England Expects


Charles S. Jackson - 2011
    Edward VIII still reigns and mourns the death of his mistress, Wallis Simpson. Left with almost no troops, guns or tanks, Britain stands alone against the might of a German Wehrmacht armed with assault rifles, main battle tanks, aircraft carriers and a pair of 'superguns' firing seven tonne shells across the English Channel.Day after day, Squadron Leader Alec Trumbull and a fast-dwindling number of broken veterans and inexperienced new-recruits take to the skies against the seemingly endless streams of German aircraft. His Spitfire damaged in the heat of battle and pursued by enemy fighters he can’t outrun, Trumbull is saved at the last moment by a strange jet aircraft that can land and take off vertically. He discovered that the advanced aircraft belongs to the Hindsight Unit: a UN task force from the 21st Century sent to combat a group of Neo-Nazis also returned from the future to aid Nazi Germany wins the Second World War. As technology accelerates and events begin to spiral out of control, Trumbull finds himself drawn into Hindsight’s desperate struggle to prevent a seemingly inevitable invasion of Great Britain and return history to its true course.

United States of Japan


Peter Tieryas - 2016
    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 shadowy group of rebels fighting for freedom. Their latest subversive tactic is to distribute an illegal video game that asks players to imagine what the world might be like if the United States had won the war instead.   Captain Beniko Ishimura's job is to censor video games, and he's working with Agent Akiko Tsukino of the secret police to get to the bottom of this disturbing new development. But Ishimura's hiding something... He's slowly been discovering that the case of the George Washingtons is more complicated than it seems, and the subversive videogame's origins are even more controversial and dangerous than either of them originally suspected. Part detective story, part brutal alternate history, United States of Japan is a stunning successor to Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. File under: Science Fiction [ Gamechanger | Area #11 | Robot Wars | Strike Back the Empire ]

1776: The Washington Divergence


Andrew Hastie - 2018
    New York is on fire. The British fleet are in the harbor, and Special Agent John Anderson still can’t believe he’s here...It began when the FBI counter-terrorism system picked up suspicious activity at Mount Vernon. Anderson was assigned to find out why a crazy old man dressed as a British Redcoat was trying to break in and how the same guy could show up five minutes later at the Smithsonian.The Colonel claims he is trying to change the past and prevent the assassination of General Washington. Anderson assumes he’s just off his meds – until the old man runs into a broom closet and disappears.Infinity Engines: Missions takes you on a journey into an alternate history, one that might have been if it wasn’t for the work of the Oblivion Order and their mission to save the future, by changing the past.

Time's Echo


Rysa Walker - 2014
    Kiernan Dunne abandoned his family ties to help Kate fight the Cyrists, and he's never regretted that for one moment. But he doesn't understand why Kate can't remember that night in 1893 Chicago, when she turned back to face the killer chasing them through the smoky corridors of the World's Fair Hotel. Kate placed the CHRONOS key around his neck and made his eight year old self promise to wear it always, and that's a promise Kiernan has never broken.When Kate suddenly vanishes after a Cyrist-engineered time shift, that hidden medallion is Kiernan's only hope for finding her. He returns to the Cyrist fold to look for clues, but his search will lead him back to the question that has haunted him for years--what really happened after he left Kate at the World's Fair Hotel?This digital novella gives Timebound readers a glimpse at Kate in another timeline and helps set the stage for Time's Edge, the second book in The CHRONOS Files Series, coming from Skyscape in October.

The Ambassador


Yehuda Avner - 2015
    You will do everything the Devil requires. Whatever it takes, you will maintain the transfer of Jews from Germany to Israel. Remember not to fear him. After all, he thinks it is you who is the Devil." 1937. In a fictional turn of historical events, the British Cabinet accepts the recommendations of the Peel Commission, establishing a Jewish State in the Land of Israel. Dan Lavi is a young diplomat sent by Ben-Gurion to serve as the country’s first ambassador to Berlin, in an effort to save as many Jews as possible under the controversial Transfer Agreement. Surrounded by the terror and atrocities of the Third Reich, Dan struggles to uphold good relations and diplomatic protocol with those who want him dead, to negotiate Nazi party politics and Allied pressures, to reconcile his love for his family with his loyalty to his country, and to stop the Final Solution – even if it costs him everything. Yehuda Avner’s political insight meets Matt Rees’s novelistic skill in this fast-paced counter-historical thriller about a diplomatic mission to the Devil.

EVA (Field Series Book 4)


Simon Winstanley - 2018
    The future lies where genetics, A.I. and time collide. You don’t want to miss the conclusion of the Field Series main arc! Complete your journey with one small step,The future has arrived. Now.

Ack-Ack Macaque: The Complete Trilogy


Gareth L. Powell - 2017
    Every day the cynical, cigar-chomping, hard-drinking monkey climbs into his Spitfire to do battle with the waves of German ninjas parachuting over the gentle fields of Kent. But life is not all the joyous rattle of machine guns and the roar of the engine, as Ack-Ack is about to find out… Because it is not 1944. It is the 21st century, in a world where France and Germany merged in the late 1950s, where nuclear-powered Zeppelins circle the globe, where technology is rapidly changing humanity, and Ack-Ack has lived his whole life in a videogame. Ex-journalist Victoria Valois finds herself drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the man who butchered her husband and stole his electronic soul. The heir to the British throne is on the run after an illegal break-in at a research laboratory, and Ack-Ack has been rudely awakened from his game world to find the doomsday clock ticking towards Armageddon… Two unlikely heroes and one mightily pissed-off monkey come together in a sci-fi trilogy full of action, adventure, bananas and bottles of rum. Includes the original Ack-Ack Macaque short story and a brand new epilogue, The Last Macaque.

