There is an alternate cover edition for this edition here.
Sixteen-year-old Charlotte and her fellow refugees have scraped out an existence on the edge of Britain's industrial empire. Though they live by the skin of their teeth they have their health (at least when they can find enough food and avoid the Imperial Labor Gatherers) and each other. When a new exile with no memory of his escape from the coastal cities or even his own name seeks shelter in their camp he brings new dangers with him and secrets about the terrible future that awaits all those who have struggled has to live free of the bonds of the empire's Machineworks.
The Inventor's Secret is the first book of a YA steampunk series set in an alternate nineteenth-century North America where the Revolutionary War never took place and the British Empire has expanded into a global juggernaut propelled by marvelous and horrible machinery.Similar books:
Goliath by Scott Westerfeld
Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
Zeppelins West by Joe R. Lansdale
The Peculiars by Maureen Doyle McQuerry
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl by David Barnett
There is an alternate cover edition for this edition 
