Nov42013

Curtsies & Conspiracies Launches Tomorrow

Book 2 of the Finishing School is due out tomorrow.

Curtsies & Conspiracies chronicles Sophronia’s continuing efforts to construct her own identity and find a place for herself in my tea-drenched steampunk world. Of course, the problem is, how does a girl build an identity when she is a spy and her stock in trade is to assume many different identities?

I know I’m excited too. But if you feel tempted to faint, be sure to do it properly!

Some background.

 

“Who doesn’t want an exploding wicker chicken?”
~ Etiquette & Espionage

Sophronia certainly does. In fact, most of the entirely proper students at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality could come up with some very crafty applications for detonating decorative fowl. At a school for spies such things are common place. Explosions aren’t the problem.

The problem is that Sophronia is getting too good at spying.

Clambering around the massive dirigible that is the school, Sophronia learns things she shouldn’t know, and witnesses things she shouldn’t see. Then, with both friends and teachers upset by her meddling, the most tragic thing of all occurs  – boys come on board. The entire school goes under cover, literally cloud cover, and floats into town under the auspices of witnessing a great technological innovation. But this is a school of espionage and things are never quite what they seem.

Sophronia is left asking herself a whole new set of challenging questions, the kind that don’t show up in class.

  • * Can she win back her friends in time to warn Dimity that her life is in danger?
  • * Is the brooding Lord Mersey more than just a pretty face?
  • * What are Soap and the sooties hiding in the boiler room?
  • * And is she really the only student who realizes their covert trip to London is more than anyone expects?

In this second installment of the Finishing School series, the pace of Sophronia’s education speeds up, and her perceptions of the world and politics around her are forcibly broadened. There are ever more treacherous petticoats to maneuver, werewolf handkerchiefs to poison, and vampires plummeting out of the sky. Sophronia is thrust bonnet-covered head first into a milling throng of secret Picklemen societies, illegal technology, and supernatural machinations. Can one young lady of dubious quality survive it unscathed? Or perhaps a better question is, can society survive Sophronia?

Exploding wicker chickens ahead!

Book News:
Steampunk Canada says, “The author has done a wonderful job of continuing Sophronia’s schooling at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality from the first book of the series into the next. It begins right in the middle of one of her lessons and continues smoothly into the meat of the story.”

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Posted by Gail Carriger

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