Based Books Genre Sale: Alternative History
Books for Sale!
One week only March 19th-25th: indie authors’ books in the alternative history genre - get ‘em while they last! As many of you know, this is the first genre event for the Based Book Sale. Nearly half of the entries included are first-time inclusions while the rest are returning features. When Hans initially tasked me with putting this together, the plan was to do 10-20 authors to gauge interest. Well, turns out the initial response was considerable and the list ballooned beyond that estimate. However, the goal was to keep the total manageable for people interested in the genre to be able to find and acquire as much as possible as well as for the select group of authors to be able to stand out - the main quarterly sales have gotten so large that it can be difficult to sift through everything.
New to the Sale
A lot of great newcomers to the sale for this genre, support their work and hopefully, they’ll return with more for the larger quarterly events as well.
Despair of the Seer |
In a masterful blend of supernatural horror and alternative history, "Despair of The Seer" transports readers to a nightmarish version of 1980s America where the Cold War has taken a terrifying turn. Through a barrier between dimensions, cosmic horrors from the mysterious Pithos Dominion have leaked into our world, transforming our familiar myths into terrifying realities.
Daemonic Mechanical Artifacts | Denton Salle
Napoleon's engineers create the steam-driven war machines that made France the greatest power of the nineteenth century. Called genies by his troops, they build the airships, golem soldiers, and ironclads that crushed the British fleets and conquered most of Europe. They also make medical marvels and semi-autonomous machines that changed the face of both Europe and the new world.
The Desert |
Set in a realm not unlike the Old West, Songless is a tale of love, hate, and redemption. Part high fantasy, part romance, Songless explores the borderlands of faith and the sometimes torturous path we travel before we turn to love. And to God.
A High Fantasy, A Western Romance, A Soul's Awakening. We go dark, so we can find the light.
Dispatches from Valhalla |
This collection contains "What ifs..." of military alternate history so daring their heroes would be welcomed into any warrior’s hall. Whether you're a new alternate history fan or an experienced traveler of the multiverse, you'll find great tales within Dispatches from Valhalla. So grab the proverbial mead horn, erm, beverage of choice and prepared to be regaled once more by tales of battles that never were...but could have been.
Defying Conventions |
In early 1787, Camden Page finds himself apprenticed to a prominent attorney in Richmond who rubs elbows with all of Virginia's prominent political figures. Among those figures is a member of the Virginia Senate whose daughter captures the young man's heart. Fortuitous circumstances take Camden to Philadelphia where he begins to uncover the pieces of a conspiracy bent on sabotaging the constitutional convention and sowing the seeds for the destruction of the fledgling nation.Just how fragile was the political situation that yielded the United States Constitution?
The Quest for Harmony |
What if America's miraculous victory in the Revolutionary War wasn't just about French aid and colonial determination? What if help came from much further away—across the vastness of space itself? For over two centuries, twelve guardians have protected this earth-shattering secret. But now, in 2024, as America teeters on the brink of a second civil war, two of these guardians must race against time to prevent the nation's collapse.
Wild Stars: Book of Circles | Michael Tierney/
Book of Circles tells the story of conflicting timelines and parallel worlds that culminate an alliance between a wolf-like alien race called the Brothan and alternate time-line fascists, the Artomiques, that aims to attack and destroy the earth by launching a comet at Jupiter to ignite it as a second sun.
Alternative Histories | Milo Fowler
Alternative Histories collects 7 tales from a past that never was—but could have been, given enough science fiction, fantasy, and horror tossed into the mix. Travel back to a time when super-powered minutemen fought King George's zombie horde, when memories were bought and sold during the Great Depression, and when JFK tried to stop an alien invasion just prior to his assassination. Time-travel with a member of the Mahican tribe searching for answers, meet Goliath's decapitated head that refused to die, and find out just how wild and weird the Old West might have been with a body-hopping, phantasmal anti-hero along for the ride.
Fritz Bauer and the Courtesan of Paris |
Enter an alternate history, where in 1916, the guns of the Great War fell silent. Now, in the 1920s, a veteran of the trenches struggles to build a lasting peace…
…while against him scheme the merchants of death. Equipped only with tact, cleverness, fluency in French, and a Luger pistol, Fritz Bauer arrives in Paris on a highly secret mission.
