Free (Kindle KDP) The Four Last Things by Timothy Hallinan [Mystery/Thriller]

[ATDrake]

A rather uninteresting day for the KDP exclusive-or-else-but-you-get-5-days-free-out-of-90-for-people-to-ignore-your-book-in-favour-of-someone-else's-5-day-freebied-book slushpile, at least from an sf/fantasy perspective. I was hard-pressed to pick a feature title because none of them really seemed worthy of a title nod from my perspective and thought about skipping it entirely, but we do have a couple of decent new backlist things, some from series people have probably been following, and some Canadiana.

Eventually I settled on this one, since it's the debut of a series for which we've gotten another volume free, and we've officially received a big-6-published freebie from this author before, and he did eventually get some sort of Edgar Award nomination.

The Four Last Things by Timothy Hallinan, is the 1st in his Simeon Grist mystery series starring an ex-professor turned PI. This originally came out from Dutton/NAL in 1989 and we've previously received one of the much later (possibly self-pub) volumes.

Free with DRM for who knows how long @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

Description
Simeon Grist knows L.A. inside and out--the sex for sale, the chic seductions, every rip-off from City Hall to Venice. So when he's hired by a Hollywood recording company to shadow one Sally Oldfield, suspected of embezzlement, Grist discovers she's entangled in The Church of the Eternal Moment--a million-dollar religious scam built around a 12-year-old channeler and the voice of a man who has been dead for a millennium.

When Sally turns up dead, Simeon knows he's become the next target of a very flesh-and-blood entity waiting in the back alleys of sin and salvation to give him a brutal look at the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell--revelations he could definitely live without...

I thought about making this the title feature, for variety and because it's DRM-free, but I realized that I just don't read sentimental-sounding literary/women's fiction and am considerably more likely to try the Hallinan thing and this looks kind of like it might have been yanked from Smashwords, judging by the notice in the front credits. Also, the blurb formatting is kind of bad (although at least it appears on the actual product page and isn't hidden behind a bunch of selective praise quotes like the Hallinan one was).

The Secrets of Married Women, by Canadian-resident UK writer Carol Mason, is a literary/women's fiction novel that was originally published in 2007 by Hodder & Stoughton, and carries much international newspaper praise in its blurb and is available in German translation.

Free without DRM for who knows how long @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

Description
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love is harder.

Jill and Rob are happily married and still very much in love. Then everything changes when they discover that Rob is infertile. Having children has never been the be all and end all for Jill. Yet, admittedly, a tiny part of her now wants what she can’t have. But more than craving the impossible, Jill just wants her marriage back to the way it was. But Rob has taken the news badly. He won't touch her. They never have sex anymore. And worse still, he won’t talk about it.

Frustrated and unsure what to do, Jill is drawn into being an unwitting 'ear' for her best friend Leigh who is having a steamy extra-marital affair. Married to a man who is eager to please but fails to satisfy, Leigh has decided that life is too short to put her own happiness last. She has given her affair an expiry date: six weeks and then she will end it.

Then there is Wendy, who is married to handsome Neil, a top policeman. Wendy is one of those friends who never lets her guard drop - a content mother and a wife whose trust and faith in her husband seems to know no limits.

But are things ever what they seem?

Does life ever go according to plan?

How well do we ever know our husbands, our best friends, or even ourselves?

Jill is about to find out when she faces infidelity and the truth head on...

The rest of the recognizable/interesting non-repeat bits of the slushpile.

Janet Dawson says that her 1992-Fawcett PI mystery debut won a St. Martin's Press/Private Eyes of America award and was nominated for several others: Kindred Crimes (The Jeri Howard Series)

Avalon-published Mona Ingram returns with a contemporary romance novella which involves the Vancouver Canucks: Between a Jock and a Hard Place

Decadent Publishing-printed fellow MR member author Keta Diablo offers a fantasy-based nymph vs serial killer romantic suspense: Dust and Moonlight

Berkley-published Alina Adams offers an "enhanced media" version of one of her 2000 Dell-published contemporary romances which contains links to music to enhance the story, apparently, if you have an internet-ready video-supporting app: When a Man Loves a Woman: Enhanced Multimedia Edition

Ken McClure returns with another 1996 Pocket-published medical thriller for your collection: Trauma

Berkley-published Nikita Black a steamy f/m western romance novella: The Renegade's Woman Her blurb gives details for some sort of multi-author one-day freebie promotion, of whom one of the participating authors, ex-Dorchester Geri Russell, is offering a repeat backlist historical romance.

