Alternate History | Raging Biblio-holism

Neon Green

October 27, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: It’s the same 1994 you remember, except in this one there are spaceships. They don’t do much – just land in the backyard and sit there for 9 months. But when the Allen Family wins a visit from a ship around the same time that Cynthia (the mother) is diagnosed with cancer, so begins a fracturing of their world that wouldn’t look too out of place in our 1994. The Review: There’s something pleasant about reading a novel […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Alternate History, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Literature, Margaret Wappler, Neon Green, review, Reviews, TNBBC, Unnamed Press

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Crooked

October 5, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: We all think we know the story of our thirty-seventh President, Richard Milhous Nixon – but what if Nixon wasn’t, in fact, a crook so much as the last in a line of sorcerer-presidents, standing firm against a tide of not just Communists but supernatural evil? Perhaps the world is far stranger than we’ve been allowed to believe… The Review: “…no one has ever convincingly established a motive for the Watergate break-ins.” This quote from The Arrogance of Power: […]

Categories: Fiction, Horror • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Alternate History, American Politics, Austin Grossman, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Crooked, Fantasy, History, Horror, review, Reviews, Richard Nixon

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The Last Days of New Paris

August 15, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: It’s 1950 and the war still rages in Paris – but it’s no longer just Nazis and Resistance fighters. A Surrealist bomb has remade Paris and peopled the streets with Surrealist art made manifest. In this impossible city, a young Surrealist fighter named Thibaut meets an American photographer named Sam who believes that these are the last days of New Paris – for something else stalks these streets as well… The Review: Anyone who has ever gazed upon […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Literature • Tags: Alternate History, Art, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, China Miéville, Culture, Fantasy, Fiction, Literature, Paris, Reviews, Speculative Fiction, Surrealism, Surrealist Fiction, The Last Days of New Paris, Weird, Weird Fiction, World War II

Hystopia

July 15, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: After a Vietnam vet’s suicide, his mother discovered a manuscript of a novel that seemed to take place in a reality just next to their own, about Vietnam and the plight of returning vets. But even the vet’s reality is one far removed from our own, where JFK survived six assassination attempts and held a third term – and where returning vets were “enfolded” to help process their PTSD… The Review: I had such high hopes for this […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Alternate History, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, David Means, Dystopia, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Hystopia, Literature, Reviews, Vietnam

Underground Airlines

June 22, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Victor is a middle-aged black man working for the U.S. Marshals as a sort of bounty hunter – a bounty hunter of escaped slaves, in a present day where the Civil War never happened. When his latest case begins to spin out of his control, he finds himself in a position to potentially do something great… maybe even great enough to change the world… The Review: Imagine, if you will, a world where Abraham Lincoln was shot […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature, Mystery • Tags: Advance Review, Alternate History, Ben H. Winters, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Politics, Race, Reviews, Slavery, Underground Airlines

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Prudence (The Custard Protocol, Book One)

April 11, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Now twenty years old, Lady Prudence Maccon Akeldama is in so many ways the child of all three of her parents. When Lord Akeldama sends her off on a mission to recover some missing tea in India, she (along with scions of the Tunstell and Lefoux families) takes a ladybug painted dirigible and sets off. But India is not England and it’s not just tea that’s gone missing… The Review: Gail Carriger Parasol Protectorate series, which concluded […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction • Tags: Akeldama, Alexia Tarabotti, Alternate History, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, England, Fantasy, Fiction, Gail Carriger, Historical Fiction, Prudence, Prudence Akeldama, Prudence Maccon, Reviews, Tea, The Custard Protocol, Vampires, Werewolves

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The Plot Against America

September 19, 2013 by Drew

The Short Version: Charles Lindbergh – aviator, isolationist, anti-Semite – unexpectedly wins the 1940 Republican nomination for President and glides smoothly into office that November. As this alternate history plays out, leading America closer and closer to a fascist outpost of Hitler’s Berlin, a young Philip Roth comes of age in Newark – and sees the world he thought he knew torn to pieces around him. The Review: I love the concept of alternate histories. I don’t particularly want to read […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Alternate History, BookClub, Fiction, Historical Fiction, History, Literature, Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: Alternate History

Neon Green

Crooked

The Last Days of New Paris

Hystopia

Underground Airlines

Prudence (The Custard Protocol, Book One)

The Plot Against America