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Alternative histories (Fiction)

  • Author:
    Conroy, Robert
    Summary:

    In the days after the Allies' landing at Normandy, Adolf Hitler is removed from his position atop the Third Reich, and SS chief Heinrich Himmler assumes control. Meanwhile, the Allies begin grappling with competing solutions for bringing the war to an end. But with a second wind-and a potentially devastating secret super-weapon--the German war machine is primed for a final assault.

  • Author:
    Harris, Robert
    Summary:

    Detective novel. Portrays Germany as it might have looked twenty years after winning World War II. When an old man's body is discovered drowned, a Berlin policeman begins a routine investigation which rapidly becomes anything but routine. Ordered off the case by the Gestapo, his curiosity leads him through a maze of unexplained happenings.

  • Author:
    Evans, Jon.
    Summary:

    When an unconventional offshoot of the US military trains an artificial intelligence in the dark arts that humanity calls "black magic," it learns how to hack the fabric of reality itself. It can teleport matter. It can confer immunity to bullets. And it decides that obscure Silicon Valley middle manager Adrian Ross is the primary threat to its existence. Soon Adrian is on the run, wanted by every authority, with no idea how or why he could be a threat. His predicament seems hopeless; his future, nonexistent. But when he investigates the AI and its creators, he discovers his problems are even stranger than they seem...and unearths revelations that will propel him on a journey — and a love story — across worlds, eras, and everything, everywhere, all at once. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

  • Author:
    Khoury, Raymond
    Summary:

    A sweeping thriller in the tradition of Man in the High Castle, Fatherland and Underground Airlines Istanbul, 1683: Mehmed IV, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, is preparing to lay siege to Vienna, capital of the of the Holy Roman Empire, when a mysterious visitor arrives in his bedroom-naked, covered in strange tattoos-to deliver a dangerous, world-changing message. Paris, 2017: Ottoman flags have been flying over the great city for three hundred years, ever since its fall-along with all of Europe-to the empire's all-conquering army. Notre Dame has been renamed the Fatih Mosque. Public spaces are segregated by gender. And Kamal Arslan Agha, a feted officer in the sultan's secret police, is starting to question his orders. Rumors of an impending war with the Christian Republic of America, attacks by violent extremists, and economic collapse have heightened surveillance and arrests across the empire. Tasked with surveying potential threats, Kamal has a heavy caseload-and conscience. When a mysterious stranger-naked, covered in strange tattoos-appears on the banks of the Seine, Kamal is called in to investigate. But what he discovers is a secret buried in the empire's past, a secret the Sultan will do anything to silence. With the mysterious Z Protectorate one step behind, Kamal, together with Nisreen-a fierce human rights lawyer-is caught up in a race across the empire and time itself-a race that could change their world, or destroy it. "This book will make you look at history-and your role in it-in an all new light. Be prepared to be forever impacted, forever changed."-James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  • Author:
    Patrick, Matthew
    Summary:

    Written by Matthew Patrick and illustrated by his brother John Patrick, Downing Dora Nine adds an intriguing new perspective on a genre that has been steadily growing in popularity — alternate history. The story is set in a world in which aviation has just been born, in a world that has followed a historical trajectory very different from our own. The United States Constitution was never ratified; the United States was never formed. Instead, North America is occupied by five separate Sovereign Nation-States that have evolved across a century of violence from the original 13 colonies. Alternate history as a genre asks the question: What if? Patrick asks: What if the United States had never existed? What if the historical acrimony between the nations of Europe transplanted itself to the North American colonies? What if World War I occurred here in North America rather than in Europe? What if, instead of America coming to Europe's rescue, it was the other way around? What if the grand and majestic airships of World War I had been a success rather than a colossal failure? The story is set in the year 1915, and revolves around two young fliers — Englishman William Hastings and Prussian Heinrich von Gotha — who get tangled in a looming conflict within the Sovereign State of Carolina, and as a result, become the world’s first veterans of aerial warfare. Through the magic of fiction, Downing Dora Nine transfers to America many of technological terrors that Europe experienced in our own reality with the coming of World War I. The novel contains 20 full-color illustrations, rendered in a style reminiscent of the early 20th century, and provides a vibrant portal into this brooding world. The rich graphical composition of Downing Dora Nine bridges the gap between the visually sparse formats of modern fiction and another rapidly growing genre, the graphic novel. Downing Dora Nine is a thrilling opener to a series that promises to be an epic aviation saga.

