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 fiance, 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?

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 begins to despair of his fiancee 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.

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 fruit: 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 into or the one she chose that long-ago day when the Lady of Devices steamed into their lives.

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.

This box set contains four novellas in the bestselling Magnificent Devices steampunk series.
Carrick House: Married eight months, Lady Claire Trevelyan and Dr. Andrew Malvern are blissfully working together on a new invention, and providing a home for a collection of street sparrows. Then Claire’s mother, the redoubtable Lady Jermyn, arrives with her family in tow and expects to stay indefinitely . . . Peony Churchill turns up on the doorstep with valise in hand . . .
Selwyn Place: When Lady Emilie Selwyn invites Andrew and Lady Claire Malvern to her very first country house party, Claire is delighted to offer her help-until she discovers that Peony Churchill is also on the guest list.
Holly Cottage: Maggie Polgarth astonishes everyone at Carrick House when, in a bid for independence, she buys a plot of land and a cottage near Vauxhall Gardens. From one decision, change ripples outward in the flock.
Gwynn Place: The winds of change are blowing-Lady Claire is a big sister again with the arrival of little Caroline, and eight-year-old Nicholas is preparing to go to Eton.

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to meDreadful relations, high expectations,And a sudden urge to pull up ropes and flee.

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 fiancee, 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.

While adjusting to life as a newlywed, seeing to her business affairs, and preparing the Mopsies to return to school in Munich, Lady Claire is settling into her new life with joy. When two young cousins of Gloria Meriwether-Astor arrive in London, the inhabitants of Carrick House are happy to welcome them. Sydney and Hugh Meriwether-Astor are completing a world tour, and the Dunsmuirs’ ball is just the thing to cap it off in splendid fashion. But Maggie learns that Sydney has his own plans for the family business–and they don’t include cutting off the supply of arms to the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias, as Gloria is determined to do.

It’s time for someone with a spine, an airship of her own, and reasons to put fields of air between herself and decisions about her future to pull up ropes and warn Gloria that betrayal is closer than she thinks.

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. Her intention–to stop the train carrying the final shipment of monstrous mechanicals into the Wild West. But they should have known that making a deal with air pirate Ned Mose in exchange for his help could never end well.

Includes Devices Brightly Shining, a bonus three-hour prequel to Fields of Air!

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. Her intention–to stop the train carrying the final shipment of monstrous mechanicals into the Wild West. But they should have known that making a deal with air pirate Ned Mose in exchange for his help could never end well.

What is a lady of principle to do? For the lives of thousands may depend on her ability to stop the war … though it means losing everything and everyone she has come to love.

If a wedding won’t stop a war, what will?

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, and then she could return to Philadelphia with her husband, her conscience clear at last. 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!

Every woman has a threshold she will not cross. Gloria has come to love her riverboat captain, and the price of peace is simply too high. But when the evil stalking the pleasant gardens of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa claims its victim, the time for belief is over and the time to act–daringly, outrageously–is at hand. Do the witches hold the key to a way out of this trap?

All Gloria has to do is take up the crown of roses and play for the highest stakes. All she has to do is become the iron dragon … and start a war of her own.

“Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife, so that I may accompany you to San Francisco de Asis and help you stop this war?”

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. But with an entire country mobilizing for war, the attempt could mean her life–and the life of the one person she is beginning to care for …

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.
On the journey, friendship blooms between Daisy and Miss Emma Makepeace, who is traveling to the Texican Territories as a mail-order bride. When Emma begs the girls to delay their search by a day or two in order to stand with her at the altar, Daisy is delighted to accept.
But the wedding day dawns on a dreadful discovery. Within hours the Texican Rangers have their man-but even in her grief, Daisy is convinced he cannot have killed her friend. She must right this terrible mistake before he hangs . . . and before the real culprit realizes that two very observant young ladies are not going to allow him to get away with murder . . .

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. Now the dancer is missing-and their father seems to be the only suspect. There is nothing for it-Daisy and Freddie must find the girl, for only she can clear his name, and tell them where he might be now.
But there are forces arrayed against them in Santa Fe . . . men in the shadows who have bet too much on a dancer’s disappearance to let two young ladies interfere and raise the stakes . . .

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.
But some secrets are fatal, and when the local matchmaker pays the price with her life on the night of the Autumn Ball, the ladies of the society beg Daisy and Freddie to help them find the killer of their fallen sister. Aided by Miss Peony Churchill, an intrepid family of aeronauts, and a Rocky Mountain Detective, the Linden sisters must see justice done and unmask a deadly conspiracy. But in a town where murder is more common than spiked absinthe, will they find themselves in the killer’s sights instead?