The only thing that vexed her more was her daughter’s emancipated mind-set. The woman feared progress as though it were the plague.

If her mother, who resisted anything relying on cogs, pipes, and belts, had her way, they’d be traveling by horse and buggy. She supposed she shouldn’t complain about their fickle and sluggish mode of transportation. Others, like Papa, hoarded such fuel for special occasions or, in his case, special projects.

Since the Peace War, only the very rich could afford petrol for everyday use. Stoking the coal in the firebox, she simultaneously praised her papa’s ingenuity and cursed the extraordinary and unreasonable price of gasoline.

“Apologies, Mother.” Repressing her frustration, Miss Amelia Darcy endured her mother’s disapproving glare-she was well used to it-and moved to the rear of Loco-Bug, the family’s one-of-a-kind steam-powered automocoach. Thirty-one years after the invasion of the twentieth-century Peace RebelsĪnd here I was congratulating myself for being so astonishingly polite. Soon the pair is dragged into an international conspiracy that could change the course of history…again. Tuck agrees to escort Amelia to her destination, but the two are challenged by political unrest, a devious sky pirate, and their own sizzling attraction. But her quest is altered when her kitecycle crashes into the airship of ex–Air Marshal-and scandalous dime novel hero-Tucker Gentry. Armed with only her father’s stories of a forgotten da Vinci workshop, a mechanically enhanced falcon, and an Italian cook, Amelia takes flight for Florence, Italy. Their only hope to save the family reputation and fortune is to embark on a quest to discover an invention of historical importance in honor of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. But when her father, an eccentric inventor, dies, the Darcy siblings are left with scrap metal-and not a penny to their names. Her heart belongs to the sky and the dirigibles of brass and steel that swoop over Victorian England. Amelia Darcy has no interest in marrying well.

Her Sky Cowboy by Beth Ciotta