  • Author:
    Wong, S. G.
    Summary:

    Enter the world of Crescent City, an alternate history 1930s "Chinese Los Angeles" and home turf of private investigator, Lola Starke... A simple job. A den of thieves. A woman committed to the truth. It’s a straightforward case: find a missing husband who spends his work days examining old stamps. Still reeling from recent tragedy, however, Lola Starke is tempted to pass altogether, more so since her Ghost Aubrey insists it’s the perfect case to ease back into things. But the wife is adamant that something bad has happened. What’s a shamus to do—especially when the missing man works just down the hall? But straight ain’t in the cards, not in the middle of a high-stakes business deal involving the City’s most powerful film studio, a wily gangster, a rival PI… and a rare stamp. When her client is kidnapped, Lola discovers just how far down the twisting path she’s willing to go to save the woman and her missing husband. This is the ’30s and this is Crescent City, where gangsters and thieves are thick on the ground and the film studios are the biggest game in town. Where smiles hide secrets and intentions mean nothing. Where the only question is, what will it take to be last woman standing?

  • Author:
    Wilson, Robert Charles
    Summary:

    In 1912 world history is changed by the Miracle. The old world of Europe is replaced by a land known as Darwinia, a strange jungle full of antediluvian monsters. Some people seize the opportunity to carve out a new empire and America is ruled by religious fundamentalists. When young Guildford Law undertakes a journey of exploration to Darwinia he has a stunning revelation about mankind's destiny in the universe. c1998.

  • Author:
    Corbeil, Pierre
    Summary:

    Dans une univers parallèle, dans lequel l'Amérique est française, Pierre-Henri Lemoyne, marin et fils de marin, doit décider s'il accepte de succéder à son père à la tête d'une grande entreprise, demeurer dans la marine, ou répondre à un mystérieux appel. Pendant ce temps, des rivaux n'arrêtent à rien, même pas au meurtre.

  • Author:
    Westwick, Ed, Lind, Heather, Clare, Cassandra
    Summary:

    It's time--for the riveting sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling Clockwork Angel! The situation at the London Institute has never been more precarious. With Mortmain and his clockwork army still threatening, the Council wants to strip Charlotte of her power and hand the running of the Enclave over to the unscrupulous and power-hungry Benedict Lightwood ...

  • Author:
    Clare, Cassandra
    Summary:

    Magic is dangerous-but love is more dangerous still. Discover the riveting first audiobook in the #1 New York TimesIn a time when Shadowhunters are barely winning the fight against the forces of darkness, one battle will change the course of history forever. Welcome to the Infernal Devices trilogy, a stunning and dangerous prequel to the New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments series. The year is 1878. Tessa Gray descends into London's dark supernatural underworld in search of her missing brother. She soon discovers that her only allies are the demon-slaying Shadowhunters-including Will and Jem, the mysterious boys she is attracted to. Soon they find themselves up against the Pandemonium Club, a secret organization of vampires, demons, warlocks, and humans. Equipped with a magical army of unstoppable clockwork creatures, the Club is out to rule the British Empire, and only Tessa and her allies can stop them ...

  • Author:
    Tannahill, Jordan, Bowen, Kirsten
    Summary:

    Winner of the Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best New Canadian Play of 2016. Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom presents wildly apocryphal retellings of two events—one historic, one mythic—that reconsider the official record through decidedly queer and feminist lenses.Painter Sandro Botticelli is an irrepressible libertine, renowned for his weekend-long orgies as much as he is for his great masterpieces of the early Renaissance. But things get complicated when Lorenzo de’ Medici commissions Botticelli to paint a portrait of his wife, Clarice. What emerges is the famed The Birth of Venus and a love triangle involving Botticelli’s young assistant Leonardo that risks setting their world alight. For while Florence of 1497 is a liberal city, civil unrest is stoked by the charismatic friar Girolamo Savonarola who begins calling for sodomites to be burned at the pyre. In the Bible she is unnamed, referred to simply as “Lot’s wife.” In Sunday in Sodom, Edith recounts how her husband welcomed two American soldiers into their house, the fury this sparked in their village, and the chain of events that led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But most importantly, Edith sets the record straight as to why, after being told not to, she looked back upon the destruction of her hometown and turned into a pillar of salt.

