Eighth and penul­ti­mate book in the Temeraire series, which began with His Majesty's Dragon. It's a delightful take on the Napoleonic wars with in­tel­li­gent dragons.

The book opens with William Laurence awaking ship­wrecked and amnesiac on the shores of Japan, where European foreigners are strictly forbidden. His dragon Temeraire fran­ti­cal­ly seeks him, while the rest of the crew think him dead. After being reunited in Nagasaki, they travel on to the Chinese court in Peking and enlist the help of the emperor's dragons in fighting Napoleon, who …continue.

Sequel to Lion's Blood

1812: The Rivers of War is the first novel in an alternate history series that recasts the War of 1812 and later the Trail of Tears. Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson, and several Scots-Irish and Indian characters head off in a somewhat different direction than they did in our history.

Flint tells a rousing, en­ter­tain­ing story, with exciting battles and engaging characters. It's a period of U.S. history that I knew little about, and I enjoyed the book.

Farthing is set in a world where the British agreed to a peace with Hitler in 1941, eight years ago. This book starts out like a classic British murder mystery: a prominent right-wing politician is murdered at the Farthing country estate and Scotland Yard are called in. The story is told from two viewpoints, that of the secretly homosexual Inspector Carmichael and that of the daughter of the house, Lucy Kahn, who married a Jew. The dead man has a yellow star pinned to his chest, making David Kahn a likely …continue.

England, 1958: an alternate universe where famous fictional characters really lived and the regime of Big Brother has just come to an end. Sixty years ago, the British Crown gathered together the Murray Group, ex­tra­or­di­nary ad­ven­tur­ers charged with sensitive missions. The remnants of the group fled England in World War II. Now they've come back to steal their dossier from MI-5, a dossier that could lead the Government back to them, a dossier that details the exploits of earlier …continue.

Another book from the 1632 series. This one largely develops a new plot. The arch­duchess Maria Anna of Austria is sent to Bavaria to marry the newly widowed Duke Maximilian, and finds that she'd rather not. She flees Munich in the company of two Grantville women, triggering a major crisis.

The book is en­ter­tain­ing but it's marred by ob­ses­sive­ly detailing the enormously com­pli­cat­ed re­alpoli­tik of Mit­teleu­ropa. Still, it's one of the good books in the 1632 series.

The latest book from the 1632 series; this one is the long awaited sequel to 1633. The premise of the series is that through some mysterious alien event, a small West Virginian town is sent back to Germany in 1631, in the middle of the Thirty Years' War, utterly changing the course of history. The Americans ally themselves with King Gustav Adolf of Sweden, forming the United States of Europe.

The authors adeptly juggle a series of plots that were set in motion in the earlier book. The …continue.

More than two thousand years ago, the balance of power shifted, Africa became the dominant continent, and Europe stayed a barbarian backwater. Muslim Africans sailed west and conquered America, using white slaves as a workforce.

Aidan O'Dere was kidnapped as a boy from an Irish fishing village, and sold to the Wakil, the governor of what would otherwise be Galveston. The Wakil's younger son, Kai, is the same age as Aidan. The Wakil and Kai are sensitive men, warriors with poets' souls, with misgivings about the in­sti­tu­tion of slavery. Their respective …continue.

Three short novels, extracted from longer stories published elsewhere.

Ms. Mid­ship­woman Harrington by David Weber is a prequel to the Honor Harrington novels. Harrington is a mid­ship­woman in the Royal Navy of Manticore, on her first tour of duty out in a pirate-infested area. She survives the hazing of a par­tic­u­lar­ly brutal and stupid superior. When half the bridge is blown away by a pri­va­teer's attack, she manages to save the day.

Islands by Eric Flint is extracted from one of the …continue.