Roberta Stephenson Trilogy by Christopher Hoare (1-3)
Requirements: ePUB Reader | 1.6 MB
Overview: I am retired and live with my wife, Shirley, and the shelter dog Emmie, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, writing fiction and working with others on their fiction, as much as life allows. As a lad I lived, breathed, and dreamed aeroplanes; I won a place at RAE Farnborough learning to engineer them. But the reality didn’t fit my dream, so I took off into a stint in the army and then away to join the oil circus. Flying objects are tools when they now appear in my writing―I guess that’s the effect of maturity, but I hope, not a constricted, resigned, and unimaginative maturity. The mind still soars, even without wings, and the dream of carrying others to a better future is now on the page.
Genre: Science Fiction, Steampunk, Fantasy
1. Steam and Stratagem
Welcome to the Steampunk World of Regency…
…where the power of steam has already passed from the age of unsatisfactory experiments to the first country-spanning railways and ships that no longer sail at the whims of weather. Roberta Stephenson is the daughter of the ‘Father of Railways’…a girl almost raised in the engine works and through her experience, and education in the most advanced halls of Miss Mather’s Academy for Girls, is fit to become manager and designer at her father’s steamship yard on the Clyde.
And Britain needs Roberta’s expertise, for fate in this world has dealt more kindly with Napoleon, allowing him to extricate most of his army from Moscow in 1812, and granting him at least a draw at Leipzig in 1813. With developments of the steamships begun in France in 1783 he is ready to take one more gamble to rid himself of the interference of Perfidious Albion, and the island’s safety may depend on the steam powered rams Roberta is offering to their lordships of the Admiralty.
Complicating Roberta’s professional life are her romantic suitors: Lord Julian Bond, man about town and Admiralty spy; the enigmatic Symington Holmes; and Engineer Lieutenant Alfred Worthington RN. It seems that Roberta is destined to choose one of these gentlemen, but will she choose wisely?
2. Spies and Subterfuge
The Mission to Locate Napoleon’s Steamships Continues . . .
Roberta Stephenson, steamship engineer, must once again aid her country, this time with intelligence gathering. No-one has glimpsed Napoleon’s steam-powered pyroscaphes, and there are disquieting rumours of a steam battleship—one even larger than Roberta’s Spiteful.
With stolen American passports and support from the Dutch Resistance, Roberta and Lord Bond’s mission in Antwerp will surely succeed. There is only one difficulty: the passports are for a married couple.
Roberta can’t refuse the proposal, not with her friends in danger. And before the mission is over, her friends and fellow spies will need every ounce of Roberta’s expertise, as she matches wits with Fouché, Napoleon’s Spymaster . . . and Napoleon himself
3. Scandal and Secrets
Britain faces down the threat of Napoleon’s invasion…
…while Roberta closes her mind to the scandal that assails her own life in order to concentrate on the construction of the ships the Navy needs. Her father-in-law, the Marquess of Tiverton, does not accept her marriage to his son aboard the frigate Medusa. Is she legally Lady Bond or is she an imposter?
Her friends work for her good name, even to the point of gaining her an audience with the Prince Regent, but her strongest champion, her husband, is away on the Continent carrying out a succession of duties for Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister.
However, Roberta’s ships are her greatest assets as they gradually take back the command of the Channel from their enemies. Under the command of the new officers and crews trained aboard the Spiteful and her consorts, even the French Ironclad has to pay them mind. And Britain finds new heroes in the Black Gangs aboard the despised vessels that prove the mettle of steam to a service and a country wedded to sail for five hundred years.
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