Джо Холдеман2.9 Каждый должен выполнять свою работу хорошо. Джулиан Класс делает ее отлично, хотя она и сводит его с ума. Он убивает людей, причем не по одному, а целыми пачками, правда, не своими руками, а с расстояния сотен миль. Он - оператор неуязвимой боевой машины,стоящей на вооружении сил Альянса, воюющих с партизанами-нгуми. Идет 2043 год, и весь мир охвачен бесконечной войной. Это не его война, и ему нестерпимо хочется наложить на себя руки. Но не в жестоком уничтожении беззащитных людей и не в бессмысленном самоубийстве состоит истинная миссия Класса. Не только Земле, но и всей Вселенной угрожает неминуемая гибель, и только Джулиан и его подруга Амелия Хардинг могут предотвратить грядущую катастрофу.
Martha Wells3.5 Nicolas Valiarde is a passionate, embittered nobleman with an enigmatic past. Consumed by thoughts of vengeance, he is consoled only by the love of the beautiful, dangerous Madeleine. He is also the greatest thief in all of Ile-Rien, a land where magic works and ghosts and demons exist alongside the gaslight and the locomotive. When Nicholas and his band of thieves attempt a heist from a Ducal palace, they discover that someone has beaten them to the treasure. For an ancient legend is waking, and evil stalks the city of Vienne. As the dead begin to rise, gargoyles come to life, and monstrous creatures walk the night, Nicholas must evade the police on his trail and get to the bottom of a tangled conspiracy before it costs him his reputation and his life -- and the world its peace.
Harry Turtledove0.0 From the master of alternate history comes an epic of the Second Civil War. It was an epoch of glory and success, of disaster and despair. Twenty years after the South won the Civil War, America writhed once more in the bloody throes of battle. Furious over the annexation of key Mexican territory, the United States declared total war against the Confederate States of America. And so, in 1883, the fragile peace was shattered.
But this was a new kind of war, fought on a lawless frontier where the blue and gray battled not only each other, but the Apache, the outlaw, and even the redcoat. Along with France, England entered the fray on the side of the South, with blockades and invasions from Canada.
Out of this tragic struggle emerged figures great and small. The disgraced Abraham Lincoln crisscrossed the nation championing socialist ideals. Confederate cavalry leader Jeb Stuart sought to prevent wholesale slaughter in the desert Southwest, while cocky young Theodore Roosevelt and stodgy George Custer bickered over modern weapons--even as they drove the British back into western Canada.
Thanks to the efforts of journalists like Samuel Clemens, the nation witnessed the clash of human dreams and passions. Confederate genius Stonewall Jackson again soared to the heights of military expertise, while the North's McClellan proved sadly undeserving of his once shining reputation as the "young Napoleon." For in the Second War Between the States, the times, the stakes, and the battle lines had changed . . . and so would history.
Once again, Harry Turtledove has created a thoroughly engrossing alternate history novel, a profoundly original epic of blood and honor, courage and sacrifice, set amidst the raw beauty of young America's frontier wilderness.
Catherine Asaro0.0 The Last Hawk is Catherine Asaro's third novel of the Skolian Empire, an interstellar civilization spanning hundreds of worlds and thousands of years. Each book approaches the Empire and a member of the ruling family from a different angle, or at a different moment in future history. Now, in The Last Hawk, Asaro tells the tale of the lost heir to the Empire. Fleeing the heat of battle in a wounded spacecraft, Kelric crash-lands on a proscribed planet where a matriarchy rules through the medium of a complex game. The women in power help to heal him, but destroy his ship and determine that he can never leave - for his knowledge of their world, if revealed to the Empire, would cause the rapid fall of their civilization. And so his rescue turns into an imprisonment of years, decades, a time in which he finds love and a challenging place in the universal game.
Jack McDevitt0.0 The date: April 8, 2024. Carefully timed to coincide with a rare total solar eclipse, the American Moonbase is about to be opened officially, with Vice President Charlie Haskell on hand to cut the ribbon. But this same eclipse also reveals a giant interstellar comet hurtling toward the Moon, which it will strike in five days. No one knows what this will mean for Earth, but the scramble to evacuate Moonbase is on. With only a limited number of shuttles, a group of evacuees, including Haskell, are whisked away at the last minute in a jury-rigged ship.Debris from the destroyed Moon wreaks massive havoc on Earth -- leaving Haskell, who is still trapped aboard the shuttle, as President. But the ship is severely crippled. Help is on its way, but it may not reach them in time. Even worse, a fragment of moonrock massive enough to end civilization is roaring toward Earth. Now there's only one way to save the world from total destruction ... if Charlie Haskell is willing to be something even more important than President -- a hero.
Конни Уиллис4.3 Нед Генри, работяга, почти засыпает на ходу и нуждается в отдыхе. Работка ещё та — ему приходится курсировать между 21-м столетием и 1940 годом, участвуя в проекте восстановления знаменитого собора Ковентри, разрушенного при нацистском воздушном налете во время Второй Мировой войны более ста лет назад. Всё бы хорошо, да смелая Верити Киндл, такой же путешественник во времени, неосторожно вытащила кое-что из прошлого. Теперь Нед должен срочно вернуться назад в викторианскую эпоху и помочь Верити возвратить вещи, дабы спасти проект и предотвратить роковые изменения в истории.