deadly 12th century gadgetry, Gisburne's first quest takes him from the Tower of London, along the pilgrim routes of France to the hectic crusader port of Marseille – leading him into increasingly brutal, bloody encounters with the man they call 'The White Devil': the fanatical Templar, Tancred de Mercheval. • Relentlessly pursued on his way back to England, and aided by the beautiful Mélisande de Champagne – who has a secret of her own – Gisburne battles his way with sword, lance and bow. Through icy mountain passes and wolf-infested forests, he hurtles towards the inevitable, bitter confrontation at the Castel de Mercheval. But beyond it – if he can survive – lies an older and even more unpredictable adversary.

E-books

Disenchanted & Co., Part 2: His Lordship Possessed by Lynn Viehl

Description from Amazon.

The second half of Disenchanted & Co.—the thrilling conclusion. In a steampunk version of America that lost the Revolutionary War, Charmian (Kit) Kittredge makes her living investigating magic crimes and exposing the frauds behind them. While Kit tries to avoid the nobs of high society, as the proprietor of Disenchanted & Co. she follows mysteries wherever they lead.

Lady Diana Walsh calls on Kit to investigate and dispel the curse she believes responsible for carving hateful words into her own flesh as she sleeps. While Kit doesn’t believe in magic herself, she can’t refuse to help a woman subjected nightly to such vicious assaults. As Kit investigates the Walsh family, she becomes convinced that the attacks on Diana are part of a larger, 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 nefarious deathmage Lucien Dredmore and the unwelcome scrutiny of police Chief Inspector Thomas Doyle. 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. Yet as she learns the truth behind her ladyship’s curse, Kit also uncovers a massive conspiracy that promises to ruin her life—and turn Rumsen into a supernatural battleground from which no one will escape alive.

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.

Weekly Update #121

Editor's Note

The Update is once again a contestant in Underground Book Reviews Battle of the Book Review Blogs. Go an vote for your favorite alternate history blog now!

And now the news...

Update: The Daedalus Incident and The Enceladus Crisis by Michael J. Martinez

Friend of The Update Michael J. Martinez was again in the news last week. For those who don't know, he is the author of the Daedalus Incident. Here is the description from Amazon:

Mars is supposed to be dead…a fact Lt. Shaila Jain of the Joint Space Command is beginning to doubt in a bad way. 

Freak quakes are rumbling over the long-dormant tectonic plates of the planet, disrupting its trillion-dollar mining operations and driving scientists past the edges of theory and reason. However, when rocks shake off their ancient dust and begin to roll—seemingly of their own volition—carving canals as they converge to form a towering structure amid the ruddy terrain, Lt. Jain and her JSC team realize that their realize that their routine geological survey of a Martian cave system is anything but. The only clues they have stem from the emissions of a mysterious blue radiation, and a 300-year-old journal that is writing itself. 

Lt. Thomas Weatherby of His Majesty’s Royal Navy is an honest 18th-century man of modest beginnings, doing his part for King and Country aboard the HMS Daedalus, a frigate sailing the high seas between continents…and the immense Void between the Known Worlds. Across the Solar System and among its colonies—rife with plunder and alien slave trade—through dire battles fraught with strange alchemy, nothing much can shake his resolve. But events are transpiring to change all that. 

With the aid of his fierce captain, a drug-addled alchemist, and a servant girl with a remarkable past, Weatherby must track a great and powerful mystic, who has embarked upon a sinister quest to upset the balance of the planets—the consequences of which may reach far beyond the Solar System, threatening the very fabric of space itself. 

Set sail among the stars with this uncanny tale, where adventure awaits, and dimensions collide!

Mike was interviewed over at SF Signal and did a guest post over at Bastard Books (what a name!) where he, among other things, discussed the upcoming sequel The Enceladus Crisis coming out next spring. go check it out.

The Real Robin Hood?

An interesting historical revisionism/secret history about the legend of Robin Hood caught my eye the other day. It is called Hunter of Sherwood: Knight of Shadows and is written by Toby Venables and published by Abaddon Books. Here is the description from the press release:

Robin Hood is a cold blooded killer and Richard the Lionheart is a ruthless butcher who cares nothing for England – Toby Venables is taking one of the most beloved English folk legends turning it on its head.

This is the story of Guy of Gisburne. Portrayed in legend as a lackey to the Sheriff of Nottingham, Knight of Shadows reveals Guy as an outcast, a mercenary, and now newly knighted, an honourable servant of King John in his intrigues against the vicious and bloodthirsty Lionheart.

