Backlist author consortium BookViewCafé are running a few monthly specials, good until the end of October (before midnight EST, I think; I missed out on one thing I wanted last month and forgot I still had the cart unchecked-out until around 10 PM PST, by which time it was too late).
All discounts should be automatic, no coupon required unless stated otherwise. BVC have changed their website and now require that you select ePub or Mobi format separately and no longer have a website login, but they say you can redownload your books from the provided links in your email receipt. It is, of course, all DRM-free and your money more-or-less goes directly to the authors.
They also have some downloadable free short stories which I'll list after:
Vonda N. McIntyre (
ISFDB entry,
Wikipedia) is offering her 1997 Nebula Award-winning historical fantasy set in an 17th century AU Versailles,
The Moon and the Sun (
ISFDB entry), for $2.50, which is 50% off the regular price. Apparently this has been optioned and may be coming out as a film adaptation at some point.
I think I'm going to pick this up. I'm a sucker for historical AU, and McIntyre did generously offer the first of her sf quartet,
Starfarers (which I still haven't finished reading after like what, two years?
) free for quite some time previously and I did mostly like her Star Trek novels which I recall reading.
Doranna Durgin (
ISFDB entry) is offering 40% off a backlist "real world/magic world" crossover high fantasy previously published by Baen in 1994, the 1st book in a trilogy within her Changespell Legacy universe: the Compton Crook Award-winning
Dun Lady's Jess for $2.99.
She offers the 1998 Baen-published prequel to this free on Smashwords, as well:
Barrenlands
Durgin's been pretty generous with the freebies and the discounts over the years. Unfortunately I've just never been able to really get into her writing (nothing wrong with it technically, just for some reason it doesn't click with me), but I'll give her prose another try, since apparently the Changespell books are considered some of her best fantasy work. And real world/magic world crossover stuff is another thing I'm a sucker for.
There are also some $0.99 cent specials:
Jennifer Stevenson's (
ISFDB entry)
The Hinky Brass Bed, the 1st in her Jewel Heiss comedic urban fantasy w/romance (I think) series, now renamed the Hinky Chicago series. This was originally published as
The Brass Bed from Ballantine in 2008 and its ISFDB blurb says it was reviewed in Locus.
Pati Nagle's (
ISFDB entry) looks-like-a-western-light-horror-but-I-could-be-wrong novel:
Dead Man's Hand. Blurb says it's got gambling, tags say it's got zombies and magic (and places it more in the fantasy category).
Nagle also offers a free short story which I'll list below.
There are more $0.99 cent backlist romance specials (non-sfnal, as far as I can tell from the blurbs) from BVC authors Patricia Rice (Sourcebooks fantasy romance author) and Patricia Burroughs, previously published by Silhouette Desire and Fawcett Gold, which I mention here for the benefit of romance-reading sf/f fans who may not be keeping up with the dedicated romance deals/discussion thread. You can see the listings on the general
BVC Specials page if interested.
Freebie downloadable short stories @ BVC (some placed rather non-intuitively so you have to dig for them):
Culture Control (post-apocalyptic sf) by Julianne Lee
The Cygnius Sedonai Caper (interstellar pet crime investigations sf) by Pati Nagle; excerpt from her multi-genre short story
Coyote Ugly and Other Tales collection as well as the tie-in novel linked on the story page.
Premium Existence (advertising satire sf) by Sue Lange; if you like this, the author has a collection of her previously-published sf satire stories for $1.99:
Uncategorized
Welcome to Welton (urban fantasy tagged with "sidhe" and "college") by Marie Brennan, prequel novelette to her Wilders series.
Hell by Any Other Name by Leah Cutter, a sample for her
Baker's Dozen contemporary fantasy collection.
To Love the Difficult by Amy Casil, a sample for her
Female Science Fiction Writer sf/f collection.
Dragon Treasure by Irene Radford (previously published as Phyllis Irene Radford,
ISFDB entry), a sample from her
Fantastical Ramblings fantasy collection, which was the one I missed out on last month for 99 cents. Eh, it'll probably go on sale again someday.
She's also got a collection of six steampunk stories going for a 50% off introductory special of $1.99:
Steampunk Voyages. This, for reasons which escape me, is not advertised on the BVC special page, so I don't know how time-limited it is.
Mom and Dad at the Home Front (probably YA fantasy) by Sherwood Smith, a sample for her Whispered Magics sf/f/ya collection.
There's a bunch of other freebie shorts living as online-reading specials and samples on their website, but these were the ones with available ePub/Mobi/PDF downloads (some of the non-sample ones are time-limited features).
Enjoy!