Books by Charles Stross

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 from violating a treaty that will bring down the wrath of an ancient underwater race upon humanity's head. Partnered with a gorgeous American agent who's actually a soul-sucking succubus from another dimension, Bob's mission (should he choose to accept it) is to stop the bad guys, avoid getting the girl, and survive - shaken, perhaps, but not stirred.

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, parallel universes, dimension-hopping terrorists, monstrous elder gods and the end of the world. Only one thing is certain: it will take more than a full system reboot to sort this mess out . . .This is the first novel in the Laundry Files.

A new adventure begins in the world of the Laundry Files: in a nightmarish vision of a Britain where magic has gone mainstream, a policewoman and a group of petty criminals are pulled into a heist to steal a book of spells that should never be opened . . .

Miriam Beckstein is a young, hip, business journalist in Boston. She discovered in The Family Trade and The Hidden Family that her family came from an alternate reality, that she was very well-connected, and that her family was too much like the mafia for comfort. She found herself caught in a family trap in The Clan Corporate and betrothed to a brain-damaged prince, and then all hell broke loose.Now, in The Merchants'' War, Miriam has escaped to yet another world and remains in hiding from both the Clan and their opponents. There is a nasty shooting war going on in the Gruinmarkt world of the Clan, and we know something that Miriam does not; something that she''s really going to hate--if she lives long enough to find out.

A volume written as homage to Arthur C. Clarke's Tales from the White Hart, featuring original stories from many of today's top genre writers, including Neil Gaiman, Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter, James Lovegrove, Liz Williams, Adam Roberts, Eric Brown, Ian Watson, and David Langford.The Fountain: a traditional London pub situated in Holborn, just off Chancery Lane, where Michael, the landlord, serves excellent real ales and dodgy ploughman's, ably assisted by barmaids Sally and Bogna.The Fountain, in whose Paradise bar a group of friends - scientists, writers and genre fans - meet regularly on a Tuesday night to swap anecdotes, reveal wondrous events from their past, tell tall tales, talk of classified invention and, maybe, just maybe, save the world…1. Introduction - Peter Weston2. No Smoke without Fire - Ian Whates3. Transients - Stephen Baxter4. Forever Blowing Bubbles - Ian Watson5. On the Messdecks of Madness - Paul Graham Raven6. The Story Bug - James Lovegrove7. "And Weep Like Alexander" - Neil Gaiman8. The Ghost in the Machine - Colin Bruce9. The Hidden Depths of Bogna - Liz Williams10. A Bird in Hand - Charles Stross11. In Pursuit of the Chuchunaa - Eric Brown12. The Cyberseeds - Steve Longworth13. Feathers of the Dinosaur - Henry Gee14. Book Wurms - Andy West15. The Pocklington Poltergeist - David Langford16. The Last Man in Space - Andrew J Wilson17. A Multiplicity of Phaedra Lament - Peter Crowther18. The Girl With the White Ant Tattoo - Tom Hunter19. The 9,000,000,001st Name of God - Adam Roberts20. About the Authors

James Bond meets H. P. Lovecraft in the ninth Laundry Files novel from Hugo Award winner Charles Stross, in a series where British spies take on the supernatural

James Bond meets H. P. Lovecraft in the eighth Laundry Files novel from Hugo Award-winner Charles Stross, in a series where British spies take on the supernatural

A high-tech, inter-dimensional espionage thriller featuring a future hi-tech America and its parallel world

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 who flirts with him despite his fear of sunlight (and girls). But Cassie has secrets of her own - secrets that make Alex's night life seem positively normal . . .James Bond meets H. P. Lovecraft in the latest occult thriller from Hugo Award winner Charles Stross, in a series where British spies take on the supernatural.

The Traders' War by Charles Stross includes The Clan Corporate and The Merchants' War, the third and fourth instalments in the spellbinding The Merchant Princes series combined into one volume.The journalistic instinct runs deep - and comes with a fatality warning.Miriam was an ambitious business journalist in Boston. Until she was fired - then discovered, to her shock, that her lost family comes from an alternate reality. And although some of them are trying to kill her, she won't stop digging up secrets. Now that she knows she's inherited the family ability to walk between worlds, there's a new culture to explore. Her alternate home seems located around the Middle Ages, making her world-hopping relatives top dogs when it comes to 'importing' guns and other gadgets from modern-day America. Payment flows from their services to US drug rings - after all, world-skipping drug runners make great traffickers. In a land where women are property, she struggles to remain independent. Yet her outsider ways won't be tolerated, and a highly political arranged marriage is being brokered behind her back. If she can stay alive for long enough to protest. The Traders' War is preceded by The Bloodline Feud omnibus, and followed with the final volume, The Revolution Trade.

Two parallel versions of America are trapped in a cold war - and it's heating up fast. This is the extraordinary finale to Charles Stross's alternative-history trilogy.

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.But when a small team of investment bankers at one of Canary Wharf's most distinguished financial institutions discovers an arcane algorithm that leaves them fearing daylight and craving O positive, someone doesn't want the Laundry to know. And Bob gets caught right in the middle.

Neptune's Brood is a brand new space opera from science fiction legend Charles Stross. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the Hugo Award for Best Novel.She was looking for her sister. She found Atlantis. Krina Alizond is a metahuman in a universe where the last natural humans became extinct five thousand years ago. When her sister goes missing, she embarks on a daring voyage across the star systems to find her, travelling to her last known location - the mysterious water-world of Shin-Tethys. In a universe with no faster-than-light travel that's a dangerous journey, made all the more perilous by the arrival of an assassin on Krina's tail, by the 'privateers' chasing her sister's life insurance policy and by growing signs that the disappearance is linked to one of the biggest financial scams in the known universe.

