Available Now At The Best Bookshops!
Her Majesty’s League of Remarkable Young Ladies made its UK debut in 2023 and reached Australia’s market in May 2024. This book is the result of winning the Times / Chicken House / IET 150 Award, a very exciting turning point in my writing career.
In 2022 I got to work with the fabulous editors at Chicken House. My editorial team included editor extraordinaire and YA author Kesia Lupo and Chicken House managing director Barry Cunningham.
The chance to collaborate with publishing professionals is exactly what I’ve dreamed of and worked so hard towards all these years. With Kesia’s expert guidance, I rewrote the entire novel, changing it from YA to MG, ramping up the excitement, and expanding the invention element. I especially enjoyed the challenge of making the forces of antagonism more menacing and the villain more villainous.
The Story
Winifred Weatherby is no ordinary nineteenth-century girl. She’s unconventional, plucky, and smart. In fact, she’s a girl-genius inventor on a mission to become an engineer, despite the fact that engineering is a Men-Only Zone in 1889.
After being expelled from her progressive academy for promising young ladies, the incorrigible Winifred Weatherby is secretly recruited to be a gadget inventress for Queen Victoria’s league of young lady spies. While aiming to exhibit her Very Promising Invention at the 1889 Paris World Fair, Winnie must protect Queen Victoria from would-be plotters, find her missing father, and prove to the world that girls CAN be inventors and engineers.
Living the Dream
In August 2023, I made the trip of a lifetime to the UK to celebrate the UK release of HER MAJESTY’S LEAGUE OF REMARKABLE YOUNG LADIES. I visited bookshops all over London, Oxford, and Bath, where I signed books and mingled with booksellers. Here’s a picture of me signing my first book.
This is the first time seeing my book in a bookstore in the UK, and what a store it was! The Waterstone’s Piccadilly flagship store boasts six storeys of books and an entire level dedicated to children’s literature.
A second highlight was my visit to Chicken House. We took a bus from Bath to Frome along winding country lanes, where brambles scratched the sides of the vehicle and every turn felt like it might be our last. It was wonderful.
But not as wonderful as the reception from the team at Chicken House. After years of a correspondence relationship, I finally got to meet these lovely people in person. Sadly, Kesia Lupo, my editor, was no longer there. After signing books at the gorgeous Hunting Raven Books, we enjoyed lunch in an historic tavern and spent a little time chatting with the team and publishers, Barry Cunningham and Rachel Hickman.
Get Your Copy
You can buy HER MAJESTY’S LEAGUE OF REMARKABLE YOUNG LADIES in fine indie bookshops in the UK or at the usual online retailers, like here and here. A superb audiobook version is available on various platforms in the UK, AU and NZ now. And there is an ebook available too!
**This page is fluid. Last updated May 2024
Alison D. Stegert 