FREE/BARGAIN - Mystery, Suspense, Thriller - 2015

[ATDrake]

A few non-couponable bargains that you may or may not want to pick up during Kobo's Super Points Bonus Days promotion which ends today (valid for North America unless otherwise indicated, also price-matched in other stores).

@ $1.99 each from Simon & Schuster's Scribner imprint, the first 2 novels in Norwegian crime author Anne Holt (SYKM, Wikipedia)'s award-nominated Hanne Wilhelmsen series starring a lesbian police officer in Oslo (other installments in the series are $16.99 CAD or £4.50 UK when available, from different publishers (couponable from the UK one), so this is probably a US/Canada-only deal).

• Blind Goddess, 1st in series
• Blessed Are Those Who Thirst, 2nd in series

@ $4.99 CAD each from Penguin Canada only, 25 novels by bestselling pioneering espionage author John le Carré (SYKM, Wikipedia), including both Smiley series novels and standalones. Apparently there's some sort of major promotional event for his stuff. Shop carefully, a few are omnibus editions for novels also on sale at the same price. (Most corresponding titles seem to be $8-12 in the US.)

@ $4.99 CAD each from Hachette's Black Moon Thriller imprint for francophone aficionados of Nordic crime titles in French translation, 6 assorted titles including ones by Swedish author Liza Marklund (SYKM, Wikipedia) in her popular and film-adapted Annika Bengtzon series starring a tabloid reporter in Stockholm, and a standalone by Swedish author Carina Bergfeldt (regularly around $12 CAD each). NB: Le loup rouge, Studio 6, and Comment je vais tuer papa are apparently being offered in slightly altered editions which don't show up as previously bought on the actual product page, so check your libraries if you think you might have gotten them during a previous promotion.

@ $6.99 CAD from Albin Michel:

La Reine de la Baltique by Swedish author Viveca Sten (Wikipedia), who is not yet available in English translation. This appears to be the 1st in a series starring an Inspector in Stockholm (French translation of I de lugnaste vatten), and her other translated books are regularly priced at $13.99 CAD.

It's apparently French-translation thriller promo month at Kobo, and if you're interested in bargain deals on works by R. J. Ellory, Dennis Lehane, Preston & Child, Stephen King, and others, you should probably check out their Promotions du mois : jusqu'à 70% de rabais, which is mostly offering them in the $4.99-$6.99 CAD range (this is cheap for francophone books; normally they're priced at about twice as much).

[Mort1997]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

La Reine de la Baltique by Swedish author Viveca Sten (Wikipedia), who is not yet available in English translation. This appears to be the 1st in a series starring an Inspector in Stockholm (French translation of I de lugnaste vatten), and her other translated books are regularly priced at $13.99 CAD

There is a book by Viveca Sten available on Amazon UK, £3.98 or free to read via Kindle Unlimited

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TUOH58...I1KI1XVYDEC1PJ

Book 2 looks to be available for pre-order

[sufue]

Atonement of Blood is the 24th in Peter Tremayne's excellent (IMO) Sister Fidelma series. It just dropped from $9.99 to $5.99 in the Kindle US store, no idea why or for how long. $5.99 is not a great sale price, but his books range $7.99 and up, and are not couponable/discountable, so I thought I'd toss this one into the thread.

This series persuaded me to visit Cashel when we visited Ireland, and although most of the buildings remaining on the Rock of Cashel now date from the 12th and 13th century, and not Fidelma's 7th century, it was still a lot of fun to imagine Fidelma, Eadulf, Colgu and everyone there.

link: http://www.amazon.com/Atonement-Bloo...dp/B00HTJ1D6K/

Spoiler:

Winter, 670 AD. King Colgú has invited the leading nobles and chieftains of his kingdom to a feast day. Fidelma and her companion Eadulf are finally home for an extended stay, and have promised their son, Alchú, that they'll be able to spend some time together after months of being on the road, investigating crimes. Fidelma and Eadulf are enjoying the feast when it is interrupted by the entrance of a religieux, who claims he has an important message for the King. He approaches the throne and shouts ‘Remember Liamuin!' and then stabs King Colgú. The assassin is slain, but does enough damage to take out Colgú's bodyguard, and to put the king himself on the verge of death.

As King Colgú lies in recovery, Fidelma, Eadulf, and bodyguard Gormán are tasked with discovering who is behind the assassination attempt, and who Liamuin is. They must journey into the territory of their arch-enemies, the Uí Fidgente, to uncover the secrets in the Abbey of Mungairit, and then venture into the threatening mountain territory ruled by a godless tyrant. Danger and violence are their constant companions until the final devastating revelation.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Mort1997

There is a book by Viveca Sten available on Amazon UK, £3.98 or free to read via Kindle Unlimited

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TUOH58...I1KI1XVYDEC1PJ

Book 2 looks to be available for pre-order

Cool, thanks! I checked for a UK publisher, since sometimes they get Nordic translated titles well in advance of North America, but didn't try Amazon.

