Free/Bargain Science Fiction & Fantasy in January 2014

[Harlock415]

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker is Amazon's daily deal at $1.99

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...d_i=1000677541

[Difflugia]

I'm not sure where to put this one, but I'll stick it here because of the time travel angle, though Kurt Vonnegut always insisted that Slaughterhouse 5 wasn't SF and that's what this one reminds me of...

Long Division by Kiese Laymon is free at B&N and Amazon.

Long Division includes two distinct but tightly interwoven stories--one called "All Things Considered," the other "Long Division." In the first, it's March 2012: 14-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson and his nemesis, LaVander Peeler, become the first black male duo to win the state of Mississippi's “Can You Use This Word in a Sentence” contest finals. Both boys are asked to represent Mississippi at the televised national competition. (Hours before the contest begins, City is given a book without an author called "Long Division.") Turmoil and misunderstanding ensue, as City and LaVander learn they have reason to doubt the merit of their presence at the contest. “They want us to win,” City says to LaVander moments before the contest starts. After being assigned, and then misusing, the word “niggardly” in the first round of the contest, City has a remarkable on-stage meltdown in front of a national television audience. LaVander, on the other hand, though incredibly shaken, advances to the finals and has the chance to win the contest.

The day after the contest, City is sent to spend the weekend with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, which is also the site of the mysterious disappearance of girl named Baize Shephard. Baize Shephard also happens to be one of the main characters in the book "Long Division," which City has been dipping into throughout the story. While in Melahatchie, City's troubled Uncle Relle reveals that City has become an overnight YouTube celebrity thanks to his on-stage meltdown, and that he is being sought to appear on a new television show called "Youtube’s
Black Reality All Stars." City is alternately celebrated and ridiculed by the white and black residents of Melahatchie as a result of his performance at the contest, even as he delves deeper into "Long Division" and its story of the missing Baize Shephard.

When the neighborhood is convinced that a white man nicknamed Pot-Belly has assaulted Baize and done away with her body, they beat the man to death...or so City thinks, until he finds the man alive, chained up in a workshed in the back yard of his grandmother’s house. City visits the imprisoned white man four times during the course of his weekend--reading to him from "Long Division," asking him questions he's always wanted to ask white people, and promising to save him if he survives his own baptism, which his grandmother has engineered during City's visit. When LaVander appears, he and City must reluctantly work together again, this time to save the life of the white man chained in the workshed--and quite possibly the life of City’s grandmother, too.

There's something else that City finds especially interesting about "Long Division," besides the story of Baize: another main character in the book is also named City Coldson--except this City Coldson, who lives in Melahatchie, is 14 in 1985. This City will do anything to make Shalaya Crump love him--including traveling 26 years into the future (via a time portal they find in the woods) to steal a laptop and cellphone from a girl--a mysterious teenaged rapper named Baize Shephard, who lost her parents in Hurricane Katrina.

The following day, Shalaya and City meet another worn down time-traveler, this one from 1964, a boy named "Jewish" Evan Altshuler. Evan is desperate to protect his family against the Klu Klux Klan during Freedom Summer. He convinces Shalaya that he can help her find her parents and her future self if she brings the laptop computer back to 1964 and does him a favor.

Unexpectedly, City and Shalaya become separated, with Shalaya stuck in 1964 and City stuck in 2012. In their wanderings back and forward through time, much is revealed about City’s relationship with Baize, and about segregation, Freedom Summer, the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Oil spill, and the limits of technology and love. Long Division is a Twain-esque exploration of celebrity, authorship, racialized terror, neo-liberalism, religion, and coming of age in Post-Katrina Mississippi.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

I'm not sure where to put this one, but I'll stick it here because of the time travel angle, though Kurt Vonnegut always insisted that Slaughterhouse 5 wasn't SF and that's what this one reminds me of...

Still £5.99 at Amazon UK. I'll keep an eye on it and see if it changes. Sounds interesting.

[Fbone]

One Second After by William R. Forstchen is $2.99 [Tom Doherty/Macmillan DRM-free] at most retailers. Dystopian earth.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-Aft...e+second+after
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/one-second-after
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/one-...=9781429922067

New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real...a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages...A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies.

Months before publication, One Second After has already been cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a truly realistic look at a weapon and its awesome power to destroy the entire United States, literally within one second. It is a weapon that the Wall Street Journal warns could shatter America. In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future...and our end.

[basschick]

went for it, and i'm over halfway through and thoroughly enjoying it. as some negative reviews mention, not a lot of action, but then i don't need lots of action to sink into a book.

