Magnificent Devices

Book 7 in the Magnificent Devices steampunk series!

Will a daring rescue put a wedding and a future at risk?

Lady Claire Trevelyan and renowned scientist Andrew Malvern are looking forward to domestic felicity in London when they are surprised by an unexpected visitor. A desperate and fugitive Alice Chalmers seeks their help—her ship has been seized in the Duchy of Venice and worse, her navigator Jake has been thrown into the dreaded underwater prison from which no one ever escapes. Even the innocent.

Lady Claire is about to embark on her career in Munich at the Zeppelin Airship Works. The Mopsies are beginning their final year at school. Andrew Malvern begins to despair of his fiancée ever choosing a wedding gown … but when help is denied from official quarters, the close bonds of friendship and shared adventure trump all these considerations with an urgency that cannot be ignored.

But there is a brooding evil waiting for them in Venice … an evil that would just as soon put an end to the flock’s interference once and for all. With an innocent friend’s unexpected return and a pair of secret agents who would prefer that women not become involved … the situation clearly calls for the inner resources of a lady of integrity.

“An immensely fun series with some excellent anti-sexist messages, a wonderful main character (one of my favourites in the genre) and a great sense of Victorian style and language that’s both fun and beautiful to read.” —Fangs for the Fantasy: The latest in urban fantasy from a social justice perspective

How much must one sacrifice for the sake of friendship? Lady Claire Trevelyan has had to deal with betrayal before, in small ways and large. But none is quite so painful as the belief that Gloria Meriwether-Astor had deserted her and her friends and left them to die under the waters of Venice. When she learns that Gloria has inexplicably vanished, she has no choice but to follow her heart and attempt to find the missing heiress. But the decisions of the heart do not sit well with the gentlemen in her life, who had every reason to believe she planned to settle down at last—and suddenly Claire finds herself without a career, a fiancé, or the confidence in her own abilities that has carried her this far. Captain Ian Hollys is suffering from the megrims and cannot seem to recover from his dreadful experience as a prisoner. Alice’s dream of captaining her own ship in England is scuttled. Tigg is struggling with a revelation that has turned his life upside down—and may result in a betrayal more harrowing than any the flock has yet seen.
Will the bond of friendship that has brought Claire and the flock together be the very thing that separates them for good? Or will love tip the balance and prove that what really defines a gentleman of means is none other than a lady of resources?

This four-book set contains the “Claire Quartet”—Lady of Devices, Her Own Devices, Magnificent Devices, and Brilliant Devices, an edition of over 250,000 words.

London, 1889. Victoria is Queen. Charles Darwin’s son is Prime Minister. And steam is the power that runs the world.

At 17, Claire Trevelyan, daughter of Viscount St. Ives, was expected to do nothing more than pour an elegant cup of tea, sew a fine seam, and catch a rich husband. Unfortunately, Claire’s talents lie not in the ballroom, but in the chemistry lab, where things have a regrettable habit of blowing up. When her father gambles the estate on the combustion engine and loses, Claire finds herself down and out on the mean streets of London. But being a young woman of resources and intellect, she turns fortune on its head …

A South Bank gang—Snouts, Tigg, Jake, 10-year-old twin girls called the Mopsies, Weepin’ Willie, and Rosie the chicken—soon becomes Claire’s flock. But concealing her secret life becomes increasingly difficult, particularly when a powerful lord proposes and she and her friends are forced to flee on an airship to the Americas. Will she achieve her goal of a university degree? Will her loyalty to her friends be her undoing when it jeopardizes the plans of powerful men who desire money more than honor? And just how many funerals will her unfortunate mother be forced to arrange?

You can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your family … or can you?

Under normal circumstances, Maggie and Lizzie would be delighted to meet their long-lost relatives and be reunited with those who had believed them dead, but when are the Mopsies’ circumstances ever to be considered normal? With her half-brother Claude Seacombe, Lizzie travels to Cornwall to meet her mother’s parents. Maggie goes along, too, since she is part of the family … or so one might assume. But the more time she spends in her grandparents’ clifftop mansion, the more she realizes that something is not right, and the events surrounding her own mother’s death are more mysterious—and dangerous—than anyone alive suspects.

