Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Alternate History

By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church. In Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn.

America, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. The winning Axis powers have divided their spoils: the Nazis control New York, while California is ruled by the Japanese. But between these two states—locked in a cold war—lies a neutral buffer zone in which legendary author Hawthorne Abendsen is rumoured to live. Abendsen lives in fear of his life for he has written a book in which World War Two was won by the Allies . . .

By 1535 Thomas Cromwell is chief minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn, the king’s new wife. But Anne has failed to give the king an heir, and Cromwell watches as Henry falls for plain Jane Seymour. Cromwell must find a solution that will satisfy Henry, safeguard the nation and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge unscathed from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.

Throughout the universe, intelligence is a rare and fragile commodity - a fleeting glimmer in the long night of cosmic history. That Earth should harbour not just one but two intelligent species at the same time defies the odds. That these species, so unalike - and yet so complementary - should forge an alliance that kindled a civilisation defies logic. But time is endless and everything comes to pass eventually....

In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of winter, two detectives find a body on the roof of a skyscraper. It's 1922, and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times. Beside the Mississippi, the ancient city of Cahokia lives on – a teeming industrial metropolis, containing every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about.

In a petrol-fuelled Roman Empire which never fell, Arrow, a gladiatrix turned governess must rescue the child she has loved as her own, a girl who could tear down the world. When Livy is abducted during a devastating Godstorm, Arrow must unleash years of the gladiator training she’d sworn to forget in order to save her. Defying her owner, a heartless Consul, Arrow turns to her ex-lover and the illegal druid underworld in a desperate attempt to rescue the girl she has come to think of as her own.

Two years on from the start of a devastating pandemic, food shortages are becoming critical, and rationing looms. So it's more than embarrassing when a truck full of luxury food for Scottish Virus Minister's banquet goes missing. When Bernard and Maitland from the HET team find it, the food is missing—but there is a dead body.

While investigating the origins of a mysterious donation to Oxford University, private detective Charles Maddox encounters the mysterious Baron Von Reisenberg, the subject of many rumors and macabre legends. In the light of day Maddox can find no evidence of anything sinister—until a series of disturbing incidents send him on a quest to expose whatever evil lurks in the Baron's castle. After a terrifying encounter nearly costs him his sanity, Maddox returns home to find London besieged by an elusive murderer branded the Vampire. 

1819. Jack 'Crow' Crowlas has married his feisty love, Hester, and with their baby daughter, settled down to enjoy their new life as Lord and Lady Lamorna of Nansmornow in Cornwall. But for Crow, trouble is never far away and as Cornwall seethes with rebellion, he is arrested for treason. Spared execution on condition that he undertakes a highly dubious mission to St Petersburg, he finds himself tangled in a snare of treachery and illicit passion, violence and sexual deceit.

A private detective is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man. The quarry? An obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: vigilante. Our detective pursues his quarry from the backwaters of Asia to the Capitals of Europe, the New World and into a realm of shadows. Here he finds the refugees, ghostly entities haunting reality. Where do they come from? And what do they want?

England, 1586. Giordano Bruno returns to England to bring shocking new intelligence to Sir Francis Walsingham. A band of Catholic Englishmen are plotting to kill Queen Elizabeth and spring Mary Queen of Scots from prison to take the English throne in her place. Bruno is surprised to find that Walsingham is aware of the plot, led by the young, wealthy noble Anthony Babington and is allowing it to progress. His hope is that Mary will put her support in writing - and condemn herself to a traitor's death.

1967. Four female scientists invent a time travel machine. They are on the cusp of fame, but then one of them suffers a breakdown and puts the whole project in peril.... 2017. Ruby knows her beloved Granny Bee was a pioneer, but they never talk about the past. Then they receive a message from the future - a newspaper clipping reporting the mysterious death of an elderly lady.... 2018. When Odette discovered the body, she went into shock. Blood everywhere; bullet wounds; that strong reek of sulphur. 

Time's Arrow tells the story, backwards, of the life of Nazi war criminal, Doctor Tod T. Friendly. He dies and then feels better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them and mangles his patients before he sends them home.

In 1942, Cork-born Kay Summersby’s life is changed forever when she is tasked with driving General Eisenhower on his fact-finding visit to wartime London. The pair takes an immediate liking to one another, and so begins a tumultuous relationship against all military regulations. Kay becomes known as 'Ike’s shadow', but that does not stop him from using his influence to grant Kay US citizenship. When the US authorities discover Eisenhower’s plans, Kay is forced to take desperate measures to hold on to the man she loves....

Cornwall, 1817. Napoleon has crushed the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, and his ex-wife, Josephine, presides over French-occupied England. Cornwall erupts into open rebellion, and young heiress Hester escapes with Crow, Wellington's former intelligence officer. Together, they become embroiled in a web of treachery and espionage as plans are laid to free Wellington from captivity and lead an uprising against the French occupation.

1826: Napoleon Bonaparte is dead, the Congress of Vienna's work is done, and there is peace in Europe. However, in Portugal there is the scent of civil war in the air following the death of King John VI. Newly returned from India, Matthew Hervey joins a party of officers sent to make an assessment and lend support to the Portuguese queen. His place on the expedition is secured with the help and influence of his new friend, Lady Katherine Greville. But the Peninsula is a place redolent with memories....

1939: Adolf Hitler, fallen from power, seeks refuge in a London engulfed in the throes of a very British fascism. Now eking a miserable living as a down-at-heels private eye and calling himself Wolf, he has no choice but to take on the case of a glamorous Jewish heiress whose sister went missing. It's a decision Wolf will very shortly regret. For in another time and place a man lies dreaming: Shomer, once a Yiddish pulp writer, who dreams lurid tales of revenge in the hell that is Auschwitz.

The World Doesn't Require You announces the arrival of a generational talent, as Rion Amilcar Scott shatters rigid genre lines to explore larger themes of religion, violence and love - all told with sly humor and a dash of magical realism. Established by the leaders of the country's only successful slave revolt in the mid-19th century, Cross River still evokes the fierce rhythms of its founding.

In the 1980s, a man is pulled up out of the Indian Ocean in Port Pallid, South Africa, claiming to have been kidnapped as a baby. So begins the odyssey of Jimfish, who defies the usual classification of race that defines the rainbow nation. His journey through the last years of Apartheid will extend beyond South Africa to the wider world, where he will be an unlikely witness to the dying days of the 20th century.

It is 1896. In an alternative history where Babbage’s difference engines have become commonplace, Captain Charles Maddox, wrongly convicted of a murder and newly arrested for treason, is rescued from execution by a covert agency called the Map Room. Maddox is given the choice of taking his chances with the authorities or joining the Map Room as an agent and helping them uncover a possible conspiracy surrounding the 1888 Ripper murders. Seeing little choice, Maddox accepts the offer and joins the team of fellow agents Church and Green.