Fantasy Spy

The galaxy is mired in a cold war between two superpowers, the Illyrican Empire and the Commonwealth. Thrust between this struggle are Simon Kovalic, the Commonwealth's preeminent spy, and Kyle Rankin, a lowly soldier happily scrubbing toilets on Sabaea, a remote and isolated planet. However, Kyle Rankin is a lie. His real name is Eli Brody, and he fled his home world of Caledonia years ago. Simon Kovalic knows Caledonia is a lit fuse hurtling towards detonation.

Dimos Horacki is a Borolian journalist and a cynical patriot, his muckraking days behind him. But when his newspaper ships him to the front, he’s embedded in the Imperial Army and the reality of colonial expansion is laid bare before him. His adventures take him from villages and homesteads to the great refugee city of Hronople, built of glass, steel, and stone, all while a war rages around him. The empire fights for coal and iron, but the anarchists of Hron fight for their way of life.

In Wyoming, a little girl reads people’s darkest secrets. In New York, a man sensing patterns in the stock market racks up $300 billion. In Chicago, a woman can go invisible. They’re called "brilliants," and since 1980, one percent of people have been born this way. Nick Cooper is among them; a federal agent, Cooper has gifts rendering him exceptional at hunting terrorists. His latest target may be the most dangerous man alive, a brilliant drenched in blood and intent on provoking civil war. But to catch him, Cooper will have to violate everything he believes in.

Personable, good looking, and a whiz at physics, graduate student Allan Diffenduffer "Duff" Bogan has a bright future ahead of him. But while staying at the home of an invalid widow in Florida, Duff makes a discovery that freezes his blood: a cache of uranium hidden in the locked closet of a fellow guest. The FBI is initially skeptical, but Duff knows all too well what his findings portend.

Living among the Sachakan rebels, Lorkin does his best to learn about them and their unique magic. But the Traitors are reluctant to trade their knowledge for the Healing they so desperately want, and while he assumes they fear revealing their existence to the world, there are hints they have bigger plans. Sonea searches for the rogue, knowing that Cery cannot avoid assassination forever, but the rouge's influence over the city's underworld is far greater than she feared. His only weakness is the loss of his mother, now locked away in the Lookout.

Lieutenant James Shelley, who has an uncanny knack for premeditating danger, leads a squad of advanced US Army military tasked with enforcing the peace around a conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. The squad members are linked wirelessly 24/7 to themselves and a central intelligence that guides them via drone relay - and unbeknownst to Shelley and his team, they are being recorded for a reality TV show.

In 1959, nine hikers of the Dyatlov expedition perished while crossing a remote mountain range in the Soviet Union. More than sixty-five years later, the circumstances surrounding their deaths remain a mystery. In 1995, Julie Sigler was killed in an Air Force training exercise crash, but the circumstances of her death are never called into question... until she appears on TV, twenty years later, standing beside the current President of the United States.

When a bomb explodes in the bustling Commonwealth capital city of Salaam, responsibility is quickly claimed by an extremist independence movement. But after a former comrade, an ex-spy with his own agenda, is implicated in the attack, Simon Kovalic and his team of covert operatives are tasked with untangling the threads of a dangerous plot that could have implications on a galactic scale. And the deeper Kovalic digs, the more he'll uncover a maze of secrets, lies, and deception that may force even the most seasoned spy to question his own loyalties.

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.

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.

With the help of his two jhereg, sorcerer and former assassin-for-hire Vlad Taltos takes on the corrupt House of the Orca as he sets out to uncover a huge financial scandal.

It’s been 18 months since the angels of the apocalypse ripped our world apart. Before, I was a burlesque dancer, decked in sequins and feathers at the hippest clubs. Now, I live in an abandoned hospital in East London, scavenging for scraps. At least, until I get the chance to fight back against the disturbingly seductive angels. In fact, I’m going undercover as a spy in their castle. I have two goals: learn their weaknesses, and find my missing sister.

Relieved that Lorkin is coming home, Sonea prepares to meet with the traitors on behalf of the Guild. Then bad news arrives: The Sachakan king has imprisoned her son.

As the Sachakan king tries to force Lorkin into betraying the traitors, Dannyl questions his friendship with Ashaki Achati. Can he trust the Sachakan? Not at all, if Tayend is right. But do Tayend’s suspicions spring from good political instincts, or jealousy? Easily evading capture by the Guild, the Rogue knows only one obstacle lies between him and his ambition to rule the underworld: Cery.

Nuclear attacks wipe out city centers. Russian warships infest the Atlantic. Chinese tanks roll out of Baltimore's ports with their sights set on Mount Weather—the bunker protecting the acting US President and what's left of the tattered military command. Lieutenant Commander Joey Washington has information about the attack that might turn the tide of battle, but can she deliver it to the underground stronghold before the tanks come crashing in?

Thomas 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.

A new queen under threat. An ambassador with a desperate scheme. Two kingdoms with everything to lose. Once a spy and counselor to the throne, Sage Fowler has secured victory for her kingdom at a terrible cost. Now an ambassador representing Demora, Sage is about to face her greatest challenge to avoid a war with a rival kingdom. After an assassination attempt destroys the chance for peace, Sage and her fiancé Major Alex Quinn risk a dangerous plot to reveal the culprit. But the stakes are higher than ever, and in the game of traitors, betrayal is the only certainty.

After a stressful first year at Yesgol, Evan Tailor is looking forward to a vacation with his boyfriend and a stress free year of schooling. Unfortunately, life has other plans. Despite his relative success in last year's tournament, Evan can't rest on his laurels. His impending debts loom ever larger, and his strengthening abilities reveal a conspiracy that runs deeper than Yesgol, one that could shake the roots of the very nation in which he lives.

Charles Stross builds a new series with Empire Games. Expanding on the world he created in the Family Trade series, a new generation of paratime travelers walk between parallel universes. The year is 2020. It's 17 years since the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire, and the newly reconstituted North American Commonwealth is developing rapidly, on course to defeat the French and bring democracy to a troubled world.

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.

The year is 2052. Climate change has had a predictably devastating effect: Venice submerged, cyclones in Oklahoma, megafires in South America. Yet it could be much worse. Two decades earlier, the global protest movement known as the Upheavals helped break the planet’s fossil fuel dependency, and the subsequent Nuremberg-like Toronto Trials convicted the most powerful oil executives and lobbyists for crimes against the environment. Not all of them. A few executives escaped arrest and went into hiding, including pipeline mastermind Robert Cave.