So it turns out that Baen, of all people, are selling some of acclaimed historical romance author
Roberta Gellis' backlist through their Webscriptions store.
Though maybe that's not so surprising, since she did write some sf/fantasy books for them a long time ago and more recently collaborated on an Elizabethan elves thing with Mercedes Lackey, who's one of Baen's really popular authors.
In any case, they had lurking tucked away on their "Book Collections" page an $18
4-book bundle of Gellis' 11th century historical romances, which are "regularly" priced at $5 each. According to the page, the special bundle pricing deal was supposed to expire starting April, but it's still live, so maybe it goes away in May?
Now, this may not seem like all that great a discount, but when you consider the fact that Ellora's Cave has set a suggested "digital list price" of $11.98 per e-book for their Gellis reprints (some in the same series, it seems), then if you're a fan, you'll appreciate the chance to save an extra $2 to put towards that $9+ per book (after most stores' discounts).
Though checking their website, it looks like the price drops to $6 per
if you buy directly from them, at least for the titles I test-clicked, which is not so bad, though a little pricey for old paperback midlist, IMHO. And Ellora does sell DRM-free MultiFormat via their website (and DRM-free ePub via Kobo), which does up the value a little.
The included books are
- Bond of Blood
- Knight's Honor
- The Sword and the Swan (prequel to "Roselynde Chronicles", co-authored with Lyle Kenyon Engle)
- The Dragon and the Rose (pre-Tudor, also co-authored)
Baen also generously offers as part of their promo CDs 6 full novels by Gellis for free.
You can get
This Sceptre'd Isle directly from the Baen Free Library and the two novels
Bull God and
Thrice Bound on the accompanying CD, and find the rest of the Doubled Edge series included with the CD that accompanies Mercedes Lackey et al's latest book,
Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicles.
Both are available via the Fifth Imperium site, which generously hosts Baen's stuff with permission for promotional purposes.
Even though I'm not normally a historical romance (or really, any sort of romance) reader myself, I did splurge to get this, due to having gotten the aforementioned freebies previously.
And from the sample chapters and having read the Doubled Edge quartet, it looks like Gellis is one of those authors who's more tilted towards historical than romance, and puts in author's notes about the actual history behind the story, which I always like to see.
Baen kind of need some sort of e-mail newsletter, or at least an announcement page for this sort of thing on their website. I don't recall seeing any sort of indication that this bundle even existed at all.