Braxton Wright is no war hero, no matter what the newspapers say. He’s just the engineer who was aboard the Union battle walker Monitor at the Battle of Parkersburg, and who drove the Monitor across enemy lines, disrupting their formations and winning the day for the Union.

Mind you, Braxton had been trying to run away at the time.

And in the battle, the Monitor was assaulted by Grays (the Confederacy’s zombie soldiers, doomed to replay the battles in which they fell) and then blasted by a dragon, resulting in the death of Braxton’s best friend.

But war hero or not, President Lincoln has a job for Braxton Wright: get into Alabama’s Castle Thunder Prison with a message for the Union’s captured spy, Hattie Lawton. The content of the message is supposed to enable Hattie to end the scourge of the zombie Grays, and in order to get the message to her, Braxton’s orders are to get himself captured.

But with the Machiavellian Allan Pinkerton at Lincoln’s side, Braxton can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s getting set up.

Lincoln’s Wizard (book one of Dragons of the Confederacy) is the kind of mashup in which steampunk revels, shoveling historical personages, magical creatures, fantastic steam-powered technology, and high-powered action hi-jinks by the barrel into a riveting retelling of the Civil War. This book rumbles with the feel of tangible machines and groans with the anguish of the undead damned — you’re going to love it.

Bonus: cover art by my friend Jeff Brimley.

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