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Luisteren én lezen

Charles Stross

A time of ambition, treachery and dangerous secrets . . . 

Rita Douglas is plucked from her dead-end job and trained as a reluctant US spy. All because she has the latent genetic talent to hop between alternate timelines - and infiltrate them. Her United States is waging a high-tech war, targeting assassins who can move between worlds to deliver death on a mass scale, and Rita will be their secret weapon.

 Miriam Beckstein has her own mission, as a politician in an industrial revolution US. She must accelerate her world's technology before their paranoid American twin finds them. It would blow them to hell. After all, they've done it before. Each timeline also battles internal conspiracies, as a cold war threatens to turn white hot. But which world is the aggressor - and will Rita have to choose a side?

This new series is set in the same world as Charles Stross' 'Merchant Princes' series.

Kate Reading

Macmillan Digital Audio

Empire Games

Dark State is the second book in the thrilling Empire Games series – set in the same world as Charles Stross' The Merchant Princes series.

In the near future, the collision of two nuclear superpowers – in two different timelines – is imminent. One America is experiencing its first technological revolution, whilst a parallel United States is a hi-tech police state. But both are poised to wreak destruction.

In Miriam Burgeson’s America, internal politics are pulling the government apart. But if one of her agents secures a high-profile defection, civil war may be averted. Rita Douglas, rival US spy, arrives during this crisis. Her world is rocked when she realizes Miriam is her mother, who gave her up for adoption as a baby. But what impact will this have on the conflict?

Then the US discovers another timeline, and the remains of an advanced society. Something annihilated that civilization – and Rita’s people are about to rouse it.

Dark State

In this chillingly resonant dystopian adventure, two versions of America are locked in conflict. Invisible Sun concludes Charles Stross’s Empire Games trilogy.

Two twinned worlds are facing attack

The New American Commonwealth is caught in a deadly arms race with the USA, its parallel-world rival. And the USA’s technology is decades ahead. Yet the Commonweath might self-combust first – for its leader has just died, leaving a crippling power vacuum. Minister Miriam Burgeson must face allegations of treason without his support, in a power grab by her oldest adversary.

However, all factions soon confront a far greater danger … In their drive to explore other timelines, high-tech USA awakened an alien threat. This force destroyed humanity on one version of Earth. And if the two superpowers don’t take action, it will do the same to them.

Invisible Sun follows Empire Games and Dark State. This trilogy is set in the same dangerous parallel world as Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes sequence.

Invisible Sun: Empire Games: Book Three


Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross returns to the Merchant Princes universe in Empire Games, the first in a trilogy of gripping techno-thrillers featuring parallel worlds on the brink of war. It’s the perfect entry-point for readers new to Charles Stross as well as existing fans. Featuring inter-dimensional political intrigue, espionage and state surveillance, the series is ideal for anyone who loved The Man in the High Castle, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, or the works of Iain Banks.

‘Stross's ferociously imaginative world-building is on full display here . . . few other writers can match him for humour, creativity and sheer density of ideas.’ SFX
