Showing results by author "Charles Stross" in All Categories

Never volunteer for active duty... Bob Howard is a low-level techie working for a super-secret government agency. While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob's under a desk restoring lost data. His world was dull and safe; but then he went and got Noticed. Now, Bob is up to his neck in spycraft, alternative universes, dimension-hopping terrorists, monstrous elder gods and the end of the world. Only one thing is certain: it will take more than 'control+alt+delete' to sort this mess out...

Some agents have all the fun. Others save the world. Bob Howard is an IT expert and occasional field agent for The Laundry, the branch of Her Majesty's Secret Service that deals with occult threats. Dressed (grudgingly) in a tux and sent to the Caribbean, he must infiltrate a millionaire's yacht in order to prevent him violating a treaty that will start a war with an ancient underwater race.

In this chillingly resonant dystopian adventure, two versions of America are locked in conflict. Invisible Sun concludes Charles Stross’s Empire Games trilogy. Two twinned worlds are facing attack The New American Commonwealth is caught in a deadly arms race with the USA, its parallel-world...

An occult assassin, an elderly royal and a living god face off in The Regicide Report, the thrilling final novel in Charles Stross' epic, Hugo Award-winning Laundry Files series. When the Elder God recently installed as Prime Minister identifies the monarchy as a threat to his growing power, Bob...

Manfred Macx is a patent junkie, spending his days dreaming up ideas that will make him rich, very rich indeed. He patents them and then offers them up to anyone for free. In doing so, he has shunned the need for cash, preferring to live off the generosity of his benefactors. Enter uploaded lobsters wanting to defect, government investigations, and a dominatrix ex-girlfriend who works for the IRS and you've got yourself a hip post-cyberpunk tale.

Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when one of the great and the good is assassinated. You can kill a politician, but their ideas usually live on. They have a life of their own. How much more dangerous, then, the ideas of mathematicians? The announcement of the solution to the traveling salesman problem heralds the imminent destruction of humanity.

An unabridged audio collection of the "best of the best" science fiction stories written in 2011 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster, as narrated by top voice talents. In "Dying Young", by Peter M. Ball, cyborgs, clones, and post-humans collide with a dragon bent on revenge in a post-apocalyptic space western. In "Canterbury Hollow", by Chris Lawson, two lovers on a planet orbiting a killer sun share their few remaining weeks together before they die....

Here is a modern novelette in H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Imagine David Cronenberg directing Dr. Strangelove, based on a script by H. P. Lovecraft. Imagine an alternate history in which nuclear bombs are not the ultimate weapon, but instead are merely a stepping stone to eldritch technologies accessible through certain trans-dimensional forces first encountered in 1920s Antarctica, technologies that neither the United States nor the USSR can quite contain.

The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross includes The Family Trade and The Hidden Family - the first two instalments of The Merchant Princes series combined in one volume. Miriam Beckstein is a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine. So when she discovers a huge money-laundering scam, she thinks...

In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another teenage nerd growing up in middle England. But his love of D&D caused him to fall afoul of the Laundry, a government agency tasked with suppressing supernatural threats. It turns out that sometimes ninth level wizard spells drawn on the back of your maths textbook can look suspiciously like actual magic...

Hyperorganised and formidable, Eve Starkey defeated her boss, the louche magical adept and billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge, in a supernatural duel to the death. At least, she has reason to hope he's dead. But though she's now in charge of the Bigge Corporation, she's not free of him yet. Through the fecklessness of her brother Imp, combined with the intricate feudal law of a tiny Channel Island, it would appear that unbeknownst to her, she was married to Bigge - and that proving his death and releasing herself from his arcane bindings will take years and cost millions. 

It's a brave new Britain under the New Management. The Prime Minister is an eldritch god of unimaginable power. Crime is plummeting as almost every offense is punishable by death. And everywhere you look, there are people with strange powers, some of which they can control, and some, not so much...

In a world where magic has gone mainstream, a policewoman and a group of petty criminals are pulled into a heist to find a forbidden book of spells that should never be opened. A new adventure begins in the world of the Laundry Files. Dead Lies Dreaming presents a nightmarish vision of a Britain sliding unknowingly towards occult cataclysm.

Britain is under New Management. The disbanding of the Laundry - the British espionage agency that deals with supernatural threats - has culminated in the unthinkable: an elder god in residence in 10 Downing Street. But in true 'the enemy of my enemy' fashion, Mhairi Murphy finds herself working with His Excellency Nylarlathotep on foreign policy - there are worse things, it seems, than an elder god in power, and they lie in deepest, darkest America.

Nobody does it better.... Dr. Mo O'Brien is an intelligence agent at the top-secret government agency known as the Laundry. When occult powers threaten the realm, they'll be there to clean up the mess and deal with the witnesses. But the Laundry is recovering from a devastating attack, and when average citizens all over the country start to develop supernatural powers, the police are called in to help.

Bob Howard is an IT specialist and field agent for the Laundry, the branch of Her Majesty's secret service that deals with occult threats. Overworked and underpaid, Bob is used to his two jobs overflowing from a strict nine to five, and since his wife, Mo, has a very similar job description, he understands that work will sometimes follow her home, too. But when 'work' involves zombie assassins and minions of a mad god's cult, he realises things are spinning out of control.

Bob Howard used to fix computers for the Laundry - the branch of the British Secret Service that deals with otherworldly threats - but those days are over. He's not only been promoted to active service but actually survived missions against cultists, enemy spies and tentacled horrors from other dimensions. Willingly or not, he's on his way up in this dangerous organisation.

London can drain the life out of you.... Bob Howard is an intelligence agent working his way through the ranks of the top-secret government agency known as the Laundry. When occult powers threaten the realm, they'll be there to clean up the mess - and deal with the witnesses. There's one kind of threat that the Laundry has never come across in its many decades, and that's vampires. Mention them to a seasoned agent, and you'll be laughed out of the room.

Bob Howard's career in the Laundry, the secret British government agency dedicated to protecting the world from the supernatural, has involved brilliant hacking, ancient magic and combat with creatures of pure evil. Now the Laundry's existence has become public, and Bob is being trotted out on TV to answer pointed questions about elven asylum seekers.

Alex Schwartz had a great job and a promising future - until he caught an unfortunate bout of vampirism and agreed (on pain of death) to join the Laundry, Britain's only counter-occult secret intelligence agency. His first assignment is in Leeds - his old hometown. But the thought of telling his parents he's lost his job, let alone their discovering his 'condition', is causing Alex almost as much anxiety as his new lifestyle of supernatural espionage. His only saving grace is Cassie Brewer, a student from the local Goth Festival.