Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads


Book Description

This fascinating third volume in the Britannia's Fist series will have you pondering how easily history could have been swayed differently. What if other countries had become involved in America’s Civil War? Historian Peter G. Tsouras presents the third installment in his Britannia’s Fist alternate history series. The winter of 1863 lowered a white curtain on the desperate struggle for North America. The United States and Great Britain fought each other to a bitter draw. On both sides of the Atlantic, the forges of battle glowed as they poured out new technologies of war. British and French aid transformed the ragged Confederate armies and filled them with new confidence. Both sides strained to be ready for the coming campaign season. Both sides seek to anticipate each other. The British strike suddenly at Hooker’s strung-out army in winter quarters in upstate New York in a brutal, swirling, late battle across frozen fields and streams. Besieged Portland shudders relentless assault. The French attack Fort Hudson on the Mississippi. At Lincoln’s direction, two great raids are launched at the United Kingdom itself as Russia enters the war on the side of the Union to raid the Irish Sea. These are only preliminaries to the great gathering of modernized armies and ironclad fleets, and with them are deadly submersibles and balloons. Battles rage from Maine to northern Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, down to steamy Louisiana. And far away across the sea, Dublin stands siege as Russia simultaneously eyes Constantinople. For Americans (blue and gray), Britons, Irish, Frenchmen, and Russians, the summer of 1864 is the crescendo battle of destinies and dreams. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.







Britannia's Fist


Book Description

England's support of the Confederacy triggers war with the Union-and World War I.




The Great “What Ifs” of the American Civil War


Book Description

“Thought-provoking and entertaining . . . What if Lincoln had dodged the assassin’s bullet? What if Lee had waged guerrilla warfare in April 1865?” —Gordon C. Rhea, author of the Overland Campaign series “What if. . . ?” Every Civil War armchair general asks the question. Possibilities unfold. Disappointments vanish. Imaginations soar. More questions arise. “What if . . .” can be more than an exercise in wistful fantasy. A serious inquiry sparks rigorous exploration, demands critical thinking, and unlocks important insights. The Great “What Ifs” of the American Civil War: Historians Tackle the Conflict’s Most Intriguing Possibilities is a collection of fourteen essays by the historians at Emerging Civil War, and includes a Foreword by acclaimed alternate history writer Peter G. Tsouras. Each entry focuses on one of the most important events of the war and unpacks the options of the moment. To understand what happened, we must look with a clear and objective eye at what could have happened, with the full multitude of choices before us. “What if” is a tool for illumination. These essays also explode the assumptions people make when they ask “what if” and then jump to wishful conclusions. This collection offers not alternate histories or counterfactual scenarios, but an invitation to ask, to learn, and to wonder . . . “A lively and engaging examination of those perennial ‘second guesses’ no student of the war fails to appreciate. No ‘pie in the sky’ here—each exploration is firmly rooted in fact, with a keen appreciation of context, providing provocative insight without sacrificing history.” —David A. Powell, author of the award–winning series The Chickamauga Campaign




Disaster at Stalingrad


Book Description

A fascinating “what if” history of one of World War II’s most iconic battles. It is early September 1942 and the German commander of the Sixth Army, General Paulus, assisted by the Fourth Panzer Army, is poised to advance on the Russian city of Stalingrad. His primary mission was to take the city, crushing this crucial center of communication and manufacturing, and to secure the valuable oil fields in the Caucasus. What happens next is well known to any student of modern history: a brutal war of attrition, characterized by fierce hand-to-hand combat, that lasted for nearly two years, and the eventual victory by a resolute Soviet Red Army. A ravaged German Army was pushed into full retreat. This was the first defeat of Hitler’s territorial ambitions in Europe and a critical turning point of World War II. But the outcome could have been very different, as Peter Tsouras demonstrates in this fascinating alternate history of this fateful battle. By introducing minor—and realistic— adjustments, Tsouras presents a scenario in which the course of the battle runs quite differently, which in turn throws up disturbing possibilities regarding the outcome of the whole war.