It's nice to see that AmazonCrossing are bringing out English versions of more authors I've wanted to try, even as store exclusives (mind you, they do have a nice habit of putting them on $1.99 sale at semi-regular intervals), and it'll be interesting see how it compares to the French.

ETA: Ooh, lucky and lucrative 8888th post. Well, I've learned useful things today, as well as saved on some stuff I really wanted, so

[Mort1997]

Free on Amazon UK - Let There Be Blood (A Lord Ambrose Mystery) by Jane Jakeman

'Summer, 1830.
Lord Ambrose Malfine’s solitary existence is shattered by a murder on the outskirts of his estate.
Forced out of his post-war rehabilitation by the possibility of gross injustice, he arrives just in time to petition a fair trial for the gypsy accused.
The two victims, Old Crawshay and his son, were found by the mistress of the house with fatal gunshots...
As Lord Ambrose looks into the events leading up to the murders, there are many questions to be answered.
A lady of the house with a dangerous addiction to laudanum, a governess whose garments betray a wealthy background and a mysterious figure trespassing on a crippled leg all populate this compelling and dizzying crime.
Lord Ambrose fears there will be more murders to follow but will he be able to identify and stop the killer before more people are hurt?'


UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/There-Blood-...ndeavour+press


US
http://www.amazon.com/There-Blood-Lo...ndeavour+press


Au
http://www.amazon.com.au/There-Blood...ndeavour+press

Can
http://www.amazon.ca/There-Blood-Lor...ndeavour+press

[Mort1997]

Free on Amazon UK -Death by the Mistletoe by Angus MacVicar

'It is the middle of June, and a severe electrical storm is predicted to hit the British Isles. In the event, weather conditions are even worse than expected and when the storm ends, it leaves behind more destruction than forecast.
Amongst the thirty people killed are nine members of the clergy, struck down by lightning. The storm has been ferocious but is the blizzard alone to blame for these deaths? James McPherson, flame-haired and quick-witted editor of the Campbeltown Gazette, is among the first to realise that something is amiss.
Noting that the bodies of many of the clergymen who died had been found close to sprigs of mistletoe, he deduces that they have been murdered.
Publishing his suspicions in his newspaper, McPherson triggers a national hunt for the killers, a hunt in which he plays a major part.
James McPherson's pursuit of the killers takes him into mortal danger and leads him to physical injury, as he uncovers the machinations of a sinister cult - based almost on his own doorstep - a cult that threatens both his life, and that of the woman he loves, Eileen.'


UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Mistle...ndeavour+press


US
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Mistleto...ndeavour+press


Au
http://www.amazon.com.au/Death-Mistl...ndeavour+press


Can
http://www.amazon.ca/Death-Mistletoe...ndeavour+press

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Mort1997

Free on Amazon UK -Death by the Mistletoe by Angus MacVicar

'It is the middle of June, and a severe electrical storm is predicted to hit the British Isles. In the event, weather conditions are even worse than expected and when the storm ends, it leaves behind more destruction than forecast. ... "

Note, this is an Endeavour Books reprint of a novel first published in 1934

[mitford13]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Note, this is an Endeavour Books reprint of a novel first published in 1934

Hahahaha, I actually bought that a week or so ago when it was .99 because I thought it sounded like an unusual Golden Age detective story. But I was tempted to email Endeavour that it's one of the most mismatched covers EVER.
But then I also remembered how much good stuff they give away...

[Fbone]

Hurricane Season (Florida Panhandle Mystery #1) by Michaela Thompson is FREE on Amazon today. Dutton 1983. GR 3.46

http://smile.amazon.com/Hurricane-Se...haela+Thompson

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by mitford13

Hahahaha, I actually bought that a week or so ago when it was .99 because I thought it sounded like an unusual Golden Age detective story. But I was tempted to email Endeavour that it's one of the most mismatched covers EVER.
But then I also remembered how much good stuff they give away...

Pretty, though! Yeah, I read through the description of the book, then went to buy it .... noticed how pretty the cover was .... and it didn't even REGISTER that the description had said the book was set in June and that the picture wasn't.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Note, this is an Endeavour Books reprint of a novel first published in 1934

MacVicar lived a long life: 1908 - 2001 .....

(source: Goodreads)

[sufue]

A bunch of US Kindle Countdown deals...almost all repeats...

Note that Endeavour Press (several of these) seems to have re-uploaded many of their titles, so if you've previously purchased them, it may not be obvious, so check carefully.

