The Merchant Princes

8 primary works • 9 total works

The Bloodline Feud

by Charles Stross

Published 11 April 2013

The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross includes The Family Trade and The Hidden Family - the first two instalments of The Merchant Princes series combined in one volume.

Miriam Beckstein is a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine. So when she discovers a huge money-laundering scam, she thinks she's hit the big time. But when she takes it to her editor, not only is she fired, but she starts to receive death threats. And that's just the beginning.

To distract her furious daughter, Miriam's adoptive mother unearths mementos from her real mother, murdered when she was an infant. But these reveal a secret that will ultimately throw entire governments into disarray. For what Miriam thinks is a simple locket has the power to fling her into an alternate timeline. In this less-developed world, knights on horseback wield automatic weapons, and world-skipping assassins lurk - all on the other side of our reality. Here, her true family runs a criminal empire - and they want her back. But Miriam has other plans.

Following The Bloodline Feud are two further omnibus volumes, The Traders' War and The Revolution Trade.

The Traders' War

by Charles Stross

Published 9 May 2013

First published as The Clan Corporate and The Merchants' War For one ex-journalist, the nightmare has just begun. Miriam Beckstein has said goodbye to her comfort zone, and the transition from journalist to captive in an alternative timeline was challenging to say the least. As was discovering her long-lost family, the Clan, were world-skipping assassins. Now civil war rages in her adopted home, she's pregnant with the heir to their throne and a splinter-group want her on their side of a desperate power struggle. But as a leader or figurehead? Meanwhile, unknown to the Clan, the US government is on to them and preparing to exploit this knowledge. But it hadn't foreseen a dissident Clan faction carrying nuclear devices between worlds - with the US President in their sights. The War on Terror is about to go transdimensional. But Mike Fleming, CIA agent, knows the most terrifying secret of all. His government's true intentions. 'Stross's ability to combine interesting ideas with solid plotting is one of his great strengths', Asimov's Science Fiction, 'Stross sure ends things with a bang ...satisfying and chilling', RTBookreviews.com, 'These books are immense fun' Locus

The Hidden Family

by Charles Stross

Published 1 June 2005

Miriam, a hip tech journalist from Boston, discovered her alternate world relatives in The Family Trade, and with them an elite identity she didn't know was hers. Now, in order to avoid a slippery slope down to an unmarked grave, Miriam, known as Lady Helge to the Family, starts applying modern business practices and scientific knowledge to a trade dominated by mercantilists - with unexpected consequences for three different time lines, including the quasi-Victorian one exploited by the hidden family.

The Revolution Trade

by Charles Stross

Published 6 June 2013

First published as The Revolution Business and The Trade of Queens For one ex-journalist, the nightmare has just begun Miriam Beckstein has said goodbye to her comfort zone. The transition from journalist to captive in an alternative timeline was challenging to say the least. As was discovering her long-lost family, the Clan, were world-skipping assassins. Now civil war rages in her adopted home, she's pregnant with the heir to their throne and a splinter-group want her on their side of a desperate power struggle. But as a leader or figurehead? Meanwhile, unknown to the Clan, the US government is on to them and preparing to exploit this knowledge. But it hadn't foreseen a dissident Clan faction carrying nuclear devices between worlds - with the US President in their sights. The War on Terror is about to go transdimensional. But Mike Fleming, CIA agent, knows the most terrifying secret of all. His government's true intentions.

The Clan Corporate

by Charles Stross

Published 16 May 2006

The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross is the third instalment of The Merchant Princes series - an energetic saga of multiple worlds.

In The Family Trade and The Hidden Family, Miriam got in touch with her roots. Now those roots have begun to strangle her.

A young business journalist from Boston, Miriam discovered that her family comes from a parallel timeline, that she is very well-connected, and that her family is way too much like the Mafia for her comfort. She’s tried hard to remain her own woman, even going so far to start a profitable (and legitimate) business in a third timeline she has discovered, outside the family reach.

There have been murders and betrayals. Now, however, she may be overreaching – if she gets caught, death or worse is around the bend. For instance, there’s the brain-damaged son of the local king who needs a wife . . . But they’d never make her do that, would they?

Merchants' War

by Charles Stross

Published 16 October 2007

Miriam Beckstein is a young, hip, business journalist in Boston. She discovered "In The Family Trade" and "The Hidden Family" that her family came from an alternate reality, that she was very well-connected, and that her family was too much like the mafia for comfort. She found herself caught in a family trap in "The Clan Corporate" and betrothed to a brain-damaged prince, and then all hell broke loose.Now, in "The Merchants' War", Miriam has escaped to yet another world and remains in hiding from both the Clan and their opponents. There is a nasty shooting war going on in the Gruinmarkt world of the Clan, and we know something that Miriam does not; something that she's really going to hate - if she lives long enough to find out.

The Revolution Business

by Charles Stross

Published 14 April 2009

Things are going badly for the Clan in this new SF novel of the Merchant Princes, the immensely popular series by Charles Stross. Locked in a vicious civil war for control over the kingdom of Niejwein, their army is bottled up inside a fortress under siege in two parallel universes at once. Duke Angbard, the Clan's leader, has been laid low by a stroke: plotters are already conspiring in readiness for the deadly dance to come. Miriam, rescued from a tight spot in New Britain, finds the hopes of the young, progressive faction focused on her. But do they want her as a leader or a figurehead? She soon finds herself thrown into a desperate struggle for power. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Clan, researchers working for the US government have achieved a technological breakthrough. The War on Terror is about to go trans dimensional.

Trade of Queens

by Charles Stross

Published 16 March 2010

A dissident faction of the Clan, the alternate universe group of families that has traded covertly with our world for a century or more, has carried nuclear devices between the worlds and exploded them in Washington, DC, killing the President of the United States. Now they will exterminate the rest of the Clan and keep Miriam alive only long enough to bear her child, the heir to the throne of their land in the Gruinmarkt world. Mike Fleming, late of US intelligence, has just survived an attack on his life in Massachusetts and knows the worst and deepest secret: behind the horrifying plot is a faction of the US government itself, preparing for a political takeover in the aftermath of terrifying disaster. There is no safe place except, perhaps, in the third alternate world, New Britain - which has just had a revolution and a nuclear incident of its own.

The Family Trade

by Charles Stross

Published 1 December 2004

Miriam Beckstein, a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine in Boston, finds iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme. But when she takes it to her editor, she's fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she has uncovered.

Before the day is over, she's received a locket left by the mother she never knew – the mother who was murdered when she was an infant. Within is a knot work pattern, which has a hypnotic effect on her. Before she knows it, she's transported herself to a parallel Earth, a world where knights on horseback chase their prey with automatic weapons, and where world-skipping assassins lurk just on the other side of reality – a world where her true family runs things.

'Fast, funny, busily inventive . . . [Stross] is the crème de la crème' Locus

'Science fiction is in good hands with Charles Stross here to lead the new generation' Orson Scott Card