Gifted with the unusual ability to embroider the very fabric of life, sixteen-year-old Adelice is summoned by Manipulation Services to become a Spinster, a move that will separate her from her beloved family and home forever.
Sixteen-year-old Adelice Lewys is called upon to harness her power in a battle for control of Earth, but as she uncovers the truth about her own history she learns that everyone holds secrets, some of which may drive her from her love, Jost, into his brother Erik's arms.
Adelice returns to Arras, where the Guild's control is slipping and Cormac Patton needs her help to reestablish order, but she soon discovers that she is not alone and must choose between an unimaginable alliance and a war that could destroy everyone she loves.
Adri's, Catherine's, and Lenore's lives are intertwined but not in the way that one would think. Adri lives in 2065 Kansas, Catherine lives in 1930s Kansas, and Lenore lives in England in 1919. As Adri is preparing to go to Mars, she stays with her cousin in Kansas, where the training takes place. Upon settling in, she comes across letters written from Lenore to Beth. Through journals and, later, letters, Catherine narrates her own story of being in Kansas during the Dust Bowl.
Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for grandfather's renowned intoxicant, and the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power, holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future.
Now and Forever is a bold new work from an incomparable artist whose stories have reshaped America's literary landscape; two bewitching novellas that have never before appeared in print--each distinctly different, yet uniquely Bradbury--demonstrating the breathtaking range of the master's talent and the irrepressible vitality of his mind, spirit, and heart.
In Somewhere a Band Is Playing, a writer is drawn by poetry and dreams to tiny Summerton, Arizona, a community hidden in plain view, where no small children play, and where the residents never seem to age. Enchanted by its powerful rural magic--and by a beautiful, enigmatic lady who bears the name of an Egyptian queen--the writer sets out to uncover Summerton's mysteries before the inevitable arrival of a ruthless destruction.
With Leviathan '99, the author who once colonized Mars returns to the cosmos to brilliantly reimagine Herman Melville's classic masterwork of obsession and the sea, transforming a great whale into a worlds-devouring comet. In the year 2099, fledgling astronaut Ishmael Hunnicut Jones boards the Cetus 7, placing his fate in the hands of a relentless madman who is blindly chasing the celestial monster's tail. And in the merciless void, a crew of earthborn and alien star-travelers will face a divine judgment, and an "enemy" wielding the most fearsome weapon of all . . . Time.
Months after she has been healed from the Enemy Sickness that afflicted her in Trail of the Dead, Lozen and her family have gathered a community around them in Valley Where First Light Paints the Cliffs and have begun to rebuild. Lozen knows danger still stalks them and she intends to be ready to defend her people, but she hopes to avoid killing another human being--though gemod monsters are not off the table. Miles away, the remaining Ones plot Lozen's demise, and a threat Lozen thought she'd eliminated comes closer. And a newfound power will complicate everything for Lozen.
Years ago, seventeen year old Apache hunter Lozen and her family lived in a world of haves and have-nots. There were the Ones (people so augmented with technology and genetic enhancements that they were barely human) and there was everyone else who served the Ones. Then the Cloud came, and everything changed. Tech stopped working. The world plunged back into a new steam age. The Ones' pets — genetically engineered monsters — turned on them and are now loose on the world. Lozen was not one of the lucky ones pre-C, but fate has given her a unique set of survival skills and magical abilities. She hunts monsters for the Ones who survived the apocalyptic events of the Cloud, which ensures the safety of her kidnapped family. But with every monster she takes down, Lozen's powers grow, and she connects those powers to an ancient legend of her people. It soon becomes clear to Lozen that she is not just a hired gun - Lozen is meant to be a hero.
In the sequel to the award-winning Killer of Enemies, Apache teen Lozen and her family are looking for a place of refuge from the despotic Ones who once held them captive and forced Lozen to hunt genetically engineered monsters. Lozen and her allies travel in search of a valley where she and her family once found refuge. But life is never easy in this post-apocalyptic world. When they finally reach the valley, they discover an unpleasant surprise awaiting them--and a merciless hunter following close behind. Hally, their enigmatic Bigfoot friend, points them to another destination--a possible refuge. But can Lozen trust Hally? Relying on her wits and the growing powers that warn her when enemies are near, Lozen fights internal sickness to lead her band of refugees to freedom and safety. Alongside family, new friends, and Hussein, the handsome young man whose life she saved, Lozen forges a path through a barren land where new recombinant monsters lurk and the secrets of this new world will reveal themselves to her . . . whether she wants them to or not.
