history where the British control with magic and the colonists rebel by inventing.It’s 1888, and sixteen-year-old Verity Newton lands a job in New York as a governess to a wealthy leading family—but she quickly learns that the family has big secrets. Magisters have always ruled the colonies, but now an underground society of mechanics and engineers are developing non-magical sources of power via steam engines that they hope will help them gain freedom from British rule. The family Verity works for is magister—but it seems like the children's young guardian uncle is sympathetic to the rebel cause. As Verity falls for a charming rebel inventor and agrees to become a spy, she also becomes more and more enmeshed in the magister family’s life. She soon realizes she’s uniquely positioned to advance the cause—but to do so, she’ll have to reveal her own dangerous secret.

    That's what Harriet and Arthur Bloomsbury think, but that comforting feeling is a fiction. Hiding among the stone walls, picturesque barns, and hay bales is a horror they can't imagine. It's deadly, impossible -- maybe even paranormal. This short story isn’t your average murder mystery, because this time, the threat isn’t quite so clear. Is it the serial killers hunting you? Your own paranoia? Or the very laws of nature? The suspense is free.

    One hundred years later, Heron of Alexandria--the city's most renowned inventor and creator of Temple miracles--receives coin from a mysterious patron to investigate the crime. Desperate to be free of the debts incurred by her twin brother, she accepts and sets in motion a chain of events that will shake the Roman Empire and change the course of history forever.

    Songs and Portobellos is a magical story that captures the creativity and clarity of perception that young people possess.The book centres on the development of teenagers Conor and Melanie during the summer of 1967 and explores the influences that bring them to understand their uniqueness.By the end of the summer they have transcended the ordinary, discovered who they are and determined what they stand for.

    London is a city in transition. The Constantine Affliction - strange malady that kills some of its victims and physically transforms others into the opposite sex - has spread scandal and upheaval throughout society. Scientific marvels and disasters, such as clockwork courtesans, the alchemical fires of Whitechapel, electric carriages, and acidic monsters lurking in the Thames, have forever altered the face of the city.Pembroke "Pimm" Halliday is an aristocrat with an interest in criminology, who uses his keen powers of observation to assist the police or private individuals - at least when he's sober enough to do so. Ellie Skyler, who hides her gender behind the byline "E. Skye," is an intrepid journalist driven by both passion and necessity to uncover the truth, no matter where it hides.When Pimm and Skye stumble onto a dark plot that links the city’s most notorious criminal overlord with the Queen’s new consort, famed scientist Sir Bertram Oswald, they soon find the forces of both high and low society arrayed against them. Can they save the city from the arcane machinations of one of history's greatest monsters - and uncover the shocking origin of . . . THE CONSTANTINE AFFLICTION.

    See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I'm one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It's French, so Beatrice tells me."Set in the late 19th century—when the city we now call Seattle Underground was the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes, would-be gold miners were heading to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront, Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable's high-quality bordello. Through Karen's eyes we get to know the other girls in the house—a resourceful group—and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, begging sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone's mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap—a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.Bear brings alive this Jack-the-Ripper yarn of the old west with a light touch in Karen's own memorable voice, and a mesmerizing evocation of classic steam-powered science.

    The Prime Lord’s last will and testament forces Merion west across the Iron Ocean, to the very brink of the Endless Land and all civilisation. To a place they call Wyoming.In the dusty frontier town of Fell Falls, there is no silverware, no servants, no plush velvet nor towering spires. Only dust, danger and the railway. Merion has only one ally to help him escape the torturous heat and unravel the mystery of his father's murder: a faerie warrior named Rhin, and a twelve inch-tall outcast of the fae realm. Revenge and redemption are never easy. There are dark forces at work in Fell Falls, and not just the railwraiths, brigands or the savages. Secrets lurk in Merion’s bloodline. Secrets that will redefine the young Hark, and open up a whole world of magic buried by empire and industry.———WINNER OF THE LIBRARY JOURNAL'S INDIE EBOOK AWARDS 2016BLOGGERS' FAVOURITE OF #SPFBO 2015ABOUT BLOODRUSHThe first book in the Scarlet Star Trilogy, Bloodrush is a coming-of-age and weird western fantasy set in an alternate 1867. It is a time when steam and clockwork seek to push the boundaries of the known world, even if it means trampling an ancient one. An action-packed mix of western and dark fantasy, Bloodrush is perfect for readers of Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Lila Bowen and Stephen King’s Dark Tower.

