Series: Clockwork Enterprises #2
Release Date: 09/14/15
Pages: 214
Summary from Goodreads
Release Date: 09/14/15
Pages: 214
Summary from Goodreads
Maeko hasn't been long away from the gritty London streets and she's already learning that her new "civilized" life comes with its own challenges. She has to dress proper, eat proper and be a proper lady. She can't even talk to a boy without a chaperone. She's got proper coming out of her ears. If not for her feline companion Macak, she might go mad.
Her one hope for some freedom and excitement comes when the moody detective, Em, asks her to be an apprentice. But that apprenticeship comes with a price. She must agree to spy on Macak's owner, Lucian, the wealthy businessman and inventor whose life she saved.
Series: Clockwork Enterprises #1
Release Date: 09/02/14
Summary from Goodreads
Release Date: 09/02/14
Summary from Goodreads
Feisty teenage thief Maeko and her maybe-more-than-friend Chaff have scraped out an existence in Victorian London’s gritty streets, but after a near-disastrous heist leads her to a mysterious clockwork cat and two dead bodies, she’s thrust into a murder mystery that may cost her everything she holds dear.
Her only allies are Chaff, the cat, and Ash, the son of the only murder suspect, who offers her enough money to finally get off the streets if she’ll help him find the real killer.
What starts as a simple search ultimately reveals a conspiracy stretching across the entire city. And as Maeko and Chaff discover feelings for each other neither was prepared to admit, she’s forced to choose whether she’ll stay with him or finally escape the life of a street rat. But with danger closing in around them, the only way any of them will get out of this alive is if all of them work together.
Excerpt
Maeko strode
down the block, observing the curious way people reacted to her now. As a
ragged street rat, they rarely deigned to notice her and, if they did, it was
with a disapproving scowl and turned up nose. They still didn’t pay her much
mind, but those who did gave a polite smile or nod, their eyes widening a touch
if they noticed the cat around her shoulders. A couple of blokes even tipped
their hats and wished her good morning, calling her miss. It was hard to
remember to smile and nod back rather than stare at them dumbfounded.
At the corner, she stopped to wait for an opportunity to cross the busy
street, Macak looking left and right as if he too were looking for a break in
traffic. She twirled the coin purse on her finger while she watched horse drawn
and steampowered coaches pass by. A coach driver shouted at a costermonger who
had halted in the street to fiddle with something on his cart. The coster
responded with a rude gesture, but he did begin to move again, muttering
something under his breath. Big omnibuses trundled along, forcing their way
through traffic, while pedestrians and the occasional brave cyclist wove
through the press. A noisy Literati steamcycle sped past, startling some of the
horses and making Macak tense. Maeko stuck her tongue out at the officer’s
back, earning a startled glance from a woman walking past.
She gazed after
the woman and sighed. More of that improper behavior she was supposed to be
unlearning.
A small tug on
her finger grabbed her attention and she turned in time to see a boy no older
than seven in tattered togs sprinting down the pavement with her coin purse in
hand. He hopped on an omnibus that was pulling away and winked back at her as
he tucked the purse in his pocket.
Cheeky little
jackanapes! She couldn’t let him get away with that. Maybe she was high society
at the moment, but who knew how long that would last. Nothing good could come
of letting a junior pickpocket get the better of her.
Nikki started writing her first novel at the age of 12, which she still has tucked in a briefcase in her home office, waiting for the right moment. Despite a successful short story publication with Cricket Magazine in 2007, she continued to treat her writing addiction as a hobby until a drop in the economy presented her with an abundance of free time that she used to focus on making it her career.
Nikki lives in the magnificent Pacific Northwest tending to her husband and three cats suffering varying stages of neurosis. She feeds her imagination by sitting on the ocean in her kayak gazing out across the never-ending water or hanging from a rope in a cave, embraced by darkness and the sound of dripping water. She finds peace through practicing iaido or shooting her longbow.
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