Furious, the Emperor ordered the death of his engineers, eliminating China's best chance of fighting back. Since her father's execution eight years ago, Jin Soling has kept her family from falling apart. With her mother addicted to opium and her younger brother in danger of being sent off to the factories, Soling has no choice but to sell off the last of her father's possessions. Unwittingly, her actions bring her to the attention of the imperial court-the same court that betrayed her father. The Crown Prince has launched a secret mission to bring together the remnants of the former Ministry of Science. To restore her family's name, Soling must track down the rebel alchemist who holds the key to powering the imperial fleet. Her only ally is a man she's just met-the engineer with a mysterious past who was once meant to be her husband...

    This is alternate history at its most mindblowing.

    . . .Being an Inquisitor is no job for a nice Jewish boy. But when Sacha Kessler learns he can see witches, he’s yanked out of everyday life on Hester Street and apprenticed to the New York Police Department’s star Inquisitor, Maximillian Wolf.The Inquisitor’s mission is to stop magical crime. And New York at the beginning of the twentieth century is a magical melting pot where each ethnic group has its own brand of homegrown witchcraft and magical gangs rule the streets from Hell’s Kitchen to Chinatown.Soon Sacha has teamed up with fellow apprentice Lily Astral, daughter of one of the city’s richest Wall Street Wizards—and a spoiled snob, if you ask Sacha. Their first job is to find out who’s trying to kill Thomas Edison.Edison has invented a mechanical witch detector that could unleash the worst witch-hunt in American history. Every magician in town has a motive to kill him. But as the investigation unfolds, all the clues lead back to the Lower East Side. And Sacha soon realizes that his own family could be accused of murder!