As a post-holiday treat, noted SF author Vonda McIntyre and the sf/fantasy writer's consortium BookViewCafé are making available the 1st novel in her Starfarers series free for a limited time.
This is downloadable in multiple formats, all DRM-free, as well as readable online.
If you find you want to pick up the rest of the Quartet, it's actually cheaper to splurge for the Omnibus containing all 4 books than pay for the remaining 3 separately.
And BVC also publishes through Smashwords and thence to Kobo, so you can probably use coupons if you find any suitable.
Here's the link directly to the Starfarers Quartet page at BVC.
ETA: New linkage for the offer this time around @
the BVC's new website catalogue (DRM-free ePub & Mobi; requires billing address but no account signup or payment info).
Might as well copypaste the description for the lazy below:
The starship Starfarer
is poised for our first voyage to another star system. The Alien Contact Team — physicist Victoria Fraser MacKenzie, geneticist Stephen Thomas Gregory, geographer Satoshi Lono, and alien contact specialist J.D. Sauvage — and the rest of the faculty and staff prepare for humanity’s most ambitious exploratory expedition.
But the world has changed. A new regime orders the vessel to be abandoned. It will be turned into an instrument of war.
What do the Starfarers do?
They do what any red-blooded Alien Contact Team would do.
They steal the starship.
Just a reminder that the
BVC has some good backlist books by pretty decent established midlist print authors, and very reasonable terms (MultiFormat, DRM-free, re-downloadable for as long as the site lasts, and generally $4.99 or less per individual title, plenty of free sample stories and novellas), so it's a nice place to get stuff if you happen to like sf/fantasy.