Category: Contemporary

Red Army by Ralph Peters

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Red Army by Ralph Peters
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Red Army is unique among military fiction published in the US during the 1980s, as it presented the material exclusively from the perspective of officers and men in the Soviet Army written by US Army intelligence analyst Ralph Peters

Soldiers with the Group of Soviet Forces in East Germany prepare to launch an invasion of West Germany. Soviet General Mikhail Malinsky, commander of the First Western Front, discusses the upcoming invasion with other Soviet leaders.

The plans call for a simultaneous thrust on three fronts: across the North German Plain, through the Fulda Gap, and across Bavaria. NATO commanders are to be bluffed into thinking the main assault will come at the Fulda Gap, but the main effort will be on the North German Plain, led by Malinsky. Airborne forces will be dropped deep into West Germany to disrupt the NATO rearguard

 

Germanica

Germanica
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Best-selling alternate history master Robert Conroy returns to World War II, this time for a dangerous last stand of the Nazis in the heart of the Alps.

GERMANICA, ÜBER ALLES!

Deep in the heart of Europe’s Alps in the redoubt called Germanica, Nazi propaganda master Josef Goebbels and a battalion of Nazi zealots hold out against a frantic final Allied push to end World War II. With Churchill losing his election, De Gaulle consolidating his rule over a newly liberated France, and Stalin asserting his own nefarious land-grab in Eastern Germany, only America, led by its untried new president Harry Truman, remains to face the toughest of Nazi warriors as they hunker down for a bitter fight to the last man.

Goebbels knows that if he can hold out just a bit longer, the war weary of the Western nations will back away from unconditional surrender for Germany, and he and his zealots can remain in power never to answer for their war crimes, and able to prepare for the moment when their hateful Nazi ideology is ready once again to rise from its alpine grave and strike at the heart of humanity!

But there are Americans and a few stalwart Europeans just as determined to put a final stake in the Nazi heart. It is now up to heroes in the making such as newly minted O.S.S. operative Ernie Janek, commando Captain Scott Tanner, and formerly enslaved Czech “Jew” Lena Bobek, to bring down the dark Nazi menace growing like a cancer in the mountainous heart of the continent.

About Germanica:
“[A] new and intriguing novel that takes the final days of the Third Reich as its jumping-off point. . . . Conroy captures the intricacies of WWII with an eye for historical nuance, and he crafts a believable alternate ending to the war. . . . [T]he story is buoyed by Conroy’s effective snapshot of the era.”—Publishers Weekly

About Robert Conroy’s Rising Sun:
“Conroy extrapolates a new and militarily plausible direction for WWII . . . A thrilling adventure.”—Booklist

Himmler’s War

Himmler's War
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Best-selling author Robert Conroy has earned considerable critical acclaim and favorable comparisons to fellow speculative history maven Harry Turtledove.

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.

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War
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“A novel that reads like science fiction but bristles with rich detail about how the next World War could be fought.” —Vice

“A modern-day successor to tomes such as The Hunt for Red October from the late Tom Clancy.” –USA Today

What Will World War III Look Like?

Ghost Fleet is a page-turning imagining of a war set in the not-too-distant future. Navy captains battle through a modern-day Pearl Harbor; fighter pilots duel with stealthy drones; teenage hackers fight in digital playgrounds; Silicon Valley billionaires mobilize for cyber-war; and a serial killer carries out her own vendetta. Ultimately, victory will depend on who can best blend the lessons of the past with the weapons of the future. But what makes the story even more notable is that every trend and technology in book—no matter how sci-fi it may seem—is real.

The debut novel by two leading experts on the cutting edge of national security, Ghost Fleet has drawn praise as a new kind of technothriller while also becoming the new “must-read” for military leaders around the world.

“A wild book, a real page-turner.”—The Economist

“Ghost Fleet is a thrilling trip through a terrifyingly plausible tomorrow. This is not just an excellent book, but an excellent book by those who know what they are talking about. Prepare to lose some sleep.”—D. B. Weiss, writer of HBO’s Game of Thrones

“It’s exciting, but it’s terrifying at the same time.”—General Robert Neller, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps

Days of Infamy: A Novel of Alternate History

Days of Infamy: A Novel of Alternate History
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On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched an attack against U.S. naval forces stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. But what if the Japanese followed up their air assault with an invasion and occupation of Hawaii? This is the question explored by Harry Turtledove in Days of Infamy, with frightening implications.

