Alternate Fiction

Deftly blending such genres as mystery, science fiction, and classic literature, Jasper Fforde’s gleefully irreverent New York Times best-selling Thursday Next novels defy categorization. In this sixth installment, the threat of all-out Genre war looms over BookWorld. But with the real Thursday Next retired in the real world, the Council of Genres has no other choice than to tap the fictional Thursday to save the day. Her mission as emissary is to prevent the brewing war—but her task is made more difficult by a hidden foe manipulating events.

A tour-de-force novel set in ancient Japan filled with passion, fantasy, and feuding warlords. The first volume in the highly anticipated Tales of the Otori trilogy.

When the American ace Major Jack Freeman - poster boy for the war against the Kaiser's undead army of shamblers - is shot down over enemy lines and taken captive, veteran Captain Michael "Madman" Burke is the only man brave and foolish enough to accept the mission to recover him. Burke assembles a team of disparate members - his right-hand man, Sergeant Moore, big-game-hunter-turned-soldier Clayton Manning, and Professor Dan Graves, one of Tesla's top men and the resident authority on all things supernatural, among them - to dare the impossible.

A barely employed tech worker has never felt they belonged. Not in society, not even in their own family. Their days are filled with loneliness, a struggle to survive and a desperate search for connection—even if that connection is merely virtual. Now, a black-market hacker promises to open a new world for them, and it works—in ways no human has ever experienced. They find a world of wonder, of possibilities and of danger—where their new virtual reality could mean the end of their physical reality. And what they discover could change the fate of humankind—forever.

In the not-too-distant future, a 21-member crew launches from Earth. Their mission: to establish a temporary colony on Mars. Little do they know that colony will become permanent–and the last stand of the human race. Because, without warning, every single person left on Earth simply...vanishes. Now, a thousand years later, the resources needed to sustain life are running out, and the very existence of the Mars colony is threatened. Humankind has only one option–to return to its home planet.

A cosmic accident sets the modern town of Grantville, West Virginia, down in war-torn 17th-century Europe, and a new nation is forged. Now after carving a place for itself among the struggling powers of Western Europe, Grantville must throw up its eastern bulwarks against Dark Age domination. But the challenge for the down-time Eastern European horde is just as great: how to crawl out of a deeper feudal shadow than any in the West - and step into the light of freedom.

Joseph K. is an Everyman. His inconsequence makes doubly strange his arrest by an officer of the court, made with no formal charges or explanation. Disoriented and consumed with guilt for a "crime" he does not understand, Josef K. must justify his life to a "court" with which he cannot communicate. Through the court's relentless bureaucratic proceedings and absurd juxtapositions of different hypotheses of cause and effect, the whole rational structure of the world is undermined.

Set in a world in which the Roman Empire never fell, Clash of Eagles finds Praetor Gaius Marcellinus leading his 33rd Legion into Nova Hesperia. But there his conception of the world is challenged by encounters with the Powhatani, Iroqua, and Cahokiani tribes.

Jasper Fforde's delightfully zany Thursday Next series shows no signs of slowing down with its seventh entry, The Woman Who Died a Lot. Despite being semihappily semi-retired from SpecOps, Thursday accepts the head librarian position at the Swindon library. But soon threats from a supreme Deity, a mnemonomorph, and the nefarious Goliath corporation press Thursday back into active duty.

Rudi Mackenzie has won the battle that expelled the enemy from the new High Kingdom of Montival. Now he must free the people who live in the state once known as Idaho from occupation by the legions of the Church Universal and Triumphant and pursue them to their lair over the mountains. There he will finally confront the forces behind the Church - the Powers of the Void.

In this alternate history of the American frontier and the Jacksonian era, a small change takes place in the Battle of the Horseshoe Bend during the War of 1812. What results is a cascade of new developments that becomes an avalanche. In our world, Ensign Sam Houston, just turned 21, led the charge on the creek barricade in that battle and almost died from a terrible wound that took him a year to recover from. In this world, his wound is minor, so he is able to continue fighting the British—and develop his close relationship with Andrew Jackson much sooner.

The spirit of Prince John, the brother of Crown Princess Orlaith, has fallen captive to the power of the Yelolow Raja and his servant, the Pallid Mask. Prince John's motley band of friends and followers, led by Captain Pip of Townsville and Deor Godulfson, the bard and master of magic, must lead a quest through realms of shadow and dream to rescue Prince John from a threat far worse than death. Meanwhile, Reiko and Orlaith muster their kingdoms for war, making common cause with the reborn Kingdom of Hawaii.

Twice before, mysterious cosmic catastrophes have sent portions of the Earth across space and back in time - first, with the Grantville Disaster in West Virginia, and then again with a maximum security prison in southern Illinois. Now, the planet is struck with yet another such cataclysm, whose direct impact falls upon the Queen of the Sea, a cruise ship in the Caribbean. When the convulsions subside, the crew and passengers of the ship discover that they have arrived in a new and frightening world. They are in the Mediterranean now, not the Caribbean.

Disorder and chaos ravage London when thousands are contaminated by the accidental discharge of an experimental bio-weapon. The disease robs its hosts of rational thought, giving them a singular desire - find more living flesh to infect. Cut off from information and senior leadership, one squadron of soldiers under the command of their senior NCO, Sergeant Major Johnson, finds itself forced to operate independently until the remnants of military and government command re-establish themselves safely at sea in the English Channel.

Eugenie Bearhani (1760-1835) was born in Calcutta, raised in Haiti, and brought as a servant - a free woman of color - to America by an English officer on the eve of the American Revolution. Yet none of that prepared Eugenie for her next employer: Colonel Aaron Burr, who some whispered had made a pact with the devil. The lines between master and servant soon tangle and blur, and first attraction becomes dangerous obsession. Many historians deny she even existed, but she and the children she bore to Burr were very real - so was her little-known marriage to America's first true villain.

Regan was a robotics scientist that caused the robot takeover of the world. When his last creation finally completes his plan to free himself, it destroys the world in the process. Destruction offers him a second chance to test his wits and cunning in another world. Now tasked with a goal that would upset the balance of a new world, Regan might be a bit more than the people of the world can handle.

Princess Orlaith, heir to Rudi Mackenzie, Artos the First, High King of Montival, now wields the Sword of the Lady - and faces a new enemy. Fortunately, she also has a new ally in Reiko, Empress of Japan. To combat their mutual foe, Orlaith and Reiko embark on a quest to find the fabled Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the Grass-Cutting Sword, one of the three great treasures of the Japanese Imperial House - but they'll face great peril along the way.

The Thirty Years' War continues to ravage seventeenth-century Europe, but a new force is gathering power and influence: the Confederated Principalities of Europe, an alliance between Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, and the West Virginians from the twentieth century, led by Mike Stearns, who were hurled centuries into the past by a mysterious cosmic accident.

In Under the Yoke, S.M. Stirling traces the rise of the Domination of the Draka and its long struggle with the United States and the American-led Alliance for Democracy. In this alternate history, the Americans who reject the Revolution did not scatter to the four winds and Canada; a slight change in the course of events brought them to the new Crown Colony of Drakia instead - starting with the Cape of Good Hope and soon encompassing the whole of the right subcontinent of Southern Africa.

Highly acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin lends a resonant voice to a pivotal yet often overlooked character of Vergil's The Aeneid. Born into peace and freedom, Lavinia is stunned to learn that she will be the cause of a great war - or so the prophecies and omens claim. Her fate is sealed, however, when she meets a man from Troy.