alternative histories (fiction)

"When X--an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter--falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone's good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora's box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification"--Provided by publisher.

Told in alternating voices and timelines, twelve-year-old Henry and his two friends unknowingly alter the outcome of World War II when they communicate over radio with three kids from 1944 and must now work together to change it back.

"In an alternate 1991, the authoritarian US government keeps tabs on everybody and everything. It censors which books can be read, what music can be listened to, and which plays can be performed. When her best friend is killed by the authorities and her theater teacher disappears without a trace, Gigi decides to organize her fellow Champaign High School thespians to put on a production of Henry VI. But at what cost?"--Amazon.

"Set in reimagined American monarchy, twelve-year-old Claire Emerson fights for her own freedom while also setting out to change the government from within, or burn it all down"--OCLC.

"The cabal of anarchists, known internationally as Zeno, have stolen the plans to a Nikola Tesla's Death Ray and intend to build it and use it first on the heroes of Jekyll. Meanwhile, Tesla and his contemporaries Charles Proteus Steinmetz and Henry Ford work against the clock to come up with an improbable chance to render the weapon useless"--OCLC.

A Chinese boy, orphaned by cholera and raised in Britain, is trained to work at Oxford's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation, the world's center for translation and magic through silver-working, where he must choose between competing loyalties.

In an alternate America, Beatrice, Samantha, and Jefferson struggle to determine what they really want and how much it is worth when weighed against the crown.

In an alternate Tang Dynasty China, aspiring royal alchemist Zilan, who has the ability to resurrect the dead, arrives in the capital to compete against the best alchemists in the country and becomes drawn into the dangerous political games of the royal family.

"The opening moves of a deadly game have begun. Jess Brightwell has put himself in direct peril, with only his wits and skill to aid him in a game of cat and mouse with the Archivist Magister of the Great Library. With the world catching fire, and words printed on paper the spark that lights rebellion, it falls to smugglers, thieves, and scholars to save a library thousands of years in the making . . . if they can stay alive long enough to outwit their enemies"--Provided by publisher.

"Separated by their own government and threatened at every turn by Napoleon's forces, Laurence and Temeraire must struggle to find each other amid the turmoil of war and to aid the resistance against the invasion before Napoleon's foothold on England's shores can become a stranglehold. If only they can be reunited, master and dragon might rally Britain's scattered forces and take the fight to the enemy as never before--for king and country, and for their own liberty. But can the French aggressors be well and truly routed, or will a treacherous alliance deliver Britain into the hands of her would-be conquerors?"--Amazon.