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Tom Kratman


Dirty Water

Tom Kratman

1462: an alien who feasts on the suffering of sentient beings dines off the agonies of Vlad the Impaler's twenty-thousand victims near Targoviste, Romania.

1688: a woman is framed for witchcraft and hanged by the neck in Boston.

1965: a toy store that never seems to run out of special toys is suspected of being the location of a temporal portal, the same one used by the agony-feeding alien.

2022: a grandfather, showing his young grandchildren what remains of the Boston of his youth, is shown that portal by his granddaughters.

And they're off! Off through the gate that grants wishes, off to deal with time travel, off to break and enter, off to endure the pain of seeing afresh loved ones long since departed in their own time. They're off to deal with hardened, murderous criminals and with equally murderous aliens.

And all of that is set around the time of Christmas joy, in old, fine hotels, with presents, fresh loves, Handel's Messiah, a department store's enchanted village, old delicacies, modern weapons, lasers... and a very special calico cat.

A Desert Called Peace

A Desert Called Peace: Book 1

Tom Kratman

Five hundred years from now, humankind has found a link to a remarkably Earth-like planet and settled there, dividing –as humans will -- into dozens of nation-states. The Federated States of Columbia has consolidated power and risen against the oppression of Earth's corrupt Caliphate. But when Salafi madmen bent on a new jihad kill FSC Captain Patrick Hennessey's family in a cowardly attack, they create an enemy that will show even less mercy than they do.

A legendary warrior is born: Carrera, the scourge of Salafism. He will forge an army from the decrepit remains of a military in a failing state. He will find those who killed his family. He will destroy them utterly. And he will try like hell to not become exactly like the enemy he is fighting.

Only when he is finished will there be peace: the peace of an empty wind as it blows across a desert strewn with the bones of Carrera's enemies.

Carnifex

A Desert Called Peace: Book 2

Tom Kratman

Revenge: it won't bring your wife and kids back, but it might help with the nightmares.

Patricio Carrera has been waging what amounts to a private world war to bring to justice the murderers of his family. He's raised an army and air force and used them. He's raised a fleet and he's about to use that. He's suborned one republic and is about to undermine another. He's tracked his enemies across half a world, breaking, in the process, any notion of international law that stood in his way.

Now he's deployed his legions to Pashtia, penultimate hideout of the Salafi Ikhwan who have made him what he has become. But with each step further from his home, revenge seems no closer. And with each step he leaves behind him a little of his dwindling humanity.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Yet the trail itself grows cold, as cold as the snow-capped, windswept mountains of Pashtia. Only Carrera's hate still burns hot, and that's a fire that is slowly consuming him.

The Lotus Eaters

A Desert Called Peace: Book 3

Tom Kratman

Sometimes paranoia is just a heightened state of awareness.

Carrera's won his war, and inflicted a horrific revenge upon his enemies. But there are wars after wars. The Tauran Union is planning an attack. The criminals of neighboring states are already attacking, and threatening to embroil him in a war with the planet's premier power. His only living son is under fire among the windswept mountains of Pashtia. An enemy fleet is hunting his submarines. His organization has been infiltrated by spies. One of the two governments of his adopted country, Balboa, is trying to destroy everything he's built and reinstitute rule by a corrupt oligarchy. Worst of all, perhaps, he, himself, bearing a crushing burden of guilt, isn't quite the man he once was.

Fortunately, the man he once was, was lucky enough to marry the right woman....

The Amazon Legion

A Desert Called Peace: Book 4

Tom Kratman

On the colony planet of Terra Nova, Carrera has achieved his revenge, destroying those who had destroyed his life by killing his wife and children in a terrorist strike. And, with this help of his second wife, he has thwarted an attempted coup that would have restored the rule of the oligarchy and undone his hard-won victory. But his fight is not over yet...

The problem of the Tauran Union's control of the Transitway between Terra Nova and Earth remains, as does the problem of the nuclear armed United Earth Peace Fleet, orbiting above the planet. The Taurans will not leave, and the Balboans--a proud people, with much recent success in war – will not tolerate that they should remain.

And yet, with one hundred times the population and three or four hundred times the wealth, the Tauran Union outclasses little Balboa in almost every way, even without the support of Old Earth. Sadly, they have that support. Everything, everyone, will have to be used to finish the job of freeing the country and, if possible, the planet. The children must fight. The old must serve, too. And the women?

This is their story, the story of Balboa's Tercio Amazona, the Amazon Regiment.

Watch on the Rhine

Posleen Universe / Earth's Other Defenders: Book 1

John Ringo
Tom Kratman

The invaders are coming - the Posleen, a seemingly unstoppable horde who have conquered one star system after another, literally feeding on their conquests. Earth's dubious allies, the Darhel, have given the humans a number of highly-advanced technological devices, including a process for rejuvenating the aged, including trained and proven soldiers who otherwise would be too old to fight. Rejuvenation may give a critical edge, since to survive, the Earth must use every resource at hand. Every resource . . .

In the dark days after the initial Posleen attack, but before the primary invasion, the Chancellor of Germany faces a critical decision. Over the years, with military cutbacks, the store of experienced German military personnel had simply dwindled. After the destruction of Northern Virginia, he realized that it was necessary to tap the one group he had sworn never, ever, to recall: the few remaining survivors of the Waffen SS. Has he made a devil's bargain, or is this a chance for the reviled SS at last to fight the good fight? And, perhaps, gain redemption. . . .

Watch On the Rhine, a new chapter in the New York Times best-selling Posleen War saga, is perhaps the most unbiased, and brutal, look at the inner workings of the Waffen SS in history. Meticulously researched, it explores all that was good, and evil, about the most infamous military force in history using the backdrop of the Posleen invasion as a canvas.

Yellow Eyes

Posleen Universe / Earth's Other Defenders: Book 2

John Ringo
Tom Kratman

Stand Against the Posleen Horde!

Earth invaded! The Posleen aggressors eating what population they don't outright vaporize! Now the aliens are closing in on a vital choke point for the humans: the Panama Canal. No canal, no food. No food--the North American resistance crumbles, and hope fades. What's worse, slimeball appeasers within the U.S. State Department (surprise!) are set to sell out the resistance to another race of would-be galactic overlords.

One problem for our enemies: when the chips are down for humans, heroes have a habit of arising: A captain of industry who whips a corrupt and inefficient Central American kleptocracy into fighting shape within weeks. A retired Panamanian woman warrior who returns to the field of battle to rally her people in a last stand to save their children. And a battleship that is literally brought to consciousness by the echoes of ancient naval tradition (and a sentient A.I.) to fight ferociously for her country -- and the captain she's come to love.

The Tuloriad

Posleen Universe / Earth's Other Defenders: Book 3

John Ringo
Tom Kratman

The Enemy of My Enemy...

Of the once innumerable battle clans of the Posleen only a handful survive. And that on the sufferance of a group of despised Indowy and Himmit. Plucked from the maelstrom on Earth they are cast out into the eternal blackness of the stars with only a slighltly insane Indowy and a computer virus to guide them.

What follows is a trail of tears and remembrance as the Posleen retrace the footsteps of their ancestors in a search for their homeworld. A search to determine if the Posleen posess the one thing no Human would give them credit for: A soul.

Returned to their beginnings, the question remains: Is there a new path for the Tular Posleen?

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