New Releases by Charles Stross

An occult assassin, a living god and an elderly queen face off in The Regicide Report, the thrilling conclusion to Charles Stross’ Hugo Award winning Laundry Files series. After 60-plus years in power in the U.K., Queen Elizabeth II has gathered a surplus of mana from believers spread across the British Commonwealth. That makes her a threat to the Elder God recently installed as Prime Minister—and a target to a shadowy faction within the Laundry looking to depose the Black Pharaoh. An assassin is dispatched to take out Queen Elizabeth and neutralize the threat of the Black Pharaoh. Bob Howard and Dominique "Mo" O''Brien return for the last time, reluctantly pressed into service protecting the queen. Plus, Mhari Murphy and her team, many of whom are now infected with vampirism, are back from their mission to Washington D.C. with mixed success. God save the Queen—someone has to. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In this new Laundry Files adventure the fate of the world will literally depend on the roll of dice... twenty-sided dice, that is. In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another spotty teenage dungeon master growing up in middle England. But then a secret government agency tasked with suppressing magical intrusions received a tip-off – and one midnight raid later, his life was turned upside down by the Satanic D&D Panic. Decades later Derek, now middle-aged and institutionalized, is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a center for deprogramming captured Elder God cultists. He’s considered safe enough to edit the camp newsletter, and he even has postal privileges – which he uses to run a play-by-mail game. After 25 years, Derek finally has reason to escape: a nearby D&D convention. While Derek’s D&D games were full of fictional elder gods and world-ending threats, a LARP game at the con is a dread ritual designed to summon a great evil into our world, and it’s up to Derek and his players to stop them. The fate of the world may depend on the contents of Derek’s magic dice bag. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Season of Skulls continues Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross''s Lovecraftian Laundry Files series. Welcome to the sunlit uplands of the 21st century! Britain''s avuncular Prime Minister is an ancient 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. Hyperorganized 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. Then an emissary of the Prime Minister arrives with an offer that she absolutely can''t...well, you know. This is the final novel in the trilogy that began with Dead Lies Dreaming and continued with Quantum of Nightmares. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Tales of tentacles, terror, and madness from the publisher who brought you Wastelands, The Living Dead, and Brave New Worlds First described by visionary author H. P. Lovecraft, the Cthulhu mythos encompass a pantheon of truly existential cosmic horror: Eldritch, uncaring, alien god-things, beyond mankind’s deepest imaginings, drawing ever nearer, insatiably hungry, until one day, when the stars are right.… As that dread day, hinted at within the moldering pages of the fabled Necronomicon, draws nigh, tales of the Great Old Ones—Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Hastur, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and the weird cults that worship them—have cross-pollinated, drawing authors and other dreamers to imagine the strange dark aeons ahead, when the dead-but-dreaming gods return. Now, intrepid anthologist Ross E. Lockhart has delved deep into the Cthulhu canon, selecting from myriad mind-wracking tomes twenty-seven sanity-shattering stories of cosmic terror. Featuring fiction by many of today’s masters of the menacing, macabre, and monstrous, including Laird Barron, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and Thomas Ligotti, The Book of Cthulhu goes where no collection of Cthulhu mythos tales has gone before: to the very edge of madness... and beyond! Do you dare open The Book of Cthulhu? Do you dare heed the call?

The alternate timelines of Charles Stross'' Empire Games trilogy have never been so entangled than in Invisible Sun—the techno-thriller follow up to Dark State—as stakes escalate in a conflict that could spell extermination for humanity across all known timelines. An inter-timeline coup d''état gone awry. A renegade British monarch on the run through the streets of Berlin. And robotic alien invaders from a distant timeline flood through a wormhole, wreaking havoc in the USA. Can disgraced worldwalker Rita and her intertemporal extraordaire agent of a mother neutralize the livewire contention before it''s too late? At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

John M. Ford''s The Scholars of Night is an extraordinary novel of technological espionage and human betrayal, weaving past and present into a web of unbearable suspense. Nicholas Hansard is a brilliant historian at a small New England college. He specializes in Christopher Marlowe. But Hansard has a second, secret, career with The White Group, a "consulting agency" with shadowy government connections. There, he is a genius at teasing secrets out of documents old and new—to call him a code-breaker is an understatement. When Hansard''s work exposes one of his closest friends as a Russian agent, and the friend then dies mysteriously, the connections seem all too clear. Shaken, Hansard turns away from his secret work to lose himself in an ancient Marlowe manuscript. Surely, a lost 400 year old play is different enough from modern murder. He is very, very wrong. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

