The Family Trade — Charles Stross

It begins the day she is fired.

Miriam Beckstein, a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine in Boston, finds ironclad 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 it in is a knotwork 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.

Blending the creativity and humor of Roger Zelazny, the adventure of H. Beam Piper and Philip Jose Farmer, and the rigor and sc of a science-fiction writer on the grandest scale, Charles Stross set a new standard for hard fantasy epics.