Historical Fiction Science History

Enslaved in Kipchak Khanate, Jinghua has lost everything: her home, her family, her freedom...until the kingdom is conquered by enemy forces and she finds herself an unlikely conspirator in the escape of Prince Khalaf and his irascible father across the vast Mongol Empire. On the run, with adversaries on all sides and an endless journey ahead, Jinghua hatches a scheme to use the Kipchaks’ exile to return home, a plan that becomes increasingly fraught as her feelings for Khalaf evolve into an impossible love.

Today’s fans of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to hear about spaceships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and Diana Gabaldon, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today.

Sarah has only one regret. Nope, it’s not toppling a billion-dollar body renting industry. They had it coming. It’s the other victims who didn’t get their bodies back. Tomas holds answers, and perhaps the key to her heart. So his cryptic invitation to visit New Orleans offers a perfect chance to mix business with pleasure. Until people start trying to kill her. Sarah finds herself on the front lines of a secret war that has waged in the shadows through the ages. Led by a psycho near-immortal who wants Sarah's soul for breakfast, the enemy launches an unprecedented assault on history ...

Otori Takeo and Kaede have ruled the Three Countries peacefully for over 16 years, following the events laid out in the epic Tales of the Otori. They have three daughters: Shigeko, 15 years old and heir to the Otori, and Maya and Miki, 13-year-old twins who have inherited the supernatural skills of their father. Kaede knows nothing of the prophecy that Takeo will die at the hands of his son and longs to give him a male child. Nor does she know of the boy he fathered 16 years ago.

The Dutch are trying to free themselves from the Spanish yolk, and the dynamic and charismatic revolutionary, William of Orange, is risking life and limb for the nation he so desperately loves. But when the Spanish monarch offers glory, titles, and twenty thousand crowns for the man who can silence William, the battle for the Netherlands becomes an assassin's game.

The passage of Halley’s Comet in 1759 is catastrophic. The comet appears to strike the Earth, sundering the New World from the Old. A chain of mountains rises in the Mid-Atlantic. No ship from the Old World arrives in America. No ship from the New World can find a passage to the Old - and most who try simply disappear. The comet has also unleashed magic forces, which soon spread everywhere.

After Halley's Comet was destroyed in a magical battle in 1759, the backlash separated the entire New World from the Old in an event known as The Sundering. Now isolated from the rest of the globe, America has become a very different place, where magic works and history has been changed forever.

This is the tale of Lukka, the Hittite soldier who traveled across Greece in search of the vicious slave traders who kidnapped his wife and sons. He tracks them all the way to war-torn Troy, where he proves himself a warrior to rank with noble Hector and swift Achilles. Lukka is the man who builds the Trojan horse for crafty Odysseus, who topples the walls of Jericho for the Israelites, and who steals the beautiful Helen.

The United States endured a bitter civil war and embarked on the complex process of Reconstruction, aiming to eliminate slavery and secure civil rights for African Americans in the South. Despite the ratification of constitutional amendments guaranteeing these rights, their full realization would not come for another century. Johnson, who assumed the presidency only after Lincoln's assassination, bears significant responsibility for this delay. His actions enabled the growth of Jim Crow laws and entrenched racial inequality throughout the South in Reconstruction's aftermath.

France, 1918. Nurse Marcelle Marchand has important secrets to keep. Her role as a spy has made her both feared and revered, but it has also put her in extreme danger from the approaching German army. American soldier George Mountcastle feels an instant connection to the young nurse. But in times of war, love must wait. Soon, George and his best friend Philip are fighting for their lives during the Second Battle of the Marne, where George prevents Philip from a daring act that might have won the battle at the cost of his own life.

A Thought Provoking Compilation of Short Stories Inspired by Ancient Mysteries, Legends, Folklore, and Alien Encounters. Thousands of years ago, extraterrestrial shapeshifters arrived on Earth and manipulated human evolution, ruling as gods. As time passed, the allure of attraction and pleasure began to tempt many. Driven by the instincts of their human and animal avatars, they sought companionship and had children. Some of these remarkable hybrids inherited many of their parents’ capabilities. Ancient writings resonate with fables of gods seamlessly transforming into animals. In modern ...

