New Releases by Charles Stross

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.

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?

Regular readers of Charles Stross''s Laundry Files might have noticed Bob Howard''s absence from the events of The Nightmare Stacks, and his subsequent return from Tokyo at the start of The Delirium Brief. Escape from Yokai Land explains what he was doing there. Bob''s been assigned to work with the Miyamoto Group, checking the wards that lock down Japan''s warded sites—a task previously handled by his predecessor Dr. Angleton, the Eater of Souls. This mostly involves policing yokai: traditional magical beings, increasingly grown more annoying and energetic. But then Bob''s simple trip turns into a deadly confrontation with the ultimate yokai. It''s massively powerful. It''s pink. And it says "Hello." At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A unique blend of espionage thrills and Lovecraftian horror, Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross''s Laundry Files continues with Quantum of Nightmares. It’s a brave new Britain under the New Management. The 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. Now she’s in charge of the Bigge Corporation—just in time to discover the lethal trap Rupert set for her long ago. Wendy Deere’s transhuman abilities have gotten her through many a scrape. Now she’s gainfully employed investigating unauthorized supernatural shenanigans. She swore to herself she wouldn’t again get entangled with Eve Starkey’s bohemian brother Imp and his crew of transhuman misfits. Yeah, right. Mary Macandless has powers of her own. Right now she’s pretending to be a nanny in order to kidnap the children of a pair of famous, Government-authorized superheroes. These children have powers of their own, and Mary Macandless is in way over her head. Amanda Sullivan is the HR manager of a minor grocery chain, much oppressed by her glossy blonde boss—who is cooking up an appalling, extralegal scheme literally involving human flesh. All of these stories will come together, with world-bending results... "For all of Stross''s genuine ability to spook and dismay, The Laundry Files are some of the most tremendously humane books I''ve ever read." —Tamsyn Muir, author of Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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.

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.

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.

A brilliant collaboartion from Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross, two defining personalities of post-cyberpunk SF—now repackaged with a new cover! Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century. Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun. The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander...and when that happens, it casually spams Earth''s networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there''s always someone who''ll take a bite from the forbidden apple. So until the overminds bore of stirring Earth''s anthill, there''s Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy technovirus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.

Eighteen stories from some of the biggest names in genre fiction, written in honour of Arthur C. Clarke. The Fountain, a traditional London pub where a group of friends - scientists, writers and SF fans - meet to swap anecdotes, reveal secrets from their past, tell tall tales, and maybe, just maybe, save the world...

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.”

There are standard methods for lifting material out of brains. Everyone, everywhere in human space, is riddled with nanotech Dreamtime encoders. They''re in the air, in the soil, in their cells and reproducing like bacteria. They constantly monitor cerebral activity, transmitting updates of their host personality to the encoders, that upload minds into the Dreamtime when their bodies cease to support them. It even makes a neat debriefing tool, if you have the equipment to interrogate the brain encoders directly. (Only Distant Intervention, that I know of, is allowed to play with this kind of kit.Charles David George "Charlie" Stross (born Leeds, October 18, 1964) is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy. Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod and Liz Williams. Obvious inspirations include Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling, among other cyberpunk and postcyberpunk writers. His first published short story, "The Boys," appeared in Interzone in 1987: his first novel, Singularity Sky was published by Ace in 2003 and was nominated for the Hugo Award. A collection of his short stories, Toast: And Other Rusted Futures appeared in 2002. Subsequent short stories have been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and other awards. His novella "The Concrete Jungle" won the Hugo award for its category in 2005. Most recently, Accelerando won the 2006 Locus Award for best science fiction novel, was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the year''s best science fiction novel, and was on the final ballot for the Hugo Award in the best novel category. Glasshouse is on the final ballot for the Hugo Award in the best novel category.

From the Hugo Award-winning author of The Rhesus Chart comes another supernatural case from The Laundry Files... 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 labyrinthine 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. Unfortunately, one of those supernatural threats has come between Mo and Bob. An antique violin, an Erich Zahn original, made of white human 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…

Accidental vampire Alex Schwartz is busy assessing the cost of renovating a Cold War bunker to be used as the new HQ for Britain s secret counter-occult agency, where he attracts the attentions of a local Goth drama student.

The Hugo Award-winning author of The Delirium Brief reveals the secrets of The Laundry Files in an adventure of Lovecraftian horror and espionage hi-jinks... As a newly appointed junior manager within the Laundry—the clandestine organization responsible for protecting Britain against supernatural threats—Bob Howard is expected to show some initiative to help the agency battle the forces of darkness. But shining a light on what’s best left in the shadows is the last thing Bob wants to do—especially when those shadows hide an occult parasite spreading a deadly virus. Traders employed by a merchant bank in London are showing signs of infection—an array of unusual symptoms such as super-strength and -speed, an uncanny talent for mind control, an extreme allergic reaction to sunlight, and an unquenchable thirst for blood. While his department is tangled up in bureaucratic red tape (and Buffy reruns) debating how to stop the rash of vampirism, Bob digs deeper into the bank’s history—only to uncover a blood-curdling conspiracy between men and monsters...

