Champagne Charlie and the Amazing Gladys
Hungover aristocrat Edward “Charlie” Decharles awakens in the back of a steam-cab, only to discover that the driver has been murdered. Unused to feeling responsible for anything, he feels compelled to find the killer. As he investigates, he meets “The Amazing” Gladys Dunchurch, a stage magician’s assistant whose employer has disappeared – and not in a good way. They form an alliance – Charlie will help Gladys with his considerable resources and Gladys will help Charlie with her even more considerable brains.
Soon they discover that their respective mysteries are not only connected to each other, but related to other seemingly unrelated strangeness transpiring in London – the murder of an astronomer, an attack on a patent medicine factory, a mysterious cult in an idyllic town, and reports of deadly creatures in the London sewers.
Charlie and Gladys find themselves pitted against dead-eyed assassins, murderous pirates, wingless flying machines, and perhaps even creatures from beyond this Earth. And lurking behind it all lies a sinister cabal that knows the secret origin of the steam-powered society that powers their world. Can our heroes save the day, or will the fallout from that secret destroy two worlds?
Champagne Charlie and the Amazing Gladys is a fun, witty, Steampunk adventure yarn, featuring a cast of eccentric characters.
Available in paperback and ebook from Bookshop.org, Amazon, or your favourite bookstore or online retailer.
$24.95
Book Details
| Weight | 395 g |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 216 × 140 mm |
| Extent | 330 pages |
| Format | Paperback |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Steampunk |
| Release date | 3 March 2020 |
| ISBN | 9781922311016 |
| Imprint | Odyssey Books |
About The Author
BG Hilton
BG Hilton spent most of his life doing jobs so tedious that his only escape was entertaining himself with crazy fantasy stories, and now he writes them down in the hope of entertaining others. He works in the education sector these days, which would probably surprise most of his teachers. His debut novel Champagne Charlie and the Amazing Gladys will be published by Odyssey Books in early 2020. He lives with his family in Sydney, and consequently spends a lot of time in traffic. You can find his blog at bghilton.com; or on social media @bghilton on Twitter and @bghilton.author on Facebook.
Ben –
Take a wild steampunk premise to a cliff, push it over the edge, jump after it, sans parachute, while cracking a bottle of champagne, lighting a cigar and bellowing a chorus or two of the Good Ship Venus, and you pretty much have a literary metaphor for what author B.G. Hilton has done with this book.
Also impressive is he lands on his feet, and strolls off humming a romantic music hall air of the 20’s – that’s the 1920’s – afterwards.
This is a riotous romp, a madcap melange of mystery and mayhem, a perfect antidote for the stresses of pandemic and global depression – the era much of this sprang from.
Enjoy!