Sixteen-year-old photography enthusiast Zoey has been fascinated by the haunted, burnt-out ruins of Medwyn Mill House for as long as she can remember - so she and her best friend, Poulton, run away from home to explore them. In 1851, 17-year-old Roan arrives at the Mill House as a ward - one of three, all with something to hide from their new guardian. 1583. Hermione, a new young bride, accompanies her husband to the wilds of North Wales where he plans to build the largest water mill and mansion in the area.

It's 1964 in the USSR, and unbeknownst even to Premier Khrushchev himself, the Soviet space program is a sham. Well, half a sham. While the program has successfully launched five capsules into space, the Chief Designer and his team have never successfully brought one back to Earth. To disguise this, they've used twins. But in a nation built on secrets and propaganda, the biggest lie of all is about to unravel. Because there are no more twins left.

Face Off with Shakespeare and Mozart! In Time Won’t Let Me, Chant Baker finds himself drawn back to the world where he first met Mary—Shakespeare’s London. This time, however, he’s not just a visitor. As he dives deeper into Elizabethan politics and Shakespeare’s circle, Chant realizes that history is more fragile than he thought. From the bustling theaters of London to the royal courts of Vienna, where he encounters the musical genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Chant is on a high-stakes journey through time. But even as Chant tackles the complexities of the past, his connection ...

Young, ambitious, and in possession of the Mandate of Heaven, Zhu believes utterly in her own capacity to do anything – endure anything – that will bring her closer to being crowned Emperor. But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor, the former courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband – and her powerful kingdom has the strength and resources to wipe Zhu off the map. The only way for Zhu to defeat Madam Zhang is to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the beautiful, traitorous eunuch general Ouyang.

A trolley car pulls into the station. Four minutes before, the inhabitants were seen boarding at the previous station. All are dead. And all of them are union. The year is 1919. The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry. They built airships that cross the seas. Guns that won the Great War. And above all, the city of Evesden. But something is rotten at the heart of Evesden. Caught between the union and the company, between the police and the victims, Hayes must find the truth behind the city before it kills him.

Tea anyone? After decades of erosion of the U.S. Constitution, the United States is faced with a major constitutional crisis not seen since the Civil War. A president and his administration filled with scandals and plagued by economic woes surprisingly wins re-election to a second term largely based on an "October Surprise" and the promise of redistribution of the nation's wealth. The night he is re-elected, an assassination attempt throws America into chaos, resulting in riots, food shortages and violence across the country.

Pencraft Awards 2019 , First Place Winner- Hy Brasil: Island of Eternity is inspired by the mythical island of Hy Brasil, said to have existed off the west coast of Ireland. In this beautiful novel Kearns takes us on an adventure to the mythical island of Hy Brasil. There we discover an advanced society faced with an unexpected event that Olan is worried might destroy their civilization. The story begins in present-day Ireland then travels back in time to an ancient and mysterious country that is populated with a people of Irish extraction. The citizens of Hy Brasil have evolved to the ...

Five hundred years ago Henry VIII had a fearsome temper and bloodthirsty reputation to match; more beast than human, some might say. . .Henry the Eighth was the bloodiest king ever to have sat on the throne of England. This fast-paced, exciting, inventive, and just plain bloody retelling of his reign will bring to light the real man behind the myth. Be dragged back kicking and screaming five hundred years into Tudor England.

A soldier from a broken future. A war that shaped history. A mission that could destroy time itself. In 2120, the world is trapped under the iron grip of the Douglas Regime, a totalitarian government that rose from the ashes of a war-ravaged past. Jack Murphy, a battle-hardened resistance fighter, is given an impossible mission—travel back to 1863 and alter history before the seeds of the regime are ever planted. His target: General Robert Sinclair, a brilliant Confederate tactician whose wartime victories will set in motion a chain of events leading to a dystopian nightmare. But ...