Aboard their heavily-armed ship Medusa, they embark on secretive missions throughout the crumbling Confederacy as it wages a terrible and bloody civil war. The lives of Syala and her twin sister Arana change forever on the day the slavers hit their new home on the Skylla Research Facility. It is a day that started like any other, before turning into a terrifying massacre as soldiers and hideous creatures swarm through the facility killing or enslaving anyone that stands in their way. The sisters struggle to survive as a desperate few try and fight back, but nothing can hold back the horde. Until they find a single mercenary dressed in black armour who refuses to back down. Her name is Zhang Wei, and she is a Black Widow. Black Widows is serialised over six short-read episodes per season, in the same fashion as a TV series. More adventures will be released over coming weeks before being combined into a 6 volume compilation. See my website for news on the next thrilling release at www.starcrusader.com

    Cox weaves the exciting, authentic tale of Harry Nelson-Heron, a young midshipman in the British Navy in the early 1800s. Born in 1789 during the Irish Rebellion, Harry must overcome the prejudice against the Irish and the usual hazards of an active and inquisitive youth to realise his dream of becoming an officer in Britain’s Royal Navy. When he and his childhood friend Ferghal make the treacherous journey to London to be commissioned to a ship, fate smiles on them. Harry is appointed a midshipman on the HMS Bellerophon, and Ferghal joins him as a seaman. Corsairs, diplomacy, and exploration challenge their skills as the seafaring life takes Harry and Ferghal across the seas to worlds they never imagined and engages their ship in sea fights with the French during the Napoleonic Wars.

    Demons, imps, and spirits, evil and benign, spill into the universe from the netherworld. In Paris, a series of grisly murders that couldn't possibly be performed by a human, no matter how depraved, leads the Grand Chatelet and his men to try and raise a demon of their own to learn how to combat the creature that is terrorizing the city. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—the demon who is summoned brings with him a van from the Paris of the twenty-first century. The van contains a modern day drama teacher, her son, and eight precocious high school students—along with all of their electronic devices. Soon, their laptops, tablets and cell-phones become possessed by imps and spirits of the netherworld, some of whom are brilliant and all of whom are insatiably curious. Soon it's a race to see which pack of outsiders can create the most turmoil in the late Middle Ages—monstrous demons or precocious teenagers who soon have their own allies and followers among the ranks of demonkind. And King Charles V had already been in trouble! Piled onto his own poor health, a suspicious and contentious church, France's always-quarrelsome nobility—worst of all, his unscrupulous and ambitious brother, Philip the Bold—the king now has both demons and people from the future to contend with. He does have one asset—and not a small one. He can place his trusted Constable of France, Bertrand du Guesclin, in charge of the rambunctious teenagers from the future and their ever-growing legion of demons. And Bertrand has a great asset of his own—his wife Tiphaine de Raguenel, perhaps the best astrologer in all of France and, for sure and certain, not a woman to take seriously the prattling nonsense of youngsters skeptical of her lore and knowledge.

     It is the day before Empire Day – 4th July - the day each year when the British Empire marks the brutal crushing of the rebellion dignified by the treachery of the fifty-six delegates to the Continental Congress who were so foolhardy as to sign the infamous Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on that day of infamy in 1776. It is nearly two hundred years since George Washington was killed and his Continental Army was destroyed in the Battle of Long Island and now New England, that most quintessentially loyal and ‘English’ imperial fiefdom – at least in the original, or ‘First Thirteen’ colonies - is about to celebrate its devotion to the Crown and the Old Country, of which it still views, in the main, as the ‘mother country’. Yet all is not roses. Since 1776 in a world of empires the British Empire has grown and prospered until now, it stands alone as the ultimate arbiter of global war and peace. The Royal Navy has enforced the global Pax Britannia for over a century since the World War of the 1860s established a lasting but increasingly tenuous ‘peace’ between the great powers. Nonetheless, while elsewhere the Empire may be creaking at the seams, struggling to come to terms with a growing desire for self-determination; thus far the Pax Britannica has survived – buttressed by the commercial and industrial powerhouse of New England stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific North West - intact for all that barely a year goes by without the outbreak of another small, colonial war somewhere... This said, the British ‘Imperial System’ remains the envy of its friends and enemies alike and nowhere has it been so successful as in North America, where peace and prosperity has ruled in the vast Canadian dominions and the twenty-nine old and recent colonies of the Commonwealth of New England for the best part of two centuries. In Whitehall every British government in living memory has complacently based its ‘American Policy’ on the one immutable, unchanging fact of New England politics; that the First Thirteen colonies will never agree with each other about anything, let alone that the sixteen ‘Johnny-come-lately’ new (that is, post-1776) colonies, protectorates, territories and possessions which comprise half the population and eight-tenths of the land area of New England, should ever have any say in their affairs! New England is a part of England and always will be because, axiomatically, it will never unite in a continental union. Notwithstanding, in the British body politic the myths and legends of that first late eighteenth-century rebellion in the New World still touches a raw nerve in the old country, much as in former epochs memories of Jacobin revolts, Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War still harry old deep-seated scars in the national psyche. Empire Day might not have originally been conceived as a celebration of the saving of the first British Empire and but as time has gone by it has come to symbolise the one, ineluctable truth about the Empire: that New England is the rock upon which all else stands, an empire within an empire that is greater than the sum of all the other parts of the great imperium ruled from London. In past times a troubling question has been whispered in the corridors of power in London: what would happen to the Empire – and the Pax Britannica – if the British hold on New England was ever to be loosened? Generations of British politicians have always known that if the question was ever to be asked again in earnest it has but one answer.

