Not your typical shipboard romance . . .
Available Now in Paperback!
Bad luck stalks Ewan Gilmore, a crewman on the steam liner Isle of Lewis. It’s a blot that makes him a pariah among the crew. Now he’s given one last chance to prove himself or be left behind on the pier – he must masquerade as a passenger and serve as secret bodyguard for a certain Professor Jakub Skovajsa and his gifted daughter, Tereza.
The Skovajas have been hounded out of the country under a cloud of grief, suspicion, and fear. Not even they know exactly what happened during the professor’s last experiment; he claims to have lost all memory of it, and Tereza can’t – or won’t – reveal what she knows. But somehow it killed a squad of soldiers, a general, two congressmen, the Secretary of War, and Tereza’s mother, Mrs. Skovajsová. Rumor has it the professor was working on a secret weapon that would end all wars, and that he still has a prototype hidden away.
No other ship will take the Skovajsas, but the Isle of Lewis can’t afford not to. As passions rise on board, the Lewis steams eastward into a maelstrom of stowaways, shysters, dissemblers, spies, and a raging hurricane, with the mystery of the Bell Cannon at its eye.
The Bell Cannon Affair started as a lark. I decided to write something that would be a beach read: thrills, intrigue, and a large cast of characters who were all “types”, with whatever author’s message happened to sneak in during the writing. All of my previous novels were coming-of-age stories, so my main characters here would already be of age, though mostly still young. As in Finn’s Clock, the background and setting would be as realistic as I could make them – with the exception of, in this case, a touch of science fiction. And since I had already decided to follow Finn’s Clock with a story set in the heart of the Victorian Era, it would be the SF of the era, not quite Steampunk with all its tropes and clichés, but definitely a gaslight adventure. And since I write for Boatman Press, there just had to be a boat in it. The SS Isle of Lewis is now boarding . . .
Click here to read an excerpt!
Order it from your local bookstore (tell them it’s available from Ingram) or find it online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and most of the other major and minor outlets! You’ll find it in ebook format too of course.