Once again, Earth is under attack. An alien species is poised for a final assault. The survival of humanity depends on a military genius who can defeat the aliens. But who? Ender Wiggin. Brilliant. Ruthless. Cunning. A tactical and strategic master. And a child. Recruited for military training by the world government, Ender's childhood ends the moment he enters his new home: Battle School. Among the elite recruits Ender proves himself to be a genius among geniuses. He excels in simulated war games. But is the pressure and loneliness taking its toll on Ender? Simulations are one thing. How will Ender perform in real combat conditions? After all, Battle School is just a game. Isn't it?
Elspeth travels to the lowlands to seal an alliance between Obernewtyn and the rebel forces that oppose the totalitarian Council, while still being pulled by the need to learn more about the weapon machines that destroyed the Land during the Beforetimes.
When a Misfit is kidnapped, Elspeth is compelled to join the growing rebellion against the Council, but while her extraordinary mental powers could topple the corrupt authoritarian regime she is more concerned about destroying the remaining Beforetime weaponmachines.
Friend becomes foe and trust is a thing of the past when the Misfits' most relentless enemy turns Elspeth's world upside down. Through coercion and mind control, Ariel stands on the cusp of his ultimate revenge--and it falls to Elspeth to rescue a former ally whose mind and body have been manipulated to unleash a plague that will destroy all it touches.
With the end of the wintertime that isolates Obernewtyn from the rest of the world, Farseeker guildmistress Elspeth Gordie again sets out for the lowlands. But she soon finds that not everyone welcomes the changes brought about by the rebellion. There is a traitor among the rebels--a traitor whose hatred of Misfits puts Elspeth in danger as she attempts to thwart an invasion of fanatical Herders.
Ready Player One takes place in the not-so-distant future--the world has turned into a very bleak place, but luckily there is OASIS, a virtual reality world that is a vast online utopia. People can plug into OASIS to play, go to school, earn money, and even meet other people (or at least they can meet their avatars), and for protagonist Wade Watts it certainly beats passing the time in his grim, poverty-stricken real life.
The Millennium Falcon is "the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy." So when Han Solo wins it in a game of sabacc, he and Chewbacca become kings of the smugglers--uncatchable, unstoppable. But with the Empire clamping down, Han knows his luck can't last. Still, when an old girlfriend who is now the leader of an insurgent Rebel group offers him a shot at an incredible fortune, Han can't resist. The plan seems a sure thing. The resistance will be light and the take enormous. Han and his friends will divide it equally with the Rebels. Too bad for Han that the planet of Ylesia is far from a pushover, that the Rebels have an agenda of their own, and that smuggler friends can often turn into enemies...quicker than lightspeed.
The twin jet plane en route to Denver from Hong Kong is merely a green radar blip half and hour off the California coast when the pilot comes through to air traffic control, saying that they had an emergency and requesting priority clearance to land. Then comes the bombshell -- he needs forty ambulances on the runway. What happened on board Flight TPA 545?
A military satellite launched to collect organisms in the upper atmosphere comes down in Arizona. Within a few hours, almost everyone in a nearby town is dead. A team of scientists is assembled to investigate.
A group of American scientists are rushed to a huge vessel that has been discovered resting on the ocean floor in the middle of the South Pacific. What they find defines their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently, undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old....
In Paris, a physicist dies after performing a laboratory experiment for a beautiful visitor.
In the jungles of Malaysia, a mysterious buyer purchases deadly cavitation technology, built to his specifications.
In Vancouver, a small research submarine is leased for use in the waters off New Guinea.
And in Tokyo, an intelligence agent tries to understand what it all means.
Harry Benson suffers from violent seizures. So violent that he requires a police guard when entering a Los Angeles hospital for treatment. Dr. Roger McPherson, neuropsychiatric researcher, is convinced he can cure Benson through a new procedure.
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a world forever altered. As civilization crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee: FBI agent Brad Wolgast, a good but haunted man; and six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte, a refugee from the doomed project.
Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.
After surviving horrific conditions in the Maze, Thomas is entrapped, along with nineteen other boys, in a scientific experiment designed to observe their responses and gather data believed to be essential for the survival of the human race.
As the third Trial draws to a close, Thomas and some of his cohorts manage to escape from WICKED, their memories having been restored, only to face new dangers as WICKED claims to be trying to protect the human race from the deadly FLARE virus.
Before WICKED was formed, before the Glade was built, before Thomas entered the Maze, sun flares hit the Earth, killing most of the population. Mark and Trina were there when it happened, They survived, but now a virus is spreading. A virus that fills humans with murderous rage. There is no cure or escape. They're convinced that there's a way to save those who are left - if they can stay alive.
Before the trials, WICKED found Thomas, the perfect boy, to help them build the Maze and find the cure for the Flare, a disease that plagues the world. But the truth of what is really going on is a secret and Thomas must uncover it before time runs out
Fire from the Goddess and the meat and furs of the mammoth are all that the People need to live. It is a harsh life but a good one and it is one that all cherish.
Young Geerna knows that the time has come for her to become a woman and take up the tasks to keep her people safe. She waits in the Awakening Place, fearful and hopeful as her ordeals come to an end. Then, on the eve of her Womanhood, a shining light descends upon her and her world is torn asunder.
And she embarks on a journey that none of her people could ever envision...
Eons have passed. Cycle upon cycle the Way of the People have remain unchanged: women are artists, men are hunters. Geerna's Law is the covenant by which humans live in harmony and peace.
But all is about to change. A call has come for The People to choose their champions, and a summons to meet the mysterious creatures who selected Geerna so long ago.
All is unknown. As the brave souls who are chosen venture forth, they will come to discover just how much that pact that Geerna made so long ago has cost them.
And they will have to confront the choices that might help them to finally know true freedom.
When Mae Holland is hired to work for the world's most powerful internet company, she can't believe her luck. The Circle, run out of a hip, sprawling California campus, links users' online data with their universal operating system, creating a new age of civility and transparency. But the story of one woman's ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, and democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.
Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodas are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in Wordsworth poems, militant Baconians roam freely spreading the gospel that Bacon, not Shakespeare, penned those immortal works. And forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. This is all business as usual for brainy, bookish (and heat-packing) Thursday Next, a renowned Special Operative in literary detection, that is, until someone begins murdering characters from works of literature. When this madman plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bronte's novel Thursday faces the challenge of her career. Aided and abetted by characters that include her time-traveling father, an executive of the all-powerful Goliath Corporation, and Edward Rochester himself, Thursday must track down the world's Third Most Wanted criminal and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide.
Chekov and Sulu are accused of murder and treason.
Tsia's activities as a guide are doomed to failure when her empathetic bonding abilities align her with the felines, who will not answer the call of humans, but a kidnapping, a desperate escape, and a desert encounter change everything.
Resisting her inherent link to the great cats, which are forbidden on her home world, the rogue guide Tsia becomes involved in an accident and is saved by a cougar cub that refuses to leave her and represents her only hope of survival.
House Atreides and the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood are targeted by the power-hungry Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, who enslaves several planets in his quest for control of the Known Universe, but Leto Atreides will protect his son Victor and his legacy as Duke at all costs.
A mountaineer in Tibet falls down a hole to emerge in a subterranean world, populated by brutish and horned creatures. Is this the hell of the Bible? As scientists and philosophers debate, a global race gets underway to exploit its fabulous mineral deposits.
Things haven't been going well for Kyle since Mighty Mike became the new town hero. He's pretty sure he could fix this disaster if he could expose Mike's secret (he's an alien), but to do that Kyle would have to admit he is the Azure Avenger-the unintentional town archvillain.
One night a new masked hero, aptly named the Mad Mask, arrives, boasting to the Azure Avenger of an off-the-charts IQ and superior superpowers. Yet the Mad Mask has come seeking intellectual assistance in building Ultitron (the robot of all robots). In exchange he offers to allow the Azure Avenger use of the awesome Ultitron to rid the world, or at least Bouring, of Mighty Mike. Forging alliances isn't usually Kyle's style, but it seems he has no choice. While Kyle agrees to help, he also has another plan: finding out who the Mad Mask is and how he got his powers. Because the last thing the Azure Avenger needs is another mindless archvillain hanging around town!