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.When a televangelist with connections to 10 Downing Street seems able to work miracles, the Laundry takes an interest. But an agency that answers to the Prime Minister can't spy on him themselves, and Bob's shadowy superiors come up with a compromise - they hire 'freelancers', with Bob in charge.British citizens who discover the occult are either forcibly recruited by the Laundry or disposed of, and Bob's never heard of freelancers before. Officially they don't exist. Anyone who's big and bad enough to remain independent is going to be hard to handle, and Bob's not too sure that the one-week 'people management' course he was sent on in Milton Keynes is going to be enough . . .

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. When a top-secret dossier goes missing and his boss Angleton is implicated, Bob must contend with suspiciously helpful Russian intelligence operatives and an unscrupulous apocalyptic cult before confronting the decades-old secret that lies at the heart of the Laundry: what is so important about the missing Fuller Memorandum? And why are all the people who know dying . . . ?

It has been said that the natural state of science fiction is the short story. If that is so, you won't find a better exploration of that state than Charles Stross's new collection. Centred around an original and previously unpublished novella, 'Palimpsest', WIRELESS is a showcase of some of the best short SF of the 21st century. With an introduction from the author and containing hitherto uncollected works such as 'Missile Gap', 'Trunk and Disorderly' and 'Rogue Farm', and some gems previously available only in small press publications, such as 'A Colder War' and 'Antibodies', WIRELESS will illustrate perfectly why award-winning editor and anthologist, Gardner Dozois, once declared:'Where Charles Stross goes today, the rest of science fiction will follow tomorrow.

The saga of the Merchant Princes continues in this spellbinding third volume

Freya Nakamachi-47 has some major existential issues. She's the perfect concubine, designed to please her human masters - hardwired to become aroused at the sight mere of a human male. There's just one problem: she came off the production line a year after the human species went extinct. Whatever else she may be, Freya Nakamachi-47 is gloriously obsolete. But the rigid social hierarchy that has risen in the 200 years since the last human died, places beings such as Freya very near the bottom. So when she has a run-in on Venus with a murderous aristocrat, she needs passage off-world in a hurry - and can't be too fussy about how she pays her way.If Venus was a frying pan, Mercury is the fire - and soon she's going to be running for her life. Because the job she's taken as a courier has drawn her to the attention of powerful and dangerous people, and they don't just want the package she's carrying. They want her soul ...

When Robin wakes up in a clinic with most of his memories missing, it doesn't take him long to discover that someone is trying to kill him.It's the twenty-seventh century, when interstellar travel is by teleport gate and conflicts are fought by network worms that censor refugees' personalities and target historians. The civil war is over and Robin has been demobilized, but someone wants him out of the picture because of something his earlier self knew. On the run from a ruthless pursuer and searching for a place to hide, he volunteers to participate in a unique experimental polity, the Glasshouse. Constructed to simulate a pre-accelerated culture, participants are assigned anonymized identities: it looks like the ideal hiding place for a posthuman on the run. But in this escape-proof environment Robin will undergo an even more radical change, placing him at the mercy of the experimenters, and of his own unbalanced psyche . . .

It was called in as a robbery at Hayek Associates, an online game company. So you can imagine Sergeant Sue Smith's mood as she watches the video footage of the heist being carried out by a band of orcs and a dragon, and realises that the robbery from an online game company is actually a robbery from an online game.Just wonderful. Like she has nothing better to do. But online entertainment is big business, and when the bodies of real people start to show up, it's clear that this is anything but a game. For Sue, computer coding expert Jack Reed, and forensic accountant Elaine Barnaby, the walls between the actual and the virtual are about to come crashing down. There is something very dangerous and very real going on at Hayek Associates, and those involved are playing for keeps. No cheats, no back doors, no extra lives - make a wrong call on this one and it's game over.

His most ambitious novel to date, ACCELERANDO is a multi-generational saga following a brilliant clan of 21st-century posthumans. The year is some time between 2010 and 2015. The recession has ended, but populations are ageing and the rate of tech change is accelerating dizzyingly. Manfred makes his living from spreading ideas around, putting people in touch with one another and leaving a spray of technologies in his wake. He lives at the cutting edge of intelligence amplification technology, but even Manfred can take on too much. And when his pet robot cat picks up some interesting information from the SETI data, his world - and the world of his descendants - is turned on its head.

In the twenty-first century man created the Eschaton, a . It pushed Earth through the greatest technological evolution ever known, while warning that time travel is forbidden, and transgressors will be eliminated.Distant descendants of this ultra high-tech Earth live in parochial simplicity on the far-flung worlds of the New Republic. Their way of life is threatened by the arrival of an alien information plague known as the Festival. As forbidden technologies are literally dropped from the sky, suppressed political factions descend into revolutionary turmoil. A battle fleet is sent from Earth to destroy the Festival, but Spaceship engineer Martin Springfield and U.N. diplomat Rachel Mansour have been assigned rather different tasks. Their orders are to diffuse the crisis or to sabotage the New Republic's war-fleet, whatever the cost, before the Eschaton takes hostile action on a galactic scale.

When the planet of New Moscow was brutally destroyed, its few survivors launched a counter-attack against the most likely culprit: the neighbouring system of trade rival New Dresden. But New Dresden wasn't responsible, and as the deadly missiles approach their target, Rachel Mansour, agent for the interests of Old Earth, is assigned to find out who was. The one person who does know is a disaffected teenager who calls herself Wednesday Shadowmist. But Wednesday has no idea where she might be hiding this significant information. Time is limited and if Rachel can't resolve this mystery it will mean annihilation of an entire world.