Fantasy Spy

Covert agent Cyril DePaul thinks he's good at keeping secrets, especially from Aristide Makricosta. They suit each other: Aristide turns a blind eye to Cyril's clandestine affairs, and Cyril keeps his lover's moonlighting job as a smuggler under wraps. Cyril participates in a mission that leads to disastrous results, leaving smoke from various political fires smoldering throughout the city. Shielding Aristide from the expected fallout isn't easy, though.

The future of democracy is about to implode. After the last controversial global election, the global infomocracy that has ensured 30 years of world peace is fraying at the edges. As the new Supermajority government struggles to establish its legitimacy, agents of information across the globe strive to keep the peace and maintain the flows of data that feed the new world order.

Civilisation is collapsing. Frustrated and angry after years of denial and inaction, a government of youth has taken power in North America, and a policy of institutionalised ageism introduced. All those older than the prescribed age are deemed responsible for the current state of the world, and are to be 'relocated', their property and assets confiscated. David Ashworth and his wife May find themselves among the thousands being moved to the southern deserts.

Welcome to Lily Dale, New York...a sleepy summer resort, home to a population of psychics, and the place where Julia Garrity and Kristin Shuttleworth formed a fast friendship broken only by death. Ten Summer Street is no ordinary house. It was there, 15 years ago, that Kristin saw something on a Halloween night that would haunt her until the end of her days. Since then, Julia has watched both Kristin and her mother fall prey to whomever - or whatever - lurks there.

It's late Thursday night, and Inspector Ross Carver is at a crime scene in one of the city's last luxury homes. The dead man on the floor is covered by an unknown substance that's eating through his skin. Before Carver can identify it, six FBI agents burst in and remove him from the premises. He's pushed into a disinfectant trailer, forced to drink a liquid that sends him into seizures, and is shocked unconscious. When he awakens, Carver works to find out what happened to him, soon realizing he's entangled in a web of conspiracy that spans the nation.

In the wake of a miracle of global proportions, National Peace Organization operative Paul Stepola has been exposed as a double agent, serving the Zealot Underground of people of faith in an atheistic world while sworn to persecute them. Now he and his family are on the run, targets of the very agency he has served for so many years.

It'll take more than a lie to keep Kirsten safe. A creative assassin. A hit list hidden in a Doomsday seed vault. A woman with an unusual gift who has to untangle the conspiracy...before it kills her. When Kirsten digs into her mother’s past she discovers a shocking betrayal that derails her life. Will she uncover the mystery before the hitman finds her?

Dark State ups the ante on the already volatile situations laid out in the sleek techno-thriller Empire Games, the start to Stross' new story-line and a perfect entry point for new listeners, in The Merchant Princes series . In the near-future, the collision of two nuclear superpowers across timelines, one in the midst of a technological revolution and the other a hyper-police state, is imminent. In Commissioner Miriam Burgeson's timeline, her top level agents run a high risk extraction of a major political player.

He has no problem leading women on just to get information. He has just been asked to spy on the Royal family of Belgium to uncover an assassination plot. Their number one suspect, the daughter of the Prime Minister, who, like him, finished university top of her class, speaks nine languages, and is a black belt. Derek’s boss warns him that the last agent on the case quit because she was impossible to read. Always up for a challenge, he is determined to find her vulnerabilities and know her better than she knows herself.

Henry Stasik, an Internal Affairs agent for the globe-spanning Coalition, is no stranger to crooked agents or scandals. He's a truth-junkie. An addict. But when international celebrity Anastasia Danicheva specifically demands his presence at a police station, everything changes. The Coalition, which has brought peace through uniting the world under a single banner, wants her dead. But none of their case against her adds up.

The last time Information held an election, a global network outage, two counts of sabotage by major world governments, and a devastating earthquake almost shook micro-democracy apart. Five years later, it's time to vote again, and the system that has ensured global peace for 25 years is more vulnerable than ever. Unknown enemies are attacking Information's network infrastructure. Information's best agents question whether the data monopoly they've served all their lives is worth saving or whether it's time to burn the world down and start anew.