On Vega III, where the jaded inhabitants pursue lives of malicious intrigue and decadent pleasure, Lady Nimisha Boynton-Rondymense has always been an anomaly. Disdainful of the frivolity of her fellows, she prefers the exciting and challenging world of her father, Lord Tionel, owner and principal starship designer of the famous Rondymense shipyards. Precociously gifted, Nimisha becomes Lord Tionel's secret assistant--and, in the aftermath of a shocking tragedy, his chosen successor at the helm of the shipyards. But supplanting her father's designated body-heir, the callow Lord Vestrin, is a slight that Vestrin and his mother, Lady Vescuya, will not easily forget. Or forgive. Preoccupied with carrying on her father's ambitious plans for the Mark 5, an experimental long-distance cruiser, Nimisha dangerously disregards Vestrin's animosity--until a solo test flight of the Mark 5 goes horribly awry, marooning Nimisha light-years from home on a planet as deadly as it is beautiful. Now, Vestrin and Vescuya are given the chance they've been waiting for: to reclaim the shipyards . . . by any means necessary. Only Nimisha's child, Cuiva--a girl every bit as ingenious as her mother--stands in their way. But for how long? For just when her daughter needs her most, Nimisha is unable to help--and in a precarious situation herself. But Nimisha has never given up in her life--and she's not about to start now .
Fifteen-year-old Daniel has followed in his parents' footsteps as the Alien Hunter, exterminating beings on The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma, but when he faces his first of the top ten outlaws, the very existence Earth and another planet are at stake.
Being a kid with wings -- constantly on the run -- has never been easy, and Max and her flock are more tense than ever.
Angel says that Fang will be the first to die, and Angel is never wrong. Maximum Ride is used to living desperately on the run from evil forces sabotaging her quest to save the world-but nothing has ever come as close to destroying her as this horrifying prophetic message. Fang is Max's best friend, her soul mate, her partner in the leadership of her flock of winged children. A life without Fang is a life unimaginable.
When a newly created winged boy, the magnificent Dylan, is introduced into the flock, their world is upended yet again. Raised in a lab like the others, Dylan exists for only one reason: he was designed to be Max's perfect other half. Thus unfolds a battle of perfection versus passion that terrifies, twists, and turns . . . and meanwhile, the apocalypse is coming.
When millions of fish start dying off the coast of Hawaii and something is destroying hundreds of ships, the government enlists the Flock--a band of genetically modified children who can fly--to investigate the problem.
After years of waiting in the shadows, Darth Sidious is taking the first step in his master plan to bring the Republic to its knees. Key to his scheme are the Neimoidians of the Trade Federation. Then one of his Neimoidian contacts disappears, and Sidious does not need his Force-honed instincts to suspect betrayal. He orders his apprentice, Darth Maul, to hunt the traitor down.
But he is too late. The secret has already passed into the hands of information broker Lorn Pavan, which places him right at the top of Darth Maul's hit list. Then, in the labyrinthine alleyways and sewers of Coruscant, capital city of the Republic, Lorn crosses paths with Darsha Assant, a Jedi Padawan on a mission to earn her Knighthood. Now the future of the Republic depends on Darsha and Lorn. But how can an untried Jedi and an ordinary man, stranger to the powerful ways of the Force, hope to triumph over one of the deadliest killers in the galaxy?
Emerging from its hiding place in the hills, the great Traction City of London chases one terrified little town across the wastelands. If it cannot overpower smaller, slower prey, the city will come to a standstill and risk being taken over by another. In the attack, Tom Natsworthy, Apprentice Historian to the London Museum, is flung from its speeding superstructure into the barren wasteland of Out-Country. His only companion is Hester Shaw, a murderous, scar-faced girl who does not particularly want Tom's company. But if they are to make it back to London, before Stalkers or hungry cities get them first, they will need to help each other, and fast. If Hester is to be believed, London is planning something atrocious, and the future of the world could be at stake. Can they get back to London before it's too late?
Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet 300 years in the future, but 50 years before the ship's scheduled landing, Amy is violently woken from her frozen slumber. Someone tried to kill her. The Godspeed is controlled by the tyrannical Eldest and Elder, his teenage heir, who is fascinated by Amy and eager to discover if he has what it takes to lead. Uncertain whether or not she can trust Elder, Amy does know that she and Elder must unlock the Godspeed's secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.
Sigma Force must battle a group of rogue scientists who unleashed a diabolical project that could mean the extinction of mankind. An ancient relic, a murdered man, an international think tank of scientists known as the Jasons who have discovered a way to bioengineer autistic children and a plot to wipe out a quarter of the world's population. And, two men must race against time to solve a mystery that dates back to the first famous oracle of history--the Greek Oracle of Delphi.
In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.
As war surges in the dystopian society around her, sixteen-year-old Divergent Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves--and herself--while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.
The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered--fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she's known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories. But Tris's new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature--and of herself--while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love.
A collection of four pre-Divergent stories plus three additional scenes from Divergent, all told from Tobias's point of view, that follow Tobias's transfer from Abnegation to Dauntless, his Dauntless initiation, the first clues that a foul plan is brewing in the leadership of two factions, and the weeks after he meets Tris Prior.
In December, 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who -- or what -- is out there?
In "Cosmos, " Carl Sagan explained the universe. In "Contact, " he predicts its future -- and our own.
Shay Remby arrives in Hollywood with $58 and a handmade knife, searching for her brother, Odin. Odin's a brilliant hacker but a bit of a loose cannon. He and a group of radical animal-rights activists hit a Singular Corp. research lab in Eugene, Oregon. The raid was a disaster, but Odin escaped with a set of highly encrypted flash drives and a post-surgical dog. When Shay gets a frantic 3 a.m. phone call from Odin, talking about evidence of unspeakable experiments, and a ruthless corporation, and how he must hide, she's concerned. When she gets a menacing visit from Singular's security team, she knows: her brother's a dead man walking. What Singular doesn't know, yet, is that 16-year-old Shay is every bit as ruthless as their security force, and she will burn Singular to the ground, if that's what it takes to save her brother.
Twins, Grace and Marty, along with a mysterious uncle, are dropped into the middle of the Congolese jungle in search of their missing photojournalist parents.
Billy Pilgrim returns home from the Second World War only to be kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who teach him that time is an eternal present.
With mutations stranger than the X-Men and with even more baggage than the Hulk, this next generation of superheroes is a far cry from your run-of-the-mill caped crusader. From the image-conscious and not-very-mysterious masked meathead who swoops in and sweeps the tough girl reporter off her feet; to the Meerkat, who overcomes his species' cute and cuddly image to become the resident hero in a small Midwestern city; to the Silverfish, "the creepy superhero," who fights crime while maintaining the slipperiest of identities; to Manna Man, who manipulates the minds of televangelists to serve his own righteous mission, these protectors (and in some cases antagonizers) of the innocent and the virtuous will delight literary enthusiasts and comic fans alike.
After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the un lucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.
Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.
Cassie Sullivan and her companions lived through the Others' four waves of destruction. Now, with the human race nearly exterminated and the 5th Wave rolling across the landscape, they face a choice: brace for winter and hope for Evan Walker's return, or set out in search of other survivors before the enemy closes in.
In the epic conclusion to the 5th Wave series, Cassie, Ben, Ringer, and Evan confront the Others' plans for the fate of the human race and the planet.
In an alternate world in which Alaska, rather than Israel, has become the homeland for the Jews following World War II, Detective Meyer Landsman and his half-Tlingit partner Berko investigate the death of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy.
World War I--The Great War--has ended, and an uneasy peace reigns around the world. Nowhere is it more fragile than on the continent of North America, where bitter enemies share a single landmass and two long, bloody borders. In the North, proud Canadian nationalists try to resist the colonial power of the United States. In the South, the once-mighty Confederate States have been pounded into poverty and merciless inflation. The time is right for madmen, demagogues, and terrorists. With Socialists rising to power in the U.S., and a dangerous fanatic in the Confederacy preaching a doctrine of hate, more than enough people are eager to return the world to war.
