Cirrus@Austlit

'Axel Platzoff did not work at the Handy Pavilion by choice. Stacking shelves seemed beneath the former supervillain who had come close to world domination so many times. But as part of his plea deal with the Hague, he had to work somewhere, so he worked at the big-box hardware store in the sleepy Australian suburb of South Hertling. Fortunately, he was not the only eccentric employee of the place. Pavilion workers included dryads, time-traveling cyborgs, water-witches, ape-men, cowboys, demigods, angels, demons, mad scientists and animate garden gnomes.

'Gradually Axel came to feel at home, until tragedy struck. The construction of a rival hardware store, just across Hurley Road threatened his living and his new friends. Axel had no choice but to to take the fight to his enemies, the only way he knew how. But is the DIY Barn really nothing but a rival hardware store? Or will its sinister secret destroy the Handy Pavilion and seriously inconvenience the people of South Hertling?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'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?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

A werewolf, sent to quarantine on an island in Moreton Bay, listens to his keeper tell him the story of how he was turned.