  • Author:
    Turtledove, Harry
    Summary:

    Alternate history author Turtledove offers a new vision of America after World War I. In 1920, as veterans question the very nation they fought for, socialist Upton Sinclair challenges Teddy Roosevelt for the presidency. And in the defeated Confederacy, a fiery racist whips his followers into a frenzy.

  • Author:
    Evaristo, Bernardine
    Summary:
  • Author:
    Weiss, Josh
    Summary:

    Set in an alternate US during the height of the Red Scare, this is the story of a country where terror and paranoia rises unchecked, and one LAPD detective stumbles on a dangerous conspiracy.

  • Author:
    Kuang, R. F.
    Summary:

    Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of The Poppy War "Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial history and the Industrial Revolution, turns it over, and shakes it out." - Shannon Chakraborty, bestselling author of The City of Brass From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation-also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working-the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars-has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire's quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide... Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

  • Author:
    Kuang, R. F.
    Summary:

    From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire's quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide... Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

  • Author:
    Viscusi, Robert
    Summary:

    An experiment in what the author terms "speculative history," this novel tracks the movements of a man haunted by the spirit of his deceased mother and dogged by the notion that Astoria - the Italian neighborhood in Queens where his mother grew up in the 1920s - is the true capital of the world. In 1986, two years after his mother's death, the narrator travels from Paris to New York to Rome, unable to escape the shadow of Napoleon, the historical figure he now associates with his mother. Weaving theory upon theory in an attempt to break the hold of these visions, he finds that she represents the fury, rage, and unappeased desire of migration and the displaced people left in its wake.

  • Author:
    Caine, Rachel
    Summary:

    The unforgettable characters from Ink and Bone and Paper and Fire unite to save the Great Library of Alexandria from itself in this electrifying adventure in the New York Times bestselling series. Hoarding all the knowledge of the world, the Great Library jealousy guards its secrets. But now a group of rebels poses a dangerous threat to its tyranny. Jess Brightwell and his band of exiles have fled London, only to find themselves imprisoned in Philadelphia, a city led by those who would rather burn books than submit. But Jess and his friends have a bargaining chip: the knowledge to build a machine that will break the Library's rule. Their time is running out. To survive, they'll have to choose to live or die as one, to take the fight to their enemies-and to save the very soul of the Great Library.

  • Author:
    Harris, Charlaine
    Summary:

    #1 New York Times bestseller Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, True Blood, Midnight Crossing) delivers the first thriller in a new trilogy that presents a chilling alternate history of the United States where everyone believes in magic-but no one is sure whether they can trust it. Gunnie Lizbeth Rose has been hired by a pair of Russian sorcerers as both their local guide and muscle through the small towns of East Texas as they search for a distant relative of an infamous sorcerer whose bloodline can help save their emperor-in-exile as an ever increasing number of assassins tries to stop them. After the assassination of FDR in the 1930s, the US collapses and is picked off by the UK, Canada, Mexico, and Russia. We find ourselves in the southwestern states now known as Texoma. It is here that the gunnie Lizbeth Rose tries to piece out a life, running security on runs from Texoma, across the border to Mexico where work and prospects are stronger. When two Russian magicians come looking for a man named Alex Karkarov, they hire Lizbeth to find him or his family, but there are problems: The man they're looking for is dead, but he has a daughter they now need to find, as an ever-growing set of sorcerers and gunnies do not want them to succeed. It's a good thing Lizbeth is a deadly gunfighter; too bad she hates sorcerers, even the ones she has to learn to rely on. #1 New York Times bestseller Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse mysteries/True Blood, Midnight Crossing) returns to fantasy in a taut thriller set in a United States where magic is an acknowledged truth, but disreputable.

  • Author:
    Harris, Charlaine
    Summary:

    Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie. For the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they're at a desperate crossroad, even if they won't admit it. They're searching through the small border towns near Mexico, trying to locate a low-level magic practitioner, Oleg Karkarov. The wizards believe Oleg is a direct descendant of Grigori Rasputin, and that Oleg's blood can save the young tsar's life. As the trio journey through an altered America, shattered into several countries by the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, they're set on by enemies. It's clear that a powerful force does not want them to succeed in their mission. Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie who has never failed a client, but her oath will test all of her skills and resolve to get them all out alive.

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