Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales a collection of assorted sf/fantasy/horror shorts by multi-talented multi-genre award-winning author Garry Kilworth (
ISFDB,
Wikipedia), with an introduction by the late Robert Holdstock (
ISFDB,
Wikipedia), is free courtesy of specialty speculative imprint PS Publishing, who originally published it as a limited edition hardcover in 2006.
This is technically part of the KDP Select exclusive-or-else slushpile rather than freebied through regular publisher promo channels, but I consider it important enough to merit its own thread (and to be out of sync with the other feature of today's slushpile, since PSP usually freebies theirs for a couple of days at a time).
Free without DRM (probably, as previous PSPs were DRM-free, although no one can tell without 1-clicking and downloading anymore, thanks to Amazon's unhelpful Product Info changes) for at least until tomorrow and available to everyone worldwide @ Amazon
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PSPs' earlier Hugo-nominee Paul Di Filippo's magical surrealist Burroughsian tale from yesterday is still free as the
2nd feature in this thread, if you missed it.
Description
Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales is a collection of stories that span some 20 years. They cover a variety of themes and are more different, in style as well as content, than they are similar. As the author himself says, "Some writers follow a path of sameness in order to satisfy their readers' desire for familiarity. To me that's like going to same country for your holiday every year. It's not me. I like going somewhere different every time."
The tales range from Chinese fantasy ('Death of the Mocking Man') to science fiction ('Moby Jack'), to fantasy ('The Sculptor') to horror ('The Megowl') to ghost stories ('Hunter's Hall') -- but for the most part they're just plain odd and refuse to slot into any set category.
So, if you like weird stories, dark comedy and tales where characters get into impossible situations and only occasionally extract themselves, then you'll probably enjoy this volume.