Storm Front


Christopher G. Nuttall - 2015
    Now, in 1985, the Third Reich stretching from the coast of France to the icy wastes of Eastern Russia, appears supremely powerful. With a powerful force of nuclear warheads and the finest military machine on Earth, there is no hope for freedom for the billions who groan under its rule. Adolf Hitler’s mad dreams have come to pass. And yet, all is not well in the Reich. The cold war with the United States and the North Atlantic Alliance is destroying the Reich’s economy, while a savage insurgency in South Africa - a war the Reich cannot win and dares not lose - is sapping its military strength. And, while the Reich Council struggles to find a way to save the Reich from its own weaknesses, a young German girl makes a discovery that will shake the Reich to its core. But the Reich Council will not go quietly into the night ... [Like my other self-published Kindle books, Storm Front is DRM-free. You may reformat it as you choose. There is a large sample of the text – and my other books – on my site: chrishanger.net. Try before you buy.]

The Radiant Warrior Omnibus


Leo Frankowski - 2004
    Things went downhill from there, and he finally had to face the disheartening fact he had somehow been stranded in 1231 A.D. He would have been happier if he had known less history. But there was very bad news in his new future, so he set out to turn Medieval Poland into the most powerful country in the thirteenth century. It wouldn't be easy. He would be investigated by the Inquisition, be knighted, round up vassals, build a city, survive armed combat with the Champion of the Teutonic Knights, invent the steam engine and cloth factories, establish universal education, and organize an army. He needed the army most of all, because he knew that the Mongol hordes would attack in only ten years and destroy Medieval Poland-and that would really mess up Conrad's life.

Accidental Warrior: The Unlikely Tale of Bloody Hal


Colin Alexander - 2020
    What he finds is a squabbling bunch of states, the consequence of the colonies having grown up on their own after European civilization collapsed from plague in the 1670s, and they are poised on the brink of war. For a socially awkward young man, who takes refuge in online games, this is a bad situation. He has no knowledge or experience that is useful in this world. He does, however, have one skill of value in a world where the rifle is a new invention – he is a competitive fencer.What do you do when the world is strange and you have no way to control your own fate? Can Hal grow up fast enough to survive in this world and can he find a way home?

The Half-Made World


Felix Gilman - 2010
    What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves; and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared--the Red Republic that once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. Now they're just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope. To the west lies a vast, uncharted world, inhabited only by the legends of the immortal and powerful Hill People, who live at one with the earth and its elements. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to the edge of the made world to a spiritually protected mental institution in order to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, a man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. And either side will do anything to understand how.

Arabella of Mars


David D. Levine - 2016
    When William III of England commissioned Capt. William Kidd to command the first expedition to Mars in the late 1600s, they proved that space travel was both possible and profitable. Now, one century later, a plantation in the flourishing British colony on Mars is home to Arabella Ashby. A tomboy who shares her father's deft hand with complex automatons. Being raised on the Martian frontier by her Martian nanny, Arabella is more a wild child than a proper young lady. Something her mother plans to remedy with a move to an exotic world Arabella has never seen: London, England. Arabella soon finds herself trying to navigate an alien world until a dramatic change in her family's circumstances forces her to defy all conventions in order to return to Mars in order to save both her brother and the plantation. To do this, Arabella must pass as a boy on the Diana, a ship serving the Mars Trading Company with a mysterious Indian captain who is intrigued by her knack with automatons. Arabella must weather the naval war between Britain and France, learning how to sail, and a mutinous crew if she hopes to save her brother from certain death.

Bitter Seeds


Ian Tregillis - 2010
    The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in betweenRaybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities--a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present--Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.Alan Furst meets Alan Moore in the opening of an epic of supernatural alternate history, the tale of a twentieth century like ours and also profoundly different.

Tales From Alternate Earths


Jessica HolmesRob Edwards - 2016
    What if the nukes had flown that day over Cuba? What if Caesar had survived? Imagine the Tunguska meteor with a different outcome. What if there was a true story behind HG Wells' most famous tale? See the world as it might have been if China discovered the New World first. And what if all of this was never meant to be and dinosaurs ruled the Earth?Authors Jessica Holmes, Daniel M. Bensen, Terri Pray, Rob Edwards, Maria Haskins, Cathbad Maponus, Leo McBride, and collaborators Brent A. Harris and Ricardo Victoria show us the world that might have been - if the butterfly's wings had fluttered a different way, if the world changed between heartbeats, if a moment of decision saw another choice.This is the fourth anthology from Inklings Press, aiming to provide a platform for new and upcoming authors and to open the door onto different worlds.

Steampunk (Steampunk, #1)


Jeff VanderMeerJoseph E. Lake - 2008
    Blaylock"The Giving Mouth" by Ian R. MacLeod "A Sun in the Attic" by Mary Gentle "The God-Clown is Near" by Jay Lake"The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel" by Joe R. Lansdale"The Selene Gardening Society" by Molly Brown"Seventy-Two Letters" by Ted Chiang"The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance" by Michael Chabon"Victoria" by Paul Di Filippo"Reflected Light" by Rachel E. Pollock"Minutes of the Last Meeting" by Stepan Chapman"Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of Tribes of the Pacific Coast" by Neal Stephenson"The Steam-Driven Time Machine: A Pop Culture Survey" by Rick Klaw"The Essential Sequential Steampunk: A Modest Survey of the Genre within the Comic Book Medium" by Bill Baker