The hour and day that Fedorov and the crew of

Kirov

have long feared draws nigh, the moment of insoluble conflict, when their greatest enemy is not another hostile ship or plane, but their own selves—

Paradox Hour

.

Yet before that moment comes, the ship finds itself in one of the greatest naval chases of all time. It is May, 1941, and a powerful German battlefleet has broken out into the Atlantic. Admiral Tovey is fast on the heels of Hindenburg, but must first run the gauntlet of Gibraltar to get into the hunt. With him are three of the most powerful ships in the world,

Kazan, Argos Fire

, and the battlecruiser

Kirov

. Yet Admiral Lütjens will not fight alone. The Kriegsmarine sorties with all its might as Raeder throws the dice in a desperate bid to prove his navy’s worth and power. Soon the Royal Navy is reaching for every warship it can find to beat to quarters. One ship called to the action, HMS

Rodney

, harbors a secret—the long missing key revealed by Elena Fairchild. It is now at grave risk, and should it be lost, the secret it might unlock will die with it, and the doom Fairchild so darkly describes may then be unavoidable.

It is a race against time itself, and the shadow of doom that hangs over the world. Meanwhile, consumed by the fire of his own thirst for vengeance, one other man figures prominently in that fate—Vladimir Karpov—for he holds yet another key to the outcome of all these events, as he sets himself on chase of his own, desperate to find and cow his arch rival and enemy, Ivan Volkov.

The stunning conclusion of the eight book

Altered States

saga of the

Kirov Series

,

Paradox Hour

also stands as a “bridge novel” leading to the third saga of the long running series. The alternate history of WWII careens into 1942 and 1943 with the premier of

Doppelganger

, coming in March 2015.