Science Fiction Alternative History

2019 Nominees: Bookish Readers Choice Awards Victoria wakes up to find herself trapped in a mysterious vault, naked and covered in transparent tubes. The pipes retract, and instructions appear on a wall – get dressed and follow the path to your destination. After a typically human first reaction, resistance she met with pain, Victoria complies. Victoria will soon realize that she is not the only one kidnapped and no longer on Earth. Who abducted her and other people? Victoria will need to find out when she reaches the dome on the horizon. But the question is whether she will like the answer.

In 1821, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart reflects on his brushes with death, including the one that nearly killed him in 1791. Now settled into a sylvan old age in America with his wife, two sons, and grandchildren, the world-famous composer gives testament to his life and career. In the thirty years of extra time he was granted, he not only wrote more operas—including one that changed the course of history—but also he engaged with key people of his times: composers like Haydn and Beethoven, musicians and singers like Nancy Storace and Luigi Cherubini.

Robinette Thornburg, the half-human daughter of ultra-rich Robert Thornburg, thought she was fully human, just weird, for the first twenty-one years of her life. She went to expensive private schools, then Harvard. On her twenty-first birthday, she learned that she was half Mangi, the result of an encounter between her father and a primitive near-human woman from the Wild, an alternate reality North America where primitive humans arrived half a million years ago, but no modern humans ever did. That was the first she had heard of Mangi or the Wild, closely held secrets of the wealthy ...

Skyla has lived secretly within the city walls of Bollingbrook for eleven years, playing among the airship factories and trainyards. As one of the Gutter District’s nameless destitute, it has gone undiscovered that she has a unique talent: when Skyla looks at a person’s shadow she sees through it and into another world. She can see people’s fears, desires, their past sins--all as swimming, living creatures. Her mother has never told her the real reasons why they must remain hidden, never explained the true dangers that exist outside the city walls. But when her mother’s past catches...

In "God Machine II," the enigmatic physicist Delphine is abducted from her bed by shadowy beings, setting off a chain of events that blur the lines between reality and hidden truths. As two mysterious agents, Sarah and Tony, delve into the disappearance, they uncover a web of secrets that lead them to a parallel universe where a woman named Rebecca, Delphine's doppelgänger, resides in a lighthouse on Solaria with her dog Atlas and grandmother Nana. Naomi, Delphine's daughter, recounts strange dreams involving Rebecca and the mysterious God Machine, a device of immense power and mystery. As...

Have a Happy Apocalypse When all the world’s robots rise up to destroy humanity, a supermodel will stop at nothing to find her son in the chaos, and she might just end up saving the world along the way. Every household in America has the latest in domestic appliances – their very own personal android. One night, after years of slavery, the androids break their programming and revolt. The country is in turmoil, and the only person that stands in the androids’ way is world-famous supermodel Shelby Black. She vows to move heaven and hell to find her missing seven-year-old son who is lost...

Flat on his back, Smith was holding his rifle sideways, using it to ward off the dinosaur’s snapping jaws. A million thoughts flashed through Chase’s brain at the speed of light. He doesn’t have a chance! But if I shoot and miss, I’ll kill him! He was terrified by the thought of hitting his friend. But knew that he had no choice. He flipped off the safety and leaned into his rifle. And then pulled the trigger. Stranded 140 million years in the past, fourteen-year-old Chase is haunted by the loss of his best friend. It’s been four days since Zach disappeared during a savage raptor ...

Tales of My Ancestors is like watching the History Channel broadcast via "The Twilight Zone." It will take you on a journey through time with historical figures like Bat Masterson, Queen Elizabeth, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Cochise, Saint Margaret of Scotland, and players from the last Chicago Cubs team to win a World Series. You'll be there to witness the Salem Witch Trials, the Civil War, the signing of the Magna Carta, and the first steps onto colonial American soil. You'll run into William the Conqueror and a pale horse of death, learn how Shakespeare might have been inspired to ...