False Dawn is the third in the Jake Lassiter series by Paul Levine at $0.99 for about six more days
info in this previous post: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=168616

Guilt Trip by Ben Rehder is the fourth in the Blanco County series at $0.99 for about 1 more day. All of these titles were on Countdown a while back at the same time - looks as if he might be cycling through them now, so if you want these but missed them before, you might keep an eye out.
link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005UZGH7U

Spoiler:

"This guy is the funniest, freshest voice in Texas mystery writing today. His work stands out like a DayGlo parka in deer season."
—Rick Riordan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lightning Thief

Guilt Trip:
Life in rural Blanco County, Texas, isn't what most folks would call exciting—and that suits game warden John Marlin just fine. He's happy to spend his days and nights protecting the local wildlife from poachers. But when the tequila-slamming, skirt-chasing treasurer of the local Rotary Club goes missing and his vehicle is found in the river the day after a flood, Marlin finds himself in charge of the search efforts. At nearly the same time, a nearby house explodes in a shower of drug paraphernalia, and an exotic car turns up stolen from the missing man's barn. Marlin and Sheriff Bobby Garza are soon overwhelmed, trying to figure out how everything connects together. It isn’t long before events begin to spiral out of control. Edgar Award-nominated author Ben Rehder keeps the plot moving and the laughs coming in another spectacularly funny crime novel straight out of the zaniest imagination in Texas.

The Mycroft Holmes Casebook by David Dickinson is at $0.99 for about six more days.
Info in this previous post: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=3098008

Death Before Facebook (previously published as New Orleans Beat) by Julie Smith is at $1.99 for about three more days. Smith's books tend to go free from time to time, so you'll have to decide whether to pay at this price.
link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008DP2B56

Spoiler:

Death Before Facebook, formerly entitled New Orleans Beat, is the FOURTH book in the Edgar Award-winning Skip Langdon series by Julie Smith.
Reader-friendly from log-on to log-off." -The Orlando Sentinel
"A peek into the sometimes dangerous world of the computer-obsessed, set in the sultry heat of New Orleans and tempered with just the right dose of Southern humor." —USA Today

MURDER MOST VIRAL!

It’s a chilly November in 1994, and thirty-one-year-old Geoff Kavanagh surreptitiously splits his time between science fiction novels and cyberspace in his parents’ dilapidated, overgrown, uptown New Orleans mansion. Until his mother finds him dead from a suspicious fall off a ladder. Maybe he should never have posted about seeing his father murdered … because way too many people on the TOWN, a pre-Facebook virtual community, knew things about his family he didn’t even suspect. Decades-old skeletons start falling out of closets after Geoff’s untimely death, thanks to New Orleans Detective Skip Langdon. Langdon finds Geoff’s gorgeous mom strangely uninterested in her son’s fatal fall, but Mom’s apparently the only one. It seems the post has gone viral. Suddenly all the TOWNSpeople have theories—and ambition as cyberdetectives. What’s a murderer to do but kill his way out?

Calling the windup “a virtuoso spin on Rashomon,” Kirkus noted that, along the way, “Smith worms her way deeply and painfully into her cast's layers and layers of past relations, getting deeper than ever into Skip as well.”

Written in the mid-90s, Death Before Facebook is a suspenseful online murder mystery blast from the past: THE NET meets Prime Suspect.

"If you haven't discovered Smith yet, now is the time to do so . . . Move over, Sara Paretsky." —KPFA-FM (Berkeley, CA)

“A poisonous bouquet from a still-rising star.” -Kirkus

The Book of the Dead is the third in the Augustus Maltravers series by Robert Richardson at $0.99 for about 2 more days.
link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OHY7HU6

Spoiler:

Augustus Maltravers, full-time writer and part-time sleuth, is on his way to visit friends in Cumbria when his car breaks down a few miles from his destination.

Seeking help from nearby Carwelton Hall, he meets the Carringtons: Charles and his beautiful young wife Jennifer.

He is astounded to find that Charles owns a Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but never published.

But Maltravers’ delight at this discovery is to be short-lived.

A shocking murder takes place and Carwelton Hall’s most valuable possession disappears….

The police believe they have their killer but Maltravers isn’t so sure.

After reading ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Attwater Firewitch’ he finds some surprising parallels to what is going on around him.

Taking his lead from Conan Doyle, he does some investigating of his own…

Is Maltraver’s imagination getting the better of him?

Or will Holmes’ fictional investigations help him track down the killer?

‘The Book of the Dead’ is the third in the series of Augustus Maltravers detective stories, following on from ‘An Act of Evil’ and ‘Skeleton Key’. "An Act of Evil", won the John Creasey Award for the best first crime novel.

Death in Room Five by George Bellairs is at $0.99 for about two more days.
link: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Chief-In...dp/B00WA407ZM/

Spoiler:

When a group from the small English town of Bolchester make an excursion to Cannes, little do they expect it to end so dramatically – with the disastrous murder of one of their party, the domineering Alderman William Dawson.

Suddenly the holidaymakers find themselves murder suspects.

