Alternate History Fiction

Lidia Yuknavitch has an unmatched gift for capturing stories of people on the margins—vulnerable humans leading lives of challenge and transcendence. Now, Yuknavitch offers an imaginative masterpiece: the story of Laisvė, a motherless girl from the late 21st century who is learning her power as a carrier, a person who can harness the power of meaningful objects to carry her through time. Sifting through the detritus of a fallen city known as the Brook, she discovers a talisman that will mysteriously connect her with a series of characters from the past two centuries.

Time is running out for the Grand Human and Lemurian Alliance. The longer they take to prepare for their confrontations with the reptilian Grik, the Holy Dominion, and the League of Tripoli, the stronger their enemies become. Ready or not, they have to move - or the price in blood will break them. Matt Reddy and his battered old destroyer USS Walker lead the greatest army the humans and their Lemurian allies have ever assembled up the Zambezi toward the ancient Grik capital city. Standing against them is the largest, most dangerous force of Grik yet gathered.

United States of Japan is set in a gripping alternate history where the Japanese Empire rules over America with huge robots. Is resistance possible in the form of subversive video games? Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible emperor, and nobody believes that Japan's conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons, a group of rebels fighting for freedom.

Roundworld is in trouble again, and this time it looks fatal. Having created it in the first place, the wizards of Unseen University feel vaguely responsible for its safety. They know the creatures that lived there escaped the impending Big Freeze by inventing the space elevator - they even intervened to rid the planet of a plague of elves, who attempted to divert humanity onto a different time track. But now it's all gone wrong - Victorian England has stagnated, and the pace of progress would embarrass a limping snail.

It is July 10, 1863, and Baltimore is in the hands of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee. Shattered remnants of the Army of the Potomac have fallen back into Washington, digging in, preparing to make a desperate stand. Six days earlier, General Ulysses S. Grant and his army of 60,000 had taken Vicksburg. The last telegram out of Washington before the rebels cut the line changed all that.

Young Magdalen and Jesus, brimming with youthful charm and arrogance, find each other and fall in love, forging a bond that is stronger than death. Their pleasure is overshadowed by a brilliant but unbalanced druid who knows a perilous secret about Maeve's past. The prequel to The Passion of Mary Magdalen.

The British win the American Revolutionary War, and a desperate Washington and the American founders must make a last stand in an enclave called Liberty. In 1781, George Washington's attempt to trap the British under Cornwallis at Yorktown ends catastrophically when the French fleet is destroyed in the Battle of the Capes. The revolution collapses, and the British begin a bloody reign of terror. A group of rebels flees westward and sets up a colony near what is now Chicago. They call it Liberty.

A novel set centuries into our paradisaical future, The Unrighteous offers a fictional glance at the thrilling stories of a single family as they band together to help a handful of newly resurrected unrighteous ones adjust to their surroundings. Narrated by John Eliot.

With the National Guard, private industry, and even a seemingly tranquil farming village caught in an explosive political crossroads all relying on NESS for missions of security, Neustatter and Astrid find themselves pressed to staff, train, and equip the agency while keeping up with their clients' growing requirements in scope and complexity. A simple railway escort mission involves a secretive manufacturing client from Grantville bearing mysterious cargo and a captured fugitive all destined for Magdeburg during the Baltic War . . . what could possibly go wrong?

From "a major new talent" (George R. R. Martin) comes an epic speculative novel of revolution, adventure, and the struggle for free will set in a world that might have been, of mechanical men and alchemical dreams. My name is Jax. That is the name granted to me by my human masters. I am a slave. But I shall be free.

In the near future, world wars have transformed the earth into a battleground. Fleeing the unending violence and the planet's now-radioactive surface, humans have regrouped on a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home. The changed world has turned evolution on its head: The surviving humans have become sexless, hairless, pale-white creatures floating in isolation, inscribing stories upon their skin.

In late 1997, a runaway teenager and her small yellow toy robot travel west through a strange American landscape where the ruins of gigantic battle drones litter the countryside, along with the discarded trash of a high-tech consumerist society addicted to a virtual-reality system. As they approach the edge of the continent, the world outside the car window seems to unravel at an ever faster pace, as if somewhere beyond the horizon, the hollow core of civilization has finally caved in.

Franklin Roosevelt is the assistant secretary of defense. Thomas Dewey is running for president with a blunt-speaking Missourian named Harry Truman at his side. Britain holds on to its desperate alliance with the United States' worst enemy while a holocaust unfolds in Texas. In Harry Turtledove's compelling, disturbing, and extraordinarily vivid reshaping of American history, a war of secession has triggered a generation of madness. The tipping point has come at last.

Thirteenth-century Europe has been saved from annihilation at the hands of the Mongols, to be sure, but new and terrible threats are at hand: political and religious turmoil threaten to turn the warriors' world upside down once more. Painted against a rich backdrop of medieval mysticism and Russian folklore, Katabasis weaves together the tales of victor and victim alike in a fearless exploration of what it means not just to survive, but to truly live again.

Ever since the USS Walker came from another world war to defy the terrifying Grik and diabolical Dominion, Matt Reddy and his crew have given their all to protect the oppressed Lemurians. But with the Walker in desperate need of repairs just as the Grik's first general is poised to strike, Reddy is desperate. With more enemies than ever before arrayed against them, the crew of the Walker needs new allies. That means combing the lethal wilds of Madagascar to find the Lemurians' fabled ancestors.

At the beginning of the 19th century: Victor Frankenstein a brilliant, misguided genius, after toiling for months building a body made from parts stolen from graves, using the forces of nature itself, imbues it with life… A life he isn’t ready or wise enough to accept. As the bandage wrapped creature, surprising both creator and created, imbued with life, rises and reaches out imploringly, Frankenstein, terrified by his own success, flees into the stormy night, abandoning his creation. The creature, innocent as a newborn, angry at its creator’s rejection, still learning to control its...

The year is 2035, and Los Angeles County is awash in a tangelo haze of wildfire smoke. Xandria Anastasia Brown spends her days deep in the archives of the Huntington Library as the curator of African American Ephemera and associate curator of American Historical Manuscripts, supported by an array of AI personal assistants and health bots.

In the Shadow of the Towers compiles nearly 20 works of speculative fiction responding to and inspired by the events of 9/11, from writers seeking to confront, rebuild, and carry on, even in the face of overwhelming emotion.

A stolen US army drone. A shrinking oasis in the Sahara Desert. A secret stash of deadly chemicals. Each is a threat to the stability of the world but individually are problems that can be overcome. In the diplomatic arena though, everyone will have a different way of dealing with such a threat. And when those in charge disagree and refuse to back down, it will kick off an international chain reaction with potentially catastrophic consequences: a world edging closer to war....

The invaders are continuing to strengthen their hold over an America still reeling. But in the hills, woods, and countryside small sparks of rebellion are taking hold, fanning the fires of patriotism that will unite the country against a common enemy. Finally free from the clutches of Fen Shu, President Madeline Tanner refuses to leave her fellow countrymen to their fate. She is their leader and will stop at nothing to protect her people