On the first day of Christmas My true love gave to me Dreadful 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 Trevelyan and Andrew Malvern at a reception to which the Prince Consort himself is expected. Captain Ian Hollys brings his fiancée Alice Chalmers to attend and meet his family—people who cannot see past her flight boots to the woman who stands by his side as an equal. 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 unlike Gloria, said plans don’t include cutting off the supply of arms to the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias. It’s time for Alice—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 … “All of the women are planning their own lives. Even better, they’re all planning different lives, different paths—because there’s more than one way for a woman to live and be strong and express her agency... The books are already turning into far more than Claire’s story and I’m happy to see that.” —Fangs for the Fantasy, on Devices Brightly Shining Devices Brightly Shining is a novella connecting Claire’s story with that of Gloria Meriwether-Astor in the Magnificent Devices steampunk world. No strong language, just a very proper kiss or two and a satisfying solution. If you like books by Gail Carriger, Lindsay Buroker, or Nancy Warren, you’re in the right place. Enjoy!

This box set contains four volumes in the bestselling Magnificent Devices steampunk series—Devices Brightly Shining, Fields of Air, Fields of Iron, and Fields of Gold, an edition of over 250,000 words. Her father started a war. She intends to stop it. Gloria Meriwether-Astor’s friendship with Lady Claire Trevelyan has changed her life. With nothing more than grit, compassion, and the help of her friends, she takes on the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias as that nation prepares to invade the Texican Territory. What else is the daughter of an arms dealer to do, when her father was the one responsible for this disaster? The lives of thousands may depend on her ability to stop the war … even if it means losing everything and everyone she has come to love … If you like old-fashioned adventure, brave women, lasting friendship, and strong-willed chickens, you’ll love the Magnificent Devices series. Fangs for the Fantasy says Gloria “makes hard choices because they’re right, because of principle, because of morality—perhaps even out of a need to change her family and her business’s legacy: but Gloria’s is ultimately the most unselfish path and that is unexpected.” With this box set, you can read all of her adventures!

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—until a desperate and fugitive Alice Chalmers turns up seeking 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 Malvern begins to despair of his fiancée ever choosing a wedding gown. But when help is denied from official quarters, the close bonds of friendship and shared adventure demand that they set sail in the airship Athena. There is a brooding evil waiting for them in Venice … an evil that would 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 don’t want their help … the situation clearly calls for the inner resources of a lady of integrity. “It’s another element I love about these books; from Claire to Gloria to Alice to Lizzie and Maggie to Lady Dunsmuir, the women in this series generally like and respect each other. Other women are not required to be lesser—weaker, more cowardly, less intelligent—in order for Claire to be awesome. She is not an exceptional woman, she is an awesome woman among awesome women.” —Fangs for the Fantasy, on A Lady of Integrity A Lady of Integrity is the seventh novel in the Magnificent Devices steampunk series. No strong language, just a very proper kiss or two and a satisfying solution. If you like books by Gail Carriger, Lindsay Buroker, or Emma Jane Holloway, you’re in the right place. Enjoy!

This book explores the ways in which contemporary writers, artists, directors, producers and fans use the opportunities offered by popular fantasy to exceed or challenge norms of gender and sexuality, focusing on a range of media, including television episodes and series, films, video games and multi-player online role-play games, novels and short stories, comics, manga and graphic novels, and board games. Engaging directly with an enormously successful popular genre which is often overlooked by literary and cultural criticism, contributors pay close attention to the ways in which the producers of fantasy texts, whether visual, game, cinematic, graphic or literary texts, are able to play with gender and sexuality, to challenge and disrupt received notions and to allow and encourage their audiences to imagine ways of being outside of the constitutive constraints of socialized gender and sexual identity. With rich case studies from the US, Australia, UK, Japan and Europe, all concentrating not on the critique of fantasy texts which duplicate or reinforce existing prejudices about gender and sexuality, but on examining the exploration of or attempt to make possible non-normative gendered and sexual identities, this volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities, with interests in popular culture, fantasy, media studies and gender and sexualities.

How much must one sacrifice for the sake of friendship? Lady Claire Trevelyan has had to deal with betrayal before, but none is quite so painful as the belief that Gloria Meriwether-Astor deserted her and her friends and left them to die under the waters of Venice. But when she learns that Gloria has vanished, can she do the right thing and attempt to find the missing heiress? Of course she must. But this does not sit well with the gentlemen in her life, who had every reason to believe she planned to settle down at last. Suddenly Claire finds herself without a career, a fiancé, or the confidence in her own abilities that has carried her this far. Worse, 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? “I have to repeat how excellent this series is with the female characters. Not just because they’re good and capable and interesting, but because they’re also different.” Fangs for the Fantasy, on A Gentleman of Means A Gentleman of Means is the eighth novel in the Magnificent Devices steampunk series. No strong language, just a very proper kiss or two and a satisfying solution. If you like books by Gail Carriger, Lindsay Buroker, or Emma Jane Holloway, you’re in the right place. Enjoy!

One of the most acclaimed books of our time—the definitive Vietnam War exposé and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. When he came to Vietnam in 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann was the one clear-sighted participant in an enterprise riddled with arrogance and self-deception, a charismatic soldier who put his life and career on the line in an attempt to convince his superiors that the war should be fought another way. By the time he died in 1972, Vann had embraced the follies he once decried. He died believing that the war had been won. In this magisterial book, a monument of history and biography that was awarded the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, a renowned journalist tells the story of John Vann—"the one irreplaceable American in Vietnam"—and of the tragedy that destroyed a country and squandered so much of America's young manhood and resources.

She wants to be an engineer, but 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 and loses, 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. Will she achieve her goal of an engineering degree? Will her loyalty to her friends be her undoing when it jeopardizes the plans of powerful men? And just how many funerals will her unfortunate mother be forced to arrange? “An immensely fun series, a wonderful main character (one of my favourites in the genre) and a great sense of Victorian style and language that’s both fun and beautiful to read.” —Fangs for the Fantasy: The latest in urban fantasy from a social justice perspective This two-book set contains Lady of Devices and Her Own Devices, the first two novels in the Magnificent Devices series. The series is meant to be read in order, but it is divided into duets and quartets for easy navigation. If you like books by Gail Carriger, Lindsay Buroker, or Nancy Warren, you’re in the right place. Enjoy!