Help me spend my credits

[pdurrant]

I have over £100 in ebook credits at Amazon that will expire by mid February at the latest.

So I need to make a list of books to buy with the credits, before they expire.

I will, of course, be looking closely at Kindle Daily deals, and Kindle Monthly deals. But I don't think there will be enough.

I like science fiction and fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, and some humour. You can check out what I've been reading over the past six years, with ratings, if you have some desire to get a really accurate idea of my tastes, from my reading lists linked in my signature lines.

Because I have a long TBR I'm willing to wait for price drops on books, so I won't be buying anything over £5, and probably not much over £3.

So suggestions please!

Already bought
David Mitchell: Back Story by David Mitchell (the comedian, not the novelist)
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (uncut edition)
Few Are Chosen by M. T. McGuire (free!)
What If? by Randall Monroe (£0.99 digital copy to go with the paperback I was given)
The Eagle of the Ninth and The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliffe (UK Daily Deal)
Declare, The Drawing of the Dark and On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers.
First six in Valor Series by Tanya Huff
The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross
A Cruise to Die For by Aaron and Charlotte Elkin.
First five Murdoch Mysteries by Maureen Jennings
The first four Collegium Chronicles by Mercedes Lackey
The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross
The Client by John Grisham
Rule of Evidence by Jack Campbell
Two of the Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey
Neuromancer by William Gibson
1635: A Parcel of Rogues by Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis (breaking my £5 limit!)
Chronicles of St Mary's by Jodi Taylor

Current list under consideration, in no particular order:
The Ides of April (Flavia Albia 1) by Lindsey Davis
The Lost Army of Cambyses by Paul Sussman (contemporary thriller)
Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews (urban fantasy)
K'Barthan series by M. T. McGuire
Huy the Scribe series by Anton Gill
Ark Royal series by Christopher G Nuttall

[Apache]

The Napoleonic Wars, by Jay Worrall, is a nice Historical Fiction Series.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/jay-worrall/

Sorry, only the last one A Sea Unto Itself, appears to still be available at Amazon UK.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sea-Unto-Its...ea+Unto+Itself

All three are still available in the US.
Apache

[drjd]

I would recommend Paul Sussman's historical mystery fiction series - The Lost Army of Cambyses, The Last Secret of the Temple, The Labyrinth of Osiris and The Hidden Oasis. These are available at Amazon UK, and each below £5. Wonderful and engaging books. I am also reading this series currently.

[Nyssa]

Clean Sweep ~ I, personally, love Ilona Andrews ! They're a great team.

[davidfor]

For science fiction and humour, I'll suggest The K'Barthan Series (Goodreads says "Trilogy", but there are four books and a short story.) The first one wasn't quite what I was expecting, but once I got into it, it was a lot of fun. Of course, the first one won't help with the credit's as it's free.

[Dazrin]

Randall Munroe's (XKCD) two books What If? (UK - £0.99 or US - $2.99) and Thing Explainer (US - $2.99) are on sale today at Amazon. Humorous, non-fiction science books with illustrations. They can easily be read in short chunks, possibly best read in short chunks. I haven't read TE yet but I really have enjoyed his What If? answers.

[pdurrant]

Many thanks for the suggestions so far. I shall be buying some books this evening, and I'll update my first post then.

[ATDrake]

Publisher Corvus/Atlantic currently has a bunch of £0.99-£1.49 specials (possibly time-limited and set to expire when Kobo's holiday sale is over on the 4th, or not) on their mysteries and some sfnal and historical books in the UK which you might want to browse through, including a Tim Powers novel (not one of his better ones, IMHO). And so does more dedicated sfnal publisher Titan. (Both of them are couponable @ Kobo, which is where I normally buy, but you're using up Amazon credits, so the next coupon contest isn't going to make much difference.)

I think you'd like Tanya Huff's Confederation aka "Valour" novels if you haven't already tried them, a very fun MilSF series with an interesting mix of alien species and cultures, and enjoyable adventures, as well as an ongoing mystery to exactly why they are at war with strange seemingly unfathomable beings, many of whose installments are just £0.99 from Titan. She writes them kind of like a Canadian mix of Bujold and Heinlein. My (brief) thoughts on #5 in the What are we reading thread.

