Alternate World Fantasy

Alternating between nineteenth-century Europe and present-day New England, this tale follows the great British painter J. M. W. Turner - and his scene of artists, intellectuals, and lovers - and Henry, a middle-aged family man whose otherwise mundane existence is disrupted by the discovery of The Center of the World, Turner’s controversial painting of Helen of Troy that had been thought lost forever.

The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios, an encounter with a talking monkey and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The listener decides.

In our universe, Ponce de Leon is remembered for his fruitless search for the mythical fountain of youth. But, in an alternate universe, his quest found something very different - and very dangerous. Eighty-five years later, Spain sent a fleet of ships against England. The English were confident that they could repel the threat - but England's fleet was annihilated by weapons shooting beams of fiery light, weapons which seemed to employ the blackest of sorcery, even if they were wielded by odd-looking beings in monk's garb.

In Amberlough City, out of the ashes of revolution, a traitor returns, a political campaign comes to a roaring head, and the people demand justice for crimes past. As a nation struggles to rebuild, who can escape retribution? Amnesty is a smart, decadent, heart-pounding conclusion to Lara Elena Donnelly’s widely praised glam spy trilogy that will have listeners enthralled until the very end.

By 1535 Thomas Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn, the king’s new wife. But Anne has failed to give the king an heir, and Cromwell watches as Henry falls for plain Jane Seymour. Cromwell must find a solution that will satisfy Henry, safeguard the nation and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge unscathed from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.

A young Yale academic is summoned to Ireland to claim the contents of her grandfather's safe-deposit box, in which she finds only one thing: a nonfiction manuscript by James Bond author Ian Fleming. The manuscript, detailing Fleming's own involvement in British espionage during World War II, contains evidence that the Duke of Windsor was in a treasonous plot with Hitler, information so confidential that people are willing to kill to continue its secrecy.

Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be "the other", this groundbreaking anthology contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, Iraq + 100 is also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future.

After a failed suicide, Silas Silverleaf awakens in a parallel universe where he never existed. Faced with impending destruction, he discovers love, purpose, and redemption in the gripping sci-fi mystery.

The fourth novel of adventure set upon His Majesty's New World. A new year brings ominous silence to the new world. As the b'ys of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment await their next mission, British and American leaders on the old world plan for the worst, and seek options that might give humanity a hope of surviving war with the blue men. When intelligence appears suggesting help might almost be within reach, the b'ys are sent on a risky mission into the unknown. Led by the son of a politician, will Waller and his men have a fighting chance? A dangerous drive awaits them.

Three hundred million years ago, the galactic community was taken by surprise. A catastrophic war with a hostile entity threatened to destroy all life until the fight was postponed by a calamitous event known as the Great Conflation. With the majority of pre-Conflation empires in ruins and the Ascended Biologicals wiped out, the hastily formed Wanderer Enclave tasked its fleet with unearthing answers and continuing the fight. One lone ship has found something: an innocuous world it had marked for routine decontamination that may hold vital answers.

THE FATE OF TWO WORLDS IS HANGING IN THE BALANCE… Back on Earth after nearly losing their lives on the alternate world of Kainnan, Noah, Katerina, Summer and Ryder are desperate to catch and eliminate the tyrant Wilhelm once and for all. Yet just when they finally have a breakthrough, Wilhelm hunts them down. Within hours, one of them is kidnapped, one is poisoned and one set up for assassination. Even if they succeed in saving each other, Wilhelm is about to unleash a new and deadly weapon which threatens to decimate the people of both Kainnan and Earth. With two worlds in jeopardy, ...

HOLMES IS STILL MISSING BUT NOW HIS GOOD FRIENDS HAVE AN IDEA OF WHERE HE MIGHT BE. A DUPLICATE HOLMES APPEARED WHEN SHERLOCK VANISHED. HIS NAME IS STEAMPUNK HOLMES. WHILE STEAMPUNK HOLMES, A LONG GUN TOTING STEAMPUNK COWBOY DETECTIVE, MESSES WITH WATSON’S MIND IN A FORCED PARTNERSHIP, THE REAL HOLMES IS WAKING UP TO AN EMPIRE DRIVEN BY BRUTAL FORCES AND VIOLENCE.