The Revolution Trade: an omnibus edition of the fifth and sixth novels--The Revolution Businessand Trade of Queens--in Charles Stross''s Merchant Princes series. Miriam Beckstein has said good-bye to her comfort zone. The transition from journalist to captive in an alternative timeline was challenging to say the least, she discovered that her long-lost family, the Clan, were world-skipping assassins. Now, while civil war rages in her adopted home, she''s pregnant with the heir to their throne and a splinter group want her on their side of a desperate power struggle. But as a leader or figurehead? Meanwhile, unknown to the Clan, the US government is on to them and preparing to exploit this knowledge. But it hadn''t foreseen a dissident Clan faction carrying nuclear devices between worlds—with the US president in their sights. The War on Terror is about to go transdimensional. But Mike Fleming, CIA agent, knows the most terrifying secret of all: His government''s true intentions. "These books are immense fun."--Locus

"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.

Der Verschwörung auf der Spur Nach der Singularität haben sich die Menschen über die Galaxis verstreut – nicht ganz freiwillig, und nicht ohne Konflikte. Als die noch junge Zivilisation auf dem Planeten Moskau von einer Supernova bedroht wird, werden die Bewohner eilig evakuiert, darunter auch die junge Wednesday. Der neugierige Teenager erkundet das Transportschiff, das sie in Sicherheit bringen soll, auf eigene Faust – und entdeckt zuerst geheime Dokumente und dann eine Leiche. Noch ahnt sie nicht, wie brisant ihre Entdeckung ist, doch schon bald wird ihre Familie getötet und sie selbst gnadenlos verfolgt. Zeitgleich nimmt die Agentin Rachel Mansour ihre Ermittlungen auf, denn es scheint, als wäre Moskaus Sonne mittels einer geächteten Waffe zur Explosion gebracht worden. Die Hauptverdächtige ist die Regierung Neu-Dresdens, und nur Wednesdays Dokumente könnten Licht in diesen verworrenen Fall bringen...

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 year is AD 7000. The human species is nearly extinct—for the fourth time—due to its fragile nature. Krina Alizond-114 is metahuman, descended from the robots that once served humanity. She’s on a journey to the water world of Shin-Tethys to find her sister Ana. But her trip is interrupted when pirates capture her ship. Their leader, the enigmatic Count Rudi, believes that there’s more to Krina’s search than meets the eye. He’s correct: Krina and Ana each possess half of the fabled Atlantis Carnet, a lost financial instrument of unbelievable value—capable of bringing down entire civilizations. Krina doesn’t know that Count Rudi suspects her motives, so she accepts his offer to get her to Shin-Tethys in exchange for an introduction to Ana. And what neither of them suspects is that a ruthless body-double assassin has stalked Krina across the galaxy, ready to take the carnet once it is whole—and leave no witnesses alive to tell the tale…

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.

The Bloodline Feud: an omnibus edition of the first two novels in Charles Stross''s The Merchant Princes series The six families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the scenes. They are a mixture of nobility and criminal conspirators whose power to walk between their world and ours makes them rich in both. Miriam, a hip tech journalist from Boston, discovers her alternate-world relatives with explosive results that shake three worlds. Now, as the prodigal Countess Helge Thorold-Hjorth, she finds herself ensnared in schemes and plots centuries in the making. She is surrounded by unlikely allies, lethal contraband, and—most dangerous of all—her family. To avoid a slippery slope down to an unmarked grave, Miriam must build a power base of her own—with unexpected consequences for three different time lines, including the quasi-Victorian one exploited by the hidden family. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

For Bob Howard, a working day tends to alternate between desperately trying not to fall asleep in committee meetings and being menaced by tentacular horrors from beyond spacetime. That''s because Bob works for the Laundry, the secret British government agency tasked with protecting the realm from occult nightmares. So when his manager Iris sends him off to the countryside to liaise with a veterinary inspector from the Department of the Environment, Fisheries, and rural Affairs, at first he takes it as a pleasant vacation. But why is Edgebaston Farm''s livery stable buying a hundred kilos of raw meat per day? Why does his briefing file contain the death-bed confession of that old fraud, H. P. Lovecraft? And why is his contact from DEFRA so deathly afraid of unicorns

Charles Stross''s "Equoid" is a dark fantasy tale from the Hugo-winning author of Rule 34, Halting State, The Atrocity Archives, and many others. The "Laundry" is Britain''s super-secret agency devoted to protecting the realm from the supernatural horrors that menace it. Now Bob Howard, Laundry agent, must travel to the quiet English countryside to deal with an outbreak of one of the worst horrors imaginable. For, as it turns out, unicorns are real. They''re also ravenous killers from beyond spacetime... At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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.

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…