Cirrus@Austlit

'The Della Morte family, steampunk inventors, set out on a journey from England to Melbourne in the Antipodes in 1888 in their flailing ship Invention. What they expected to be an uneventful trip turns out to be anything but. This is a book for anyone who loves adventure and intrigue set in a steampunk world very different from our own.

'This trip should have been so easy. Invention is a state of the art steam-powered flying sailing ship. Sisters Abigail, Beatrix and Zarah are experienced sailors, and with their parents should have made it to the Antipodes in record time. But, who are the pirates who are shadowing them down the coast of Africa and what are they after? Who is the man in the top hat? How many of the Della Mortes will actually reach Melbourne? And what will happen to them when they get there? Voyage to the Antipodes is a steampunk adventure for lovers of resourceful, colourful heroes and mysterious and hideously wicked villains.' (Publication summary)

'Abigail and Beatrix have been adopted by the Malefics, a famous inventor family, after a short stay in the Skipping Girl Home for Wayward and Homeless Girls in Melbourne. Zarah sets out to be reunited with them, but when she gets to the Malefic Mansion she is disturbed to find that her sisters are nowhere to be seen.

'Where are Zarah’s sisters?

'Why have other children been disappearing?

'And what do these happenings have to do with the Malefics’ latest invention, The Library of Wonder?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.