In 1881, a generation after the South won the Civil War, the peace is shattered. Furious over the annexation of American territory, the United States declares total war against the Confederacy. In this second American Civil War the times, stake and battle lines have changed - and so has history.

World War II seethed across the planet. Hostilities spread in ever-widening circles of destruction. Then the real enemy arrived. Out of the skies came an inhuman invasion force, their weaponary overwhelming and with a simple goal: Fleetlord Atvar had arrived to claim Earth for the Empire.

The first in Harry Turtledove's massive new First World War series...

In this alternate history novel, Bold Bardash, a horseman in the army of Temur the Lame, rides west across the steppe and on to the Magyar Plain, where he comes across a town in which everyone lies dead. The opportunists flood in, and the world becomes a different place.

The Emperor Hadrian writes a valedictory letter to Marcus Aurelius, his future successor. The Emperor meditates on his past, describing his accession, military triumphs, love of poetry and music, and the philosophy that informed his powerful and far-flung rule. This work recreates the life and death of one of the great rulers of the ancient world.

The beginning of a new trilogy from perhaps the most significant Sf writer of the 21st century.