Available Now:
1637: The French Correction
By Eric Flint & Walter Hunt
NEW RING OF FIRE SERIES ENTRY FROM THE LATE ERIC FLINT AND BEST-SELLING AUTHOR WALTER HUNT: The King is dead: Long Live the King. But which one? Gaston sits on the throne in Paris, but the dead king’s infant son has powerful forces on his side, ready to place him where he belongs. Who will prevail?
Tensions build in France following the ascension of Gaston to the throne of his murdered brother, but there are factions supporting the claim of King Louis’ surviving infant son. As France moves toward civil war, other parties, both visible and invisible, maneuver to take advantage of the increased tension. Who will survive to reign over France—King Gaston, the exiled child and his regents, or the King of Spain?
Coming March 4, 2025
https://www.baen.com/1637-the-french-correction.html
1637: The Pacific Initiative
By Iver P. Cooper
NEW RING OF FIRE SERIES ENTRY FROM IVER P. COOPER
A cosmic catastrophe, the Ring of Fire, strands the West Virginia town of Grantville back in time in the middle of the Thirty Years War. One of its ripple effects is that Japan has pulled back from a policy of isolation and staked out its own claims on the west coast of North America. But it is not the only power interested in that part of the New World, and the native Americans have also responded, in different ways, to the unexpected colonists. And there are conflicts among the colonists themselves.
In settling the fate of this part of the New World, a few remarkable individuals have an outsize role to play: Oyamada Isamu, a samurai on his first independent command; Yells-at-Bears, a young native woman of Vancouver Island; Father Blanco, a Jesuit priest and former missionary; and Iroha Date-hime, the daughter of the Grand Governor of New Nippon.
Coming March 4, 2025
https://www.baen.com/1637-the-pacific-initiative.html
1635: The Weaver’s Code
By Eric Flint and Jody Lynn Nye
A young gentlewoman, Margaret de Beauchamp, finds her fate twisted into the lives of the up-timers when she meets the Americans imprisoned in the Tower of London. In exchange for her help, Rita Simpson and Harry Lefferts give her a huge sum of money to keep her family’s manor and its woolen trade from falling into the hands of the crown and its unscrupulous minister, Lord Cork. But Margaret’s troubles are not at an end. Her family’s fortunes are in a downward spiral. Her trip to Grantville brings unexpected dangers and a possible up-time solution.
Inspired by books in the Grantville library, Margaret has an idea to restore her family’s fortunes with an innovation never before seen in fabric design. With the help of Aaron Craig, an up-timer programmer using aqualators, water-powered computers, they teach her father’s craftsmen to create a combination machine loom that can produce a new type of woolen cloth. The ornate and perfect patterns quickly trend among the nobility. However, the Master Weavers of the county’s Weaver’s Guild aren’t happy about being overshadowed by the changes to the status quo, and take their grievance to Lord Cork, who is still looking for the people who helped the Americans escape from the Tower.
Cork isn’t interested in squabbles between mere tradesmen, but he is very interested in taking over the new calculating machine that is fueling the upsurge in the de Beauchamp fortunes. He sends agents ordered to stop at nothing to secure it for his own ends. Margaret has to protect her new business, and prevent anyone from discovering that up-timers are in the country to assist her, but she still has to deal with an uprising at home.
https://www.baen.com/1635-the-weaver-s-code.html
Magdeburg Noir
By David Carrico
Magdeburg, the capital of the newly-formed United States of Europe, has a dark and bloody history. Most of the city and its population were destroyed when the imperialist army ran amok after capturing the city in May of 1631. The ancient Gothic cathedral was one of the few structures that survived more-or-less intact.
Once the Swedish king Gustav Adolf drove out the imperialists and established the USE, Magdeburg began to recover—and then grow at an astonishing rate. New industries inspired by the technology of the time-transplanted Americans of Grantville are turning the city into a boom town, with immigrants from all over central Europe pouring in.
A boom town is full of hope and aspiration—but it’s also a place that generates its own darkness and chaos. The city’s fledgling police force is scrambling to get control over the growing crime and violence. Sometimes it succeeds—but often it doesn’t. And such failures bring down the might of the city’s powerful revolutionary Committees of Correspondence, whose leader Gunther Achterhof can match any criminal’s ruthlessness.