The year is 1924. In the United States, the Socialist Party, led by Hosea Blackford, battles Calvin Coolidge to hold on to the Powell House in Philadelphia. The Confederate States, victorious in the War of Secession but at last tasting defeat in the Great War, suffer poverty and natural calamity. The Freedom Party promises new strength and pride, but if its chief siezes the reins of power, he may prove a dangerous enemy for the hated U.S.A. By the time the 1920s come to a close, catastrophe will cast a poll across the continent -- and in a world of shimmering hatreds, shattered lives, and pent-up violence, the center cannot hold. And for a powerful nation, the ultimate shock is yet to come ...
The year is 1915, and the world is convulsing. Though the Confederacy has defeated its northern enemy twice, this time the United States has allied with the Kaiser. In the South, the freed slaves, fueled by Marxist rhetoric and the bitterness of a racist nation, take up the weapons of the Red rebellion. Despite these advantages, the United States remains pinned between Canada and the Confederate States of America, so the bloody conflict continues and grows. Both presidents--Theodore Roosevelt of the Union and staunch Confederate Woodrow Wilson--are stubbornly determined to lead their nations to victory, at any cost. . .
Is it the War to end all Wars-or war without end? What began in 1914 as a conflict in Europe, when Germany unleashed a lightning assault on its enemies, soon spreads to North America, as a long-simmering hatred between two independent nations explodes in bloody combat. Twice in fifty years the Cenfederate States of America humiliated their northern neighbor. Now revenge may at last be at hand.
An alternate history novel that chronicles the second Civil War, which erupts in 1881 when the United States declares war against the Confederate States of America in retaliation for annexing the Mexican territory.
It's 1942. For twenty-five years, the USA and the CSA have been entrenched in an era of simmering hatred, locked in a tangle of blood-soaked battle lines, modern weaponry, desperate strategies, and the kind of violence that only the damned could conjure up for themselves and their enemies. In Richmond, Confederate president and dictator Jake Featherston is shocked by what his own aircraft have done in Philadelphia--killing U.S. president Al Smith in a barrage of bombs. Featherston presses ahead with a secret plan carried out on the dusty plains of Texas, where a so-called detention camp hides a far more evil purpose. As the untested U.S. vice president takes over for Smith, the United States face a furious thrust by the Confederate army, pressing inexorably into Pennsylvania. But with the industrial heartland under siege, Canada in revolt, and U.S. naval ships fighting against the Japanese in the Sandwich Islands, the most dangerous place in the world may be overlooked.
Franklin Roosevelt is the assistant secretary of defense. Thomas Dewey is running for president with a blunt-speaking Missourian named Harry Truman at his side. Britain holds onto its desperate alliance with the USA's worst enemy, while a holocaust unfolds in Texas. In Harry Turtledove's compelling, disturbing, and extraordinarily vivid reshaping of American history, a war of secession has triggered a generation of madness. The tipping point has come at last.
The third war in sixty years, this one yet unnamed: a grinding, horrifying series of hostilities and atrocities between two nations sharing the same continent and both calling themselves Americans. At the dawn of 1944, the United States has beaten back a daredevil blitzkrieg from the Confederate States-and a terrible new genie is out of history's bottle: a bomb that may destroy on a scale never imagined before. In Europe, the new weapon has shattered a stalemate between Germany, England, and Russia. When the trigger is pulled in America, nothing will be the same again.
In 1914 they called it The Great War, and few could imagine anything worse. For nearly three decades a peace forged in blood and fatigue has held sway in North America. Now, Japan dominates the Pacific, the Russian Tsar rules Alaska, and England, under Winston Churchill, chafes for a return to its former glory. But behind the façade of world order, America is a bomb waiting to go off. Jake Featherston, the megalomaniacal leader of the Confederate States of America, is just the man to light the fuse
Berlin, 1964. The Greater German Reich stretches from the Rhine to the Urals, and keeps an uneasy peace with its nuclear rival, the United States. As the Fatherland prepares for a grand celebration honoring Adolf Hitler's seventy-fifth birthday and anticipates a conciliatory visit from U.S. president Joseph Kennedy and ambassador Charles Lindbergh, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb.
But when Xavier March discovers the identity of the body, he also uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with the American journalist Charlotte Maguire, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth--a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history.