I'd also consider getting Maureen Jennings' Murdoch Mysteries series of historical mysteries set in late 19th century Toronto, also mostly £0.99 from Titan (in fact, I plan to snap them up from Kobo myself, if the sale prices last long enough for the next contest to kick in). I haven't actually read them, but they're the basis for the eponymous very popular TV show, which I enjoy quite a lot, and she's said to be one of our better mystery novelists.

Titan also have a few Mercedes Lackey and Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (the series reprinting the assorted public domain crossover mashups by established writers such as Fred Saberhagen) at that price point, if you're interested. The quality usually varies on those latter, but I've generally found them at least worth a look from the library.

Some quality semi-humorous non-fiction about ancient Rome and Greece by classicist Peter Jones (Wikipedia) which I recommend (I haven't read these particular ones, but I own and have greatly enjoyed his "Ancient and Modern" column collections, and his excellent Classics in Translation, as well as his language learning titles, enough that I feel confident in selling these as a blind buy and snapped them up myself during last years' sales) for £1.89 each from Atlantic Books: Eureka!: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Ancient Greeks But Were Afraid to Ask & Veni, Vidi, Vici: Everything you ever wanted to know about the Romans but were afraid to ask. He has a regular column in The Spectator, which you can try to see if you like his writing.

I would also tentatively recommend considering from the £0.99 Corvus sale (I have purchased and started reading these authors, who have good reputations, during previous sales, and so far it's seemed pretty solid, but I haven't finished yet, so I don't know if they fall apart completely at the end):

• 66º North by Michael Ridpath, 2nd in his Fire & Ice series starring an Icelandic-American cop who gets relocated from Boston to Iceland as a cross-cultural crime consultant. We've previously received the 1st-in-series free as an iTunes UK Book of the Week, which you might have picked up back then, as well as some backlist KDP freebies of his.
• 1222 by Anne Holt, 8th in her award-winning Hanne Wilhelmsen series set in Oslo. The other books in the series, as well as Holt's Vik series, seem to drop below £2 on sale every so often.

Another follow-up to a previous freebie you might wish to try is:

• Lucifer's Tears by the late James Thompson, currently just £1.85. This is the 2nd in his Inspector Vaara series set in Finland, of which we got the 1st free. YMMV on this one, as the series is the tale of an increasingly corrupt police officer turning to stealth-vigilantism, and it's kind of on the violent (but not too gory, relatively speaking) action thriller wish fulfillment side. But I really liked all four installments of it and it's probably worth it to read the freebie and decide whether you're interested enough to try the 2nd. My comments on #1, #2, #3 & #4, if you're interested.

You may also wish to consider the exclusive ebooks from Amazon's own imprints, which just aren't going to show up cheaper elsewhere. They don't seem to put them on sale in the UK nearly as regularly as they do in North America, but you might want to keep an eye out for discounts on:

• Martin Jensen's "The King's Hound" historical mystery series from AmazonCrossing, which I think you'd enjoy. They're very fun books set in the Danelaw under the reign of King Cnut, starring an unlikely partnership between a manuscript illuminator and his half-Danish warrior traveling companion, with a kind of semi-antagonistic buddy cop feel. I really like these (my comments on #1 & #2), and future installments are on my auto-buy wishlist.
• Possibly Leena Lehtolainen's Maria Kallio series. This is another auto-wishlist series for me, but I think these would perhaps be less to your taste (they're pretty slow-paced low-key retro-90s Finnish police procedurals), but maybe worth giving a try if the samples read well and they show up on sale. (My comments on #1, #2 & #3.)
• Aaron & Charlotte Elkins' Alix London mystery series, if you haven't bought them all already, since you've enjoyed the Gideon Oliver and Chris Norgren ones you got from Fictionwise.