With American military forces subjugated and civilians living in fear of their conquerors, there is no one to stop the Japanese from using the islands’ resources to launch an offensive against America’s western coast.

American Front (The Great War series Book 1)

American Front (The Great War series Book 1)
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“This is state-of-the-art alternate history, nothing less.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

When the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, the United States and the Confederate States of America, bitter enemies for five decades, entered the fray on opposite sides: the United States aligned with the newly strong Germany, while the Confederacy joined forces with their longtime allies, Britain and France. But it soon became clear to both sides that this fight would be different—that war itself would never be the same again. For this was to be a protracted, global conflict waged with new and chillingly efficient innovations—the machine gun, the airplane, poison gas, and trench warfare.

Across the Americas, the fighting raged like wildfire on multiple and far-flung fronts. As President Theodore Roosevelt rallied the diverse ethnic groups of the northern states—Irish and Italians, Mormons and Jews—Confederate President Woodrow Wilson struggled to hold together a Confederacy still beset by ignorance, prejudice, and class divisions. And as the war thundered on, southern blacks, oppressed for generations, found themselves fatefully drawn into a climactic confrontation . . .

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut (include Harrison Bergeron and other stories)

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut (include Harrison Bergeron and other stories)
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Since its original publication in 1968, Welcome to the Monkey House has been one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved works. This special edition celebrates a true master of the short-story form by including multiple variant drafts of what would eventually be the title story. In a fascinating accompanying essay, “Building the Monkey House: At Kurt Vonnegut’s Writing Table,”noted Vonnegut scholar Gregory D. Sumner walks readers through Vonnegut’s process as the author struggles—false start after false start—to hit upon what would be one of his greatest stories. The result is the rare chance to watch a great writer hone his craft in real time.

Includes the following stories:

“Where I Live”
“Harrison Bergeron”
“Who Am I This Time?”
“Welcome to the Monkey House”
“Long Walk to Forever”
“The Foster Portfolio”
“Miss Temptation”
“All the King’s Horses”
“Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog”
“New Dictionary”
“Next Door”
“More Stately Mansions”
“The Hyannis Port Story”
“D.P.”
“Report on the Barnhouse Effect”
“The Euphio Question”
“Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son”
“Deer in the Works”
“The Lie”
“Unready to Wear”
“The Kid Nobody Could Handle”
“The Manned Missiles”
“Epicac”
“Adam”
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”

When Gravity Fails (The Budayeen Cycle Book 1)

When Gravity Fails (The Budayeen Cycle Book 1)
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In a futuristic Middle East, plug-ins can turn anyone into a killer in this “wry and black and savage” Nebula and Hugo award finalist (George R. R. Martin).

Set in a high-tech near future featuring an ascendant Muslim world and divided Western superpowers, this cult classic takes us into a world with mind- or mood-altering drugs for any purpose, brains enhanced by electronic hardware with plug-in memory additions and modules offering the wearer new personalities, and bodies shaped to perfection by surgery. Marid Audran, an unmodified and fairly honest street hustler, lives in a decadent Arab ghetto, the Budayeen, and holds on tight to his cherished independence.

Then, against his best instincts, he becomes involved in a series of inexplicable murders. Some seem like routine assassinations, carried out with an old-fashioned handgun by a man wearing a plug-in James Bond persona; others, involving whores, feature prolonged torture and horrible mutilations. Soon the problem comes to the attention of Budayeen godfather Friedlander Bey—who makes Audran an offer he can’t refuse.

Nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, the highest honors in the genre, When Gravity Fails, which introduced the cyberpunk Budayeen Cycle, is a pioneering work the Denver Post called “superior science fiction” and Harlan Ellison described as “crazy as a spider on ice skates . . . plain old terrific.”

Babylon Babies

Babylon Babies
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“What makes the novel so haunting is its vision of a near future in which society has fractured along every possible national, tribal and sectarian fault line.”—The New York Times Book Review

In the hidden “flesh and chip” breeding grounds of the first cyborg communities, Toorop, a hard-boiled Special Forces veteran of Sarajevo, is hired by a shadow organization to escort a young woman, Marie Zorn, from Russia to Canada. But what appears to be a routine job is anything but. After completing the mission, Thoorop discovers that Marie is no ordinary girl. A genetically altered pawn in an elaborate plot, Marie is carrying a dark secret that could spell destruction for all humankind–if Thoorop doesn’t track her down before it’s too late.

“A vast encyclopedia of the future as seen through a crystal ball with cracks in the glass.

High-Rise

High-Rise
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When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.