Incorruptible |
STALKED BY ANCIENT EVIL! After Kurt Larson’s hovercraft crashes over old Los Angeles, he and a band of refugees search desperately for an unblighted source of power before itʹs too late. But heat and lack of resources aren’t their only threats. Long ago, the city was home to a great evil—the Corrupted One! Did she still exist out there in that terrible wasteland? Kurt Larson is about to find out!
The Perfect & the Wicked |
John Riley is the son of Irish Immigrants and a bootlegger in Prohibition America. The upwardly mobile John takes an opportunity to embed himself with the WASP elite that runs the country. However, as John's social status rises, the sacrifices he has to endure to maintain it rise as well. He is willing to make these personal sacrifices, but can he ask the same of his family?
Returning Titles
It’s important to have favorites, below is the collection of titles returning for the alternative history genre sale.
Firefly Season 2 | Travis Corcoran & Clark Bianco
When you're a time trader - someone with a ship that can hop sideways across the millions of alternate timelines - the big money isn't in technology or science, it's in entertainment. There are some universes where George Lucas didn't die on the set of American Graffiti but instead went on to make a space fantasy classic. In other universes there's a movie called "Dune" by Jodorowsky. And in some there's a guy named Tolkien who wrote a sequel to "The Hobbit".
Ask any timetrader and he'll tell you: put three things together - buyer, seller, and product - and that's where the magic happens.
The World’s Other Side |
George Boatman trained to be a priest, but his people need a criminal. Five centuries after the mighty Gondwanan civilization conquered the Northern Hemisphere, George leads a band of thieves and smugglers in the Ilinwa city of Shikaakwa. It's a bloody job, but his people need him. What George needs is vengeance. Love, loyalty, and cultures collide in The World's Other Side, an alternate history scifi thriller.
Improvidence | David Herod
The apocalypse has passed and new peoples rise from the ashes. Among them is a young engineer, newly enlisted in an army with plans to reclaim what has been lost. His mission: deep reconnaissance into the lost wilds of West Virginia.
But the world is twisted beyond recognition. To reclaim the abandoned fort necessary to impose order on this lawless frontier he must overcome both the scars of the old world and the savagery of the tribal men who now inhabit it.
Death of a Vice President |
Madness, murder, and mystery pervade throughout this Edgar Allan Poe-inspired alternate history thriller! It is early April 1853. Franklin Pierce, the newly elected President of the United States, has suffered the greatest personal tragedy of his life, plunging him into a depression-fueled madness. The Vice President, William King, unexpectedly appears at the White House in the middle of the night having overheard details of an international assassination conspiracy that threatens them both.
That Axe Anciently Was Mine |
What if the hero of a savage and ancient land returned from the deep mists of time?
Samuel Rider is a man out of time and place. A man with a destiny undreamed of.
Necromancers and demons, werewolves and the undead. The villains and monsters of legend lurk still in the night, unseen by most.
Hacking Galileo | Fenton Wood
HACKING GALILEO is a tech memoir by an insider, full of ingenious exploits and fascinating details about the aerospace technology of the 1980's.
Author and publisher alike are risking Federal retaliation by publishing this book. Is it a true account, or a clever work of fiction? What is the Terrible Secret of Space, and what does it have to do with the origin of the rogue asteroid? Read it for yourself--while you still can!
The Devil’s Dictum |
In a topsy-turvy United States founded by pirates, the personal assassin to the chief justice receives a terrifying order: round up and kill all men who look like himself.
Spooky, sly and satirical, The Devil’s Dictum recasts J. Edgar Hoover as a Satanic high priest, Calvin Coolidge as a private eye, and Richard Nixon as the pilot of a giant armored robot. Readers hungering for original and mind-blowing alternate history need look no further.
A Rambling Wreck | Hans G. Schantz
There's no partial credit on a question of life and death!
Off to Georgia Tech for the education he'll need to defeat the guardians of the hidden truth, Peter discovers the battle for the future is being fought right on campus. Now he has to infiltrate a conspiracy, find new allies, and thwart a takeover of the school. Peter's most challenging final exam has only one question:
Can a Rambling Wreck stop the Cabal?
And a failing grade will be his last.