Musicians murdered, new and brutal religious cults arising, bombings and arson, spies and informers and those hunting them—these are only some of the ingredients in the reborn city of light and darkness.
https://www.baen.com/magdeburg-noir2.html
Letters from Gronow
By David Carrico
What happens when the seventeenth century encounters Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep? What happens when the Elder Gods descend upon Magdeburg? When literary entrepreneur Johann Gronow discovers the stories of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe in the libraries and book collections of Grantville, he launches a magazine for the purpose of publishing translations of their stories. Der Schwarze Kater—The Black Tomcat—begins attracting attention immediately. From his very first reading of the first issue of the magazine, a young bookkeeper named Philip Fröhlich develops a passion to write those kinds of stories. And so begins the quest of every author—to satisfy the requirements of an editor and make that first elusive sale. As have millions of aspiring authors, Philip discovers it’s not as easy as it looks. Time after time his submissions receive a rejection letter from Gronow. But Philip stubbornly keeps submitting, along the way discovering things about himself and the people around him that he never would have learned any other way.
https://www.baen.com/letters-from-gronow2.html
The Private Casefiles of Archie Gottesfreund
By David Carrico
New detective and adventure stories laid in the Ring of Fire Universe.
Archibald Gottesfreund, a half-Scot/half-German mercenary, retired from that life after losing both his cousin Rory and part of his own left hand in a skirmish with brigands in northern France. Weary of that life, Archie rode east, looking for a new life, which he found in Jena when he met up with Master Tiberius Claudius Titus Wulff. After doing the master merchant a favor, he found himself enlisted to be Master Titus’ chief agent and right-hand man, a life he never expected.
Over the years, Master Titus’ business affairs and his passion for books alike provide many adventures for Archie. Two of the best are presented in this volume.
https://www.baen.com/the-private-casefiles-of-archie-gottesfreund.html
1635: Music and Murder
By David Carrico
Music . . .
It’s been said that musicians live for the next new sound. Well, the musicians of Europe were presented with the biggest new sound ever when the Ring of Fire brought the future back to 1631. What will the court musicians think when they hear Bach, Stravinsky, and the Beatles? What will the street and tavern musicians think when faced with Johnny Cash, Metallica, and Nirvana? Things don’t go smoothly for Marla Linder and her friends.
And Murder . . .
The Thirty Years War was an ‘interesting’ time to be alive, in the proverbial Chinese curse sense of the word. Then Grantville arrived from the future, bringing technology and philosophies that set European civilization on its ear. But that’s not all that came back with Grantville. Imagine trying to establish modern police procedures in a time where neither the powers-that-be nor the people underneath them provide much support. Up-timer Byron Chieske and his down-timer partner Gotthilf Hoch walk some mean streets and lonely roads.
This is an updated edition with “Canticle de Noël.” This was originally published in A 1632 Christmas and has been moved here so that all the Marla and Franz stories are in one place. This edition also contains an Author’s Afterward.
https://www.baen.com/1635-music-and-murder.html
The Unexpected Sales Reps
By Virginia DeMarce
How to succeed at spying without really trying
Pranksters and scammers from way back, Paolo Fucilla and Carlo Rigatti fought for Spain at the Wartburg and survived.
Curious about the people who had beaten them so handily, they went to Grantville. Whatever their other faults, they were serious about keeping their oaths. When they promised not to take up arms they meant it. In Grantville, they got in trouble again and skipped town.
Looking for a job that didn’t include being shot at with napalm, they decided to try their hand at spying. It was a “Here, hold my beer and watch this” inspiration. It wasn’t their first, and it wouldn’t be their last.
They went to work for the Archbishop of Salzburg. But spies need cover stories, so they decided to sell office supplies. It was supposed to be a single job, so they didn’t bother to tell the manufacturer that they were now the sales reps for Vignelli Business Machines.
Watch as Paolo and Carlo demonstrate the kind of trouble they can get into.