For an old nemesis is preying on the weak and proud, and no matter how well dressed or well educated a young lady might be, she cannot stand by and watch evil destroy a beloved cousin’s future. Maggie must straighten her spine and plunge into danger for Lizzie’s sake … and prove that no matter the name she bears, she is first and foremost what the Lady of Devices believes her to be … a lady of spirit.

Book 5 in the Magnificent Devices series!

You can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your family ... or can you?

Now sixteen, the twins Lizzie and Maggie are educated young ladies who have not been called “the Mopsies” in years … except by their guardian, Lady Claire Trevelyan. With the happy prospect of choosing their own future, the girls can leave their dodgy past behind, and Lizzie can bury her deepest childhood memories where they can do no harm. Upon her graduation from school, Lizzie is awarded an enormous honor—but can she pay the price? Is she ready to be separated from Maggie and become the woman she believes she was meant to be—or will old habits tempt her into defiance and plunge her into disaster?

On a dare, Lizzie picks the wrong man's pocket and nearly loses her life. But these frightening events bear unexpected The dream Lizzie holds closest to her heart comes true in a most unexpected way. But this dream, too, comes with a price. Lizzie must decide whether her true family is the one she was born to … or the one she chose that long-ago day when the Lady of Devices steamed into their lives …

Book four in the Magnificent Devices steampunk series! A lady of resources has the power to change the world-if she can stay alive long enough to do it. Lady Claire Trevelyan had been looking forward to glittering balls, congenial society, and relief from pursuit during her stay with Lord and Lady Dunsmuir in the Canadas. Well, perhaps not entirely. Being pursued by a handsome airship captain is rather diverting, especially when it appears her erstwhile employer, Andrew Malvern, is becoming much too distracted by a certain blond mechanic. But a shot fired in the night puts an end to such diversions, and instead plunges her and her orphaned band of children into a fight for their very survival. Between secret conversations at the highest levels of society and skullduggery in the diamond mines, Claire must discover who is behind a series of alarming attempts on her friends' lives-before her mother is compelled to make funeral arrangements yet again. "I have a big grin on my face which is my Magnificent Devices grin-it's impossible not to smile your way through this book. It's such swashbucklingly good fun. The tone has that wonderful lightness of humour and joy that keeps up in even the direst of situations. At the same time it wonderfully maintains the sense of time and place-the Victorian feel, the language, the class, the clothing, the attitudes are all extremely vivid, carefully maintained and, at times, gloriously lampooned." -Fangs for the Fantasy, on Brilliant Devices

An air voyage to remember turns into a disaster no one may survive.

With her orphaned charges, Lady Claire Trevelyan joins the Earl of Dunsmuir’s family on an airship voyage to the Americas. If she can stay out of Lord James Selwyn’s way until her eighteenth birthday, she will be of age and cannot be forced into marriage. What she doesn’t know is that Lord James is in the Americas, too, with Andrew Malvern closing in on him—and the wonderful device he stole. But when a storm cripples the airship and air pirates swoop in like carrion birds, Claire and the children must live by their wits to make their way across a harsh landscape. Will Andrew ever see her again and right the wrong he believes he has done? Will Lord James succeed in his monumental thievery? And how exactly does Rosie the chicken evade the soup pot?

Tighten your goggles, pull on your gloves, and prepare yourself for stratagems and strangeness in the third book in the series, Magnificent Devices!

Escaped lunatics, lost children, vengeful lords, and love. Really, the situation is becoming quite impossible.

Seventeen-year-old Lady Claire Trevelyan, left alone after the Arabian Bubble financial disaster claims home and family, now leads the cleverest gang in the London underworld. Between outwitting a rival gang, inventing a device that will net her and her scientist employer worldwide fame, and keeping her mother from marrying her off, she can almost forget that a powerful lord wants to get closer ... and if he succeeds, can destroy it all with a single word ...