A Rainbow of Blood


Book Description

"Do you know what military glory is? It is 'that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy.’” --Abraham Lincoln The Union in dire peril! The war that began in Peter G. Tsouras’s previous alternate history, Britannia’s Fist, accelerates during a few desperate weeks in October 1863. From the bayous of Louisiana to the green hills of the Hudson Valley, from Chicago in flames to the gates of Washington itself, the Great War uncoils in ropes of fire. French and British armies are on the march, and heavy reinforcements have put to sea. Copperheads have risen in revolt to drag the Midwest into the Confederacy as a vital Union army stands starving and under siege in Tennessee. Meanwhile, Robert E. Lee and the Royal Navy set in motion a stroke that is boldness itself. The Union staggers under these blows. While the Grenadier Guards march into glory in upstate New York’s apple orchards, from the second story of a shot-up Washington hotel Abraham Lincoln watches a forest of the red flags of rebellion waving over a Confederate column rushing across the Long Bridge. To stop them is a war-worn regiment of New York soldiers. To their backs Washington burns. But new technologies and the art of intelligence are thrown onto the scales, while Russia plans to enter the war to avenge its humiliation in the Crimean War. A Rainbow of Blood brings forward the Great War from its outbreak to the first great crisis of the embattled republic. Peopled with remarkable personalities of the age, the book rattles with the tramp of armies marching down one of the most intriguing roads not taken--or even imagined--until now.




The British Navy Book


Book Description




The War of the Wheels


Book Description

Amid apocalyptic invasions and time travel, one common machine continually appears in H. G. Wells’s works: the bicycle. From his scientific romances and social comedies, to utopias, futurological speculations, and letters, Wells’s texts abound with bicycles. In The War of the Wheels, Withers examines this mode of transportation as both something that played a significant role in Wells’s personal life and as a literary device for creating elaborate characters and complex themes. Withers traces Wells’s ambivalent relationship with the bicycle throughout his writing. While he celebrated it as a singular and astonishing piece of technology, and continued to do so long after his contemporaries abandoned their enthusiasm for the bicycle, he was not an unwavering promoter of this machine. Wells acknowledged the complex nature of cycling, its contribution to a growing dependence on and fetishization of technology, and its role in humanity’s increasing sense of superiority. Moving into the twenty-first century, Withers reflects on how the works of H. G. Wells can serve as a valuable locus for thinking through many of our current issues and problems related to transportation, mobility, and sustainability.




Cain at Gettysburg


Book Description

Winner of the American Library Association's W. Y. Boyd Award for Excellence in Military Fiction Two mighty armies blunder toward each other, one led by confident, beloved Robert E. Lee and the other by dour George Meade. They'll meet in a Pennsylvania crossroads town where no one planned to fight. In this sweeping, savagely realistic novel, the greatest battle ever fought on American soil explodes into life at Gettysburg. As generals squabble, staffs err. Tragedy unfolds for immigrants in blue and barefoot Rebels alike. The fate of our nation will be decided in a few square miles of fields. Following a tough Confederate sergeant from the Blue Ridge, a bitter Irish survivor of the Great Famine, a German political refugee, and gun crews in blue and gray, Cain at Gettysburg is as grand in scale as its depictions of combat are unflinching. For three days, battle rages. Through it all, James Longstreet is haunted by a vision of war that leads to a fateful feud with Robert E. Lee. Scheming Dan Sickles nearly destroys his own army. Gallant John Reynolds and obstreperous Win Hancock, fiery William Barksdale and dashing James Johnston Pettigrew, gallop toward their fates.... There are no marble statues on this battlefield, only men of flesh and blood, imperfect and courageous. From New York Times bestselling author and former U.S. Army officer Ralph Peters, Cain at Gettysburg is bound to become a classic of men at war. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




The Angel of the Revolution


Book Description

‘The Brotherhood of Freedom’ is out to take over the world using airship warfare. The group is led by a brilliant Russian Jew and his daughter, the 'angel' Natasha. They manage to establish a 'pax aeronautica' over the earth after a young inventor masters the technology of flight in 1903, and the war progresses to the heart of Russia and against the Russian Czar.