In this representative volume, "The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories" the reader will find twenty-four of Mark Twain's best shorter works. Classic and unforgettable tales that span the author's career are included, such as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which is Twain's most famous short story and was his first great success as an author. It is the unforgettable tale of Jim Smiley, the gambler who will bet on anything including...

"Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. In a world not quite like this one, two lovers will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie...

A terrifying tale about HIV spreading in the early sixteenth century by an author, Publisher Weekly calls "The Master of Alternate History." What if HIV started spreading in the early 1500s rather than the late 1900s? Without modern medicine, anybody who catches HIV is going to die. A patriarchal society reacts to this devastating disease in the only way it knows how: it sequesters women as much as possible, limiting contacts between the sexes except...

From Gibraltar to Crete; the tangled lives of naval officers and their men, Pulver and Stebbings, of marines like O'Flynn, Maori warriors like Lieutenant Ngarimu, the healer 'Ronnie' Prasad and many more, following the orders of their political masters, intent on stabilising the newly-liberated Spain and smashing the German war machine on land, on seas patrolled by HMS Hood and her sisters, and in skies overflown by the RAF and the Luftwaffe. This...

Slavery is back. America, 1962. Having lost a war, America finds itself under Nazi Germany and Japan occupation. A few Jews still live under assumed names. The 'I Ching' is prevalent in San Francisco. Science fiction meets serious ideas in this take on a possible alternate history.

The Union ambassador is missing. More than a hundred years after the McClellan-Davis Accords ended the Civil War, tensions are still high between the Union and the Confederacy. But recent trade agreements and personnel exchanges have made both sides hope that good relations can be restored. That is, until the Union ambassador vanishes one night from the embassy in Perdition. Two agents are sent to investigate his disappearance. Delilah Thorn, a video...

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A Los Angeles Times Book Review Favorite Book of the Year Since her girlhood, Prudence Winship has gazed across the tidal straits from her home in Brooklyn to the city of Manhattan and yearned to bridge the distance. Now, established as the owner of the enormously successful gin distillery she inherited from her father, she can begin to realize her dream. Set in eighteenth-century Brooklyn,...

A truth we all know... but agree not to talk about... was how the Clapping Lady from the secretive Consilience Foundation described it to a teenage Methuen Pryce in 2012 as they discussed his Segmented World model. But, it was also a 'truth' that Nick O'Grady, ambitious young CEO of the high-tech Allied Answers, had not 'talked about' that was, until he invited Methuen to his plush New York office in the summer of '23. Against expectations, the bearded...

A Short History of the World illustrated H. G. Wells - A Short History of the World: with original illustrations Although best known for his scientific romances that paved the way for the modern science fiction genre, H. G. Wells (1866-1946) produced significant works on politics, society, science and history. Fascinated as much with the real world as his imaginary one, and displeased with the quality of history textbooks at the end of World War...

The life of Eric Arthur Blair greatly impacted the work he wrote under the name 'George Orwell'. The Spanish Civil War, wartime Britain, and the rise of totalitarianism all fed into seminal works like Animal Farm and 1984 whose impact is still felt today.But what would Orwell have written had he lived in another timeline? A world where his experiences in Spain were different, and the Second World War broke out over Czechoslovakia, not Poland?Mark...