When magic and superpowers emerge in the masses, Wendy Deere is contracted by the government to bag and snag supervillains in Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross'' Dead Lies Dreaming: A Laundry Files Novel. As Wendy hunts down Imp—the cyberpunk head of a band calling themselves “The Lost Boys”— she is dragged into the schemes of louche billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge. Rupert has discovered that the sole surviving copy of the long-lost concordance to the one true Necronomicon is up for underground auction in London. He hires Imp’s sister, Eve, to procure it by any means necessary, and in the process, he encounters Wendy Deere. In a tale of corruption, assassination, thievery, and magic, Wendy Deere must navigate rotting mansions that lead to distant pasts, evil tycoons, corrupt government officials, lethal curses, and her own moral qualms in order to make it out of this chase alive. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Dark State is the second book in a thrilling series - set in the same world as Charles Stross'' Merchant Princes series. This book follows Empire Games.In the near future, one America is experiencing its first technological revolution - whilst in a parallel world, the United States is a hi-tech police state. But both timelines are poised for conflict. Miriam Burgeson''s America is heading for civil war. However, a high profile defection might avert this crisis, if only Miriam and her agents can arrange it in time. And Rita Douglas, rival US spy, arrives during this turmoil. Rita''s world is rocked when she realizes Miriam is her birth mother, changing her own mission irrevocably. Then her United States discovers yet another parallel earth, and the remains of an advanced society. Something destroyed that civilization, Rita''s people are about to rouse it - and two worlds will face the consequences.

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. A thousand-mile-wide storm system has blanketed the midwest, and the president is nowhere to be found - Mhari must lead a task force of disgraced Laundry personnel into the storm front to discover the truth. But working for an elder god is never easy, and as the stakes rise, Mhari will soon question exactly where her loyalties really lie.

The eighth case in Charles Stross'' Laundry Files, the Hugo Award–winning series described by Kirkus Reviews as “a weirdly alluring blend of super-spy thriller, deadpan comic fantasy, and Lovecraftian horror.”

A time of ambition, treachery and dangerous secrets . . . Rita Douglas is plucked from her dead-end job and trained as a reluctant US spy. All because she has the latent genetic talent to hop between alternate timelines - and infiltrate them. The United States is waging a high-tech war, targeting assassins who can move between worlds to deliver death on a mass scale. And Rita will be their secret weapon. Miriam Beckstein has her own mission, as a politician in an industrial revolution US. She must accelerate her world''s technology before their paranoid American twin finds them. It would blow them to hell. After all, they''ve done it before. Each timeline also battles internal conspiracies, as a cold war threatens to turn white hot. But which world is the aggressor - and will Rita have to choose a side? This new series is set in the same world as Charles Stross'' ''Merchant Princes'' series.

Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross presents the next case in The Laundry Files, “a weirdly alluring blend of super-spy thriller, deadpan comic fantasy, and Lovecraftian horror” (Kirkus Reviews). Dominique O’Brien—her friends call her Mo—lives a curious double life with her husband, Bob Howard. To the average civilian, they’re boring middle-aged civil servants. But within the labyrinthian secret circles of Her Majesty’s government, they’re operatives working for the nation’s occult security service known as the Laundry, charged with defending Britain against dark supernatural forces threatening humanity. Mo’s latest assignment is assisting the police in containing an unusual outbreak: ordinary citizens suddenly imbued with extraordinary abilities of the super-powered kind. Unfortunately these people prefer playing super-pranks instead of super-heroics. The Mayor of London being levitated by a dumpy man in Trafalgar Square would normally be a source of shared amusement for Mo and Bob, but they’re currently separated because something’s come between them—something evil. An antique violin, an Erich Zann original, made of human white bone, was designed to produce music capable of slaughtering demons. Mo is the custodian of this unholy instrument. It invades her dreams and yearns for the blood of her colleagues—and her husband. And despite Mo’s proficiency as a world class violinist, it cannot be controlled…

"Some stories are more explicitly Lovecraftian than others, but all demonstrate how Lovecraft''s dark mythology continues to inspire outstanding tales of modern horror." - Publisher''s Weekly Many of the best weird fiction writers (and creators in most other media) have been profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos H.P. Lovecraft created eight decades ago. Lovecraft''s themes of cosmic indifference, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history - written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread - are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it. A few years ago, New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presented some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction from the first decade of the twenty-first century. Now, New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird brings you more eldritch tales and even fresher fiction inspired by Lovecraft.