Escaping Fate |
Pete Bedauern began his life as a latchkey kid in a run-down trailer park with a single mom, living on stale hot dog buns and bleak prospects. Those were the cards Fate had dealt him, and Pete was on his way to becoming an angry young man. Then Pete’s estranged uncle burst on the scene to punch Fate in the mouth…
Population of Loss | Michael DiBaggio/
The Martian onslaught has crushed earth's mightiest empires and reduced the great achievements of civilization to poisoned rubble, but mankind still endures.
From the ruins of England to the desolate American west, unexpected champions arise to confront a foe that has never yet known defeat, and the stakes are nothing less than the survival of the human race.
The Blue World Anunnaki Advent |
Loosely based on Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles, The Blue World follows the efforts of the Sumerian gods, the Anunnaki, as they land on earth to mine the gold there in order to repair the damaged atmosphere of their home planet, Nibiru. The Anunnaki miners find gold mining laborious and dangerous, so they genetically engineer a hybrid race to do it for them. Mixing Anunnaki DNA with simian, they create The Human, “those who work.”
The Dream of the Iron Dragon | Robert Kroese
DRAGON AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST ALTERNATE HISTORY NOVEL Trapped 1300 years in the past, they have one mission: survive. In the 23rd century, humanity has been hunted to the verge of extinction by an alien race. When an exploratory ship accidentally travels back in time to Viking age Scandinavia, the human race is given a second chance. Pursued by the power-hungry King Harald, the four surviving crew members join a ragtag band of Vikings as they pillage their way across Europe. It will take all their ingenuity, courage and technical know-how just to survive. But survival is only the beginning. To save humanity, they must somehow return to the stars. Thus begins a decades-long effort to teach the Vikings to build a craft capable of reaching space—a ship that will come to be known as the Iron Dragon.
Codex Babylon | Robert Kroese
A secret cabal of demonic forces threatens to destroy civilization and plunge the world into a new Dark Age. Humanity's only chance is a shadowy organization called GRAIL--the modern day heirs to the Knights Templar--which has discovered the secret to time travel. The past cannot be changed, but if GRAIL can send an agent into the past to recover a lost book on demonology called the Codex Babylon, they may have a fighting chance to save humanity from utter destruction.
Operation Vampire | Steven G. Johnson
Weird World War II
Sgt. Mick Murphy, a death-walker elf, and his recon company must save Allied troops from mass slaughter by Austrian vampires flooding out of a secret compound located in the Alps. Mick, his dwarf buddy Dave, and war-weary soldiers head up into the mountains to seek and destroy it…
The Compleat Martian Invasion |
With Earth left in shambles by the Martian invasion, Queen Victoria's daughter Louise must lead the world through a dire emergency: The Martians are coming back.First she must rescue Cavor from his prison on the Moon in order to build a defense fleet. Even with Cavor their efforts would be for nothing without the genius of Nikola Tesla leading the way. And on Mars, unexpected allies fight a rearguard action to help Earth. Meanwhile the Time Traveler repeatedly appears, but is he friend or foe?
Three Rivers Plague | Zachary Forbes & Joshua Forbes
The unleashing of a biological weapon across the United States forces the government to begin rounding up high-profile individuals, in hopes of preserving American society. Famous rockstar Thomas Wylde, fresh off the catastrophe at his latest concert, is taken to a shelter in the sky. That is, until a member of his band falls victim to the weapon's infection, convincing him to escape into the post-apocalyptic city of Pittsburgh, now plagued by undead horrors, cults, cocaine junkies, and even the mafia…
The Fall of Tartaria |
The Fall of Tartaria by Michael Finney is a short story that takes place in an alternative reality to bring the Tartarian Empire to life on the page in word and image. Ominous warnings are emerging from various factions within the empire, but will they remain unheeded?
Also available in a short film!
Thank You for Supporting the Based Book Sale
Independent authors work hard at their craft from writing to promotion. It can be to break through to success, however, we might define that, but it’s promotions like this that offer an opportunity to get eyes on the community, so share this post on your social channels and help us drive attention for this week! Subscribe to stay in the loop on this and future Based Book Sales.
First thought: Focusing on a single genre narrows things down, and it's not too difficult to navigate through everything!
Lowers the cost of browsing and searching.
I'd enjoy more smaller/more focused BBSs through the year than a couple giant ones.
Fantastic!