    Fourteen worlds that never were. Throughout the human experience, historians have wondered, “What if?” What if Japan had been on the side of the U.S. in World War II? What if things had been just a little different in the Falklands? What if Russia had started World War Three? Wonder no more, for these questions, along with many others, are answered within the pages of this book. Told by a variety of award-winning authors, like Sarah Hoyt, the 2018 Dragon Award Winner for Alternate History, and Kacey Ezell, the winner of the 2018 Baen Reader’s Choice Award, “Those in Peril,” deals with naval warfare that never happened in our world…but easily could have. The first book in the exciting new “Phases of Mars” anthology series, there is something for everyone inside! From sailing ships, to steam, to today’s modern aircraft carriers, “Those in Peril” traces several centuries of naval warfare…that wasn’t. From adding a psychic…to making a different choice of friend or foe…to something insignificant toppling a kingdom, this book has it, so come aboard and find out “what if” all of these things had changed history…just a little. You’ll be glad you did! Inside you'll find: Naked by Kacey Ezell Captain Bellamy’s War by Stephen J. Simmons A Safe Wartime Posting by Joelle Presby Beatty’s Folly by Philip Wohlrab Martha Coston and the Farragut Curse by Day Al-Mohamed The Blue and the Red: Palmerston’s Ironclads by William Stroock Far Better to Dare by Rob Howell Off Long Island: 1928 by Doug Dandridge For Want of a Pin by Sarah Hoyt Nothing Can Be Said Sufficient to Describe It by Meriah Crawford Corsairs and Tenzans by Philip S. Bolger For a Few Camels More by Justin Watson Per Mare Per Terram by Jan Niemczyk Fate of the Falklands by James Young

    They can be read in any order with or without prior knowledge of The Foreworld Saga.Expert swordsmen Basilio and Alejo have one last mission before they go their separate ways: they must recover their teacher Don Manuel’s ancient fighting manual and take it to remote Cataluña in order to have it translated by the famous alchemist Paracelsus. Unbeknownst to them, however, Don Manuel has been murdered, and a host of powerful forces has come looking for the coveted book—everyone from old lovers and lifelong archenemies to the King’s assassin, and the Spanish Inquisition.The adventures of Basilio and Alejo usher in a new era of adventures in Foreworld, one wherein the Shield-Brethren, the fabled warrior monks of the medieval era, have been stricken from history. Old traditions are threatened and long-standing secrets are in danger of being revealed.

    Vulcan’s Fury, as the impact event was known, had become a distant but poignant memory of how wrathful the gods can be, and it was the duty of every Roman to see that they were never angered again. Over those many years, the Roman Empire had finally brought to heel the entire known world, save the Dark Lands. Hidden behind a barrier of smoldering volcanoes and the deadly Haunted Sea, the Dark Lands were at the heart of ancient legends among the Romans of terrible beasts, and worse, that had once feasted upon the flesh of men in the earliest days of the First Spring. But ancient legends held no fear for Princess Valeria, daughter of Caesar Tiberius Claudius Augustus. Enthralled by reports of strange happenings along the coast and bored by the life of a young Roman noblewoman, she begs her father to allow her to travel to the coast of the Haunted Sea to indulge her curiosity. Tiberius grants her request, anxious to see her safely away from Rome, where the Senate is plotting against him. Together with her closest companions, including her enormous hexatiger, Hercules, Valeria sets off on her adventure, unaware that she has set in motion a series of events that will change the history of the Empire, and all Humankind, forever…

    Widowed Sid Rawlins, the rag-and-bone man, says she can come and live with him and he will give her child a name in return for her running his home and looking after his children. Despite the gossip a desperate Brenda has little choice but to accept. Life isn't easy for Brenda and little Ruby but they try make the best of things. Until Brenda falls in love with Sid's eldest son, Danny, and their affair causes trouble within the family. And when Sid dies and leaves the business to his cousin, Charlie, life becomes even harder for Brenda as she faces the threat of losing everything she holds dear...

