Book 1

Boneshaker

by Cherie Priest

Published 29 September 2009

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska's ice. Thus was Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue's widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.


Book 2

Dreadnought

by Cherie Priest

Published 28 September 2010
Nurse Mercy Lynch is elbows deep in bloody laundry at a war hospital in Richmond, Virginia, when Clara Barton comes bearing bad news: Mercy's husband has died in a POW camp. On top of that, a telegram from the west coast declares that her estranged father is gravely injured, and he wishes to see her. Mercy sets out toward the Mississippi River. Once there, she'll catch a train over the Rockies and - if the telegram can be believed - be greeted in Washington Territory by the sheriff, who will take her to see her father in Seattle. Reaching the Mississippi is a harrowing adventure by dirigible and rail through war-torn border states. When Mercy finally arrives in St. Louis, the only Tacoma-bound train is pulled by a terrifying Union-operated steam engine called the DREADNOUGHT. Reluctantly, Mercy buys a ticket and climbs aboard. What ought to be a quiet trip turns deadly when the train is beset by bushwhackers, then vigorously attacked by a band of Rebel soldiers. The train is moving away from battle lines into the vast, unincorporated west, so Mercy can't imagine why they're so interested.
Perhaps the mysterious cargo secreted in the second and last train cars has something to do with it? Mercy is just a frustrated nurse who wants to see her father before he dies. But she'll have to survive both Union intrigue and Confederate opposition if she wants to make it off the DREADNOUGHT alive.

Book 3

Ganymede

by Cherie Priest

Published 27 September 2011
The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Although he's happy to run alcohol and guns wherever the money's good, he doesn't think the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly side effects. But reforming is easier said than done: the captain's first legal gig will be paid for by sap money, because the Seattle Underground is in dire need of supplies. New Orleans is not Cly's first pick for a shopping run. He loved the Big Easy once, back when he also loved a beautiful mixed race prostitute named Josephine Early, but that was a decade ago. He's still on Jo's mind, he learns when he gets a telegram about a peculiar piloting job. It's a chance to complete two lucrative jobs at once, one he can't refuse. He sends his old paramour a note and heads for New Orleans, with no idea of what he's in for - or what she wants him to fly. But he won't be flying. Not exactly. Hidden at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it...if only they could sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
..if only it hadn't killed most of the men who'd ever set foot inside it. Now the only question is whether Cly and his crew will end up in the history books, or at the bottom of the ocean.

Book 4

The Inexplicables

by Cherie Priest

Published 13 November 2012

Adventures await Rector “Wreck ’em” Sherman. About to turn eighteen, he’s facing ejection from the orphanage that passed for home. He should also choose a trade, but work is scarce in steam-powered Seattle. And Rector has more unconventional plans.

He’s started dealing in sap, a yellow narcotic produced by rebels and outlaws within the city’s toxic walled enclave. What’s worse, he’s been sampling his wares. Other problems include being haunted by an old friend with a grudge. The pressure builds until he sneaks behind the wall himself, seeking both (un)gainful employment and excitement.

As rumoured, he finds a terrifying host of the hungry undead, and then there’s the monster. Rector's certain that his attacker wasn’t human, or undead. But he’s going to need more proof than his own addled word to expose it. His new mission becomes a compulsion when others witness the creature’s destructiveness, and give its kind a name. The Inexplicables.

Praise for the series: ‘Everything you’d want … pure mad adventure’ Cory Doctorow, ‘Adventure of rollicking pace and sweeping proportions' Scott Westerfeld, ‘Cherie Priest is the high priestess of steampunk' The Seattle Times


Book 5

Fiddlehead

by Cherie Priest

Published 12 November 2013
Ex-spy `Belle Boyd’ is retired – more or less. Retired from spying on the Confederacy anyway. Her short-lived marriage to a Union navy boy cast suspicion on those Southern loyalties, so her mid-forties found her unemployed, widowed and disgraced. Until her life-changing job offer from the staunchly Union Pinkerton Detective Agency.

When she’s required to assist Abraham Lincoln himself, she has to put any old loyalties firmly aside – for a man she spied against twenty years ago. Lincoln’s friend Gideon Bardsley, colleague and ex-slave, is targeted for assassination after the young inventor made a breakthrough. Fiddlehead, Bardsley’s calculating engine, has proved the world is facing an extraordinary threat. Meaning it's not the time for civil war.

Now Bardsley and Fiddlehead are in great danger as forces conspire to keep this potentially unifying secret, the war moving and the money flowing. With spies from both camps gunning for her, can even the notorious Belle Boyd hold the war-hawks at bay?

Cherie Priest has been hailed as 'the High Priestess of Steampunk' - and you can see why in this latest wonderfully written adventure.