Miriam Beckstein has gotten in touch with her roots and they have nearly strangled her. A young, hip, business journalist in Boston, she discovered (in The Family Trade ) that her family comes from an alternate reality, that she is very well-connected, and that her family is too much like the mafia for comfort. In addition, starting with the fact that women are family property and required to breed more family members with the unique talent to walk between worlds, Miriam has tried to remain an outsider and her own woman. She started a profitable business in a third world she has discovered, outside the family reach (recounted in The Hidden Family). She fell in love with a distant relative, but he died saving her life.

 

Now, however, in The Clan Corporate, Miriam may be overreaching. And if she gets caught, death or a fate worse is around the bend. There is, for instance, the brain-damaged son of the local king who needs a wife. But they'd never make her do that, would they?

Praise

 

"The Clan Corporate offers more proof, if any were needed, why Charles Stross has become universally acknowledged as one of science fiction's major new talents."--Mike Resnick

 

“Stross and his feisty heroine are currently about the best practitioner and heroine the old motif boasts, and many are and will be the readers hoping for more than the three volumes they’ve given us so far.” --Booklist
 
“Stross is a cunning writer.” –Locus on The Clan Corporate
 
“Charles Stross’s Family Trade series continues strong with The Clan Corporate.” --Analog

 

“Stross continues to mix high and low tech in amusing and surprising ways. . . .[he] weaves a tale worthy of Robert Ludlum or Dan Brown.” –Publishers Weekly on The Hidden Family

"It's simply a great adventure, full of danger, of plots within plots, of forbidden love and political murder."--Orson Scott Card on The Family Trade

About the Author(s)

Charles Stross

CHARLES STROSS lives in Edinburgh, Scotland

Charles Stross's Blog

Podcast interview: Charles Stross At WorldCon 2007

Excerpt

Chapter One
Tied Down
 
Nail lacquer, the woman called Helge reflected as she paused in the antechamber, always did two things to her: it reminded her of her mother, and it made her feel like a rebellious little girl. She examined the fingertips of her left hand, turning them this way and that in search of minute imperfections in the early afternoon sunlight slanting through the huge window behind her.

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