The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy

October 27, 2014
Steampunk fans, as well as readers who enjoy their thrillers heavily dosed with humor, will revel in this rollercoaster ride. Early on, President William Howard Taft vanquishes four opponents in the ring, solidifying his reputation as the "single greatest underground boxing champion the world would never know of." Flush with victory, Taft ascends from the covert ring to Airship One, a dirigible that serves the president as a flying sanctuary. There, his top aide, Robert Todd Lincoln, reveals that he possesses an unusual watch that is "proof that there is something in Alaska completely alien to this planet." Furthermore, this watch was in the pocket of Lincoln's father the night he was assassinated in 1865. That revelation launches Taft and Lincoln on a wild adventure that involves a killer automaton, Teddy Roosevelt's ambitions for a third term, and a dangerous mission into the New Haven Tomb of the notorious Yale secret society, Skull & Bones. Della Quercia doesn't take the over-the-top plot too seriously, but this alternate universe's internal logic is cleverly constructed. Agent: Sara Crowe, Harvey Klinger.

July 1, 2014
In his fiction debut, della Quercia imaginatively steampunks a worldwide conspiracy confronting President William Howard Taft, a crisis that threatens the U.S.Curiously, Taft is "the single greatest underground boxing champion the world would never know of." That avocation is facilitated by Nellie Taft's willingness to run her husband's administration; a look-alike automaton; and an 800-foot-plus flying machine, Airship One, capable of a fun trip across the pond so Taft can box four London toughs in one night. In a plot bracketed by Lincoln's assassination and the sinking of the Titanic, Taft and company cope with a sinister superweapon fueled by cesium hydroxide, clues to which are incorporated in a pocket watch, "unlike any machine in history," given to Lincoln by a Russian ambassador. The watch is brought to Taft by a worried Robert Lincoln, Abraham's son. More characters are yanked from history, including Tesla (he gets good press), Edison (he doesn't), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Machiavellian J.P. Morgan, and diabolical King Leopold II of Belgium, ravager of the Congo. Taft's the most appealing character, 350 pounds of bon homme, passionately in love with Nellie, loyal to those who serve him, including the Cuban cigar-smoking Wilkie, Secret Service chief and bane of Nellie's existence. There's a Marx Brothers reference amplified by a Groucho-ism; an attack at the White House; an invasion of Yale's Skull and Bones, "the greatest secret of the society: its lack of any particularly meaningful secrets"; an Airship One trip to meet Kurtz in the heart of darkness; and a rock-'em, sock-'em shootout aboard the Titanic. Highlighted by footnotes linking events to news reports in the archives of the New York Times, the narrative moves smoothly, a tale laced with dialogue often incorporating Tom Swift-ian charm and constructed so that techno-wizardry doesn't overwhelm the story.A good-fun entry point into the world of steampunk.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2014
Follow the exploits of two unlikely heroeswily Robert Todd Lincoln and rotund President William Howard Taftand a large cast of characters, including J. P. Morgan, Theodore Roosevelt, Nellie Taft, and Nikola Tesla, drawn from the annals of history as they circle the globe in an effort to solve a mystery stretching back in time to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. When President Lincoln's long-missing timepiece is rediscovered, both continents and genres are crossed in a mad rush to uncover clues to solve the secrets impacting the course of lives and history. Quercia deftly adopts a serialized literary style that suits the turn-of-the-century setting. Science fiction, action, adventure, melodrama, comedy, and suspense combine in this delightful steampunk romp cleverly designed to keep readers guessing and the pages turning.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)