Audiobooks by Charles Stross

Prolific novelist Stross pauses to collect short stories that have not (yet) been stitched up into his longer work. Stories that move the U.S.–U.S.S.R. conflict onto a massive disk in another galaxy (Locus Award–winner Missile Gap), offer a spam-filter solution to the Fermi paradox (MAXOS) and suggest clever bargains with the devil in a newly frozen Scotland (Snowball's Chance) demonstrate Stross's ability to crisscross genres, blending SF, fantasy, horror and espionage.

Charles Stross (Author), Paul Hecht, Robert Ian Mackenzie (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tor.com: Selected Original Fiction, 2008-2012

This outstanding collection of short stories features some of the best of Tor.com original fiction, in audio for the first time. Written for and originally published exclusively on Tor.com, this audiobook includes Nebula and World Fantasy Award-nominated short stories, brand-new fiction from bestselling authors, and tales that feature characters and worlds that listeners already know and love. In this unique story collection, listeners will enjoy fiction from Sylvia Day, John Scalzi, Brandon Sanderson, and many others. The collection includes: “Earth Hour” by Ken MacLeod “Eve of Sin City” by Sylvia Day, featuring Evangeline Hollis of the Marked series “The President’s Brain is Missing” by John Scalzi “Overtime” by Charles Stross, set in the world of The Laundry Files “Firstborn” by Brandon Sanderson “Down on the Farm” by Charles Stross, set in the world of The Laundry Files “After the Coup” by John Scalzi “The Finite Canvas” by Brit Mandelo “Swift, Brutal Retaliation” by Meghan McCarron “Portrait of Lisane da Patagnia” by Rachel Swirsky

Brandon Sanderson, Brit Mandelo, Charles Stross, John Scalzi, Ken MacLeod, Rachel Swirsky, Sylvia Day (Author), Amy McFadden, Cassandra Campbell, Gideon Emery, Jill Redfield, Kathleen Gati, Luke Daniels, MacLeod Andrews, R. C. Bray (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Traders' War: The Clan Corporate and The Merchants' War

The Traders' War by Charles Stross includes The Clan Corporate and The Merchants' War, the third and fourth instalments in the spellbinding The Merchant Princes series combined into one volume. The journalistic instinct runs deep - and comes with a fatality warning. 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 US 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. The Traders' War is preceded by The Bloodline Feud omnibus, and followed with the final volume, The Revolution Trade.

Charles Stross (Author), Kate Reading (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Trade of Queens: Book Six of the Merchant Princes

A dissident faction of the Clan, the alternate universe group of families that has traded covertly with our world for a century or more, have carried nuclear devices between the worlds and exploded them in Washington, DC, killing the President of the United States. Now they will exterminate the rest of the Clan and keep Miriam alive only long enough to bear her child, the heir to the throne of their land in the Gruinmarkt world. The worst and deepest secret is now revealed: behind the horrifying plot is a faction of the US government itself, preparing for a political takeover in the aftermath of disaster. There is no safe place for Miriam and her Clan except, perhaps, in the third alternate world, New Britain--which has just had a revolution and a nuclear incident of its own. Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series reaches a spectacular climax in this sixth volume. Praised by Nobel laureate Paul Krugman as "great fun," this is state of the art, cutting edge SF grown out of a fantastic premise.

Charles Stross (Author), Kate Reading (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Rhesus Chart

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 things 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 superstrength 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 bloodcurdling conspiracy between men and monsters…

Charles Stross (Author), Gideon Emery (Narrator)

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The Revolution Trade: The Revolution Business and The Trade of Queens

The Revolution Trade by Charles Stross includes The Revolution Business and The Trade of Queens - the final two instalments of the spellbinding The Merchant Princes series combined in one volume. For one ex-journalist, the nightmare has just begun . . . Miriam Beckstein has said goodbye to her comfort zone. The transition from journalist to captive in an alternative timeline was challenging to say the least. As was discovering her long-lost family, the Clan, were world-skipping assassins. Now 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. Preceding The Revolution Trade are two previous omnibus volumes, The Bloodline Feud and The Traders' War.