Enjoy two short stories and a novella from the Laundry Files. Originally published on Tor.com, these stories by Charles Stross continue the adventures of the Laundry, a secret division of the British government dedicated to tracking down and containing breaches of reality by occult and otherworldly threats. "An entertaining mash-up of Lovecraftian mythology and an extremely twisted take on a fantasy trope."--Publishers Weekly (on Equoid: A Laundry Novella) At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Traders'' War -- an omnibus edition of the third and fourth novels in Charles Stross''s Merchant Princes series. 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 U.S. 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. "These books are immense fun."--Locus At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

For outstanding heroism in the field (despite himself), computational demonologist Bob Howard is on the fast track for promotion to management within the Laundry, the supersecret British government agency tasked with defending the realm from occult threats. Assigned to External Assets, Bob discovers the company (unofficially) employs freelance agents to deal with sensitive situations that may embarrass Queen and Country. So when Ray Schiller—an American televangelist with the uncanny ability to miraculously heal the ill—becomes uncomfortably close to the Prime Minister, External Assets dispatches the brilliant, beautiful, and entirely unpredictable Persephone Hazard to infiltrate the Golden Promise Ministries and discover why the preacher is so interested in British politics. And it’s Bob’s job to make sure Persephone doesn’t cause an international incident. But it’s a supernatural incident that Bob needs to worry about—a global threat even the Laundry may be unable to clean up…

After being stalked across the galaxy by an assassin, post-human Krina Alzon-114 journeys to the water-world Shin-Tethys in search of her sister.

From the author of Rule 34 and Halting State, a tale of deception, engineering, and the most unlikely rocket propulsion technology imaginable. "A Tall Tail" by award-winning science fiction author Charles Stross is a Tor.com Original set in a compelling alternative universe. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Darrell Schweitzer interviews seventeen science fiction writers. Included are scintillating conversations with: George R. R. Martin, James Morrow, Jack Dann, Geoffrey A. Landis, Joe W. Haldeman, Zoran Zivkovic, Esther M. Friesner, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Harry Turtledove, Gregory Frost, Tom Purdom, D. G. Compton, Robert J. Sawyer, Charles Stross, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, and Howard Waldrop.

Meet Edinburgh Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh, head of the Innovative Crimes Investigation Unit, otherwise known as the Rule 34 Squad. They monitor the Internet for potential criminal activity, analyzing trends in the extreme fringes of explicit content. And occasionally, even more disturbing patterns arise… Three ex-cons have been murdered in Germany, Italy, and Scotland. The only things they had in common were arrests for spamming—and a taste for unorthodox entertainment. As the first officer on the scene of the most recent death, Liz finds herself sucked into an international investigation that isn’t so much asking who the killer is, but what—and if she doesn''t find the answer soon, the homicides could go viral.

Slipcased state: out of print, sold out, will not be reprinted in this state.

Welcome to the Stasis, the clandestine, near-omnipotent organization that stands at the heart of Charles Stross''s Hugo Award-winning novella, Palimpsest. By mastering the mysteries of the Timegate, the Stasis has repeatedly steered mankind away from the brink of utter extinction. Through countless millennia, through the "mayfly flickerings" of innumerable transient civilizations, its members have intervened at critical junctions, reseeding the galaxy with viable potential survivors. In the process, they have reconfigured the basic structure of the universe, all in the name of human continuity. Pierce is a newly recruited member of the Stasis, serving out a complex twenty- year apprenticeship while struggling to find his way through the paradoxical maze of history (and unhistory) that surrounds him. As his once simple existence expands and replicates over vast stretches of time, Pierce uncovers a new and unexpected destiny, one that will embroil him in the larger purposes of the Stasis and in the ultimate, unresolved fate of humanity itself. Skillfully merging the threads of an individual life with the grandest, most overarching concerns, Palimpsest offers both visionary brilliance and narrative excitement in equal measure. Powerfully imagined, beautifully constructed, and written throughout with great economy of means, it is the kind of mind-expanding mini-epic that only science fiction and only a master practitioner like Charles Stross could produce.

The story of the worldwalkers just got stranger in Charles Stross''s The Merchants'' War. More worlds, more surprises. And there''s a war going on ... 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. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In Charles Stross''s novel The Atrocity Archive and its sequels, the "Laundry" is a secret British agency responsible for keeping dark interdimensional entitities from destroying the cosmos and, not incidentally, the human race. The battles with creatures from beyond time are dangerous; however, it''s the subsequent bureaucratic paperwork that actually breaks men''s souls. Now, in "Down on the Farm," Laundry veteran Bob Howard must investigate strange doings at another obscure, moth-eaten government agency—evidently a rest home for Laundry agents whose minds have snapped... Charles Stross is the Hugo-winning author of some of the most acclaimed novels and stories of the last ten years, including Singularity Sky, Accelerando, Halting State, the "Merchant Princes" series beginning with The Family Trade, and the story collections Toast and Wireless. In 2010, his Laundry story "Overtime," published on Tor.com, is a finalist for science fiction''s Hugo Award. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

