Adventures of Arabella Ashby

Born on Mars, sixteen-year-old Arabella Ashby enjoys many more freedoms than most girls her age, tramping around the desert with her older brother. But that liberty is not to last. Finding Mars much too unladylike for her daughters, Arabella's mother takes the girls back to London, where they're sure to find suitable husbands among the ton. Weighed down by Earth's gravity-and her own unhappiness-Arabella dearly misses her father and their shared passion for automata. When she learns of his death, she also uncovers her cousin's devious plot to travel to Mars, murder her brother, and claim the family inheritance for himself. To foil his dastardly plans, Arabella disguises herself as a boy to gain employment on an airship to Mars. Though she is valued by the captain for her talent with the automaton navigator he invented, she must survive French privateers, mutiny, and her own unmasking, only to reach a Mars embroiled in rebellion … "A fanciful romp through a cosmic 1812, Hugo Award–winning Levine's first novel is a treat for steampunk fantasy fans."-Library Journal, starred review

Though happy to be back on her home planet of Mars, Arabella's peace is shattered when she receives distressing news. Her long-absent fiancé Capt. Prakash Singh, commander of the Honorable Mars Company airship Diana, has been taken as a prisoner of war on Venus, the very planet where the exiled Napoleon has fled. Desperate to rescue Singh any way she can, Arabella pays off the gambling debts of a rakish privateer captain in order to arrange passage on his vessel. But when they're captured by a French squadron and taken to Venus, Arabella finds herself reunited with Singh, as a captive in the same brutal prison-camp. In a spacefaring adventure filled with interplanetary espionage, cosmic combat, and mind-blowing inventions, Arabella finds herself torn between two very different-yet ultimately courageous-men. Together they plot a daring conspiracy to expose Napoleon's dangerous plan: the building of a secret weapon that would make the French emperor virtually unstoppable. "Arabella embarks on another entertaining quest in an imaginative setting that combines 19th-century seafaring with pulp-style space adventure."-Publishers Weekly

Arabella is now a hero, but her new status brings attention that could threaten all she holds dear, in this final cosmic adventure. Finally and truly husband and wife, Arabella Ashby and Capt. Prakash Singh are lauded as heroes in England after defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Venus. When they are invited to the Brighton palace of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, a Martian- and Venusian-inspired architectural marvel, the mechanically-bent Arabella finds herself drawn to the prince's steam-powered Merlin chair and two-wheeled Draisine. But the Prince has motives other than mere entertainment for their visit. He offers Singh a great opportunity, divulged under a cloak of secrecy. In his dual role of captain and spy, Singh will be sent to Mars to help bring the planet under British control, a mission that will pit Arabella's love and loyalty for her home against the most powerful realm in the universe.