AustLit

'Marcus Fulder is the best man at finding runaway slaves in the Rome of the early days of the reign of Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. It is because he has a talent for remembering faces. He is called in by a merchant named Gaius Maximus Secundus to find a runaway female slave from India named Vishesti. He wants her back because she has developed an aquatic creature called a navitar that could be grown big enough to tow ships. Her talent seems more than human. Her children, who have been corrupted by Rome and speak Latin while putting emphasis on the wrong syllable, say she is an ifrit, a demon. Is her power magical or something else? Vishesti curses Rome for what has been done to her children. Does she succeed?'

Source: SF Revu (http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=14369). (Sighted: 21/02/2018)

When a Russian scientist discovers an alien colonising force, an assassin is sent after him to keep him from sharing the news.

'In 1899 London, Inspector Grant investigates a lady who claims her big electrical apparatus is for a camera, even though it looks like a bomb or a death ray.'

Source: Rocket Stack Rack (http://www.rocketstackrank.com/2017/03/The-Influence-Machine-Sean-McMullen.html) (Sighted: 30/04/2018)

'Seldom was the Mediterranean Sea so very calm that the wavelets were barely visible at the entrance to the Canal of Erythraea, gateway to the orient. In the western sky the moon hung as a thin crescent, and beside it Venus gleamed like burning silver. The sorceress Xarial stood on the wharf of green granite, tall, svelte, crowned by cascades of pale hair, gazing west through a tube of polished brass. Two figures approached, the smaller of them not half the height of his master. Xarial's swarthy Iberian guard. Grattan, looked on warily. ' (Introduction)