Alternate World Fantasy

Miriam Beckstein is happy in her life as a successful reporter. When she gets iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme, Miriam thinks she's found the story of the year. But when she takes it to her editor, she's fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she's uncovered. Before the day is over, she's received a locket left by the mother she never knew - the mother who was murdered when she was an infant. The knotwork pattern within has a hypnotic effect on her.

It is May 1985 and World War III rages in Central Europe. Fledgling insurgent groups in the East Bloc fight for independence from their Soviet overlords. America pledges to help. Among the teams of US military advisers are two Vietnam War veterans, sent in to assist an East German major named Werner Brandt and his motley band of fighters. Their objectives are to help destroy Soviet military reinforcements and to eliminate the Russian garrison in control of Saxony. It won't be easy - Brandt is consumed with a lust for vengeance that threatens to derail his own operations.

It’s 1914. The Great War grips the world - and from the Western Front a strange story emerges...a story of St. George and a brigade of angels descending from heaven to fight beside the beleaguered British troops. But can there be any truth to it?

What will the eminently logical Sherlock Holmes do when he finds himself in a world where nothing makes sense? Where knights in shining armor fight the Trojan War, where he must ally himself with a famous outlaw from the American West, and where Doctor Watson's insights are just as relevant as his own? Dennis McCarty has written the most unusual piece of Sherlock Holmes fan fiction ever, and possibly the most literary.

Eastern Europe, August 1942. The Khazar kaganate, an isolated nation of Turkic warrior Jews, lies between the Pontus Euxinus (the Black Sea) and the Khazar Sea (the Caspian). It also happens to lie between a belligerent nation to the west that the Khazars call Germania - and a city the rest of the world calls Stalingrad. After years of Jewish refugees streaming across the border from Europa, fleeing the war, Germania launches its siege of Khazaria. Only Esther, the daughter of the nation's chief policy adviser, sees the ominous implications of Germania's disregard for Jewish lives.

The sky is not the limit. From an alley in New York to an interstellar wormhole, the path to the future looks different for everyone. These cosmic short stories from some of today’s most influential Black authors reveal a universe of possibilities.

Germany, late summer 1945. The war is over, but the country is in ruins. Millions of refugees and holocaust survivors strive to rebuild their lives in displaced persons camps. Millions of German soldiers and SS men are held captive in primitive conditions in open-air detention centres. Everywhere, civilians are desperate for food and shelter. No one admits to having voted Nazi, yet many are unrepentant. Adolf Hitler is said to have killed himself in his Berlin bunker. But no body was found - and many people believe he is alive.

A Tale of Fantasy and Magic Rockwell believes his eight-year-old daughter Sydney has a very vivid imagination. She sees the mythical Fae: fairies, goblins, sprites, pixies, and other magical creatures. She sees them, talks about them, and plays with them, but every instance feels like a knife in Rockwell's gut. His daughter sees all the mythical creatures in the stories told to her by his late wife, Sarah, reminding him that Sarah is gone. These stories are folklore handed down through the generations and all that his daughter has to cling to of her mother. He has no idea how to help his ...

The Unfolded World is a bitter and unfriendly place for Daniel Carter and Emily Lovecraft. In this world the Cold War never happened because the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1941. In this world the Nazi Großdeutschland is the premier superpower and is not merely tolerated but indulged because, in this world, the Holocaust happened behind the ruins of the Iron Curtain and consumed only Bolsheviks, Communists, and others the West was glad to see gone. In this world there are monsters, and not all of them are human.

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....

In sixteenth-century New Spain, witchcraft is punishable by death, indigenous temples have been destroyed, and tales of mythical creatures that once roamed the land have become whispers in the night. Hidden behind a mask, Pantera uses her magic and legendary swordplay skills to fight the tyranny of Spanish rule. To all who know her, Leonora de las Casas Tlazohtzin never leaves the palace and is promised to the heir of the Spanish throne. The respectable, law-abiding Lady Leonora faints at the sight of blood. No one suspects that Leonora and Pantera are the same person.

