Steampunk adventure for fans of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who An alternate 1895, A world where Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace perfected the Difference Engine. Where steam and Tesla-powered computers are everywhere. Where automatons powered by human souls venture out into the sprawling London streets. Where the Ministry, a secretive government agency, seeks to control everything in the name of the Queen. It is in this claustrophobic, paranoid city that seventeen-year old Sebastian Tweed and his conman father struggle to eke out a living. But all is not well. A murderous, masked gang has moved into London, spreading terror through the criminal ranks as they take over the underworld. As the gang carves up more and more of the city, a single name comes to be uttered in fearful whispers, Professor Moriarty. When Tweed's father is kidnapped by Moriarty, he is forced to team up with information broker, Octavia Nightingale, to track him down. But he soon realizes that his father's disappearance is just a tiny piece of a political conspiracy that could destroy the British Empire and plunge the world into a horrific war. From the Hardcover edition.