Lieutenant James Shelley and his squad of US Army soldiers were on a quest for justice when they carried out the unauthorized mission known as First Light. They returned home to America to face a court-martial, determined to expose the corruption in the chain of command that compelled their actions. But in a country still reeling from the nuclear terrorism of Coma Day, the courtroom is just one battlefield of many.

Asharee lost her family in a monster attack and learned to survive on the streets. It's a hard life, so when she's offered a chance to escape, she decides to look past the reputation of the person offering. Best decision ever. While a house of pleasure might seem like a bad place for a young woman, the truth is Asharee's never been safer. The gradeenas protect their tizanas. And so she learns how to entice, to dance, to seduce with her eyes and a shake of her hips. But what happens later in the privacy of her room...

Marci Simon lives a double life: conservative professor of English by day, and controversial blogger of aliens by night. But when a classified document lands in her lap, her two worlds collide in an explosive revelation of shocking and deadly secrets. Despite imminent danger at every twist, Marci embarks on an unstoppable quest to expose the terrifying truth. Only she never anticipated the entangled nebula of dark lies, nor the never-ending wormhole the government would spiral through to silence her forever.

When Lilly was first chief engineer at The Commonwealth, nearly 50 years ago, the Central Archive wasn't yet the greatest repository of knowledge in the known world, protected by scribes copying every piece of found material - books, maps, even scraps of paper - and disseminating them by Archive Runners to hidden off-site locations for safe keeping. Back then, there was no Order of Silence to create and maintain secret routes deep into the sand-covered towers of the Gone World or into the northern forests beyond Sea Glass Lake.

After foiling a German plot to devastate America's coastal cities from Boston to Galveston, crack Black Chamber agent Luz O'Malley and budding technical genius Ciara Whelan go to California to recuperate. But their well-deserved rest is cut short by the discovery of a diabolical new weapon that could give the German Imperial Navy command of the North Sea. Luz and Ciara must go deep undercover and travel across a world at war, and live under false identities in Berlin itself to ferret out the project's secrets.

Some terrifying things have happened to Olive in the old stone house, but none as scary as starting junior high. Or so she thinks. When she plummets through a hole in her backyard, though, she realizes two things that may change her mind: First, the wicked Annabelle McMartin is back. Second, there's a secret underground that unlocks not one but two of Elsewhere's biggest, most powerful, most dangerous forces yet. But with the house's guardian cats acting suspicious, her best friend threatening to move away, and her ally Morton starting to rebel, Olive isn't sure where to turn.

When the rule of law fails, dishonest politicians get even dirtier. Shane and Julianna can’t compete with the debased dictators of Jackson County unless they are willing to bend a few rules of their own. Shane Black escaped the city by the skin of his teeth. But his well-stocked mountain retreat is now the target of a local despot who gained his power through bribes, payoffs, and shady politics. Mayor Hayes had few scruples before the collapse. Now that he’s the only law around, he’s down-right ornery. Road trips are always a bad idea in the apocalypse.

My name is Silver Spell Solange. No, I didn't plan for my initials to be the same rank needed to enter the spy academy. But I would do anything to get into the one of a kind school. I have the magical capability of an Elemental Witch, the strength to kick anyone's ass, and quick problem-solving skills to get my teammates out of any jam. There’s only one small problem - the other "S" I’m missing.

In our near-future, the eccentric tech billionaire Jamin Lake reveals an innovation that could save our broken and divided nation: Algo, an A.I. candidate for president. It is heralded as an efficient, rational, and seemingly incorruptible leader, underpinned by the brainpower of a million minds. Jamin vows the A.I. has been programmed to follow only a single benevolent mantra: to deliver “the most good for the most people”. In a nation mired in seemingly endless crisis and division, it feels like a real chance for a better future.