Devices Brightly Shining: A steampunk Christmas novella

Book nine of the Magnificent Devices series-a short Christmas sugarplum

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 and Andrew Malvern at a reception to which the Prince Consort himself is expected. Captain Ian Hollys brings his fianc e 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 ...

About the Author
RITA Award(R) winning author and Christy finalist Shelley Adina wrote her first novel when she was 13. The literary publisher to whom it was sent rejected it, but he did say she knew how to tell a story. That was enough to keep her going through the rest of her adolescence, a career, a move to another country, an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction, and countless manuscript pages. Shelley is the author of twenty-four novels published by Harlequin, Time/Warner, and Hachette Book Group, and several more published by Moonshell Books, Inc., her own independent press. Shelley is a world traveler who loves to imagine what might have been. Between books, she loves playing the piano and Celtic harp, making period costumes, quilting, and spoiling her flock of rescued chickens.