[ATDrake]

A few more things you might be interested in while they're still going cheap in the post-holiday sales:

Recent Hugo Award-winner Liu Cixin's The Dark Forest, 2nd in his Three-Body Trilogy of which the 1st book was the award-winner, is just £0.99 from Head of Zeus (published by Tor in North America).

Tim Powers' Declare is just £1.79 from Corvus, and I very highly recommend this as an awesome mashup of John le Carré and biblically-referential Lovecraftian sensibilities for a brilliant Cold War secret history horror spy thriller. I may be biased because I absolutely loved it when I read it, but since IIRC you enjoyed Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives in his Laundry Files series, I think there's a pretty good chance you might like this one, even though it's somewhat different and darker in tone. Stross mentions it in the essay in the back of TAA about his influences, which is how I came to know about it. Fair warning: it is a very densely plotted and demanding sort of read (Powers apparently based it upon some sort of rule that he couldn't alter any actual RL historical occurrences when writing it, only come up with interstitial additions and hidden motivation explanations for it all), but well worth it if you're interested, IMHO.

Head of Zeus also has on sale some C. J. Box mystery novels for £0.99. I haven't read these, but they're award-winners, and we did get the 1st-in-series as a UK freebie a while ago, and you may want to have a look at their other listings, which include some historical fiction at the £0.99 mark, including one by Sharon Kay Penman (apparently a very respected and popular historical writer whom I've never tried, but IIRC is a favourite of several MR members).

ETA: If you keep paging through to the £3-4 mark, Head of Zeus also have a bunch of Brother Cadfael mysteries if you don't already have the lot, and some of Colleen McCullough's historicals, including entries in her Masters of Rome series, which were kind of flawed, but which I enjoyed quite a bit, and some Dana Stabenow, who's been offering the 1st in her Kate Shugak series as a long-term introductory freebie for some years now.

[Apache]

I know you have been reading Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet Series. You should add his parallel series Lost Stars. The first is Tarnished Knights and follows characters from the Syndicate Worlds.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/...hed-knight.htm

Apache

[Fbone]

Do you already have the rest of Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Tim Powers

I think you'd like Tanya Huff's Confederation aka "Valour" novels

I'd also consider getting Maureen Jennings' Murdoch Mysteries series of historical mysteries

Titan also have a few Mercedes Lackey and Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (the series reprinting the assorted public domain crossover mashups by established writers such as Fred Saberhagen) at that price point, if you're interested.

Some quality semi-humorous non-fiction about ancient Rome and Greece by classicist Peter Jones

• Martin Jensen's "The King's Hound"
• Possibly Leena Lehtolainen's Maria Kallio series.
• Aaron & Charlotte Elkins' Alix London mystery series

Wow - thanks for the thought you've put into this.

Tim Powers - I remember reading The Drawing of the Dark some 30 years ago and loving it. I think I shall add some of his to my list, possibly including The Drawing of the Dark.

I don't think I've read anything by Tanya Huff or by Maureen Jennings but those series do sound fun.

I'll have a look at the Titian offers. I'm not so sure about the non-fiction. I have the first two of the Martin Jensen series, I'll look at the Maria Kallio books, and you're right - the Alix London series are right up my street and there's one that I haven't got yet.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Recent Hugo Award-winner Liu Cixin's The Dark Forest, 2nd in his Three-Body Trilogy of which the 1st book was the award-winner, is just £0.99 from Head of Zeus (published by Tor in North America).

Tim Powers' Declare is just £1.79 from Corvus, and I very highly recommend this as an awesome mashup of John le Carré and biblically-referential Lovecraftian sensibilities for a brilliant Cold War secret history horror spy thriller.

Head of Zeus also have a bunch of Brother Cadfael mysteries if you don't already have the lot

I read a short by Liu Cixin and wasn't thrilled, so I'm reluctant to jump into the novels. Translated works are tricky - one never knows if it's the author or the translator that's the problem.

That Tim Powers does sound fun, and some Tim Powers are going on my list definitely.

And yes, I already have all the Brother Cadfael books.

