In a world where magic has gone mainstream, a policewoman and a group of petty criminals are pulled into a heist to find a forbidden book of spells that should never be opened…
We’re thrilled to share the cover to Dead Lies Dreaming, the next book in Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series—available October 27, 2020 from Tor.com Publishing.
As magic and superpowers emerge in the unruly masses, the government has begun to employ private sector contractors to capture felons. This is how supernaturally gifted Wendy Deere gets her job bagging and snagging supervillains.
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.
Buy the Book
Dead Lies Dreaming
Charles Stross is the author of the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series, and several stand-alone novels including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn’s Children. Born in Leeds, England, in 1964, Stross studied in London and Bradford, earning degrees in pharmacy and computer science. Over the next decade and a half he worked as a pharmacist, a technical writer, a software engineer, and eventually as a prolific journalist covering the IT industry. His short fiction began attracting wide attention in the late 1990s; his first novel, Singularity Sky, appeared in 2003. He has subsequently won the Hugo Award twice. He lives with his wife in Edinburgh, Scotland, in a flat that is slightly older than the state of Texas.
AUTHOR’S CAVEAT:
So, this is being marketed as Laundry Files. Which is tough to argue against because it is set in the same magic-infested universe as Bob and his co-workers.
However. This is not a novel about the Laundry.
The only characters from other Laundry Files stories who appear in this novel are his Dread Majesty the Prime Minister (briefly seen on TV), and a very confused Russian ex-special forces soldier, now working as a loss adjuster for the Transnistrian Mafiya. (He adjusts losses: six feet down.)
Do not expect to learn anything about the fate lying in store for Bob, Mo, and their friends in this book (or the sequel that I’m currently working on). That lies in store for the last couple of novels in the main story arc of the Laundry Files, which are not yet written.
PS: the thing on the cover is Marble Arch in London, the triumphal arch on the site of the former Tyburn gallows tree. The festive Christmas ornament on top is the New Management’s Tzompantli (or skull rack), notionally designed by Foster + Partners to demonstrate the doom that comes to the enemies of the Black Pharaoh. Because nothing says STRONG AND STABLE GOVERNMENT like a giant pile of the skulls of your vanquished enemies …
Looking forward to this for sure.
Those are some huge skulls or that is a very small arch.
October cannot come soon enough.
@1 Laundry Files Universe (LFU?) stories are just fine. I’m almost dreading Case Nightmare Green, because that would be the end of the series (if not also of the world).
BillReynolds: CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN started in book 3, “The Fuller Memorandum”. It’s in full effect by book 8, “The Delirium Brief”. It’s a creeping crisis, like anthropogenic climate change.
The question is, will the Laundry (or anyone else?) be able to metaphorically decarbonize in time, before our doom is sealed?
Hoh hum another Laundry story. I know, I know he must like writing them. But I’m depressed and disappointed. Love his SF stuff, which is revelatory brilliant. Laundry not so much.
Absence makes this reader’s heart grow fonder.
@6, Charlie tells entertaining lies for money. The Laundry Files are a regular earner, for both himself and Tor, whereas the standalone fiction can vary in reader popularity, fickle, unappreciative, barely-evolved monkeys that we readers are. He tries to pace out the Laundry books with other fiction, but authors are cottage industries and glitches can significantly affect the production cycle. You’ll just have to be patient for the next non-Laundry book.