christopher dunkle

Book I of the Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket
By Christopher Dunkle

The Doll's diary entries written by Lori Williams

Illustrations by Derek and Phillip Marunowski

“You ever fall in love with the end of the world?”

Set in a reimagined England in the year 1888, Turnkey begins in the gilded metropolis of New London, the poster city of a socially-advanced, mechanically-propelled British empire. In this lavish city, orchestrated and built from the ground up by a reclusive industrialist who has ascended the throne, we find perhaps the only antiquated thing left in Europe…and he’s propping his head on a sticky bar top in the dead of night.

Ladies and gentlemen, Will Pocket.

The so-called “Absynt Bard of New London.”

A progressively-backward and perpetually-penniless daydreamer who has spent most of his nights in New London’s dreariest taverns, making company with warm beer and the warbling sounds sent out from the spinning wax on a dusty music box.

Our story begins on one such night. Having consumed far more beer than he can afford, the exhausted Pocket strikes a deal to friend and barman Alan Dandy to pay for rounds with a well-told story. What follows is a retelling of Pocket’s captivation with the Watchmaker’s Doll, a peculiar young lady crafted entirely out of ticking clockwork and beautiful synthetics. When the Doll is found and accidentally awakened from a mechanical slumber by Pocket and the fox-like cutpurse Kitt Sunner, they inadvertently spark a series of great troubles for not only the three of them, but for those whose paths they eventually cross: everyone from sky-sailing pirates and medicine peddlers to a teahouse mystic and a bulletproof gambler.

A backward and booze-soaked spin on the steampunk model, Turnkey follows its cast of old-fashioned souls adrift in a new-fashioned world. A blend of self-deprecating humor, silly wit, white-knuckle adventure, old-fashioned romance, and bittersweet tragedy, Turnkey begins The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket with a resounding bang!