Charles Stross (Author), Kate Reading (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Revolution Business: Book Five of the Merchant Princes

Things are going badly for the Clan in this new SF novel of the Merchant Princes, the immensely popular series by Charles Stross. Locked in a vicious civil war for control over the kingdom of Niejwein, their army is bottled up inside a fortress under siege in two parallel universes at once. Duke Angbard, the Clan's leader, has been laid low by a stroke: plotters are already conspiring in readiness for the deadly dance to come. Miriam, rescued from a tight spot in New Britain, finds the hopes of the young, progressive faction focused on her. But do they want her as a leader or a figurehead? She soon finds herself thrown into a desperate struggle for power. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Clan, researchers working for the US government have achieved a technological breakthrough. The War on Terror is about to go transdimensional.

Charles Stross (Author), Kate Reading (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Rapture of the Nerds

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. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick 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. The Rapture of the Nerds is a brilliant collaboration by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross, two of the defining personalities of post-cyberpunk science fiction. “Mind-bendingly entertaining…The novel is a surefire hit for genre fans. Fans of Adam Roberts’ elegant, intellectually challenging SF will also be on firm ground here.”—Booklist (starred review)

Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow (Author), John Lee (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Nightmare Stacks

The Laundry Files' "fast-paced blend of espionage thrills, mundane office comedy and Lovecraftian horror" (SFX) continues as Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross assigns a day trader to a permanent position on the night shift... After stumbling upon the algorithm that turned him and his fellow merchant bankers into vampires, Alex Schwartz was drafted by The Laundry, Britain's secret counter-occult agency that's humanity's first line of defense against the forces of darkness. Dependent on his new employers for his continued existence-as Alex has no stomach for predatory bloodsucking-he has little choice but to accept his new role as an operative-in-training. Dispatched to Leeds, Alex's first assignment is to help assess the costs of renovating a 1950s Cold War bunker into The Laundry's new headquarters. Unfortunately, Leeds is Alex's hometown, and the thought of breaking the news to his parents that he's left banking for civil service, while hiding his undead condition, is causing more anxiety than learning how to live as a vampire secret agent preparing to confront multiple apocalypses. Alex's only saving grace is Cassie Brewer, a drama student appearing in the local Goth Festival who is inexplicably attracted to him despite his awkward personality and massive amounts of sunblock. But Cassie has secrets of her own-secrets that make Alex's night life behaviors seem positively normal...

Charles Stross (Author), Gideon Emery (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Merchants' War: Book Four of the Merchant Princes

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.

Charles Stross (Author), Kate Reading (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Jennifer Morgue

Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross continues to make a name for himself in the sci-fi genre. The Jennifer Morgue is an extension of Stross' award-winning novella The Concrete Jungle. Bob Howard is a special operative for the British agency called The Laundry, and his task is to stop a rogue billionaire from using an artifact, known as Gravedust, with the power to reanimate the dead. The U.S. Black Agency sends the lethal Ramona Random to aid Bob's mission, but she seems to have a different agenda.

Charles Stross (Author), Gideon Emery (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Hidden Family: Book Two of Merchant Princes

In the tradition of Roger Zelazny's classic Amber novels, the second volume of Charles Stross's thrill-a-minute saga of multiple worlds. Miriam, a hip tech journalist from Boston, discovered her alternate world relatives in The Family Trade, and with them an elite identity she didn't know was hers. Now, in order to avoid a slippery slope down to an unmarked grave, Miriam, known as Lady Helge to the Family, starts applying modern business practices and scientific knowledge to a trade dominated by mercantilists -- with unexpected consequences for three different timelines, including the quasi-Victorian one exploited by the hidden family. Charles Stross is one of the big new SF writers of the 21st century, and the saga of The Merchant Princes is his most ambitious work yet.

Charles Stross (Author), Kate Reading (Narrator)

Audiobook