A Conventional Boy - (Laundry Files) by Charles Stross (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another spotty teenage dungeon master growing up in middle England. But then a secret government agency tasked with suppressing magical intrusions received a tip-off - and one midnight raid later, his life was turned upside down by the Satanic D&D Panic. Decades later Derek, now middle-aged and institutionalized, is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a center for deprogramming captured Elder God cultists. He's considered safe enough to edit the camp newsletter, and he even has postal privileges - which he uses to run a play-by-mail game. After 25 years, Derek finally has reason to escape: a nearby D&D convention. While Derek's D&D games were full of fictional elder gods and world-ending threats, a LARP game at the con is a dread ritual designed to summon a great evil into our world, and it's up to Derek and his players to stop them"--

Book Synopsis

In this new Laundry Files adventure the fate of the world will literally depend on the roll of dice... twenty-sided dice, that is.

In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another spotty teenage dungeon master growing up in middle England. But then a secret government agency tasked with suppressing magical intrusions received a tip-off - and one midnight raid later, his life was turned upside down by the Satanic D&D Panic.

Decades later Derek, now middle-aged and institutionalized, is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a center for deprogramming captured Elder God cultists. He's considered safe enough to edit the camp newsletter, and he even has postal privileges - which he uses to run a play-by-mail game. After 25 years, Derek finally has reason to escape: a nearby D&D convention. While Derek's D&D games were full of fictional elder gods and world-ending threats, a LARP game at the con is a dread ritual designed to summon a great evil into our world, and it's up to Derek and his players to stop them.

The fate of the world may depend on the contents of Derek's magic dice bag.

Review Quotes

Praise for A Conventional Boy:

"[A Conventional Boy] reads a bit like Terry Pratchett trying his hand at Lovecraftian horror. The result will delight." - Publishers Weekly, starred review

Praise for the Laundry Files:

"Smart, literate, funny." --Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians

"A bizarre yet effective yoking of the spy and horror genres." --The Washington Post

"Imagine a world where gnarly Lovecraftian demons are all too real yet are routinely neutralized with high-tech wizardry by a supersecret British spy agency, and you'll get an inkling of the genre-bending territory Stross explores in his Laundry Files novels." --Booklist on The Fuller Memorandum

About the Author

CHARLES STROSS is the author of the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry Files series, and several stand-alone novels including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children. He has won three Hugo Awards, including one for the Laundry Files novella Equoid, published on Reactor (formerly Tor.com). Born and raised in Leeds, England, he lives with his spouse in Edinburgh, Scotland, in a flat that is slightly older than the state of Texas.