Type: StandaloneNovel

Void Star: A Novel

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Void Star: A Novel
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A riveting, beautifully written, fugue-like novel of AIs, memory, violence, and mortality

Not far in the future the seas have risen and the central latitudes are emptying, but it’s still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor. Irina isn’t rich, not quite, but she does have an artificial memory that gives her perfect recall and lets her act as a medium between her various employers and their AIs, which are complex to the point of opacity. It’s a good gig, paying enough for the annual visits to the Mayo Clinic that keep her from aging.

Kern has no such access; he’s one of the many refugees in the sprawling drone-built favelas on the city’s periphery, where he lives like a monk, training relentlessly in martial arts, scraping by as a thief and an enforcer. Thales is from a different world entirely—the mathematically inclined scion of a Brazilian political clan, he’s fled to L.A. after the attack that left him crippled and his father dead.

A ragged stranger accosts Thales and demands to know how much he can remember. Kern flees for his life after robbing the wrong mark. Irina finds a secret in the reflection of a laptop’s screen in her employer’s eyeglasses. None are safe as they’re pushed together by subtle forces that stay just out of sight.

Vivid, tumultuous, and propulsive, Void Star is Zachary Mason’s mind-bending follow-up to his bestselling debut, The Lost Books of the Odyssey.

The War After Armageddon

The War After Armageddon
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Shocking scenes of battle…unforgettable soldiers…heartbreaking betrayals…. In this stunning, fast-paced novel, a ruthless future war unfolds in a 21st century nightmare: Los Angeles is a radioactive ruin; Europe lies bleeding; and Israel has been destroyed…with millions slaughtered. A furious America fights to reclaim the devastated Holy Land.

The Marines storm ashore; the U.S. Army does battle in a Biblical landscape. Hi-tech weaponry is useless and primitive hatreds flare. Lt. Gen. Gary “Flintlock” Harris and his courageous warriors struggle for America’s survival–with ruthless enemies to their front and treachery at their rear. Islamist fanatics, crusading Christians, and unscrupulous politicians open the door to genocide.

The War After Armageddon thrusts the reader into a terrifying future in which all that remains is the horror of war–and the inspiration of individual heroism. A master at bringing to life “the eternal soldier,” Ralph Peters tells a riveting tale that honors those Americans who fight and sacrifice all for a dream of freedom.

Red Army by Ralph Peters

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

How Few Remain

How Few Remain
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From the master of alternate history comes an epic of the second Civil War. It was an epoch of glory and success, of disaster and despair. . . .

1881: A generation after the South won the Civil War, America writhed once more in the bloody throes of battle. Furious over the annexation of key Mexican territory, the United States declared total war against the Confederate States of America in 1881.

But this was a new kind of war, fought on a lawless frontier where the blue and gray battled not only each other but the Apache, the outlaw, the French, and the English. As Confederate General Stonewall Jackson again demonstrated his military expertise, the North struggled to find a leader who could prove his equal. In the Second War Between the States, the times, the stakes, and the battle lines had changed–and so would history. . .

The Guns of the South

The Guns of the South
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“It is absolutely unique–without question the most fascinating Civil War novel I have ever read.”
Professor James M. McPherson
Pultizer Prize-winning BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM

January 1864–General Robert E. Lee faces defeat. The Army of Northern Virginia is ragged and ill-equpped. Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower.
Then, Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with an unplaceable accent, approaches Lee with an extraordinary offer. Rhoodie demonstrates an amazing rifle: Its rate of fire is incredible, its lethal efficiency breathtaking–and Rhoodie guarantees unlimited quantitites to the Confederates.
The name of the weapon is the AK-47….
Selected by the Science Fiction Book Club
A Main Selection of the Military Book Club

Lest Darkness Fall & Timeless Tales Written in Tribute

Lest Darkness Fall & Timeless Tales Written in Tribute
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Rarely do books have such a great influence on a genre as Lest Darkness Fall has had on science fiction. Frequently quoted as one of the favorite books of many of the masters in this genre, this book by L. Sprague de Camp helped establish alternate-history as solid sub-genre of science fiction.

An indication of the influence and longevity of the book is by the number of best-selling writers who have written stories in direct response to, or influenced by, Lest Darkness Fall. The original tribute volume (titled Lest Darkness Fall and Related Stories, reprinted three such stories by Frederik Pohl, David Drake and S. M. Stirling written over a period of forty-three years―a testament to the timelessness of the book.

The 2021 edition (Lest Darkness Fall and Timeless Tales Told in Tribute) includes two brand new stories by Harry Turtledove and David Weber.

Similar, thematically, to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the book tells the tale of Martin Padway who, as he is walking around in modern Rome, is suddenly transported though time to 6th Century Rome.

Once in ancient Rome, Padway (now Martinus Paduei Quastor) embarks on an ambitious project of single-handedly changing history.

L. Sprague de Camp was a student of history (and the author of a number of popular works on the subject). In Lest Darkness Fall he combines his extensive knowledge of the workings of ancient Rome with his extraordinary imagination to create one of the best books of time travel ever written.

This volume also includes an afterword by Alexei and Cory Panshin, adapted from their Hugo-winning book on science fiction, The World Beyond the Hill.

Timescape: A Novel by Gregory Benford

Timescape: A Novel by Gregory Benford
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Winner of the 1980 Nebula Award, Timescape has since become a classic of the science fiction genre, combining hard science, bold speculation, and human drama—a challenging and triumphant tale told by a master storyteller. 

1998. Earth is falling apart, on the brink of ecological disaster. But in England a tachyon scientist is attempting to contact the past, to somehow warn them of the misery and death their actions and experiments have visited upon a ravaged planet.

1962. JFK is still president, rock ‘n’ roll is king, and the Vietnam War hardly merits front-page news. A young assistant researcher at a California university, Gordon Bernstein, notices strange patterns of interference in a lab experiment. Against all odds, facing ridicule and opposition, Bernstein begins to uncover the incredible truth . . . a truth that will change his life and alter history . . . the truth behind time itself.