Free (Kindle/Sony/DRM-free) Roselynde by Roberta Gellis [12thC Historical w/ Romance]

[ATDrake]

So, Ellora's Cave has entirely changed their website and I still don't feel like sorting things out.

But I thought I'd spotlight this freebie of theirs, which is likely due to expire tomorrow, because it's one of the rare things they've given out where I've actually read and liked the author's works (not this one, though I've read the prequels and intend to get to this one eventually) and can recommend as overall decent-quality reads.

Roselynde by Roberta Gellis is the 1st in her Roselynde Chronicles of medieval historical romances (Gellis is generally very tilted towards the historical aspects, and should be fairly good read for primarily historical-oriented readers) set in England in the wake of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II's reign. This has been free for the past couple of weeks courtesy of publisher Ellora's Cave, who are reprinting it from some ancient paperback edition.

If you are interested in the historical build-up to this story as well, with the rise of Henry II to power, Baen offers them DRM-free, in their Roberta Gellis bundle here (linking to just that for your convenience: the bundle savings discount has since expired, so you can just pick up the three that you need to complete the story, if you're not interested in the Tudor stuff). I've read them all and Sword and the Swan is the best one and the most closely related to the Roselynde Chronicles, just so you know.

Anyway, currently free (but not for much longer) @ Amazon (available to Canadians), Sony (available to Canadians, but check your cart to see if they've stealth-price-jumped), and worldwide without DRM directly from Ellora's Cave as well as All Romance eBooks.

I'll also note that Gellis has a number of other books in her series deep-discounted to just 99 cents as part of Ellora's Values from the Vault sale when you buy directly from them, and they finally adjusted the price on #4 in the Heiress series (which remained stubbornly at $5.99 when the other books were just $0.99 each) to match, so if you didn't already get it, you can pick it up now. The other medieval historical series, the Royal Dynasty/"Song" books, are pretty decent, at least for the last two in it, IMHO. Book #4 especially is very plotty with lots of RL political intrigue mixed in.

(ETA: She's also got some sort of standalone medieval historical romance deep-discounted to $0.99 cents via Sourcebooks, which offers in DRM-free MultiFormat via their Discover A New Love bookclub. It's $0.74 for members, and even non-members may be able to knock the price down even further using the discover15 coupon code: The Rope Dancer)

Description
Alinor Devaux, is beautiful and very rich. She is also an orphan, but her grandparents had not left her defenseless. She has been trained to manage her estates and to rule her vassals. But then the old king dies and Alinor becomes the ward of Richard Coeur de Lion. Alinor knows that her safety and the well-being of her precious lands rests on her ability to make her warden, Sir Simon Lemagne, her willing slave.

Sir Simon has known many women, but never one like Alinor. He is an easy victim. But Alinor tumbles into love. Soon Sir Simon is the only man she will take as a husband. But Simon is no suitable match—he is poor and has no political power. The king would make no profit by permitting Simon to marry Alinor.

In their struggle to be united despite the obstacles in their path, Lady Alinor and Sir Simon are swept from the Royal Court in England into King Richard’s Crusade, through the king’s conquest of Cyprus and into the Holy Land. They endure bloody battles and heartrending separations before Simon convinces King Richard to allow their love fruition in marriage.

[koland]

Note that due to the mess Ellora's Cave website is, you need to buy ONLY one book at a time there and download it.

Attempting to download any book in your library will ONLY give you the last one purchased. If you need access to older books, you must contact support (they are very helpful and fast during business hours, but still). Also, no books transferred over from Jasmine Jade, which apparently just disappeared.

Yet another reason not to trust your purchases to the cloud, even at the publisher's site.

[koland]

Just wanted to note that today (unlike late last night) Ellora's Cave seems to have fixed their issue with being unable to download books from your library (before, you could only download the last book added; now you can get to all of them).

Still no migration from the JasmineJade site.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by koland

Still no migration from the JasmineJade site.

Maybe you need to check the display settings?

As of the OP posting time, I had all my (few) paid books in my actual-buying account from JJ, and most of my freebies on the freebie-only account seem to be there when I set the bookshelf to display 96 books at once (or whatever the max is).

[koland]

I'll check, but when I complained about that specifically (and the inability to get to more than one book of the ones I could see), they said they were working on that issue.

Maybe the just chucked the free purchases that were on the other site?

ETA: Their site design is pretty awful, this time around, too. Can barely read the black on deep read, the scroll box doesn't have mouse wheel support (and should be eliminated, anyway), etc. Even the login box has gone to refusing to remember you name, which means an irritation every time you want to look at your shelf, just as with AllRomance.

[koland]

OK, looked for any type of setting that should fix it, but couldn't find anything. I can see new books since first of the month, but nothing else.

When they switched over, I had to reset my password, but it knew I had an account from JJ. They simply never moved over any of my books.

[banjobama]

Just letting everyone know, this seems to only still be free at the Sony store, but I just got it there.