A nice treat in today's KDP Select exclusive-or-else-but-you-can-promo-freebie-for-5-days-out-of-90 slushpile.
For those of you who've been following sf/fantasy writer Lee Killough's freebied backlist, one of the early books which apparently made her name in the field is now being offered free.
And there's also a very nice historical true-crime thriller as well, and some other previously-printed backlist books to go with the established author self-pubs.
Blood Hunt by Lee Killough, is the 1st in her Garreth Mikaelian series of police procedurals starring a vampire cop, originally published by Tor in 1987, and a sort of precursor to the current paranormal investigative style of urban fantasies we have today. Apparently back then, it was pretty unusual to blend the supernatural with the procedural and only a handful of authors were doing it.
Killough's other novels have been yanked from Smashwords to be KDP Selected, but they are still a reasonable $2.99 and DRM-free, although I'm personally waiting to see if she puts any back on SW in time for Read an E-Book Week.
Anyway, free without DRM for who knows how long @ Amazon
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Description
When San Francisco Homicide Inspector Garreth Mikaelian begins hunting a mysterious red-haired woman who appears involved in the murders of two out-of-town businessmen, he faces a killer unlike any he has investigated before. For unknown to him, Lane Barber is a vampire. When Garreth comes too close, she attacks him and turns him into a vampire, too. Now, even as he struggles to cope with this devastating change in his life without betraying to others what he has become, he is back on Lane’s trail...this time with a vengeance. But can he find her, and find a way to bring her to justice, before she decides to attack again, and this time finish him off?
Nicola Thorne offers a 2000-HarperCollins published historical crime novel, apparently based on a true-life 1850s Dorset murder:
My Name is Martha Brown
Previously-featured James D. Best, who had a business title published by Wiley and has since turned his hand to fiction writing, offers a Western set historical drama/thriller of a shopkeeper-turned-gunslinger which also happens to have an Audible edition:
The Shopkeeper (A Steve Dancy Tale)
Previously-featured small-press-published Gordon Ryan offers the 2nd in his historical Irish immigrant saga, should you have missed the omnibus edition freebied earlier:
Conflict: The Callahans Book Two
Paul Argentini, who had a couple of print-published "how to write a play" and "how to run a community theatre" small press books in the late 90s, turns his hand to writing historical novels of the Da Vinci Code-type uncovering hidden secrets "mystery" and offers:
The Fourth Nail
Canadian-resident Claire Delacroix offers a 2000-Dell-paperbacked historical romance, 2nd in her Bride Quest series:
The Countess She offers a selection of her backlist books (also published under the pseudonyms Claire Crosse and Deborah Cooke) for $2.99 a pop
over at Smashwords (and hence to any other Smashwords-carrying outlets), if you're interested.
Previously featured Big-6-paperbacked Cheyenne McCray, writing under her erotic pen name Jaymie Holland, offers an erotic romantic suspense novella involving a paranormal government agency:
The Touch
Alisha Yvonne who has had several novels published by small-press Urban Books, some of which she says have been listed as bestsellers by Essence magazine, offers what looks like a chick-lit possibly-romantic thriller:
The CleanUp Woman
Julia Buckley had a 2006 novel printed by Llewellyn Publishing's Midnight Ink imprint, who've offered us mystery freebies in the past. She now offers the start of a new series:
Madeline Mann (The Madeline Mann Mysteries)
Previously-featured Robert W. Walker returns with another in his Big-6-paperbacked Jessica Coran Forensic Pathologist thriller series. I forget whether this has been freebied before, since I've set up a secondary auxiliary account to keep the KDP offerings separate from the publisher-promo freebies, so:
Primal Instinct
Barbara M. Hodges, who has a number of YA novels small-press published by Tigress, an imprint with at least a handful of authors in its stable, teams up with Randolph Tower to write a cop-vs-serial killer thriller, offered from the same BWLPP imprint who are re-pubbing Lee Killough's book above:
Ice
Previously featured Canadian horror writer James Roy Daley offers his 2007 1st novel:
The Dead Parade, which includes a lot of previews for other stuff. You'd think they'd vary the selection a little and promote some more varied titles.
John McDonnell, who's had one story officially printed in a small-press magazine (
ISFDB entry), offers a collection of short horror tales:
Big Chills
Previously-featured fellow MR member author Libby Fischer Hellman re-offers her mystery/thriller short story collection, should you have missed it earlier:
Nice Girl Does Noir: A Collection of Short Stories (Vol. 2)
For the nature-lovers in the audience, here's a brief field guide done by some people who originally intended it for a high school environmental science class and they've put in fairly nice illustrations and descriptions from the sample I quickly skimmed, so:
The Essential Species of Pennsylvania
Happy reading, if there's anything in there you think you might like.