A Conventional Boy

Author: Charles Stross

Hardcover

Publishing just ahead of the final Laundry Files novel (The Regicide Report, summer 2025), this collection includes the short Laundry Files novel A Conventional Boy - set during the 1980s Satanic Panic - and two other other short stories in this joyous celebration of all things Laundry Files. For fans of Slow Horses and Stranger Things.

Pre order release date
7th April 2025

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Hardcover

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Description

In A Conventional Boy, the fate of the world will depend on a roll of the dice... twenty-sided dice, that is.

In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another teenage nerd growing up in middle England. But his love of D&D caused him to fall afoul of the Laundry, a government agency tasked with suppressing supernatural threats. It turns out that sometimes ninth level wizard spells drawn on the back of your maths textbook can look suspiciously like actual magic...

Decades later, Derek is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a centre for deprogramming captured cultists. But Derek finally has reason to escape, and an escape plan to out into action: he wants to attend his first gaming convention. While Derek's D&D games were fictional, a game at the con really 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 dice bag.

The Laundry Files series follows an agency of British spies who deal with supernatural threats; they also have to deal with chronic underfunding, government ministers, rival agencies and worst of all, each other. Think Slow Horses crossed with the monsters from Stranger Things, this series is funny, nerdy, and a cult classic.

Publishing just ahead of the final Laundry Files novel (The Regicide Report, summer 2025), this new collection includes the never before published Laundry Files novel A Conventional Boy - inspired by the 1980s Satanic Panic - and two other short stories in this joyous celebration of all things Laundry Files.

In this collection:

A CONVENTIONAL BOY (53.3k words)
DOWN ON THE FARM (12.7k words)

*OVERTIME (8.7k words)

also includes exclusive afterword from Charles Stross

About the Author

Charles Stross is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of seven Hugo-nominated novels and winner of three Hugo awards for best novella, he has won numerous other awards and been translated into at least twelve other languages.