Lady of Devices: A steampunk adventure novel with smart women inventors

Shelley Adina

Dec 2019 · Magnificent Devices Book 1 · Moonshell Books, Inc.

About this ebook

Enjoy this first in series novel of steampunk action and adventure that's family friendly and full of heart, by award-winning author Shelley Adina.

She wants to be an engineer, but her parents—and society—will never allow it. Until riots break out in steampunk London and she seizes her chance...

It’s 1889, and Lady Claire Trevelyan is expected to do nothing more with her life than catch a rich husband. Unfortunately, her talents lie not in the ballroom, but in the laboratory, where her experiments have an embarrassing habit of blowing up. 

When her father gambles the estate on the combustion engine despite the fact that everyone knows the world runs on steam, Claire finds herself out in the street with nothing to her name but her steam landau and her second best hat. 

But the embarrassments of her old life might be the talents that save her now ... if she can stay alive long enough to barter her skills for a street gang’s protection. It’s not long before a new leader rises in the London underworld, known only as the Lady of Devices … a double life Claire must keep secret if she is to achieve her dream and become the assistant to a world-renowned scientist ...

If you like old-fashioned adventure, brave women, clever children, and strong-willed chickens, you’ll love the first book in the Magnificent Devices series. Books 1-4 are best read as a quartet. Fangs for the Fantasy says Claire is “a wonderful main character (one of my favourites in the genre)” and the series has “a great sense of Victorian style and language that’s both fun and beautiful to read.” If you like books by Gail Carriger, Lindsay Buroker, and Emma Jane Holloway, you're in the right place. Enjoy!

Ratings and reviews

Well written and enjoyable, the storyline moved along quickly and alas was finished much to soon. But there are more tales of the Lady to read, thank dear arthor for a delightful story.

Great storyline.

About the author

Shelley Adina is the author of more than 50 novels published by Harlequin, Warner, Hachette, and Moonshell Books, Inc., her own independent press. She writes steampunk mystery and adventure as Shelley Adina, classic Regency romance as Charlotte Henry; and as Adina Senft, is the USA Today bestselling author of Amish women’s fiction. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University in the UK, won RWA’s RITA Award® in 2005, and was a finalist in 2006. She appeared in the 2016 documentary film Love Between the Covers, is a popular speaker and convention panelist, and has been a guest on many podcasts, including Worldshapers and Realm of Books. When she’s not writing, Shelley is usually quilting, sewing historical costumes, or enjoying the garden with her flock of rescued chickens.