Tears up the clichés of the Robin Hood myth to reveal the deeper issues between this chaotic period of English history, Knight of Shadows will delight readers of Bernard Cornwell and the Flashman series, as it deftly weaves history and legend into a brand new pattern, with Gisburne firmly at the heart of events.

Guy’s mission is to intercept the jewel-encrusted skull of John the Baptist from the clutches of the Knights Templar before it can reach Philip, King of France. Gisburne’s quest takes him and his world-weary squire Galfrid into increasingly bloody encounters with ‘The White Devil’: the fanatical Templar de Mercheval.

Relentlessly pursued back to England, Gisburne battles his way with sword, lance and bow. But if he survives there lies ahead an even more unpredictable adversary!

As a fan of Robin Hood since my dad would read me the old tales as a kid at night, I might actually check this out.

Europa Universalis IV Annexes Massive Update into Game Territory

If you are playing Europa Universalis IV, here are some announcement you probably want to check out.

Paradox issued last week an update to Europa Universalis IV, the empire building strategy game. The new update implements hundreds of fixes, feature updates, balance adjustments, checks, including support for windowed fullscreen, new idea groups for more than 20 nations, and a “suggest demands” button which will automatically populate a peace offer that the AI will accept when trying to end a war.

New DLC packs have also been released for those players who would like to expand upon their empire expansions, entitled “American Dream” and “National Monuments II,” adding in the opportunity to play out the American Revolution through in-game events, and then go out and conquer several new iconic landmarks around the world. The new update is free to all Europa Universalis IV players whether or not they purchase the DLC.

Also available today is a new strategy guide for Europa Universalis IV, penned by Jason Pitruzzello. Created for both new and experienced players, this complement to the Europa Universalis IV experience includes a special section for returning players that details the differences between Europa Universalis IV and its predecessors, tips on how to Westernize non-European nations, and invaluable insight into Europa Universalis IV’s new monarch power system.

If there are any other game studios you want me following, please let me know.

Calendar

Oct 6: Cranford Historical Society will present “Steampunk 101: What Is Steampunk with Professor Adam Smasher” at Cranford, NJ.

Oct 16: “Phantasmagorical Steampunk Extravaganza” in Coshocton, OH.

Oct 20: Canadian Steam Productions is producing "Steam on Queen" a steampunk Halloween bazaar in Toronto, Canada.

Links to the Multiverse

Books

David Barnett on Being a “Sci-Fi” Writer at SF Signal.
Full steampunk ahead: Newfane author Bruce Hesselbach pens Perpetual Motion, a pre-World War I romance novel by Nell Curley at The Commons Online.
Your Daily Recommended Dose of Steampunk Murder! by Charlie Jane Anders at io9.

Comics

War Comics: Britains Lost Genre? at Geek Syndicate.

Counterfactual and Real History

5 Ridiculous Myths You Probably Believe About the Dark Ages by J. Wisniewski at Cracked.
Alternate History: Aaron Carter by Kevin Noonan at The Observer.
The 'alternate history' of Australia's Top End by Xavier La Canna at 105.7 ABC Darwin.
Alternative history – a look at the Concordat of 1827, or what could have been at In Caelo et in Terra.
The Anti-Defamation League's New Counterfactual Advertisement by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld at The Counterfactual History Review.
Black Aviators in the Diesel Age at Chronicles of Harriet.
The Day the World Nearly Ended by Sean Korsgaard at Korsgaard's Commentary.
The wildly speculative alternate history of Christopher Columbus’ voyage at Extraordinary Experiences.

Films

Argo and Alternate History by John Birmingham at Cheeseburger Gothic.

Games

Cedaria: Blackout - When Steampunk meets the Middle East at Gamasutra.
New Sherlock Holmes Game Announced for PS4 by jms1701 at Geek Syndicate.
Real-world Civilisation game shows impact of war by Hal Hodson at NewScientist.

Interviews

Eric Kripke at TV Line.
Kim Newman at Alternative Magazine Online.

Reviews

The Baskerville Affair: A Study in Silks by Emma Jane Holloway at Falcata Times.
The Chaos Engine at Diehard GameFAN.
Elementary 2.1: "Step Nine" at Thinking about books.
Revolution 2.1: "The Last Surviving Friend" at Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress.
Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff of Nightmares by James Lovegrove at Falcata Times.

Television

Time Travel Adventures with Conservatives at The Colbert Report.

* * *

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.