Grantville April, 1636   The news that Archbishop Laud, still exiled in the Low Countries, had, at the recommendation of Veleda Riddle, appointed Tom Simpson, who was still with Mike Stearns, fighting the Ottomans in Austria, as bishop-elect of the State of Thuringia-Franconia caused an immense stir in Grantville's little community of up-time Episcopalians, down-time [...]

Stockholm September, 1635   The scent of tea wafted up from the tulip-shaped glass. The aroma made the older man smile in childish delight. He took the sugar cube between his teeth and lifted the piping hot cup by the rim, sipping carefully. The bitter hot liquid melted the sweet sugar in a perfect balance [...]

Hear the loud alarum bells— Brazen bells! What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! -Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells"   In the name of Jesus the Lord, Amen. I, Georg Theodor Ernsting, a landowner in Oberkochen, near the Imperial City of Aalen, [...]

Chapter 7 - Grantville Nicholas pushed his chair back from the table and the books that cluttered it. He needed to stand and stretch, get a drink. More importantly, he needed to think. He had come to the Grantville Public Library to finally start his research and what he had found was both frustrating and [...]

  Chapter 9   Andreas Schardius knew he was good. Not in the sense that he was a good man. He knew he was not. No, he knew he was good, in the sense that he made things happen. He accomplished things. He made money, lots of money. And when he was good, according to [...]

"Are you getting this?" Or so Liam Peterson might have heard. He wasn't one to spend a mind-numbing shift rearranging cargo in silence—nor to endure the endless droning "news" adrift in the short passageway from Andy's compact bridge. And yet, there was something compelling about that maybe-heard question. He removed an ear bud. As the [...]