After a cosmic accident sets the modern West Virginia town of Grantsville down in war-torn seventeenth century Europe, the United States of Europe is forged in the fire of battle. Now Spain makes its countermove on the Enlightenment brought by the West Virginians, as Cardinal Gaspare de Borja y de Velasco sets into motion a plot to establish Spanish hegemony over the city-states of Italy and to disgrace and assassinate a pope who has been friendly to the new ideas.
But there are those — up-timers and locals alike — who are determined that the fire of sweet reason so recently lit will never again be extinguished. To do so they must summon all the willpower and political craft they can muster. For they face the Heart of Medieval Darkness Itself, an implacable foe determined to use force of imperial arms and treasonous deceit to retain its grip on power — and to be sure that life for all but the wealthy and connected remains nasty, brutish, and very short.
None of which is a surprise. You see, it's 1635. Everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Alternate history master Eric Flint teams again with Andrew Dennis (1634: The Galileo Affair) in a return to war-torn Italy for the latest idea-laced thriller in Flint's massive "Assiti Shards" saga!
Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn: Global war smashed civilization—or so the legends told-but not all of its machines. A caste of "scientists" arose who knew how to repair and operate the ancient machines—but not how they worked—and worshipped at the altars of the atomic gods who were said to make the machines run. Society was a strange mix of the modern and the medieval, with armies riding on horseback into huge spaceships, then flying to human colonies on other planets to wage war with swords and arrows.
Then came the mutant Clane, who would have been put to death for his deformities had he not been born into the ruling family. Though his body was twisted, his mind was brilliant, and he not only recovered the lost science behind the ancient machines, but found the truth behind the legends of civilization's downfall. Alien invaders, not human war, had reduced humanity to barbarism as a prelude for a later return in force to colonize the Solar System. And that return would happen soon, unless Clane could find a way to stop it. . . . For the first time, the entire Clane saga, told in the two novels Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn, is complete in one volume.
Mission to the Stars, Van Vogt's sweeping novel of interstellar adventure, is also included, along with the two short novels in the "Ezwal" series, chronicling the struggle of one man to convince a feral but intelligent species to join with humanity in the battle against a mutual enemy-but first he must convince the lone Ezwal who is trapped with him in a deadly jungle to co-operate, or neither will survive.
Listen to the authors discuss the book here on the Baen Free Radio Hour.
Over light-years of space and 50,000 years back in time, to create a new history.... Only to find there was no way back.
Earth is adapting to a future of amicable coexistence with the advanced aliens from Thurien, descended from ancestors who once inhabited Minerva, a vanished planet of the Solar System. The plans of the distantly related humans on the rogue world Jevlen to eliminate their ancient Terran rivals and take over the Thurien system of worlds have been thwarted, but the mystery remains of how it was possible for the fleeing Jevlenese leaders to have been flung back across space and time to reappear at Minerva before the time of its destruction.
Victor Hunt and a group of his colleagues travel to Thurien to conduct a joint investigation with the alien scientists into the strange physics of interconnectedness between the countless alternate universes that constitute ultimate reality. When their discoveries lead first to bizarre communication with bewildered counterparts in other universes, and thence to the possibility of physical travel, the notion is conceived of sending a mission back to the former world of Minerva with the startling objective of creating a new family of realities in which its destruction is avoided. But Imares Broghuilio, the deposed Jevlenese leader, along with several thousand dedicated followers with five heavily armed starships, are already there. And they have a score to settle.
TO ESCAPE PURSUIT, SHE TOOK ON ANOTHER'S IDENTITY—
AND FOUND HERSELF MARKED FOR DEATH!
Maris's work with the local underworld on the huge space station was anything but honest, but life was much more pleasant than it had been before the gang's leader had picked her up from the slums. Then her boss grabbed a visitor to the station who was asking too many questions, only to find out that she was a very important diplomat. Worse, his prisoner had apparently committed suicide by jumping through an airlock into hard vacuum.
To avoid dangerous questions from station security, he decided to let Maris's corpse be found with the diplomat's IDs; but Maris saw through his plot and used those IDs to escape to the planet the Diplomat was about to investigate. Unfortunatley she landed in a hornet's nest of corrupt officials conspiring with a local tyrant. Surrounded by people who wanted her eliminated, the only person she could trust was Gabrel, a young officer who set off with her on a cross-planet trek to get evidence that would expose the tangled web of corruption.
Maris was strongly attracted to Gabrel and the feeling seemed to be mutual. But then, he thought she was a high-ranking government agent. What would happen when he found that she was only a petty criminal on the run
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Ball is author of such popular fantasy novels as The Shadow Gate, No Earthly Sunne, and Lost in Translation, and in the science fiction field has collaborated with New York Times best-selling author Anne McCaffrey on the national best sellers PartnerShip (Baen), recently reprinted in the Baen MegaBook Brain Ships, and Acorna: The Unicorn Girl and Acorna's Quest (both Harper Prism/Eos). She has also written historical novels and romances under her own name, as well as pseudonyms (for example, Catherine Lyndell). Ball has degrees in mathematics and linguistics, and was a Fulbright Scholar, spending two years in Africa studying Swahili. She has two daughters and does quilting in her spare time.
In the world called Yuulith, on the other side of the secret cross-dimensional gate, Curtis Macurdy had led a mighty army, becoming known to his faithful warriors as an invincible mystic warrior, the Lion of Farside. But Macurdy was always at heart a farmer, like his ancestors, and after the war he returned to Earth, hoping that fate would permit him to till his ancestral soil in peace. But the Second World War was casting a long, dark shadow over Macurdy's hopes.
Hitler's obsession with the occult has led to a secret Mazi project for recruiting people with paranormal abilities, abilities that have proven all too real. One of the recruits has discovered the Bavarian Gate, and on the other side of it, the militaristic Voitusotar, with their potent psychic powers.
An alliance between the Nazis and the Voitusotar would mean certain victory for the Axis. Macurdy must infiltrate the Nazi project and find a way to destroy the Bavarian gate to Yuulith and end the danger to both worlds. But even the mental powers of the Lion of Farside may not permit Macurdy to survive his desperate mission....
John Dalmas 