But, with so many grudges borne against Dawson, it becomes impossible to work out who might have been responsible for his death.

Was the fact that he had been a traitor in the maquis - the French resistance - during the war a factor?

And was his death connected to the subsequent killing of the crooked barkeeper Sammy?

When Scotland Yard call in Chief Inspector Littlejohn in to investigate, rudely interrupting his holiday in the Riviera, he comes up against a trying, taxing and peculiar case.

'Death In Room Five' is a classic detective mystery by one of the masters of the genre.

'Bellairs is up there with the greats of English crime fiction. Every fan of the genre should read him.' - Robert Foster, best-selling author of 'The Lunar Code'.

George Bellairs was the nom de plume of Harold Blundell (1902-1985), a crime writer and bank manager born in Heywood, near Rochdale, Lancashire, who settled in the Isle of Man on retirement. He wrote more than 50 books, most featuring the detective Inspector Littlejohn. He also wrote four novels under the alternative pseudonym Hilary Landon.

Sherlock Holmes and the Holborn Emporium by Val Andrews is at $0.99 for about five more days.
Info in this previous post: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=3117262

Island in Waiting by Anthea Fraser is at $0.99 for about five more days.
Info in this previous post:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=3055874

Dead Centre is the seventh in the Ernest Best by Joan Lock. It's at $0.99 for about five more days.
link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016OMM0AK

Spoiler:

1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.

Trafalgar Square. London.

Unrest has been building for days, the unemployed gathering daily to protest and nightly to sleep.

The police are exhausted by extra duty; blamed for failing to do more to prevent the disorder, they grow increasingly bitter about the protesters’ accusations of brutality.

When a prominent member of one of the new socialist organisations is found dead at the foot of Nelson’s Column, it only adds more fuel to the protesters’ fire.

DI Best and Constable Roberts must juggle competing priorities as they search for the killer and attempt to manage the Trafalgar Square situation.

To make matters worse, Best catches a glimpse of Stark, a man guilty of murder in Whitechapel — the only witness to the crime is Florence Bagnall, Roberts’s fiancé.

As tensions rise and time begins to run out, Best realises that something terrible is about to happen…and that he may be powerless to stop it.

Killing Me Softly by Marjorie Eccles is the tenth in the Gil Mayo series at $0.99 for about six more days.
link: http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Me-Sof...dp/B00UX96Q6A/

Spoiler:

Detective Sergeant Gil Mayo has a problem on his hands.

Even quiet community of Lavenstock isn't immune from the threat of drugs and his team are getting nowhere in combating the town’s problem.

But their inquiries take a drastic turn when a member of a well-known and respected family is killed.

As both Mayo and DI Abigail Moon plunge into the investigation of this murder, and as more and more of the unsavoury details of the victim's private life are revealed, it becomes not simply a question of who had a motive to kill him, but who didn't.

Things become more and more complicated as Abigail’s personal life begins to interfere with the murder investigation as a man from her past becomes involved in the case.

As Mayo and Abigail start to uncover the truth, it becomes clear the murder was not an end, but a beginning - the first link in a chain that will lead to more deaths...

'Killing Me Softly' is an expertly-plotted crime thriller that will keep readers gripped from the first page to the final twist.

Bury Him Darkly is the second title in the Philipa Lowe/Oliver Simpson series by Roger Ormerod. It's on countdown at $0.99 for about 2 more days.
Info in this previous post: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=3062249

[Little.Egret]

Breaking off from Inspector Faro, here's a Gothic mystery freebie

Castle of Foxes by Alanna Knight

Tanya Durris, widowed after a theatre fire in Victorian London, unexpectedly inherits Devenick Castle, her late husband's ancestral home in the ruggedly beautiful Scottish Highlands. It comes with a price - her own life. Haunted by her dead husband's voice, Tanya struggles against ghostly horrors, while Lord Edward, Queen Victoria's godson, and Gavin Duthie both want her love - or is it her inheritance? And which one is trying to kill her?

Alanna Knight MBE has now written more than sixty novels (including sixteen in the acclaimed Inspector Faro series and seven featuring his daughter Rose McQuinn).


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QJEJE08/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00QJEJE08/
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00QJEJE08/

[BetterRead]

A classic Nero Wolfe mystery, Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout, is currently $1.99.

Amazon US
Barnes & Noble
Google Play
Kobo

A prize bull, a restaurateur's tacky publicity stunt, a family feud (among the bull's owners), and the death of a family scion pit Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin against a special breed of killer.

Named One of the Century's 100 Favorite Mysteries by The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association

[sufue]

Originally Posted by BetterRead

A classic Nero Wolfe mystery, Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout, is currently $1.99.

Amazon US
Barnes & Noble
Google Play
Kobo

Plot

Spoiler:

And Archie meets Lily Rowan in this one...