Charles Stross – författare

In A Conventional Boy, the fate of the world will depend on a roll of the dice... twenty-sided dice, that is. 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...Decades later, Derek is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a centre for deprogramming captured cultists. But Derek finally has reason to escape, and an escape plan to out into action: he wants to attend his first gaming convention. While Derek''s D&D games were fictional, a game at the con really 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 dice bag.The Laundry Files series follows an agency of British spies who deal with supernatural threats; they also have to deal with chronic underfunding, government ministers, rival agencies and worst of all, each other. Think Slow Horses crossed with the monsters from Stranger Things, this series is funny, nerdy, and a cult classic.***Publishing ahead of the final Laundry Files novel (The Regicide Report), this new collection includes the never before published Laundry Files novel A Conventional Boy - inspired by the 1980s Satanic Panic - and two other short stories in this joyous celebration of all things Laundry Files.***In this collection:*A CONVENTIONAL BOY (53.3k words)*DOWN ON THE FARM (12.7k words)*OVERTIME (8.7k words)also includes exclusive afterword from Charles Stross

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. Mo is appointed as official police liaison, but in between dealing with police bureaucracy, superpowered members of the public and disgruntled politicians, Mo discovers to her horror that she can no longer rely on her marriage, nor on the weapon that has been at her side for eight years of undercover work, the possessed violin known as ''Lecter''.If this wasn''t bad enough, a mysterious figure known as Dr Freudstein is committing heists and sending increasingly threatening messages to the police. Who is Freudstein and what is he planning?

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.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE LOCUS AWARD 2018

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. What neither Bob nor his managers have foreseen is that their organisation has earned the attention of a horror far more terrifying than any demon: a government looking for public services to privatise. There are things in the Laundry''s assets that big business would simply love to get its hands on . . .Inch by inch, Bob Howard and his managers are forced to consider the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British government itself.