The Magnificent Devices Series

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. It's not long before a new leader rises in the underworld, known only as the Lady of Devices...

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…

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.

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.

It is the event of the season - on Twelfth Night, the Dunsmuirs have invited the cream of London society to celebrate the marriage of Lady Claire and Andrew Malvern at a reception to which the prince consort himself is expected. Captain Ian Hollys brings his fiancée, Alice Chalmers, to London to attend and to meet his family - people who cannot see past her flight boots to the woman who stands by his side as an equal.

Her father may have sacrificed his own life to save hers, but heiress Gloria Meriwether-Astor is finding it difficult to forgive him. After all, how many young ladies of her acquaintance will inherit wealth, beauty, and a legacy of arms dealing? Now the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias is about to declare war on the Texican Territory and Gloria simply will not allow it. In company with Alice Chalmers and the crew of Swan, along with a lost young Evan Douglas seeking to make reparation for his own sins, she takes to the air.

Gloria Meriwether-Astor, determined to end the invasion her father and a power-hungry diplomat started, has found safety with the witches of the river canyons in the Wild West. But how can one young lady without so much as a hat to her name challenge a kingdom? Confronted with the solution - marriage - she has two choices: accept the help she needs or return to Philadelphia alone and a failure. So, in the company of riverboat Captain Stan Fremont - the dashing rogue she must now call husband - she sets off for the capital to negotiate with the viceroy. 

Gloria Meriwether-Astor's belief in doing the right thing has carried her across the world and through dangers that would have felled a lesser woman. She believed that if she married the dashing Captain Fremont, she could approach the Viceroy of the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias with impunity. She could convince the prince to stop the war their fathers began. Sadly, belief and reality are two different things. The prince agrees to her proposal on one condition - that she annul her marriage and become his wife instead.

Margrethe Amelia Linden (Daisy to her friends) is a young woman of gentle upbringing, some talent as a watercolorist, and firm opinions that often get her into trouble. Determined to find her missing father, in the summer of 1895 she sets out for the last place he was seen: the Wild West. It's a rude shock when her younger sister stows away on the airship - such behavior no doubt the result of her unsuitable friendship with Maggie Polgarth and the Carrick House set.

Daisy Linden and her sister, Frederica, arrive by airship in Santa Fe, capital of the Texican Territories, determined to search for their missing father. But two surprises await them - the authorities' baffling refusal to help and a not-so-chance meeting with snake-oil salesman William Barnicott. To their joy, the Lindens find that their father has indeed been seen in Santa Fe. To their horror, it was an assignation with a cancan dancer in the dead of night.

Daisy and Frederica Linden have tracked their missing father to Bodie, the most dangerous town in the Wild West, where bad men murder without guilt and single ladies are as rare and valuable as gold. Here they must depend upon the help of the society of absent friends, that secret network of boardinghouse keepers who know everyone's business - and make secrets their stock in trade.