KDP freebie backlist round-up for 2012-01-19

[ATDrake]

There is literally nothing Relevant To My Interests in today's KDP Select exclusive-or-else slushpile trawl, although a satiric fantasy parody looks like it might actually get skimmed.

But the horror fans should be happy, as it seems writers of that genre are taking to freebie-ization in droves, and thanks to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, some of them actually do have published author creds, if only for short stories.

Also some backlist author repub/self-pub romance/thrillers and other non sf/fantasy stuff.

Not sorted, as I want to eat and shower, and I'm sure the people on the bus will appreciate it if I do the latter, more than you'd appreciate me instead spending the time to arrange these things by genre.

Alina Adams offers the 5th book in her Figure Skating Mystery series, 2007-paperbacked by Berkley, in an enhanced version with videos which she says is an "excerpt of the complete text": Skate Crime: Multimedia

Severed Press offers a horror/thriller and a zombie anthology which are written/edited by people with reasonably lengthy ISFDB entries: Linkage for both their titles

For those of you following the releases, J.R. Rain now offers: J.R. Rain's Vampires 3

James Roy Daley, a Canadian-born horror/suspense author (ISFDB entry) has three freebie things which come up under his name, including a multi-author vampire anthology and a collection of his own short stories: Linkage for them all.

Previously-featured fellow MR member author Libby Fischer Hellman offers a prequel to her self-repubbed Georgia Davis mystery series: ToxiCity

Donna Fasano offers a previously-Harlequin-published contemporary romance, edited and expanded by the author: His Wife For A While

David Champion offers what the Publisher Weekly's review says is the 9th Bomber Hanson mystery starring an attorney defending a football team, which series has apparently been small-press-published since the mid-90s: Bomber Bombs

Richard Parks, who has extensive printed short story credentials (ISFDB entry), offers a self-pub suspense maybe-horror novel: The Blood Red Scarf

Carole Gill, who's had two short stories published (ISFDB entry) offers a collection of probably sf/fantasy/horror tales: Infinity:Tales of Time and Space

Berkley-published Cynthia Eden offers a paranormal romance novella: Bound in Sin

I'm not sure if this is the sort of thing I want to encourage, but UK writer John Matthews once again offers his Penguin-published legal thriller, repackaging it yet again with some bonus chapters from other books. It's certainly one way to get around the 5-days-free-out-of-90 KDP limit, and at least the 3rd version of this he seems to have freebied thus far: #1 Package: Bestsellers Ascension Day plus first quarters of Past Imperfect and The Last Witness

Kristie Lynn Higgins has somehow ended up with an ISFDB entry, despite having only one work, published by one publisher, who seems to have her work as their only work they've published, which has not shown up elsewhere. Nevertheless, the ISFDB tends to be self-correcting in these matters and meanwhile if you're interested: Shades of Gray #1 Noir, City Shrouded By Darkness ( science fiction thriller suspense series)

Jason Z. Christie, should he happen to be the same Jason Christie who has an ISFDB entry, would be a Canadian with a story collected in the long-running Tesseracts anthology series of Canadian speculative fiction. If he's not, you may still enjoy his: Zombie Killa

Carol A. Strickland seems to have contributed to the Legion Outpost fanzine for the DC Comics Legion of Super-Heroes series back in the day. Now, she offers a self-pub superhero fantasy romance with a cover that looks like it was cribbed from some retro-60s wilderness adventure novel when they were still using hand-painted art: Touch of Danger (Three Worlds)

James D. Best has written some sort of business book for Wiley and some of his fiction work is available in hardcover large print editions, which IIRC is a fairly rare thing to happen. So here's his confusingly-blurbed-but-apparently-historical political thriller about the US Articles of Confederation, if you're interested: Tempest at Dawn

Samhain-published Delle Jacobs offers an historical Celtic/Viking romance: Loki's Daughters

Berkley-published Michele Scott writing under her self-pub penname A.K. Alexander offers a historical-spanning epic Mexico-set organized crime thriller which weirdly, has another author entirely listed in the About section of the blurb: The Cartel

Harlequin/Zebra-published Cheryl Bolen offers a Regency historical romance, 3rd in her Brides of Bath series: A Fallen Woman

Oh wait, it seems like that Penumbra Publishing which did Kristie Higgins' collection above does in fact have another author in their stable, and he happens to be David Berardelli, who offers some sort of supernatural ghost novel: Stepping Out Of My Grave

Previously-featured fellow MR member author and TV show tie-in writer Lee Goldberg offers the 2nd in his The Jury mystery/thriller series: Adjourned His cooler and funnier also-TV show tie-in writer brother Tod Goldberg's set of literary fiction stories is still free: Where You Lived

Small-press published since 1994, Gordon Ryan offers a 3-book omnibus edition of his speculative contemporary US political thriller series: The Rebellion Trilogy

Sherry Roberts offers a 1994 small-press published literary/women's fiction debut novel which appears to have decent reviews from Publisher's Weekly and the Library Journal: Maud's House

Previously-featured award-winning South African expat playwright and comedian Ian Fraser offers the comedic fantasy: From Hell: A Novel which he blurbs as "A transgender Tolkien meets Terry Pratchett on acid in this epic saga of danger, forbidden love, genocide, carnivorous fish, cunning dwarves, and one man's irrepressible hunger for pizza." I don't know about you, but I'm downloading this for the lulz. One of his previous offerings is still free, by the way: Flies for the Mayans

Berkley-or-Five-Star-I-forget-which-published Julie Hyzy offers a collection under her pen name N.C. Hyzy: Mystery Short Stories Vol. 1

Marcus Scheppert, whose German-language book about the East/West Germany division does seem to have made a splash in its original language offers the English translation: Generation Wall: Stories from the GDR

Richard Lee Byers who's written Warhammer gaming tie-in novels(ISFDB entry) offers a self-help guide with contributions from various authors: Zombie Writing

I have no idea who this author is, but he has a fun cover to his cracktastic-sounding: Harry Truman vs the Aliens Thus, I will be getting it for the lulz, especially as it "Includes a critical introduction from Adam Openheimer, Ph.D."

Kensington-published Lori Brighton offers a historical romance in her Seduction series: To Seduce an Earl She also offers two romance shorts free to all via Smashwords: Love Letters historical romance and: Wild Passion looks contemporary.

If a link is wonky, search is your friend. Happy reading, if you happen to spot something you think you might like.

[Dr. Drib]

The Carol A. Strickland cover is horribly bad. -- Ouch! A real stinkeroo!

And the Michele Scott title, which has a DIFFERENT author for the excerpted promo blurb! -- Rich, rich Indy stuff! - HAHAHAHAHAHA!

And 'author' John Matthews, endlessly repackaging THE SAME NOVEL, over and over, just so it will be free!

God help the Indy writer!


For the rest, many of them look interesting. I think I downloaded another 10 or so!

THANKS! You made my day. I needed a good laugh!


Don

[Sydney's Mom]

Wow, what a lot of work! Thanks for sorting them for us - I snagged a couple.

[Blue Tyson]

The author of the Harry Truman story is actually Victor Gischler.

Crime writer and X-Men scribe.

[phloxy]

Thanks for putting this together!

[Blossom]

Wild Passion is actually a historical paranormal novella.
Thanks for much I grabbed the romances.

[Terisa de morgan]

Thank you, and thank you Blossom by the info about "Wild Passion", I've grabbed it.

[mikaelalind]

If someone is interested, Lori Brighton also offers a paranormal romance novel for free at Smashwords.