Free (nook/Kindle/Kobo/iTunes) Castle in the Air [Vintage Rediscovery Literary Short]

[ATDrake]

Castle in the Air by the late British novelist H. E. Bates (Wikipedia, and now also IMDB via adaptations and Facebook posthumously which I find oddly hilarious, in a way, for an author who's been dead for longer than I've been alive) is a newly-rediscovered humorous slice-of-life literary short story, originally published in 1957 but never previously reprinted, which takes place in an English pub, free courtesy of publisher Bloomsbury.

This is being made free to promote their upcoming reprintings of Bates' work, much of which probably qualifies in the minor modern-ish classic category, judging by how much of it seems to have been adapted to assorted TV miniseries which you might have seen via BBC/ITV/PBS.

Currently free @ B&N (also UK), Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK), Kobo & iTunes & Google Play (all available to Canadians). ETA: also available from eBooks.com.

And this has been the (late!) selected 3rd (non-repeat… ish) free ebook thread of the day.

Because getting a vintage rediscovery of forgottten story by a semi-classic vintage modern author offered free to us to promote the re-release of his semi-classic vintage modern works (and not buried deep inside some reprint anthology where you'd have to buy the entire thing just to get the one "new" story like musicians so often do with "best-of" albums with just the one unreleased song on it) thereby making them available again for his old fans as well as a new generation of readers is a really nice thing for a publisher to give us, so

Enjoy!

Description
Visiting his aunt's pub is normally a waiting game, sitting outside to avoid the musty smell of beer and bacca. But when old Smiler takes a seat beside him, sucking in pint after pint through his gingery whiskers, a whole new world of battles and bones opens up before him.

H. E. Bates a prolific English novelist and short story writer wrote 'Castle in the Air' for The Evening News in 1957, but the story was never re-printed in any of his later collections. In fact, its existence was forgotten until 2013 when it was spotted accidentally during a rummage through a newspaper archive. On re-discovering this charming and humorous short story — which exemplifies H.E. Bates's great skill of drawing vivid characters and his ability to create an almost tangible sense of a place — Bates's descendants felt it had to be shared with a wider audience.

Bloomsbury Reader is delighted to be re-publishing 'Castle in the Air' alongside the whole body of H. E. Bates's short fiction and novellas, and here we offer it as a free taste of Bates's irresistible writing.