Alternate History Fiction

What would have happened if Felix and Jenna met in high school? Felix and Jenna have the perfect love story in Everything We Are, but what would happen if they’d met in high school, when their lives are worlds apart? In this reimagining, read about what would have happened if Jenna had attended Felix’s high school in Los Angeles, and they met before rock bands or heroin addictions entered the picture. High school students Felix and Jenna are opposites in every way.

Wherever Hel looks, New York City is both reassuringly familiar and terribly wrong. As one of the thousands who fled the outbreak of nuclear war in an alternate US - an alternate timeline - she finds herself living as a refugee in our own not-so-parallel New York. The slang and technology are foreign to her, the politics and art unrecognizable. While others, like her partner Vikram, attempt to assimilate, Hel refuses to reclaim her former career or create a new life. Instead, she obsessively rereads Vikram's copy of The Pyronauts - a science-fiction masterwork in her world.

Robespierre is dead. The Reign of Terror is over. As Royalist strength grows, the Duc de L'Aubespine plots a coup that will consign the revolution to history. With Olympe in his clutches, he believes nothing can stop him. But he's reckoned without the intrepid Battalion of the Dead! Reunited in Paris, Ada is poised for action—but if she plays her hand too soon, everything she's sacrificed to gain his trust will be lost. Meanwhile, an unlikely alliance with an old enemy might be Camille's only option to save Olympe and stop the duc in his tracks.

"Work Sets You Free" by David Barnett is an original short story featuring the protagonist of the forthcoming novel Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl. Gideon is a young fisherman in Yorkshire, England, in an alternate 1890, who embarks on a journey to find Captain Lucian Trigger, the famed Hero of the Empire, to deal with a mystery plaguing his home village.

First Contact has not been going well. The nations of Earth are rapidly militarizing against the arrival of the Superorganism, an alien civilization that promises to destroy humanity before it can develop into a real threat. The Superorganism has done it before–to their distant transient relatives–and they could easily do it again. But the alien Ampersand and his human interpreter Cora Sabino are done with trying to save humanity from both the Superorganism and itself; to them, this is a civilization that does not deserve to be saved.

Stranded in the past in 1836, Will Travers woke up in the body of William Barret Travis, commander of the doomed Alamo command, and did what any self-respecting Texan would do when handed a bag of lemons: He made lemonade - defeating Santa Anna's army, twice, forging a lasting peace with the Comanche and rescuing his son from a band of kidnappers. Sixteen years later and just months after he wins the presidency of the Republic of Texas, Will faces the worst crisis of his life. The young republic is being torn apart by civil war. On paper, it appears Will holds all the cards: The rebels are ...

Boarding a transport ship after the Battle of Gettysburg, Colonel Andrew Keane and his 35th Maine regiment are swept into an alternate world. The first human civilization they encounter on this planet resembles medieval Russia, with boyars and priests ruling over the peasants and townspeople. Soon Keane and his regiment learn this world's terrible secret: that cannibalistic hordes of large, fierce Tugars circle the planet and demand tribute - including humans to be devoured.

JD Duncan loves his family and likes to be left alone. When America is attacked, JD is 20 miles from home, and is forced to walk back on foot. With help from his son Jack, he returns to find his town quickly descending into chaos. The Duncan family moves to a nearby farm, with trouble finding them at every turn. America has been infiltrated by terrorists. With coordinated attacks on the country’s infrastructure, the US is quickly brought to its knees.

It is a grim time for the dragon Temeraire. On the heels of his mission to Africa, seeking the cure for a deadly contagion, he has been removed from military service - and his captain, Will Laurence, has been condemned to death for treason. For Britain, conditions are grimmer still: Napoleon's resurgent forces have breached the Channel and successfully invaded English soil.

Captain Andy Blacklock was overseeing the change of shifts at the state of Illinois' maximum-security prison when the world outside was suddenly ripped apart. They thought it was an earthquake until they found that the Mississippi River had disappeared, along with all signs of civilization. Then the sun came up - in the wrong direction. And a dinosaur came by and scratched its hide against the wall of the prison.... Something had thrown the prison back in time millions of years. And they were not alone.

New York Times best seller, master-class alternate historian, and creator of the Ring of Fire saga Eric Flint delivers an explosion of tales filled with well-turned action, wit, and wonder.

Young Alvin was born the seventh son of a seventh son. By his birthright, he possesses magical powers and is destined to become something great, perhaps even a Maker. Indeed, Alvin is special. But the boy remains vulnerable to dark forces who reach out to destroy him and are willing to do anything to keep him from growing up. Carefully weaving the lore and the folk-magic of the men and women who settled a continent—as well as the beliefs of the tribes who were there before them—Orson Scott Card has created a fascinating alternate frontier America.

Sinai Tapestry, the brilliant first novel of the Jerusalem Quartet, is an epic alternate history of the Middle East in which the discovery of the original Bible links a disparate group of remarkable people across time and space. In 1840, Plantagenet Strongbow, the twenty-ninth Duke of Dorset, seven-feet-seven-inches tall and the greatest swordsman and botanist of Victorian England, walks away from the family estate and disappears into the Sinai Desert carrying only a large magnifying glass and a portable sundial.

Like the tentacles of an octopus, the railroad in California reached out across the state, grasping everything of value in the state. Based on the bloody Mussel Slough Tragedy - a conflict between wheat farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad - The Octopus is a stunning novel chronicling the twilight of the frontier West. A depiction of the tensions between the railroad, the ranchers, and the ranchers’ League. The book emphasizes the control of “forces” - such as the power of railroad monopolies - over individuals.

The Difference Engine is an alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is a prime example of the steampunk sub-genre; It posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer called Engines. The fierce summer heat and pollution have driven the ruling class out of London and the resulting anarchy allows technology-hating Luddites to challenge the intellectual elite.

In 1942, Hitler led the world's most savage military machine. Stalin ruled Russia while America was just beginning to show its strength in World War II. Then, in Harry Turtledove's brilliantly imagined Worldwar saga, an alien assault changed everything. Nuclear destruction engulfed major cities, and the invaders claimed half the planet before an uneasy peace could be achieved.

Pearl Harbor covers the full spectrum of characters and events from that historic moment, from national leaders and admirals to the views of ordinary citizens caught in the chaos of war. Gingrich and Forstchen's now critically acclaimed approach, which they term "active history", examines how a change in but one decision might have profoundly altered American history. In Pearl Harbor, they pose the question of how the presence of but one more man within the Japanese attacking force could have transfigured the war.

The Earth is coming to the boiling point as the climate disaster of the meteor strike becomes more and more clear, but the political situation is already overheated. Riots and sabotage plague the space program. The IAC's goal of getting as many people as possible off Earth before it becomes uninhabitable is being threatened.

Alvin is a Maker, the first to be born in a century. Now a grown man and a journeyman smith, Alvin has returned to his family. He will share in their isolation, work as a blacksmith, and try to teach anyone who wishes to learn the knack of being a Maker. For Alvin has had a vision of the Crystal City he will build, and he knows that he cannot build it alone. But he has left behind true friends as well as enemies. And his ancient foe, the Unmaker, has found new hands to do his work of destruction.

Jonathan Lambshead stands to inherit his deceased grandfather’s overstuffed mansion - a veritable cabinet of curiosities - once he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. But the three soon discover that the house is filled with far more than just oddities: It holds clues linking to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley has stormed back to life on a magic-fueled rampage across a surreal, through-the-looking-glass version of Europe replete with talking animals (and vegetables).