The Laundry Files’ “fast-paced blend of espionage thrills, mundane office comedy and Lovecraftian horror” (SFX) continues as Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross assigns a day trader to a permanent position on the night shift... After stumbling upon the algorithm that turned him and his fellow merchant bankers into vampires, Alex Schwartz was drafted by the Laundry, Britain’s secret counter-occult agency that’s humanity’s first line of defense against the forces of darkness. Dependent on his new employers for his continued existence—as Alex has no stomach for predatory blood-sucking—he has little choice but to accept his new role as an operative-in-training. For his first assignment, Alex is dispatched to Leeds to help assess the costs of renovating a 1950s Cold War bunker for use as the Laundry’s new headquarters. Unfortunately, Leeds is Alex’s hometown, and the thought of breaking the news to his parents that he’s left banking for the Civil Service, while hiding his undead condition, is causing him more anxiety than learning how to live as a vampire secret agent preparing to confront multiple apocalypses. Alex’s only saving grace is Cassie Brewer, a drama student appearing in the local goth festival who is inexplicably attracted to him despite his awkward personality and massive amounts of sunblock. But Cassie has secrets of her own—secrets that make Alex’s nightlife behaviors seem positively normal...

In these 23stories, Brown never rails to surprise and delight. Time after time the reader anticipates the ending only to discover that once more the author has proved too clever. Yet Brown never "cheats," never feeds false clues, and his endings are always plausible. His imag­ination is by turns puckish, grim, out­landish--but forever fresh. Brown's stories run from the fifty-word "Mistake" to a novelette ("The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches"). In "Granny's Birthday," a two-page short short, with Granny supervising like a benign queen, the party goes splendidly, marred only by manslaughter and murder.

Complete information for developers designing network programs using the Windows Sockets standard. This book's easy-to-understand explanations and sample programs simplify working with the Windows Sockets API. Expert Patrice Bonner presents methods and tools for designing robust network applications, including sample stream and datagram client and server applications.