Alternate History
Here are some of my favourite alternative history novels. Eventually we will have detailed reviews of them all.
Fox on the RhineA what if book,shows if actual histirical July 1944 plot by German officers to kill Hitler actually suceeded. After Hitlers death Henrich Himmler seizes power and makes a seperate peace with Stalin.With General Rommel back in command of German troops in the west.Then Germany mass produces jet fighters devestating Allied airforces. |
Stars & Stripes ForeverFirst in a trilogy which tells the story of a mid-19th century war that never happened. Prince Albert dies of typhoid before he can rewrite an intemperately-worded dispatch by Britain's Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, to Abraham Lincoln. Emotions in Washington and London escalate. |
Stars & Stripes in PerilNow it's 1863 and perfidious Albion is making a comeback via the Pacific, establishing a Mexican beachhead and planning attacks on united America's "soft underbelly" in the Gulf of Mexico. Gurkha and Sepoy troops build roads while sweaty white officers express nostalgia for England: "I despair of ever seeing her blissfully cold and fog-shrouded shores again." |
FatherlandIn 1992, Hutchinson published a book, which became a bestseller; entitled Fatherland, by Robert Harris in which we see a very different 1964. In this world, that almost existed, but never was, we see a Berlin that Hitlers architect, Albert Speer, planned to build, - the hub of a victorious Third Reich extending from the Rhine to the Urals. Read an article on gaming Fatherland.
|
Resurrection DayIn the early 1970s, ten years after the nuclear war that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US is still struggling to recover. Journalist Carl Landry finds himself in the middle of a government cover-up. Brendan DuBois is an award-winning US author of mystery stories: this alternate-world thriller is very much in the tradition of Robert Harris's Fatherland. The striking blurb line: "Everyone remembered exactly what they were doing the day President Kennedy tried to kill them". History went awry in this world's Cuba crisis, leading to a 1962 nuclear war that devastated Russia, crippled America and left Britain a major world power smugly giving aid to the USA. Cut to 1972 Boston and ex-soldier Carl Landry, now a newspaper reporter whose coverage of a routine murder is suppressed by military censors. He's unwisely curious, investigates further and inevitably stirs up a hornets' nest. Attacks, deaths and disappearances follow. With a new-found girlfriend--an English Times reporter who is not all she seems--Landry uncovers a succession of red-hot secrets about abandoned New York, perfidious British and military plotting, and crucial documents coveted by several factions with different beliefs about their contents. Is Kennedy unjustly despised for starting World War Three? Is the rumour that he's still alive just this timeline's version of the Elvis myth? After building up terrific tension, DuBois delivers satisfying answers. Grimly plausible (apart from a few lapses in "British" dialogue) and worthy of the Fatherland comparisons. This is probably one of my favourite books of all time, I have read it quite a few times now and enjoy it every time. |
The Shadow of AlbionYoung Sarah Cunningham is ripped from the present day and thrust into a volatile alternative Europe of 1805 where King Henry IX rules over the English Empire, America has no revolution, and Napoleon Bonaparte marches unchecked across Europe. |
Operation ShatterhandAlternate (or not so alternate) history: What might have happened when the Nazis tried to invade the U.S. via Mexico...and smacked hard against the obstacle of the native Hopi and Navajo peoples? One thing's for sure: the Germans would never have known what hit them... |
1632In Flint's novel of time travel and alternate history, a six-mile square of West Virginia is tossed back in time and space to Germany in 1632, at the height of the barbaric and devastating Thirty Years' War. Repelling marauding mercenaries and housing German refugees are only the first of many problems the citizens of the tiny new U.S. face, problems including determining who shall be a citizen. In between action scenes and descriptions of technological military hardware, Flint handles that problem and other serious ethical questions seriously and offers a double handful of memorable characters: a Sephardic Jewish family that establishes commercial and marital ties with the Americans, a cheerleader captain turned lethal master sniper, a schoolteacher and an African American doctor who provide indispensable common sense and skill, a German refugee who is her family's sole protector, and, not least, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Not, perhaps, as elegant as some time-traveling alternate histories, Flint's is an intelligent page-turner nevertheless. Order it from amazon.co.uk |