Originally Posted by Harlock415

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker is Amazon's daily deal at $1.99

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...d_i=1000677541

[itisbomb]

A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five
by George R. R. Martin

is $2.99 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Dragons-...ce+with+dragon

[basschick]

thanks for the heads-up! i love the first four books, but had put off reading this one. now i'm a happy camper

Originally Posted by itisbomb

A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five
by George R. R. Martin

is $2.99 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Dragons-...ce+with+dragon

[itisbomb]

Angelbound
by Christina Bauer

is today's Nook Daily Find. It can be downloaded for $0.99.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ange...=9780989405003

Below is the blurb:
Eighteen year old Myla Lewis is a girl who loves two things: kicking ass and kicking ass. She’s not your every day quasi-demon, half-demon and half-human, girl. For the past five years, Myla has lived for the days she gets to fight in Purgatory’s arena. When souls want a trial by combat for their right to enter heaven or hell, they go up against her, and she hasn’t lost a battle yet.

But as she starts her senior year at Purgatory High, the arena fights aren’t enough to keep her spirits up anymore. When the demons start to act weird, even for demons, and the King of the Demons, Armageddon, shows up at Myla’s school, she knows that things are changing and it’s not looking good for the quasi-demons. Myla starts to question everything, and doesn’t like the answers she finds. What happened seventeen years ago that turned the quasi-demons into slave labor? Why was her mom always so sad? And why won’t anyone tell her who her father is? Things heat up when Myla meets Lincoln, the High Prince of the Thrax, a super sexy half-human and half-angel demon hunter. But what’s a quasi-demon girl to do when she falls for a demon hunter? It’s a good thing that Myla’s not afraid of breaking a few rules. With a love worth fighting for, Myla’s going to shake up Purgatory.

[BelleZora]

Barnes & Noble Free Friday selection: Dover Beach (The Last P.I. Series, Book 1) by Richard Bowker. First published as a mass market paperback by Spectra in 1987. Matched at Amazon. Seems it fits both the science fiction and mystery genres.

B&N
Amazon US

[cromag]

Thanks!

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

Barnes & Noble Free Friday selection: Dover Beach (The Last P.I. Series, Book 1) by Richard Bowker. First published as a mass market paperback by Spectra in 1987. Matched at Amazon. Seems it fits both the science fiction and mystery genres.

B&N
Amazon US

Got it.

Thank you!

[GeoffR]

Glen Cook's The Tyranny of the Night, the first in the Instrumentalities of the Night series is US$2.99 at US and New Zealand retailers, maybe others. (code JANGET30 will get an extra 30% off at Kobo New Zealand if you don't have a better code).

[Ginwen]

The Last Days: Six Apocalyptic Thrillers Amazon US

Hopefully these aren't too independent--they do have a publisher listed, and I've read some pretty good books by Michael R. Hicks.

More than 450,000 words of thrilling post-apocalyptic fiction from six bestselling authors, all in one low-priced box set. Includes the complete text of:

Bitter Harvest (Season of the Harvest #2) by Michael R. Hicks--While investigating the grisly murder of a fellow agent, FBI agent Jack Dawson discovers the dark secret behind the creation of genetically modified organisms, bringing a terrifying new meaning to the old saying that you are what you eat...

Infected (Slow Burn #2) by Bobby Adair- In a late Texas summer with a virus burning through an unprepared population, an over-educated underachiever fights for his life against the atavistic brutality of the contagion's survivors.

Origins (The Wasteland Chronicles #2) by Kyle West- 2060: the meteor Ragnarok has turned the world into a wasteland, and now a horrific virus is infecting the world - will Alex and his friends survive long enough to thwart the next apocalypse?

The Shock (After #1) by Scott Nicholson- A massive solar storm wipes out the technological infrastructure and kills billions, and then the survivors discover that some among them have...changed.

The Onset (Contamination #1) by T.W. Piperbrook- A band of survivors struggles to outlast an infection that has consumed the American southwest

Melt Down (Breakers #2) by Edward W. Robertson- Humanity faces not one apocalypse, but two: first a lethal pandemic, then a war against those who made the virus.

Also, if you decide to get this, the first book in the Season of the Harvest series is available free at Amazon US

[doubleshuffle]

Just got mail from The Robot Trading Co. They're selling the complete 100-book Angry Robot catalogue for 100 English pounds. Definitely a bargain if you think price per book; still a whole lot of money though. Don't think I'll bite.

http://angryrobotbooks.com/?p=20998
http://www.robottradingcompany.com/angry-robot-100.html


EDIT: Just saw that the offer is limited to the first 100 purchasers... Not for me; I hate being rushed into making a deal.

[pdurrant]

Not enough authors I recognise to make it worth it for me, but I'm sure people with a smaller TBR pile might find it a bargain.