When it comes to expressing the pleasure and pain of being just a touch too smart to be happy, Dorothy Parker is still the champion. Along with Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, and the rest of the Algonquin Round Table, she dominated American popular literature in the 1920s and 1930s. This collection of more than 30 short stories and poems is essential for any Parker fan and an excellent way for new listeners to make the acquaintance of one of the 20th century's most quotable authors.

It's Smergey's lucky day. He gets to fight a dinosaur with a paperclip. Yeah, that's how much fun it's been with the First Team. What's left of them. Smergey doesn't know where anyone else is, or even if they are alive. He only knows that he and President Harkness have been separated from First Team. The President is severely wounded and Smergey is wishing he had practiced his boy scout skills better now. And you won't believe what happens for Smergey's second lucky day. The President wakes up just long enough from his fever coma to tell Smergey an atom bomb is about to blow up if the ...

Playing celestial blues in dive bars is better than leading armies to slaughter - just ask Kaltron, the most reluctant God of War ever. He'd rather go by Carl, strum to his songs, and avoid his dysfunctional divine family's endless power games. Too bad his overeager brother Yond unleashed Jegu, a soul-devouring horror, threatening gods and mortals alike. Now Carl's got problems. His manipulative dad wants him to pick up the Bright Sword again. His seductive sister keeps trying to rope him into cosmic schemes. The beautiful mortal barmaid Angelina has caught his eye. And oh yeah - there's ...

When celebrity aviator, Charles A. Lindbergh, wins the 1940 presidential election on the slogan of 'America First', fear invades every Jewish household. Not only has Lindbergh blamed the Jews for pushing America towards war with Germany, he has negotiated an 'understanding' with the Nazis promising peace between the two nations. Growing up in the 'ghetto' of Newark, Philip Roth recounts his childhood caught in the stranglehold of this counterfactual nightmare. As America sinks into its own dark metamorphosis and Jewish families are torn apart, fear and uncertainty spread.

From New York Times best-seller and science fiction and fantasy mistress of adventure Mercedes Lackey, together with a team of topnotch collaborators, comes Book Two in The Secret World Chronicle, a pulse-pounding saga of superpowers - and the very human men and women who must learn to wield them without losing themselves in the process.

Blood tells all. Vervain Lavine has been through Hell. Two Hells actually, one of which she's been barred from. Despite all that, things are going pretty well for the Godhunter. At least they were until she turned on the news. Crops across America are dying, children in Hawaii are missing, and havoc is being wrecked upon her nightclub, Moonshine. It's obviously God messing with her again but which one is it this time? There's so many gods who want her dead these days. Then one wrong word sends her tumbling into an unknown realm. A strange place filled with even stranger beings who seem to ...

Annabel Scheme is a detective story set in an alternate San Francisco where the digital and the occult live side-by-side. It's a short listen, perfect for people who like Sherlock Holmes, Douglas Adams, ghosts and/or the Internet. In Scheme's San Francisco, an indie rocker's new tracks are climbing the charts, even though the rocker herself is long dead. A devout gamer has gone missing, and the only trace of him that remains is inside his favorite game, the blockbuster MMORPG called World of Jesus. And the richest man in the city, the inventor of the search engine called Grail, might just have made a deal with a devil.

Against the backdrop of a never-colonized North America, a broken Ojibwe detective embarks on an emotional and twisting journey toward solving two murders, rediscovering family, and finding himself.

What if legends aren’t really legends? What happens when pixels, imagination, and dice are replaced with steel, flesh, and arcane power? What happens when a campaign hook isn’t just an opening dialogue, but rather what awaits you in life? Shad, Derek, Fred, and Jeff are just ordinary guys. They did their time in Iraq, hold regular jobs, and spend some of their free time playing RPGs on their game platforms and at the table. Until they were shanghaied into a place where magic and the mystic had been banished from Earth. Eventually, with great difficulty they returned home and got on with...