Book 1 | Start here
Die Twice, File Once
A legally dead investigator follows a missing worker into a system that treats personhood as company property.
The six-book speculative noir series by A. N. Mercer
Six books. One impossible city.
Dirk Strangelove is legally dead, corporately employed and investigating a city where bureaucracy can rewrite memory, identity and reality itself.
Start with Book 1. Continue through all six Sanctuary case files. Every novel has Kindle, paperback and glossy hardcover editions, and all six Kindle editions are included with Kindle Unlimited.
Books 1-6: Die Twice, File Once | The War is Already Over | On the Other Hand... | As I Was Saying... | To Whom It May Concern | Yours Faithfully
Book 2 | Continue here
The War is Already Over
A Ministry raid exposes Dirk's dangerous ability to persuade people, machines and reality to accept a useful lie.
Book 3
On the Other Hand...
A darkly comic Sanctuary case about identity, memory, personhood and a city that can turn a life into paperwork.
Book 4
As I Was Saying...
A dead man's last letter sends a probationary courier through missing addresses, erased lives and one official story that refuses to stay finished.
Book 5
To Whom It May Concern
A missing door and an impossible straight road ask whether Sanctuary can be made safe without making it smaller.
Book 6
Yours Faithfully
Old records assert new authority as Sanctuary faces Full Lock and Dirk confronts the difference between helping and controlling.
New daily serial // Arc One
Thirty mornings inside Sanctuary.
A small administrative problem follows Dirk into tomorrow, then the day after that, until it becomes a complete story about property, personhood and a coat with better paperwork than its owner.
One new record every Sanctuary morning.
Read in order. Arc One concludes after Record 30.
Open the dated archive
Opening today's Sanctuary record...
The briefing
Death is final. Administration is not.
A missing factory worker pulls Dirk into a machinery of polite theft: edited memories, reassigned names, catalogued grief and a system deciding which recorded lives count.
A body in corporate arrears
No pay. No medical care. No ammunition. Sanctuary has leverage, and the bill is paid in pieces of Dirk himself.
Identity as inventory
Names, memories and grief are processed with the calm efficiency of assets moving through a ledger.
Who counts as a person?
Dirk must trust the living, the dead and the people Sanctuary never bothered to recognise at all.
Series catalogue
One city. An expanding catalogue of case files. Every book opens another door into Sanctuary.
- Author
- A. N. Mercer
- Genre
- Speculative noir / hard-boiled mystery / corporate dystopia
- Catalogue
- An expanding sequence of novels and collected case files
- Reading order
- Every title is listed below in publication order
- Series status
- Ongoing, with further Sanctuary files to follow
- Access
- Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback or glossy hardcover
Reader fit
For anyone who suspects the form is the monster.
Bureaucratic horror
The menace is not chaos. It is a system working exactly as designed.
Noir with stranger stakes
A hard-boiled investigation where memory and personhood can be stolen without breaking policy.
Dark, humane comedy
Deadpan absurdity with genuine emotional consequences beneath the paperwork.
Ideas worth arguing over
Ownership, identity, compromise and the line between a recorded life and a recognised person.
Find your way into Sanctuary
Start with the idea that bothers you most.
These short field guides explain the genres, the tabletop origins and the best entry point without spoiling the investigations.
What is speculative noir?
A detective story in which the evidence is unstable because memory, identity and reality can all be tampered with.
Read the field guideWhen the system is the monster
A reader's guide to bureaucratic horror, corporate dread and rules that work exactly as intended.
Enter the records officeFrom tabletop NPC to six books
How a long-running roleplaying setting became a straight-faced speculative-noir series.
Read the origin fileWhich case file should you open?
Answer three questions. Sanctuary will misclassify you as efficiently as possible.
Begin Sanctuary intakeChoose your next case
Start with Book 1. Continue in order.
All six books are offered on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited, in paperback, and as glossy hardcovers. Amazon shows current price and availability for each format.
Book 1
Die Twice, File Once
A legally dead investigator follows a missing factory worker into a system that edits memories, reassigns names and treats personhood as company property.
Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback and glossy hardcover available now.
Book 2
The War is Already Over
A Ministry raid reveals Dirk's gift for Faith: the dangerous art of persuading people, machines and reality itself to accept a useful lie.
Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback and glossy hardcover available now.
Book 3
On the Other Hand...
Identity, memory and personhood collide with the terrible efficiency of a city that can turn a life into paperwork.
Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback and glossy hardcover available now.
Book 4
As I Was Saying...
A dead man's letter draws a probationary courier into Sanctuary's machinery of missing people, disputed lives and official stories.
Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback and glossy hardcover available now.
Book 5
To Whom It May Concern
A vanished door, maps that omit people and a perfectly straight road force Carys Bellweather to decide what can be repaired and what must be allowed to change.
Find Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback and glossy hardcover options on Amazon.
Book 6
Yours Faithfully
Incompatible memories and old records push Sanctuary towards Full Lock, leaving Dirk to confront the line between helping people and placing his name inside their lives.
Find Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback and glossy hardcover options on Amazon.