Debra Lauman offers a psychological suspense/literary fiction about the demons which haunt a Holocaust survivor, originally out in 2004 from Gardenia Press, which appears to have a small stable of fiction writers: I. Joseph Kellerman

Canadian Harlequin Love Inspired Suspense author Linda Hall returns with the debut to her 2003 Multnomah-published inspirational PI mystery which has a partially Canadian setting: Steal Away (Teri Blake-Addison series)

Jim Whiting & Jack Dunning offer a collection of their cartoons which appeared on the ComputorEdge Magazine website: That Does Not Compute! Computer and Internet Cartoons from ComputorEdge Magazine

This probably-self-published cookbook, which is designed to tie into a fiction novel by blogger Corine Gantz (whose small imprint only seems to carry her books,) nevertheless seems to be up to a reasonably professional standard as far as cover and organization and prose and formatting internals in the sample go, which is something I like to encourage in indie authors, so: Hidden in Paris -- The Cookbook

Backlist-printed/small-pressed repeats from Charson Ong, Charlie Carillo, Charlene Keel (for some bizarre reason, her vintage 1970 air stewardess memoir is filed as "erotica", possibly as some kind of Mile High Club joke), Tim Vicary, Alison Kent, Iain Rowan, Dave Zeltserman Gayle Wrigglesworth, Barbara Sissel Taylor. Established self-pub repeats from Valerie Douglas, Derek Clendening, Mark Yarwood, Edward W. Robertson, Kate Silver.

Happy reading, if indeed you manage to spot something you think you might like and you learn enough secrets from married women to provide grist for your mill, or whatever.

[Joykins]

Well, I'm a married woman and I need me some of them secrets. Thanks!

[GA Russell]

A free novel by an Edgar nominee is good enough for me to try!

[Blue Tyson]

Another Alex Irvine short story too I see :-

Shambhala

http://www.amazon.com/Shambhala-Drea.../dp/B007BWDFYS

[sufue]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Janet Dawson says that her 1992-Fawcett PI mystery debut won a St. Martin's Press/Private Eyes of America award and was nominated for several others: Kindred Crimes (The Jeri Howard Series)

There definitely was a "real" published Jeri Howard series - I have a couple of the books somewhere in my garage, from back in the late 80's or early 90's (???). Set in Oakland, California, IMS...

Happy to pick up the first one for free - although not sure when I'll get around to reading it, given the size of my TBR list.

[ATDrake]

Feature still free, power outage over, minor updates below.

Kate Paulk, who has contributed some stories to those Valdemar anthologies set in Mercedes Lackey's popular fantasy universe, offers a prequel to her take on the historical Vlad Dracul's life: Born in Blood

John Noone returns with a slightly revised version of his 1974 Hamish Hamilton-published literary fiction novel which he says "won an Arts Council Award in Great Britain" and is honest enough to admit received "reviews were at best mixed, often hostile": THE NIGHT OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

Stoker/Edgar-nominee Billie Sue Mosiman returns with the self-explanatory: SPARKLE-A Tale of the Devil

Tracy Sumner offers her 2000-Zebra contemporary romance: Tides of Love (Seaswept Seduction/Book One: NOAH)

Mike Dennis who has one book out from small press L&L Dreamspell who are carried by Fictionwise offers a mystery: THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA (Key West Nocturnes series)

Ken Shakin has had a few things out from small specialty LGBT presses. He offers his 2006 Harrington Park small-pressed literary fiction novel, with blurb praise from EDGE magazine: The Cure for Sodomy

The following small presses have a mix of new and repeat freebies, some of them backlist books or newer works by established authors: Camel Press, Coffeetown Press, Stay Thirsty Media, Imajin Books,Books We Love/BWLPP.

Frankly, most of the repeats are very insignificant short stories and/or minor author self-pubs which I can't even remember at this point, but I will mention for those of you who've been picking up probably self-pub Canadian Cindy Bouchard's BC-set historical family saga set pre-WWI, she seems to be freebieing all 7 volumes of it today in case you missed any: Linkage for the lot

Happy reading, if indeed you manage to spot something you think you might like, or your gradual collection of the Princes of the North saga has been made complete this very day.