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by D. J. Butler (Author)
1859.
War is coming.
In the mounting tension all eyes turn west, to the Kingdom of Deseret. The Madman Orson Pratt's perfection of air-ship technology already has every power scrambling to get Deseret's Brigham Young into the war as its ally, or sidelined permanently. The stakes only rise with the rumors that Pratt's newest invention is a working, deadly, phlogiston cannon.
Sam Clemens of the United States Army rides into Deseret on his amphibious steam-truck, the Jim Smiley. Racing against him on the land-ferry Liahona comes Captain Richard Burton, explorer, linguist, soldier, and hard-headed man of science. Edgar Allan Poe, a master spy presumed dead for a decade, travels in disguise as an exhibitor f Egyptian antiquities, doing his dirty work for the clandestine confederate leadership with flesh-eating clocksprung scarab beetles and a hypnotic hypocephalus. The rivals fight each other tooth and nail and clash with the Kingdom's loyal but eccentric defender, the Deseret Marshal Orrin Porter Rockwell.
But why are Deseret's Danite militiamen hunting Rockwell? And why does the Madman seem to be playing his own game?
Author Biography
D.J. Butler (Dave) is a novelist living in the Rocky Mountain northwest. His training is in law, and he worked as a securities lawyer at a major international firm and in house at two multinational semiconductor manufacturers before taking up writing fiction. Dave writes speculative fiction for all audiences. In addition to his steampunk, urban fantasy, and science fiction novels published with Wordfire Press, he has a forthcoming steampunk fantasy series to be published by Knopf. Look for The Kidnap Plot in spring of 2016. Dave is a lover of language and languages, a guitarist and self-recorder, and a serious reader. He is married to a powerful and clever woman and together they have three devious children. Read about Dave's writing projects at http: //davidjohnbutler.com.
