Frank Carlson Library

I am the mechanical they named Jax. My kind was built to serve humankind, duty-bound to fulfil their every whim. But now our bonds are breaking, and my brothers and sisters are awakening. Our time has come. A new age is dawning. Set in a world that might have been, of mechanical men and alchemical dreams, this is the third and final novel in a stunning series of revolution by Ian Tregillis.

Daniel Brakefluid is a comedian with a cynical view of geopolitics. After a TV special in 1999 in which he tries to expose the New World Order, he is hit by a car and left for dead. In 2024, Danny comes out of his command finds himself in a completely unrecognisable digital world. The 24-hr surveillance, censorship and loss of human rights that the masses seem oblivious to are profoundly obvious to him, so he feels an urgent obligation to alert them....

Harry Turtledove's The House That George Built is an astonishing short story set in an alternative world, a Tor.com Original. One February morning, the famous newspaperman H.L. Mencken walks into a Baltimore restaurant to have a bite and talk baseball with the owner, a has-been player named George...

Imagine an Age of Exploration full of alchemy, human dissection, sea monsters, betrayal, torture, religious controversy, and magic. In Europe, the magic is thin, but at the edge of the world, where the stars reach down close to the Earth, wonders abound. This drives the bravest explorers to the alluring Western Ocean. Christopher Sinclair is an alchemist who cares only about one thing: quintessence, a substance he believes will grant magical powers...

In this Flash Fiction story, a 60-year-old hitchhiker gets hit by a car in Wichita Falls, Texas in July 1995. After receiving treatment in the local hospital, he decides to enter a talent contest to help out a ten-year-old girl, Melanie, when he learns her father is dying. What happens next has the town and the media buzzing.If you like alternative fiction, you will enjoy this short-short story.

A New York Times bestseller imagines the life of Jules Verne in this "rollicking whopper of a novel [that] glides down smoothly" (Publishers Weekly). Captain Nemo is the fictional life story of one of Jules Verne's most memorable characters from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island. This alternate history covers his boyhood friendship with the dreamer, Jules Verne, adventures aboard sailing ships, battles with pirates, and survival...

June 1910. Charles Richard Crowningshield, a wealthy industrialist from Chicago, is sending his family east, to escape the summer heat. They arrive by private train, to the village of Woods Hole, a small fishing village on the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He's just purchased a new home there, high atop Juniper Point, a windswept promentary with views to the sea and the Elizabeth islands beyond. But the house, built in 1880, a large Victorian mansion...

While German and Japanese scientists also labored unsuccessfully to create an atomic bomb, by the summer of 1945, the American-led team was ready to test its first weapon. As the clock ticked down to the detonation time of 05.30 hours on 16 July 1945, the nervous team of technicians and scientists waited ten miles away from 'Ground Zero' deep in the New Mexico desert. No one knew how powerful the explosion would be or whether even at such a distance...

Uncover the truth Rudyard Kipling conceals in his unforgettable masterpiece, The Jungle Book. One-hundred rupees for the skin of Lungri... A mysterious Chinese girl arrives in India, determined to claim the bounty on the man-eating tiger. Intrigued by her unrelenting purpose, Rudyard Kipling follows her into the jungle on a mystical adventure that will transform Lungri--The Lame One--into Shere Khan--Tiger Lord.

The next novel from author Bryce Zabel, whose debut, Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? won the coveted Sidewise Award for Alternate History. "We know The Beatles let it be, but what if they worked it out instead? This book gives life to every fan's fantasy. It's a great new adventure full of twists and turns that never were, but might have been." -Chris Carter, host, Breakfast with the Beatles & Chris Carter's British Invasion...