The Delirium Brief
The latest case in the Laundry Files, the Hugo Award–winning series described by Kirkus Reviews as “a weirdly alluring blend of super-spy thriller, deadpan comic fantasy, and Lovecraftian horror.”
Bob Howard’s career in the Laundry, the secret British government agency dedicated to protecting the world from unspeakable horrors from beyond spacetime, has entailed high combat, brilliant hacking, ancient magic, and combat with indescribably repellent creatures of pure evil. It has also involved a wearying amount of paperwork and office politics, and his expense reports are still a mess.
Now, following the invasion of Yorkshire by the Host of Air and Darkness, the Laundry’s existence has become public, and Bob is being trotted out on TV to answer pointed questions about elven asylum seekers. What neither Bob nor his managers have foreseen is that their organization has earned the attention of a horror far more terrifying than any demon: a British government looking for public services to privatize. There’s a lot of potential shareholder value in the Laundry’s “knowledge assets.”
Inch by inch, Bob Howard and his managers are forced to consider the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British government itself.
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Charles Stross
Charles Stross doesn’t just write science fiction—he reverse-engineers the future. Whether unraveling the complexities of AI, economics, or cosmic horror, his stories feel less like speculative fiction and more like eerily plausible roadmaps to tomorrow. A former software developer and technical writer, Stross brings a hacker’s mindset to storytelling, dissecting the machinery of reality and exposing the glitches beneath.
Born in Leeds, England, Stross grew up surrounded by the last vestiges of the Industrial Age, a landscape that would later inform his fascination with systems—both human and technological. Before becoming a full-time author, he dabbled in everything from pharmacy to computer science, experiences that lend his work an uncanny level of authenticity. His early exposure to computing and online culture made him one of the first sci-fi writers to deeply explore the implications of a hyper-connected world, long before the tech boom turned cyberpunk into a reality.
Laundry Files
The multiple Hugo Award-winning Laundry Files series follows the exploits of a former tech support worker now-turned field agent, Bob Howard, at the Laundry, a top secret British intelligence agency dedicated to protecting the cosmos and human race from nefarious supernatural phenomenon beyond spacetime. Starting off with The Atrocity Archives, witness Charles Stross infuse each genre-bending novel with a blend of dark fantasy, bureaucratic humor, and the pacing of a hardcore thriller. An innovative spin on H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos,” the Laundry Files is perfect for fans of weird fiction and bureaucratic humor with a technological twist.
Laundry Files consists of eleven primary books, and includes three additional books that complement the series but are not considered mandatory reads and considered as a complete series. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
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