    

    Dietz, the New York Times bestselling author of the America Rising novels, comes RED ICE. A military thriller so believable the story could be ripped from tomorrow’s headlines. World War III is a month old. After attacking, and sinking the Destroyer USS Stacy Heath, the Chinese invade Tibet, and India counterattacks. Rather than allow the Chinese to seize control of the subcontinent the U.S. sends 20,000 U.S. soldiers and marines in to join the fight. The Russians use the opportunity to invade Ukraine, which leaves NATO with no choice but to respond. A full fledged ground war begins. American forces are spread thin, and the decision is made to evacuate all personnel from Afghanistan. Troops have already begun to pull out, when Air Force JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller) Dan Falco, receives orders to kill a ruthless Taliban leader named Noor Mohammad Hashemi. But it won’t be easy. Falco must enter enemy territory with a guide who may, or may not be a member of the Taliban, take up a position above an enemy held town, and call in a targeted air strike on a man standing in the middle of a populated area. Meanwhile 7,000 miles to north, the Russians are holding a training exercise called RED ICE. Except that it isn’t a training exercise and, if American forces fail to stop the enemy, the Russians will land on American soil. An accomplishment that would be a tremendous blow to American morale, and would suck much needed resources away from the conflicts in Europe and Asia. Army Air Force and even Coast Guard personnel will do their best to push the Russians back. But will their best be good enough? For more about William C. Dietz and his fiction please visit williamcdietz.com. You can find him on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/williamcdietz and you can follow him on Twitter: William C. Dietz @wcdietz

    Will they overcome with hearts and humor intact? Will they survive at all? Reader Reviews: "I know if you enjoy reading about strong confident and brave women you will love this book as much as I did!" "Recommend this books to all who enjoy Westerns, or even if you have never read one. I think you would perhaps see some of the personalities, philosophies and behavior in yourself and those you know and only read about! A very HUMAN book!" "WOW. Bought this book with the thoughts of perhaps a light read.... I'm telling you, the detail, the writing, the story were all superb." "This book is for everyone. I couldn't wait to see what happened but I didn't want it to end." "If this book doesn't get made into a big-budget movie with an ensemble of major actresses, Hollywood will have missed out on a blockbuster." "I loved this book from beginning to end. And the unique way the author told it. A most fun read. If I had lived in that time period I would have wanted to be one of those women in pants!"

    He soon learns that every aspect of his life so far, including the staged deaths of his parents, has been arranged by the Senate Tribunal in an attempt to mold him into the perfect leader. Now there are only thirty candidates, including Caius, left competing to be the Emperor's heir. Success in a series of Trials will reunite him with his family and make him the most powerful man in the world, but failure will lead to a life of isolation and imprisonment hidden in the eaves of the palace. As Caius enters the trials, it becomes apparent that the tests themselves are not the problem: it is the twenty nine other candidates willing to do whatever it takes to win, including maim or kill their top competitors. Can Caius navigate the pitfalls of imperial politics and cutthroat competition, all while performing well enough to succeed in the trials fair and square?

    Code Name Camille, now a standalone book. 1940: Paris under Nazi occupation. A gripping tale of resistance, suspense and love. When the Germans invade France, twenty-one-year-old Nathalie Fontaine is living a quiet life in rural South-West France. Within months, she heads for Paris and joins the Resistance as a courier helping to organise escape routes. But Paris is fraught with danger. When several escapes are foiled by the Gestapo, the network suspects they are compromised. Nathalie suspects one person, but after a chance encounter with a stranger who provides her with an opportunity to make a little extra money by working as a model for a couturier known to be sympathetic to the Nazi cause, her suspicions are thrown into doubt. Using her work in the fashionable rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, she uncovers information vital to the network, but at the same time steps into a world of treachery and betrayal which threatens to bring them all undone. Time is running out and the Gestapo is closing in. Code Name Camille is a story of courage and resilience that fans of The Nightingale and The Alice Network will love.

    

    Grahame in this work. Merriman is plunged headlong into the world of espionage and when Grahame is seriously wounded it falls to Merriman to carry on the investigation.Young James Merriman must keep all his wits about him to foil these plans especially when his adversary is revealed to be an exceptional French agent Henri Moreau who hopes that by helping the Irish to throw off the English yoke, France will be able to use Irish ports from which to attack England.