THE ALTERNATE WORLD OF KAINNAN IS ANYTHING BUT STABLE... The elusive Wilhelm is still alive and plotting multiple takeovers. Despite hunting him for months, Aaron the Priest seems no closer to uncovering his plans and is forced to seek assistance on earth to stop the tyrant. Following their life-threatening experiences on Kainnan, Noah and Katerina are looking forward to a normal life – if normal includes living in hiding. Along with Ryder and Summer, who are facing challenges of their own, Aaron must recruit them all if Kainnan is to be saved. With the truth and deception rings in play, ...

Return to Decize, where conflict between the new foundry and the workers is brewing into rebellion. Join Haywood Vale as he struggles to feed a desperate populace with his garden magic. Now a full Gardener six years after his devastating conflict with the blood mage he might be the only one who can save the city. As a master of Baari's twisting and a dabbler in the devoured god, Bileam, he must make a choice between standing up for the people of Decize or hiding in his gardens. When Haywood makes a desperate attempt to save lives he is swept into a conflict that might topple the city, ...

Set during the Gold Rush, in a re-imagined American West, Lucy and Sam, 12 and 11, are newly orphaned siblings. With their father's body on their backs, they roam an unforgiving landscape dotted with buffalo bones and tiger paw prints, searching for a place to give him a proper burial. The siblings must battle with their own memories, the illusion of the American Dream and each other.

Two more compelling mystery adventures in the magical town of London during the Victorian era. But on a different world parallel to our own. A world where magic and steampunk science co-exist. CASE OF THE BUTTERFLY PRINCESS The Baron treated her like a Princess, but when she vanished, the awful truth would soon be revealed by the clever work of Sherlock Holmes…if he and Watson can escape the same fate first. A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY Ghastly series of murders leads Holmes and Scotland Yard to the sewers deep beneath London. What they discover is that there are no mistakes with this ...

Known for his New York Times best-selling alternate history novels, Flint is equally a master of shorter forms, and this second large volume gathers more of Flint's shorter works. Including several stories and a short novel set in Flint's celebrated Ring of Fire alternate history series. A commemorative novelette set in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos universe. A story with Dave Freer, set in his and Flint's popular Rats, Bats, and Vats series. Several humorous short stories addressing Biblical literalism. A long novella in a Martian steampunk setting.

The war had taken everything from Lina Sucherin - her parents, sisters, a fledgling romance...even her faith in herself and her psychic abilities. All of it ripped away with the fall of the Third Reich and the brutal Soviet sack of Berlin. Three years later, amid the suspicion, paranoia, and fledgling brutality of communist East Germany, danger threatens the only people Lina cares about, forcing her to overcome her lingering self-doubt.

As a doctor in the post-Blackout United States of America of 2087, Joe Barnes struggles to save his patients and uphold his Hippocratic Oath. Even so, he’s an idealist, and his home life is one of happy expectation as he and his wife Mary prepare to welcome their first child after a “medical miracle” makes their dream possible. But a teenaged boy dies unexpectedly on Barnes’ watch and a girl goes missing, and as Barnes becomes obsessed with finding the killer, patients keep dropping dead from strange diseases that should no longer exist at the end of the 21st century.

Three great tales, packed with magic, mystery, and terror. CASE OF THE DARK MASTER A new kind of weapon strikes London a deadly blow. It sucks everything into a vortex, leaving only a crater behind. An unthinkable weapon, it must be stopped! Even Captain Nemo and his famous Nautilus are drawn into a supernatural conflict that has an undercurrent of being run by an old enemy of Sherlock Holmes. Can Holmes and his companions discover the truth behind the weapon and who made it before it's too late to save London? RULES OF DARKNESS What is the dark secret of the Count’s castle and how will ...