View our feature on Charles Stross'' The Fuller Memorandum. National bestselling author Charles Stross brings back Bob Howard-"a British super spy with a long-term girlfriend, no fashion sense, and an aversion to martinis" (San Francisco Chronicle) Bob Howard is taking a much needed break from the field to catch up on his filing in The Laundry''s archives when a top secret dossier known as The Fuller Memorandum vanishes-along with his boss, who the agency''s executives believe stole the file. Determined to discover exactly what the memorandum contained, Bob runs afoul of Russian agents, ancient demons, and the apostles of a hideous faith, who have plans to raise a very unpleasant undead entity known as the Eater of Souls...

Introduced to readers in the novels The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue, the Laundry is a secret British government agency charged with preventing dark interdimensional entities from destroying the human race. Now, in "Overtime," the Laundry is on a skeleton staff for Christmas—leaving one bureaucrat to be all that stands between the world and annihilation by the Thing That Comes Down Chimneys. Written especially for Tor.com''s holiday season, Charles Stross''s novelette is a finalist for the 2010 Hugo Award. Charles Stross is the Hugo-winning author of some of the most acclaimed novels and stories of the last ten years, including Singularity Sky, Accelerando, Halting State, the "Merchant Princes" series beginning with The Family Trade, and the story collections Toast and Wireless. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A bold fantasy in the tradition of Roger Zelazny''s Chronicles of Amber, The Merchant Princes is a sweeping new series from the hottest new writer in science fiction! Miriam Beckstein is happy in her life. She''s a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine in Boston, making good money doing what she loves. When her researcher brings her iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme, Miriam thinks she''s found the story of the year. But when she takes it to her editor, she''s fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she has uncovered. Before the day is over, she''s received a locket left by the mother she never knew-the mother who was murdered when she was an infant. Within is a knotwork pattern, which has a hypnotic effect on her. Before she knows it, she''s transported herself to a parallel Earth, a world where knights on horseback chase their prey with automatic weapons, and where world-skipping assassins lurk just on the other side of reality - a world where her true family runs things. The six families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the scenes, a mixture of nobility and criminal conspirators whose power to walk between the worlds makes them rich in both. Braids of family loyalty and intermarriage provide a fragile guarantee of peace, but a recently-ended civil war has left the families shaken and suspicious. Taken in by her mother''s people, she becomes the star of the story of the century-as Cinderella without a fairy godmother. As her mother''s heir, Miriam is hailed as the prodigal countess Helge Thorold-Hjorth, and feted and feasted. Caught up in schemes and plots centuries in the making, Miriam is surrounded by unlikely allies, forbidden loves, lethal contraband, and, most dangerous of all, her family. Her unexpected return will supercede the claims of other clan members to her mother''s fortune and power, and whoever killed her mother will be happy to see her dead, too. Behind all this lie deeper secrets still, which threaten everyone and everything she has ever known. Patterns of deception and interlocking lies, as intricate as the knotwork between the universes. But Miriam is no one''s pawn, and is determined to conquer her new home on her own terms. Blending the creativity and humor of Roger Zelazny, the adventure of H. Beam Piper and Philip Jose Farmer, and the rigor and scope of a science-fiction writer on the grandest scale, Charles Stross has set a new standard for fantasy epics. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

“Stross’s work offers a potent reminder of why short stories used to be the preferred delivery method for science fiction.” – The A.V. Club This selection of speculative fiction runs the gamut—from “Palimpsest,” a decidedly nontraditional time-travel novella, to “Dawn on the Farm,” an adventure of hapless secret agent Bob Howard (star of the Laundry novels: The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, and The Fuller Memorandum). Also included are “MAXOS,” a stunning example of the new flash-fiction form; his Locus Award-winning novella, “Missile Gap”; and “Unwirer,” a collaboration with Cory Doctorow. Rounding out the contents are “A Colder War,” “Rogue Farm,” “Trunk and Disorderly,” and “Snowball’s Chance,” four unique, genre-bending tales that could only come from the limitless imagination of one of the twenty-first century’s most daring visionaries, Charles Stross.

Following the extinction of humankind in the twenty-third century, leaving behind only androids, femmebot Freya Nakamichi 47 accepts a job to transport a mysterious package from Mercury to Mars, unaware that some extremely powerful and ruthless humanoids will stop at nothing to possess the package and its contents.