FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by issybird

I haven't seen it in forever, but I suspect the cringeworthy aspects would take over for me now. Two words: Mickey Rooney.

Attachment 172034

I understand. But I have no problem with media being of its age.

[Dr. Drib]

^ Mickey Rooney was one hell of a talented guy. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

[ZodWallop]

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene $1.99 at Amazon US

Named by Time magazine as one of the hundred best English-language novels written since 1923

In the Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1930s, all vestiges of Catholicism are being outlawed by the government. As churches are razed, icons are banned, and the price of devotion is execution, an unnamed member of the clergy flees. He’s known only as the “whisky priest.” Beset by heretical vices, guilt, and an immoral past, he’s torn between self-destruction and self-preservation. Too modest to be a martyr, too stubborn to follow the law, and too craven to take a bullet, he now travels as one of the hunted—attending, in secret, to the spiritual needs of the faithful. When a peasant begs him to return to Tabasco to hear the confessions of a dying man, the whisky priest knows it’s a trap. But it’s also his duty—and possibly his salvation.

[Difflugia]

The Absolutist by John Boyne is free.
Kobo
eBooks.com
B&N
Amazon

I saw it as the B&N Free Friday selection and it looks like it's free everywhere. I don't know anything about it, but searched Mobileread and found a number of posts speaking highly of this and other John Boyne books.

It is September 1919: twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a package of letters to the sister of Will Bancroft, the man he fought alongside during the Great War.

But the letters are not the real reason for Tristan's visit. He can no longer keep a secret and has finally found the courage to unburden himself of it. As Tristan recounts the horrific details of what to him became a senseless war, he also speaks of his friendship with Will--from their first meeting on the training grounds at Aldershot to their farewell in the trenches of northern France. The intensity of their bond brought Tristan happiness and self-discovery as well as confusion and unbearable pain.

The Absolutist is a masterful tale of passion, jealousy, heroism, and betrayal set in one of the most gruesome trenches of France during World War I. This novel will keep readers on the edge of their seats until its most extraordinary and unexpected conclusion, and will stay with them long after they've turned the last page.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

The Absolutist by John Boyne is free.
Kobo
eBooks.com
B&N
Amazon

I saw it as the B&N Free Friday selection and it looks like it's free everywhere. I don't know anything about it, but searched Mobileread and found a number of posts speaking highly of this and other John Boyne books.

thanks for that. The book sounds very good.

[ZodWallop]

Boston: A Documentary Novel by Upton Sinclair is $1.99 at Amazon US.

A wealthy dowager confronts the brutality of the class system and fights for justice in this dramatic account of the Sacco and Vanzetti case

With the publication of The Jungle in 1906, Upton Sinclair became the literary conscience of America. Two decades later, he brought his singular artistry and steadfast commitment to the cause of social equality to bear on the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists accused of armed robbery and murder. Boston, a “documentary novel” published one year after Sacco and Vanzetti were executed, brilliantly combines fact and fiction to expose the toxic atmosphere of paranoia, prejudice, and greed in which the two men were tried.

Recently widowed sixty-year-old Cornelia Thornwell abandons her Boston Brahmin family to take a factory job in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She witnesses the crushing poverty and heartless bigotry endured by immigrant laborers, and befriends the charismatic fishmonger Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a committed anarchist and atheist. When Vanzetti and his fellow countryman Nicola Sacco are arrested and charged with murder, Cornelia’s belief in the fairness of the American judicial system is shattered. Joining the public outcry heard from Boston to Buenos Aires, she demands a fair trial—but it is too late. As Sacco knew all too well: “They got us, they will kill us.”

[bfisher]

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron is on sale at amazon.ca for $CDN 1.99
https://www.amazon.ca/Confessions-Na.../dp/B00B06NAAA

The Goodreads page:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/..._of_Nat_Turner

[ZodWallop]

Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is $1.99 at Amazon US.

Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

[ZodWallop]

Tom Robbins' first novel, Another Roadside Attraction is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon US.

What if the Second Coming didn’t quite come off as advertised? What if “the Corpse” on display in that funky roadside zoo is really who they say it is—what does that portend for the future of western civilization? And what if a young clairvoyant named Amanda reestablishes the flea circus as popular entertainment and fertility worship as the principal religious form of our high-tech age? Another Roadside Attraction answers those questions and a lot more. It tell us, for example, what the sixties were truly all about, not by reporting on the psychedelic decade but by recreating it, from the inside out. In the process, this stunningly original seriocomic thriller is fully capable of simultaneously eating a literary hot dog and eroding the borders of the mind.

[sufue]

I've not read Tom Robbins, but this sounds a lot like Rob Kroese's Mercury series, which features a journalist protagonist whose job it is to report on various purported End Times. She gets very complacent, because all of the supposed End Times turn out to be fake...until one day one turns out to be the real thing. And it comes complete with a very distractable angel, Mercury, sent from heaven specifically to prepare for the end of the world.

I believe Kroese's series is self-pub, but I've read most or all of them, and have enjoyed all that I have read. They go on sale a lot...

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Tom Robbins' first novel, Another Roadside Attraction is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon US.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by sufue

I've not read Tom Robbins, but this sounds a lot like Rob Kroese's Mercury series, which features a journalist protagonist whose job it is to report on various purported End Times. She gets very complacent, because all of the supposed End Times turn out to be fake...until one day one turns out to be the real thing. And it comes complete with a very distractable angel, Mercury, sent from heaven specifically to prepare for the end of the world.

I believe Kroese's series is self-pub, but I've read most or all of them, and have enjoyed all that I have read. They go on sale a lot...

I checked the Mercury series. To me they look closer to Gaiman and Pratchett's Good Omens.

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I checked the Mercury series. To me they look closer to Gaiman and Pratchett's Good Omens.

Now I'm interested!

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ReadingManiac

Now I'm interested!

Here's a link to the series of 5. They're all $0.99 a piece. Not sure if that's a sale, or their regular price: Mercury

[snape]

I loved the Mercury series and found every book highly entertaining and well written. Recommended.

[sufue]

They do go on sale from time to time, but usually not for very long, so I would move on these if you are interested. They are usually $3.99, so still not horrible, but $0.99 is a significant markdown . Kroese is an "aggressively" independent author (i.e. he publishes articles about and gives talks about how to be an independent author), so he controls his own pricing and marketing strategy. With that said, I've liked all of the Mercury series, but I don't read a ton of sci-fi/fantasy, so I may not be the best judge. To me, the basic premise was a lot of fun, and the books themselves were fun and quirky enough to keep my interest.

Right now, two short stories in the series, including one intended to be a prequel, are free.

Mercury Begins, prequel: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00918ALA6/

Mercury Swings: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005JTNDEM/

So, if you don't want to spend even $0.99 for the first full-length title, you can get a taste for free, and see if you like the style. Although Kroese (like many authors) tries to say you can read in any order, I think the series would be better off in order, at least the full-length books. But you can get a sense of the writing style from these - and, of course, Begins is meant to be a prequel...

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Here's a link to the series of 5. They're all $0.99 a piece. Not sure if that's a sale, or their regular price: Mercury