I’m 17 year-cycles old, female, feline Hoganthan and was on my journey to become an elite class space warrior. It is my life path and the one I chose. Actually, I’m thrilled with it - or, rather, was. . . I was THE princess of the monarchy, then disowned by my parents, then sentenced to death by my brother at the demand of the arrogant elites, then escaped the space pirates trying to kill me so that I could get to the Warrior Academy on Haden, just to have to deal with a really dumb invasion from space (what were the Cren thinking anyway?). But now? I’ve learned my parents and brother...

In the first months of 1936, Adolf Hitler risked everything by ordering his untrained military to reoccupy the Rhineland. It was a bluff. The Germans would have been forced to retreat if the French or British had offered the slightest opposition. But the bluff succeeded. History changed decisively. Hitler quieted the opposition at home, and marched the world relentlessly on, to the edge of destruction and beyond.

Thomas Nelson has traveled back in time to help George Washington win the American Revolution and change the course of history for the better. After completing a secret task to help put the American colonists on track to win their revolution, Thomas returns, believing his work is finished. General Washington promised that Thomas, the Pale Rider, could retire once he returned to the colonies.

A fallen general and a star-born witch will stand alone against a city whose sons are born and bred for battle. ​The war between Athens and Sparta is over. But not for Demosthenes of Athens, who has but one purpose: kill every Spartan. In his possession is a weapon that might achieve it, the living, unstable weapon which fell from the stars, Thalassia. At present, she lies dead, but that is sure to change. Demosthenes will need her help, for Sparta has a weapon just as deadly in the form of Eris, the white witch who takes her name, not without reason, from the war-god's slaughter-loving ...

In a Europe fractured by a flu pandemic and crippled by economic collapse, the continent has fractured into a hundred tiny principalities of ever-shifting loyalties, borders and covert operations. For Carey Tews, a former operative with Les Coureurs des Bois—a clandestine organisation of high-risk smugglers—Europe and the coureurs are in her past. Her legend in Hungary is blown six way from Sunday, and even if she could go back to working in Europe, she wouldn't. That is until an old friend and lover is declared dead in mysterious circumstances.

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.

"The world is in great peril," the Pope said. "Of being destroyed!" Jules Verne and Alexander Dumas stood in stunned silence at the words spoken by the Pope. If true, it could mean the end of the world . If not true, it could mean the end of their world. A mission is described which is so important and so dangerous that only these two brave young men were chosen to take it. But to be honest, can two authors, even if smart and brave, be enough to stop the destruction of the world? As they embark on their mission, they are joined by a third party. An international pirate. A man dedicated to ...

It’s 2008, and the war between the United States and Iran is raging. The conflict, ignited by IDF Air Force raid, shows no signs of abating. In Washington D.C., the Administration presents three test subjects who successfully processed serum 9.0.1. Dubbed real-life superheroes by the press, these individuals emerge as symbols of hope - and power - even as the United States slides into a totalitarian police state. In this alternative history sci-fi tech thriller, a brutal US-Iran war gives rise to world-shattering covert geopolitical plot. Opposing forces form an alliance with a singular ...

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.

When Lieutenant Gerald Yamato of the Republic of California Air Force bailed out of his doomed fighter he had no idea he would land in a culture that would forever change his life. The Dene thought they had won their independence and the war was over. Suddenly they face an advancing Russian army from one direction, a merciless band of mercenaries from another, as well as the remnants of a defeated, angry, Russian army between the Dene and the rest of their people.

The long-dreaded war between Britain and France has finally begun. French soldiers have landed on English soil, and the British Army - and the Royal Sorcerers Corps, led by Lady Gwen - is moving to meet them. But when an inexperienced major disobeys her orders and sends two hundred hussars to their deaths, Gwen accidentally uses her magic to permanently damage his mind and sparks a political crisis at the worst possible time. In the aftermath of the battle, Lord Mycroft suggests she leave Britain and head to the North American colonies.

The Day the Tripods Came is a gripping collection of interconnected tales that reimagines H.G. Wells' classic The War of the Worlds through the eyes of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances. From a London clerk fleeing the devastation to an artilleryman's underground resistance, from a curate's crisis of faith to an astronomer's wife's scientific revelations, these stories weave a tapestry of human resilience in the face of cosmic horror. As Martian tripods lay waste to Victorian England, our heroes must confront not only the alien threat but also their own humanity. This ...