Originally Posted by Apache

I know you have been reading Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet Series. You should add his parallel series Lost Stars. The first is Tarnished Knights and follows characters from the Syndicate Worlds.

A good thought, but those books are already in my TBR pile

Originally Posted by Fbone

Do you already have the rest of Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series?

Also a good thought. I have the first five, so unless there's a good offer, I'll wait to get any further volumes.

Thanks again for all these suggestions!

[ATDrake]

If you don't already have it and were waiting for a price-drop, The Fuller Memorandum, 3rd in Charles Stross' Laundry Files series, is currently just £1.99.

And there's some Barbara Hambly sequels to her Darwath trilogy (which IIRC you re-read at some point) out from Voyager at the £3.99 mark (not a special offer, but this is the lowest I've seen them priced in the UK or North America from Del Rey over the past couple of years, though it's possible they might go on sale at some point): #4 Mother of Winter, and #5 Icefalcon's Quest. They're not as good as the original trilogy, and frankly a bit of a grimdark downer at certain points, but I also found them an interesting expansion of the world and exploration of certain ideas, even if I disagreed with some of the ways the stories played out; so maybe worth a look if you want to find out what happened next in that setting.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I don't think I've read anything by Tanya Huff or by Maureen Jennings but those series do sound fun.

I'll have a look at the Titian offers. I'm not so sure about the non-fiction.

I read a short by Liu Cixin and wasn't thrilled, so I'm reluctant to jump into the novels. Translated works are tricky - one never knows if it's the author or the translator that's the problem.

IMHO, Tanya Huff is one of Canada's best sf/fantasy authors and very readable indeed; I'll usually take a look at her works, even if I end up not caring for some particular series. If you end up liking her, she's got a rich back catalogue of works to enjoy (admittedly, most of them don't seem to be available in the UK). I've heard that Maureen Jennings' original Murdoch Mysteries books are a bit more sober than the TV adaptation, which is known for its light-hearted humour, but still quite good in a more serious way.

If you need more material to evaluate Peter Jones' classics stuff (apparently not a time-sensitive sale, since I bought mine at roughly the same price around October-ish) which is admittedly close enough to the "For Dummies, Now With Extra Trivia and Further Reading Pointers!" level that if you already know a fair amount about ancient Greece and Rome they may be completely redundant to your level of knowledge, I noticed that The Spectator now only allows reading of 5 articles for "free".

Sadly, the old Friends of the Classics site which had a more extensive archive of them is down, but there's two mirrors of his older columns over here and here, covering roughly 2001-2003 & 2010-2012. He does seem to have a bit of a relatively conservative viewpoint for the UK (I guess that's only to be expected for some old-school Oxbridge guy in his mid-60s), but I find he's usually pretty insightful and informative and entertaining enough to offset the occasional bit of "you kids, get off my lawn!" cane-shaking feel that sometimes comes through, and he's very committed to encouraging education at all levels. But then I live an ocean and a continent away, so YMMV.

As for Liu Cixin, several years ago we did get quite a number of stories of his for free via the KDP Select program (I found about a half-dozen collections of his shorts in my Kindle library from that period), so maybe it'd be worth trying to read a few more to see, maybe not. In any case, the entire trilogy will likely go on special offer again and again throughout the years, now that there's the Hugo Award prestige attached to it. I really like Ken Liu's original short stories, but I'm not sure his translation work is doing it for me, either. But the unusual setting and the ideas were interesting enough to keep me going when I started reading the 1st for the Hugo voting last year.

[pdurrant]

I've now bought the first five of the Murdoch Mysteries. They did sound like the sort of thing I'd like. I noticed that all the bad reviews were from people who liked the TV series before reading the book. Since I've never seen the series, I thought they were worth a punt at £1 each.

I still have over £100 in credits to spend before the middle of February.

[cromag]

It's a classic so you've probably already read it, but I've recently been thinking back on books I'd like to re-read and the top of my list is Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner. I just checked and it's a pretty good bargain at $4.99 from Amazon in the US.

http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Zanzibar...dp/B004VMV3U4/