Combat Monsters: Untold Tales of World War II 

by Henry Herz, Joshua Palmatier (Introduction), Jane Yolen (Contribution by), Mary Fan (Contribution by), Eugen Bacon (Contribution by)

Overview

Combat Monsters brings together twenty award winning and bestselling speculative fiction authors who each bring their own spin on an alternate history of World War II.

New research has uncovered deeply buried military secrets—both the Allied and Axis special operations during WWII included monsters. Did the Soviets use a dragon to win the Battle of Kursk? Did a vampire fight for the Canadians in Holland? Did the US drop the second atomic bomb on a kaiju?

This collection takes real events from World War II and injects them with fantastical creatures that mirror the “unreality” of war itself. Each story—and two poems—feature mythical, mystical, and otherwise unexplainable beings that change the course of history. Dragons rise and fall, witches cast deadly spells, mermaids reroute torpedoes, and all manner of “monsters” intervene for better or worse in the global turmoil of WWII.

Together, Combat Monsters challenge the very definition of monstrous, with the brutality of war as a sobering backdrop.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798874748432
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	02/11/2025
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Henry Herz has authored twelve picture books. His children’s short stories have been published in Highlights for Children, Ladybug magazine, and in anthologies for Albert Whitman & Co. Henry also writes adult science fiction and fantasy short stories. He holds a BS in engineering from Cornell, an MS in engineering from George Washington University, and an MA in political science from Georgetown.

Joshua Palmatier was born in Coudersport, PA, but since his father was in the military he moved around. A lot. He started writing science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories in the eighth grade, and hasn’t stopped writing since. He now resides in upstate New York, where he teaches mathematics at the State University of New York.

Jane Yolen has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century. She has written over three hundred books, including Owl Moon and The Devil’s Arithmetic. She splits her time between Massachusetts and Scotland.

Mary Fan is the author of several novels, including Artificial Absolutes and Starswept, both of which have received praise from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. She is also coeditor of the independently published Brave New Girls anthologies, which are aimed at encouraging girls to explore STEM fields. She lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections as well as Writing Speculative Fiction. Her books Ivory's Story, Danged Black Thing, and Saving Shadows were finalists for the British Science Fiction Association Awards, and she has been nominated for, or has won awards, including the Foreword Indies Award, Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant, Otherwise Fellowship, Nommo Award, and others. Bacon's creative work has appeared in Award Winning Australian Writing, Fantasy magazine, Year's Best African Speculative Fiction, and Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Jeff Edwards is a retired Navy chief and anti-submarine warfare specialist. From chasing Soviet submarines during the Cold War to launching cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf, he had a military career of twenty-three years that spanned the globe. He lives in California with his wife and family where he works as a military consultant.

Peter Clines is the toy-collecting, movie-loving, New York Times bestselling author of Paradox Bound, Terminus, The Fold, 14, the Ex-Heroes series, a pair of short-story collections, a classical mash-up novel, some unproduced screenplays, and countless articles about the film and television industry. He currently lives and writes somewhere in Southern California.

Bishop O’Connell authored the fantasy novels The Stolen, The Forgotten, Three Promises, and The Returned, all from Harper Voyager Impulse.

Tori Eldridge is the author of The Ninja’s Oath, book four in the Lily Wong thriller series—nominated for the Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity Awards, winner of the 2021 Crimson Scribe Best Book of the Year—and the Brazilian dark fantasy Dance among the Flames. Her shorter works appear in numerous anthologies. A former actress, singer, and dancer on Broadway, television, and film, Tori holds a fifth-degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninja martial arts. ToriEldridge.com.

Harry Turtledove, known as the “Master of Alternative History,” is the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of a number of bestselling series and standalone novels. He received his PhD from UCLA in Byzantine history and worked as a technical writer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education before becoming a full-time fiction writer. He also served as the treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He has written a number of successful series, including the Crosstime Traffic series, the Darkness series, and the Worldwar I Colonization series, among others. His standalone works include Ruled Brittania, Every Inch a King, Conan of Venarium, Household Gods, and Justinian.

Scott Sigler is a popular podcaster and a #1 New York Times bestselling author. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their dog.

Ann Dávila Cardinal is a novelist and director of recruitment for the Vermont College of Fine Arts where she also earned her MFA degree in writing. She comes from a long line of Puerto Rican writers, including father and son poets Virgilio and José Antonio Dávila and her cousin, award-winning fiction writer Tere Dávila.

Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling and five-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author, anthology editor, comic book writer, executive producer, and writing teacher. He is the creator of V Wars (Netflix) and Rot & Ruin (Alcon Entertainment). His books have been sold to more than two dozen countries. To learn more about Jonathan, visit him online at jonathanmaberry.

Andrea Tang grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and currently resides in Washington, DC, where she pens fiction by night and collects geopolitical gossip by day. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the University of Oxford, she's also a perpetually recovering theater kid, Fulbright scholar, former pentathlete, tae kwon do black belt, and serial dabbler in various martial and movement arts. Among other things, she enjoys superheroes, giant robots, and the endless versatility of pie.

Kevin Andrew Murphy authored the novel Fathom (UNKNO) and co-authored Drum Into Silence (Tor) and House of Secrets (White Wolf). He has contributed short stories to seven of the Wild Cards anthologies edited by George R.R. Martin, Wendigo Tales (Pinnacle). He’s written gamebooks for Steve Jackson Games, Pathfinder, and White Wolf.

Jeremy Robinson is the author of bestselling thrillers, including XOM-B, SecondWorld, The Last Hunter: Descent, Project Nemesis, and the Jack Sigler thrillers, including Threshold and Ragnarok. His novels have been translated into ten languages. He began his creative career as a comic book illustrator and screenwriter.

Tanya Huff spent three years in the Canadian Naval Reserve then earned a degree in radio and television arts from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. She is the author of numerous short stories and more than twenty novels, including the bestselling Blood books, the Smoke series, and the Keeper’s Chronicles. She has been the guest of honor at numerous American and Canadian conventions, and her work has been nominated for several awards, including winning the Aurora Award for Best Novel. She lives in Ontario, Canada.

David Mack is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure, including the Star Trek Destiny and Cold Equations trilogies. His writing credits span several media, including television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), film, short fiction, and comic books. He resides in New York City.