FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by maddz

The original paperback releases were also split into 2 books (at least in the UK), so it's nothing to do with a new paperback release. I suspect it's to do with size.

Very likely. I had A Storm of Swords in a single paperback volume and the spine cracked before I had finished the second chapter.

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Very likely. I had A Storm of Swords in a single paperback volume and the spine cracked before I had finished the second chapter.

So it's a good thing. Replacing a cracked ebook reader is much more expensive.

[salty-horse]

The Curator by Owen King is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
Expanded from a short story, which didn't have fantastical elements. (link to paid magazine). A bit of trivia: this is Joe Hill's brother.

A Dickensian fantasy of illusion and charm where cats are revered as religious figures, thieves are noble, scholars are revolutionaries, and conjurers are the most wonderful criminals you can imagine.

It begins in an unnamed city nicknamed “the Fairest”, it is distinguished by many things from the river fair to the mountains that split the municipality in half; its theaters and many museums; the Morgue Ship; and, like all cities, but maybe especially so, by its essential unmappability.

Dora, a former domestic servant at the university has a secret desire—to understand the mystery of her brother's death, believing that the answer lies within The Museum of Psykical Research, where he worked when Dora was a child. With the city amidst a revolutionary upheaval, where citizens like Robert Barnes, her lover and a student radical, are now in positions of authority, Dora contrives to gain the curatorship of the half-forgotten museum only to find it all but burnt to the ground, with the neighboring museums oddly untouched. Robert offers her one of these, The National Museum of the Worker. However, neither this museum, nor the street it is hidden away on, nor Dora herself, are what they at first appear to be. Set against the backdrop of an oddly familiar and wondrous city on the verge of collapse, Dora’s search for the truth will unravel a monstrous conspiracy and bring her to the edge of worlds.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

So it's a good thing. Replacing a cracked ebook reader is much more expensive.

True! I wouldn't want to risk cracking the screen with an ebook that was too heavy.

[salty-horse]

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss is $2 in the US. (Kobo, Amazon)
First in a completed trilogy featuring the adventures of famous women characters from literature.

The story of a remarkable group of women who come together to solve the mystery of a series of gruesome murders—and the bigger mystery of their own origins.

Mary Jekyll, alone and penniless following her parents’ death, is curious about the secrets of her father’s mysterious past. One clue in particular hints that Edward Hyde, her father’s former friend and a murderer, may be nearby, and there is a reward for information leading to his capture…a reward that would solve all of her immediate financial woes.

But her hunt leads her to Hyde’s daughter, Diana, a feral child left to be raised by nuns. With the assistance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Mary continues her search for the elusive Hyde, and soon befriends more women, all of whom have been created through terrifying experimentation: Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherin Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein.

When their investigations lead them to the discovery of a secret society of immoral and power-crazed scientists, the horrors of their past return. Now it is up to the monsters to finally triumph over the monstrous.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang is $3 in the US.

Kobo

Amazon

Dang! I missed this one. It sounds pretty good, too.

[salty-horse]

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford is £0.99 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)
Alternate history. Was on several "books of the year" lists.
Ian Mond: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6003016571
Adam Roberts: https://sibilantfricative.blogspot.c...s-of-2023.html

A thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently.

In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of winter, two detectives find a body on the roof of a skyscraper.
It's 1922, and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times. Beside the Mississippi, the ancient city of Cahokia lives on - a teeming industrial metropolis, containing every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that body on the roof is about to spark off a week that will spill the city's secrets, and bring it, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets and gunfire, either to destruction or rebirth.

Francis Spufford returns, with a lovingly created, richly pleasure-giving, epically scaled tale set in the golden age of wicked entertainments.

[SomeSteve]

The Prestimion Trilogy by Robert Silverberg is $3.99 at Amazon US and Kobo US.

The trilogy is comprised of the books Sorcerers of Majipoor, Lord Prestimion, and The King of Dreams.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-prestimion-trilogy

https://www.amazon.com/Prestimion-Tr.../dp/B0CDBM7NHG

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

The Prestimion Trilogy by Robert Silverberg is $3.99 at Amazon US and Kobo US.

Still patiently waiting for them to discount the Majipoor bundle.

[SomeSteve]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

The Prestimion Trilogy by Robert Silverberg is $3.99 at Amazon US and Kobo US.

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Still patiently waiting for them to discount the Majipoor bundle.

I wish I could have been the bearer of better news.

They like to test you by discounting the one you're not waiting for first -- if they ever discount that other item at all. Some things I'm (im)patiently waiting for them to discount never seem to change, while other titles by the same author (and from the same publisher) are discounted time and again.

[Dr. Drib]

^^

My god! How can the publisher miss a period [.] after the very first sentence of a book!

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

They like to test you by discounting the one you're not waiting for first -- if they ever discount that other item at all. Some things I'm (im)patiently waiting for them to discount never seem to change, while other titles by the same author (and from the same publisher) are discounted time and again.

I'm willing to wait, or resort to the lending the books from the Internet Archive
BTW, Time and Again by Simak is currently discounted. The bundle it's in isn't, but was many times this year.

[SomeSteve]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

They like to test you by discounting the one you're not waiting for first -- if they ever discount that other item at all. Some things I'm (im)patiently waiting for them to discount never seem to change, while other titles by the same author (and from the same publisher) are discounted time and again.

Originally Posted by salty-horse

I'm willing to wait, or resort to the lending the books from the Internet Archive
BTW, Time and Again by Simak is currently discounted. The bundle it's in isn't, but was many times this year.

I'm willing to wait, too, and if the price never comes down to what I'm willing to pay, to do without (I don't like to borrow books, so I don't do it). There's nothing I need, and it's not as if I didn't have more than enough to read.

Speaking of Time and Again, again, From Time to Time by Jack Finney, the sequel to a different Time and Again, is $1.99 at the moment.

I haven't read either of these books (or the Simak, either, for that matter), and I don't own them, but I would be interested to know what people here think of them, or if they're even familiar with them.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/from-time-to-time-3

[ngrant]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

Speaking of Time and Again, again, From Time to Time by Jack Finney, the sequel to a different Time and Again, is $1.99 at the moment.

I haven't read either of these books ... and I don't own them, but I would be interested to know what people here think of them, or if they're even familiar with them.

I listened to the audio versions of the Jack Finney books back when Audible was a "newborn" and remember being enthralled by both. I found both ebook and audio versions on Everand (the new Scribd) so will have another listen, thanks for bringing this up. I am rather a sap for time travel stories and loved the movies "Somewhere in Time", "About Time" and "Deja Vu". Also enjoy Jodi Taylor's "St Mary's Chronicles" -- which her fans know are NOT time travel stories. Check out the always fabulous Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies" and "By His Bootstraps" for even more fun, and the original "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells. One of my favorite top three books of all time is Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer". Lots to enjoy!

[DNSB]

For those who might want the original version of Christopher Stasheff's King Kobold—the one that he thought so bad that he rewrote the entire story as King Kobold Revived, the link on http://christopher.stasheff.com/ from June, 2023 is still there and still works.