Lady of Devices

Lady Claire Trevelyan has been trained since childhood to marry money. Her gift lies elsewhere: she invents and builds machines, and the ballroom bores her.

Then her father stakes the family estate on a combustion-engine venture, and it fails. The loss leaves Claire without a home. She goes into the streets of London with only her steam landau and her own ingenuity to live on.

To stay safe, Claire offers her mechanical skills to a street gang, and they give her protection in return. As her work spreads, a new name starts to circulate in London's underworld: the Lady of Devices. She has to keep that identity separate from the rest of her life.

She has a goal of her own. Claire wants to become assistant to a renowned scientist, and a double life exposed would put that position out of reach.

This is a steampunk adventure and the first book in the Magnificent Devices series, a quartet. It follows a resourceful young woman who rebuilds her life from nothing, set in a Victorian-style London of steam engines and crime.