Showing results by author "James Philip" in All Categories

In the alternative timeline of the post-Cuban Missiles War the swinging sixties never happened. "Ask not of your country" is the fourth verse of the American story of Armageddon. To its friends and enemies alike, the United States seems to have emerged from the October War battered, bruised, but invincible. However, 20 months after the cataclysm, terrible wounds remain unhealed, and the nation of liberty is riven by conflict.

Cricket on the Beach is book one of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62 - Australia. Timeline 10/27/62 is set in a world in which the Cuban Missiles Crisis went wrong and the swinging '60s never happened. The thermonuclear madness might not have reached as far south as Australasia, but in the weeks and months after the Cuban Missiles War, many more people might have succumbed to the "On the Beach" syndrome had it not been for the distraction of a unique sporting odyssey.

It is September 1943, and Bomber Command is gathering itself for what many in the High Command believe will be its final victorious campaign; but even the true believers in the "main aim" know the coming winter battle will be bloodier than anything which has come before. For Adam Chantrey, looking forward to the fifth year of his personal odyssey, duty has become his watchword, and life on the squadrons his only reality. And then one day, while waiting for a train that is late, he encounters a different fate...and afterwards, nothing will ever be the same again.

New York - July 1976 - in a world in which New England remains the sparkling jewel in the crown of the British Empire. It is the day before Empire Day - July 4 - the day each year when the British Empire marks the brutal crushing of the rebellion dignified by the treachery of the 56 delegates to the Continental Congress who were so foolhardy as to sign the infamous Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on that day of infamy in 1776.

La Argentina covers the period of the Argentine invasion of the British South Atlantic Dependencies (The Falkland Islands-Las Islas Malvinas, South Georgia and the British Antarctic Territories) in the spring of 1964.

It is April 1964 in a world in which the "swinging '60s" never happened. Two Soviet tank armies have fallen on Iran and are pouring down from the Zagros Mountains onto the Iraqi floodplains of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers like wolves upon the fold. In the United States, the overwhelming popular mood is one of "America first". The "victory" of the October War has never seemed more pyrrhic, or all the death, destruction, and grief more futile, than it does in the second week of April 1964. Only one thing is certain: The world is about to be turned upside down again.

It is January 1965 in a world in which the Cuban Missiles Crisis went horribly wrong and the "swinging sixties" never happened. In the United States, a new president has entered the White House; in Britain, the country will shortly be going to the polls for the first time since the October War. But with the return of "normal" politics, there is no return to the "normality" of the old, now-lost world order.

This box set puts together Book 1 and 2 of the series - Interlopers and Pictures of Lily - in a single accessible volume.

The Cuban Missiles Crisis didn't end peacefully and the "swinging sixties" didn't happen. On Saturday October 27th, 1962 American and Soviet geopolitical brinkmanship resulted in the most terrible war in human history. The forever changed world that remained when the thermonuclear fires had burned themselves out is the world of Timeline 10/27/62.

In Winter's Spy, the Mystery Man is under arrest, suspected of having been an enemy agent for his whole career in the Metropolitan Police and throughout all his years working for MI5. Dammed by the evidence of a German spy whom he encountered in Paris before the war, it seems as if he must literally fight for his life. Then, transported to Camp 020, MI5’s South London interrogation center, and confronted by his accuser, the Mystery Man begins to suspect that nothing is quite what it seemed.

Detective Inspector Frankie Ransom prides herself on being third generation Met - her father was head of the old Flying Squad, her grandfather retired as deputy head of CID at Scotland Yard - but suspects the Force she loves has long since fallen out of love with her.

She'd been promised a "proper" police job in the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, but what she'd got wasn't even close. She'd been promised she'd be working with an elite team of experienced detectives - what she'd got was a squad of malcontents, troublemakers, and time-servers. And worst of all, she discovers she's been appointed London's unofficial "Celebrity Cop." As if to add insult to injury, Professional Standards are on her case. Not because she's done anything wrong.

In The Plains of Waterloo, eight months have passed since the bloodbath at Harald Villas at the end of A Ransom for Two Roses. Frankie has been slowly piecing her life back together and coming to terms with her changed self. When she visits a notorious child killer in prison at Waddon Hall Maximum Security Unit in Dorset, she believes she is testing how far she has come since that terrible winter night.

In 2015, a group of young people sued the federal government for violating their constitutional rights by promoting the climate catastrophe, depriving them of life, liberty, and property without due process of law. They Knew offers evidence for their claims, presenting a devastating account of the federal government's role in bringing about today's climate crisis. James Speth, tapped by the plaintiffs as an expert on climate, documents how administrations from Carter to Trump continued aggressive support of a fossil fuel-based energy system.

A little over 20 months have passed since the cataclysm of October 1962. It is a minute before midnight in Philadelphia on July 4, 1964, in a world stumbling inexorably toward a second, even more catastrophic nuclear war. The United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom have stepped to the edge of the thermonuclear abyss; who will blink first? In All Along the Watchtower, the main series and the USA series of Timeline 10/27/72 merge into a single global narrative of the most desperate hours in human history.

Sir Stanley Jackson captained Harrow School, Cambridge University, and England in a golden epoch of English cricket. It is no bad thing to place the man and his age in perspective before the telling of his story. Our subject played his cricket in an age lost to us forever, an age wreathed in legend.

It is April 1964 in a world in which the ‘swinging '60s’ never happened. Two Soviet tank armies have fallen on Iran and are poised to pour down from the Zagros Mountains onto the Iraqi floodplains of the Tigris and the Euphrates like wolves upon the fold. The Shah is dead, and Tehran has been destroyed by a nuclear strike; in Iraq, there has been a coup d’état, and civil war has broken out. Only a handful of British tanks and a few thousand widely scattered troops around the oilfields of the Middle East stand between the Red Army and mastery of the Persian Gulf.

Hawke first captained Yorkshire in the Championship in 1883. He was also the man who sacked Bobby Peel, the greatest left-arm bowler of his era, and infamously declaimed "Pray God, no professional shall ever captain England", sentiments that very nearly damned him forever. A man of contradictions, strong convictions, more often than not his own worst enemy, this cricketing biography goes behind the myth of the man looking to paint a picture of one of cricket’s great men.

The Great Society is the third verse of the American story of Armageddon. To its friends and enemies, alike the United States seems to have emerged from the October War battered, bruised, but invincible. However, 13 months after the cataclysm terrible wounds remain unhealed and the nation of liberty is riven by conflict. The United States is a country desperately looking to re-find its way; to re-discover its sense of nationhood and purpose.

August 1940 - Chief Inspector Guy Winter has been Fleet Street's favorite detective for over a decade. Dubbed the "Mystery Man" by his friends and enemies alike, for all his fame he cuts a lonely figure at Scotland Yard, where every newspaper story is fresh grist to an already tired mill. Laid low by personal tragedy, there are many who suspect that the great detective's career is over.