Now that Kobo's
50JUN 50% off coupon code is back to working again, some couponable discount bargains that it can be used on, in Canada, at least:
Soho Press appears to no longer be couponable in the US, but can still be discounted in Canada:
linkage for the lot.
- @ $1.99 CAD they have just over a page of 1st-in-series titles. Lots of varied authors with established track records you can check on SYKM; I've been wanting to try Qiu Xiaolong's Death of a Red Heroine, which was on my wishlist.
- @ $4.99 they are offering from #2-#15 of Cara Black's Aimee Leduc Investigation series (mentioned and recommended by sufue upthread as a Kindle Daily Deal previously for $1.99 USD each, with the 50% off and the exchange rate, this works out to roughly the same price if you missed it earlier; #11 has previously been free), and #2-4 of Henry Chang's Detective Jack Yu series (#1 was previously a freebie many years ago), and 9 vintage standalone titles from the 1950s by Canadian author Margaret Millar (SYKM, Wikipedia), a Grand Master Award recipient from Mystery Writers of America. Beast in View is a 1956 Edgar Award Best Novel winner and the blurb says it's "hailed as one of the greatest psychological mysteries ever written".
- @ $7.19 CAD mark, which is admittedly pricey, but the 50% off coupon takes them down to $3.50-ish ($3.25 if you've the VIP membership) and Soho rarely discounts non-1st-in-series titles, there are more standalone and further-in-series books by Ted Lewis, Jassy Mackenzie, and several others, if you're looking to fill a series.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is no longer couponable in the US, but can still be discounted in Canada. At $2.99 USD/$3.99 CAD, they've a handful of mystery/thrillers among their periodic sale offers (
quick linkage to all the fiction in case there's some more literary-type stuff which catches your eye):
- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, a classic and basis for the film starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater
- The Ludwig Conspiracy by Oliver Pötzsch, an historical thriller translated by Anthea Bell, one half of the team that does an excellent job of getting the Astérix albums into English
- The Informant by Thomas Perry, a crime thriller in the vein of author Otto Penzler, according to the subtitle
- The Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore
Faber & Faber have a handful of deep-discount titles:
- Bloodland by Alan Glynn @ $1.13 CAD
- 2 Kitty Peck mysteries (look like YA) by Kate Griffin @ $1.99
- 3 titles from Doug Johnstone @ $1.99-$2.50
- Scarred by Norwegian author Thomas Enger (SYKM, Wikipedia NO), in his Henning Juul series @ $1.99 CAD; I've wanted to try this author out for some time, since I've heard good things about the supposedly sharp sense of humour in his writing. If you happen to be in the UK, Pierced and Burned in the series are also discounted to £0.99. For comparison, the Simon & Schuster Atria Books edition that is officially available via the North American rights is $12 CAD, non-couponable.
And to round out the couponable publishers you may wish to look at, F+W Media's Prologue Books imprint (which generously gave us quite a lot of freebies years ago) has their regular selection of vintage pulp and backlist mysteries (and sf/fantasy) at mostly $4 CAD each, which become quite cheap using the coupon:
linkage for the lot.
- @ $2.50 CAD, The Books of Fell by award-winning YA author M. E. Kerr (Wikipedia) is a money-saving 3-book omnibus edition of titles that they also offer separately.
ETA: Also Kensington. I forget whether they're still couponable in the US, but they certainly are in Canada, and are offering assorted cozy mystery and crime thriller novels discounted from 99 cents and up:
linkage for the lot.
ETA 2: Also
Diversion Books and
Poisoned Pen Press, both of whom have been generous with the freebies in the past, and have a handful of 99 cent series-introductory sale titles, as well as their regular $2.99 USD/$3.99 CAD and up pricing on their newer titles and backlist reprints.