Standing Naked In The Wind

London, 1901. Queen Victoria is dead. An age of reason is ending. And something far darker is about to begin.When a grieving automaton-maker sells his soul to a secret society of occultists, he ignites a war that will tear reality apart at the seams. Armed with clockwork assassins and stolen artifacts from the court of John Dee, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn seeks to conquer the final frontier: death itself.But standing in their path are a handful of unlikely heroes:Dr. Maxwell Jaxon — a brilliant but haunted scientist who has glimpsed the worlds beyond our own and knows some doors should never be opened.Emerald Robinson — a fierce neurobiologist whose love for Jaxon is matched only by her determination to pull him back from the edge of his own obsessions.Oliver Harrison — a young genius whose twin brother, a genocidal conqueror from a parallel dimension, waits in the shadows for a chance to reclaim his stolen life.Odette Boudreaux — a Vodou priestess whose ancient wisdom may be humanity's only defense against forces that science cannot explain.Nikola Tesla — a visionary inventor whose electrical genius becomes the weapon in a battle for the soul of reality itself.From the gaslit streets of London to the frozen stones of Stonehenge, from the iron lattice of the Eiffel Tower to the steel belly of Captain Nemo's Nautilus, from Wardenclyffe's lightning-scarred tower to the collapsing crown of the Statue of Liberty—the battle rages across a world where the laws of nature are bleeding at the edges.Bees build impossible geometries. The dead stir in their morgue drawers. The walls between worlds grow thin.And in the darkness, something waits.---"e;A breathless fusion of historical thriller, dark occultism, and Victorian science fiction. Think Jules Verne meets H.P. Lovecraft, with the relentless pacing of a modern blockbuster."e;"e;A world teeming with wonders and horrors in equal measure. This is what steampunk should be: not brass goggles and whimsy, but a genuine exploration of what happens when humanity's reach exceeds its grasp."e;"e;A sprawling, ambitious epic that asks the oldest questions—what is death? What is consciousness? What do we owe to the future?—and answers them with pulse-pounding action and genuine heart."e;---For readers of The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, The Difference Engine, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell—a novel of scientific ambition, occult madness, and the fragile, beautiful miracle of being human.THE VEIL THINSThe world is not what you think it is.The walls are thinner than you believe.And some doors, once opened, can never be closed.