Shadow Conspiracy Books

In the Year Without a Summer, a group of mad geniuses descended on Geneva. In an attempt to save the body and mind of George Byron, they performed a dreadful and forbidden experiment that forever changed history—and tore their own lives apart. Years later, Byron’s daughter Ada has inherited her father’s genius. With Charles Babbage, inventor of the analytical engine, she invents the “automatic sciences,” allowing the creation of machines that mimic human action, and even human thought. Once again, history has changed. Mechanical spiders perform menial tasks. Intelligent locomotives keep their own time schedules. Massive dirigibles and flying automata have flung the Empire—and piracy—into the sky itself. But even a golden age casts a long shadow, and silent forces are moving in the darkness. Whispers of a conspiracy to destroy the Empire are beginning to surface. The fate of the Geneva experiment and the mad geniuses that created it remains unknown. And the fate of the world itself rests in the hands of Ada Lovelace. In The Shadow Conspiracy, Book View Café’s lineup of bestselling, award-winning authors combines forces to create an unforgettable shared world of steam-powered science, fantastic magic, and dark conspiracy.

The soul of the poet who would be king still seeks immortality — but will it find a home? And will that home be flesh or steel? Revisit the shared Victorian world of transferable souls and intelligent machines introduced in The Shadow Conspiracy . Judith Tarr’s irrepressible Emma Rigby prances through a new adventure with automata. Nancy Jane Moore brings us more missions for the mysterious warrior woman, Jane Freemantle. Chris Dolley brings to life a wonderful parody reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse. Then there are the historical characters who keep popping into our works of fiction. Amy Sterling Casil introduces us to insane artist Richard Dadd and makes us redefine madness. Irene Radford visits Dr. John McLaughlin and his wife Marguerite in the Oregon Country with some questions about when no government is too much government. Pati Nagle gives us some more insight into the life of mystical Marie LaVeau. And always, Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, hovers in the background along with her father, Lord Byron.

In the world of the Shadow Conspiracy where the human soul has proven to be measurable and transferable to an automaton, the question arises: is the robot a person? The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 freed all the slaves in the states in rebellion against the Federal Government. What if that same document freed ensouled automata as well? This third volume of the Shadow Conspiracy has seven stories that examine the question of humanity. We take you from an observation hot air balloon above the siege of Vicksburg to the soul-grinding Battle of the Crater, from simple farm folk who call themselves Friends, to the mysticism of Marie Laveau and Voudon. Our award winning authors ask the age-old question of what makes us human, what is the nature of slavery, and who deserves freedom? Only you can provide the answers.