    Until, that is, he realizes that she is a spirit, and he is the only one who can see or hear her. Her name is Becca Hatcher, and she needs Maddox to help get her home.Farrell Grayson, Modern-day Toronto: Rich and aimless Farrell Grayson is thrilled when the mysterious leader of the ultra-secret Hawkspear Society invites him into the fold. But when he learns exactly what he has to do to prove himself, Farrell starts to question everything he thought he knew about family, loyalty, and himself….Fate has brought these young people together, but ancient magic threatens to rip them apart.

    What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves; and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared--the Red Republic that once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. Now they're just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope. To the west lies a vast, uncharted world, inhabited only by the legends of the immortal and powerful Hill People, who live at one with the earth and its elements. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to the edge of the made world to a spiritually protected mental institution in order to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, a man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. And either side will do anything to understand how.

    Having suffered losses and reversals in his life, he is neither naive nor without considerable personal resources. He isn't just a detective; he's also a conjurer, which makes him someone who lives on the margins of polite society. Some people fear his powers; others merely find him a distasteful rogue who should simply go away . . .but still, he is useful to the powers-that-be when problems arise requiring his unusual skill-set. In the novels Thieftaker and Thieves' Quarry, as well as in the story "A Spell of Vengeance," which was published on Tor.com, Kaille has had to deal with a variety of crimes and their perpetrators. The story that follows is one from Kaille's early days as a thieftaker in Boston. In it, he must face a formidable foe, one of a most unexpected sort, whose own powers, very different from his own, prove the equal of Ethan's.At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

    At 21, her age and her unladylike interest in automatons have sealed her fate as an undesirable marriage prospect. But a devastating plague sends Alice off in a direction beyond the pale—towards a clandestine organization, mad inventors, life-altering secrets, and into the arms of an intrepid fiddle-playing airship pilot.

    The problem? Fortune seekers and airship pirates are after her for the secret to flash gold, her late father's alchemical masterpiece. With her modified rifle and a pocketful of home-made smoke bombs, Kali wouldn't normally hide from a confrontation, but taking on a whole airship single-handedly is a daunting task. Unfortunately, the other racers won't assist her--they're too busy scheming ways to sabotage her unorthodox sled.When a sword-slinging stranger shows up, wanting to hire on as her protector, she's sure he has ulterior motives, but he's the only one interested in helping her. The question is...why?Details: an 18,000-word (75 page) steampunk novella set in the Yukon during the gold rush era.

    Roosevelt. Germany is at war with Russia and rules all of Europe --- including Great Britain --- and Japan is conquering China and East Asia. The United States is an isolationist nation, still struggling with the Great Depression, and is being governed by President Huey P. Long, former Louisiana governor and senator. In Portsmouth, N.H., Sam Miller is a cop supporting a family and trying to stay on the right side of his boss, the law, and his conscience. Then a murder victim is found by the railroad tracks, a number tattooed on the victim's wrist, something never seen before by the police. It's a case Sam could walk away from. It's a case he will be ordered to drop. And it is case that leads him into a lethal vortex of politics, espionage, rebellion, and international intrigue. As war rages in Europe, a new fascist power rises in America, overseen by President Long and his allies. And the people Sam thinks he knows best-his wife, his brother, his colleagues-reveal new identities. In a formerly close-knit city by the sea, where no one is above suspicion and no one is safe, a global summit is about to take place between President Long and Chancellor Adolf Hitler. On that day, history will be changed. And millions of people will live or die, all because Sam Miller has been a very good cop-faced with a very bad choice.

    Clandestine Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences is forbidden to investigate. But Eliza Braun, with bulletproof corset, fondness for dynamite, remarkable devices, drags along timorous new partner Wellington Books, of encyclopedic brain, against Phoenix intent on enslaving Britons.

    But soon it’s discovered that Warwick killed dozens of people as he strove to perfect another improved Ticker for Penny, and he’s put on trial for mass murder. On the last day of Warwick’s trial, the Farthings’ factory is bombed, Penny’s parents disappear, and Penny and her brother, Nic, receive a ransom note demanding all of their Augmentation research if they want to see their parents again. Is someone trying to destroy the Farthings...or is the motive more sinister?Desperate to reunite their family and rescue their research, Penny and her brother recruit fiery baker Violet Nesselrode, gentleman-about-town Sebastian Stirling, and Marcus Kingsley, a young army general who has his own reasons for wanting to lift the veil between this world and the next. Wagers are placed, friends are lost, romance stages an ambush, and time is running out for the girl with the clockwork heart.