FREE/BARGAIN — Mystery, Suspense & Thrillers

[ZodWallop]

We Are Here by Michael Marshall is $0.50 at Amazon (only). It's so frustrating when the major publishers help support Amazon's dominance.

It should've been the greatest day in David's life. A trip to New York, wife by his side, to visit his new publisher. Finally it looks as though the gods of fate are going to lift him from schoolteacher to writer. But on his way back to Penn Station, a chance encounter changes all of that.
David bumps into a stranger who covertly follows him, and then, just before they board the train home, passes him by close enough to whisper: "Remember me." The stranger follows them back to where they live, and it isn't long before David realizes that this man wants something from him . . . something very personal, that he may have no choice but to surrender.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

We Are Here by Michael Marshall is $0.50 at Amazon (only). It's so frustrating when the major publishers help support Amazon's dominance.

You can price match it at Kobo.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You can price match it at Kobo.

$0.50 vs. $10 with hope my price match is accepted... For me that's not too tempting. More power to those who do it though.

[sufue]

The prolific Edward Marston (real name: Keith Miles) has written an impressive number of historical mystery series. I've read and liked several of his Domesday and Nicholas Bracewell books, and a few of his Railway Detective books. And, until I looked at SYKM just now, I didn't realize he was the same guy who also wrote some contemporary golf mysteries under his real name a couple of decades ago. I also read and liked some of those back in "real paper" days. Now, the fourth book in his Christopher Redmayne/Jonathan Bale series, The Frost Fair, is on sale in the UK for £0.99.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006WB7N0Q
Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-frost-fair-4

Spoiler:

Christmas, 1669. In the grip of the coldest winter for years, the River Thames is frozen from bank to bank and London celebrates with a traditional frost fair held on its broad back. Revellers come from far and wide to enjoy the spectacle: an ox is roasted, booths set up and entertainers employed to amuse the crowds enjoying the holiday atmosphere.

Among the throng is ambitious young architect Christopher Redmayne, escorting the daughter of one of his clients with whom he hopes to further a romantic attachment. By chance they meet Christopher's good friend, Constable Jonathan Bale. When a child slips on thin ice the pair make a chilling discovery of a frozen naked corpse embedded in the ice.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

$0.50 vs. $10 with hope my price match is accepted... For me that's not too tempting. More power to those who do it though.

I have price matched over 60 books, and only had a problem once when I tried doing two nearly identical books in the same order. I've never had a problem with one book per order.

But I do also wait for the price match refund before downloading the book.

Those 10% extras do add up! And if you have enough of a credit balance from gift cards, you don't get loads of small transactions and refunds on your actual bank account.

[salty-horse]

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon is £2 in the UK (Amazon only, but should be price-matchable. Kobo is £3)
Now a Major Motion Picture, but thankfully this is still the old cover.

"Quite simply, one of those books that will make this world - our world, our daily chemical-preservatice, plastic-wrapped bread - a little more tolerable, a little more human . . . [Pynchon's] voice - absolutely unmistakeable and absolutely inimitable . . . is the American voice of the late twentieth century." —Frank McConnell, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Later than usual one summer morning in 1984 . . ." On California's fog-hung North Coast, the enchanted redwood groves of Vineland County harbor a wild assortment of Sixties survivors and refugees from the "Nixonian Reaction," still struggling with the consequences of their past lives. Aging hippie freak Zoyd Wheeler is revving up for his annual act of televised insanity when news reaches him that his old nemesis, sinister Federal agent Brock Vond, has come storming into Vineland at the head of a heavily armed Justice Department strike force. Zoyd instantly disappears underground, but not before dispatching his teenage daughter Prairie on a dark odyssey into her secret, unspeakable past . . .

Freely combining disparate elements from American pop culture - spy thrillers, Ninja potboilers, TV soap operas, sci-fi fantasies - Vineland emerges as what Salman Rushdie has called in the New York Times Book Review "that rarest of birds: a major political novel about what America has been doing to itself, to its children, all these many years."

[GA Russell]

Phantom Detective Magazine
Fall, 1949

includes

Who Killed Karney
novelet by John Creasey

$1.99

https://www.radioarchives.com/The_Ph...49_p/re965.htm

[salty-horse]

What's the Worst That Could Happen? (Dortmunder #9) by Donald E. Westlake is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
A bunch of other books in that series are also $3.

It started with a ring. A cheap ring. The yellow metal said brass, not gold, and the sparkly bits were certainly not diamonds. But the ring belonged to May's horseplaying uncle, who swore it brought good luck. Dortmunder, who wouldn't kick a little good luck out of bed, puts it to the test when he goes to burglarize Long Island billionaire Max Fairbanks. As luck would have it, Dortmunder is greeted by Fairbanks himself - and a loaded gun - as soon as he strolls through the door. When the cops arrive, the mogul adds insult to injury by claiming that Dortmunder's lucky ring is actually his. Big mistake, big guy. As soon as Dortmunder can give the cops the slip, the world's most single-minded burglar goes after the fat cat with a vengeance and a team of crooks that only he can assemble. And from the get go everything will go Dortmunder's way - everything, that is, except the ring.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

$0.50 vs. $10 with hope my price match is accepted... For me that's not too tempting. More power to those who do it though.

Looks like they haven't done anyting at Kobo.uk

(Perhaps so at Kobo.com ?)

[Dr. Drib]

From Kobo.UK:

"The Dark Iceland Series
ALL SIX books in Ragnar Jónasson's international, multi-million-copy bestselling Dark Iceland series in one GREAT-VALUE Box Set!"

£1.99
£1.79 [if a VIP member]

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the...iceland-series

[sufue]

My experience is similar - mostly no trouble, other than occasionally being asked for a screenshot to substantiate a Kinde price, usually when I did the match late in the day on a Kindle Daily Deal. However, on the couple of other rare occasions when I have had trouble it has been similar to @pdurrant, although in my case, it has been with two books by the same author, bought each in its own shopping cart, but one right after the other, and they get them mixed up. Even with different transaction numbers. One of them I never got resolved, but it was a small amount, like normally £2.99 and on sale for £0.99, and eventually it just wasn't worth the hassle to keep trying - or try to get it refunded. The other, I eventually got them to fix, but many emails and much hassle later.

So I now have a minimum of somewhere around $0.50 - $0.75 before I decide to even bother with the price match these days, and will just buy at Kobo without the price match hassle if the price differential is less than that. The Kobo VIP helps a lot, because a lot of the time Kindle will be at $0.99 and Kobo at $1.99, but with a discount, and so the difference is reduced. I am at the end of my career, trying to get retired, and work is so overwhelming at the moment that I just don't have time. (This may change when I do get retired .)

But almost all the time, the price match has worked (with screenshots for backup), and I do keep a close eye on the big ones.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I have price matched over 60 books, and only had a problem once when I tried doing two nearly identical books in the same order. I've never had a problem with one book per order.

But I do also wait for the price match refund before downloading the book.

Those 10% extras do add up! And if you have enough of a credit balance from gift cards, you don't get loads of small transactions and refunds on your actual bank account.

[sufue]

Six months later, again on sale. Still the most recent, although a new one is coming out in April.

Originally Posted by sufue

Sealed with a Hiss is the thirty-third and most recent (2025) in Rita Mae Brown's Mary Minor Haristeen/Mrs Murphy series. It's on sale in both the US and UK right now.

Kindle US, $1.99: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9XWF7YZ
Kobo US, $1.99: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sealed-with-a-hiss-3
Kindle UK, £0.99: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D9XWF7YZ
Kobo UK, £1.99, discountable: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/sealed-with-a-hiss-3