FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[Quoth]

Previously 99p on Amazon, now 99p on Kobo
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the...trated-edition

95% Off
Was £20.99
Now £0.99
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition

Stories include: 'A Wizard of Earthsea', 'The Tombs of Atuan', 'The Farthest Shore', 'Tehanu', 'Tales From Earthsea', 'The Other Wind', 'The Rule of Names', 'The Word of Unbinding', 'The Daughter of Odren', and 'Earthsea Revisioned: A Lecture at Oxford University'

Maybe worth re-purchasing if you only had the Amazon version.

[Quoth]

Also Guards Guards is still 99p and some Alan Dean Foster bargains on Kobo UK
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/search?qu...a-79ea4604774c

[isarl]

Buying books from different Kobo regions is easy enough but is there some way to access a US-only Humble Bundle from abroad?

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by isarl

Buying books from different Kobo regions is easy enough but is there some way to access a US-only Humble Bundle from abroad?

You can change your location in the settings:
https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/...ation-Settings

You will have to do that using a proxy machine that is in the desired location, but once you change, you can go back to your regular connection.

[Ashartus]

Originally Posted by isarl

Buying books from different Kobo regions is easy enough but is there some way to access a US-only Humble Bundle from abroad?

I was able to do it from Canada with a VPN and not logging in to my Humble Bundle account (as soon as I logged in it told me the deal wasn't available so I logged out and used a different email address). I did log in to my regular (Canadian) Kobo account when redeeming the code but was still using the VPN to be safe, once I redeemed they show up in my account without having to use the VPN.

[isarl]

My thanks to you both for the helpful information. I was able to find the setting to change my Humble Bundle account region, but I am also interested to read about the idea to simply try without being logged in. Allow me to contribute some more information!

First: Humble Bundle warns me that if I change my region, I may only do so 2 more times in the next 90 days.
To me, this suggests that in general one may change their Humble Bundle region up to 3 times every 90 days. Good to know!

Second: In my experience, Kobo does not care about your IP address nor does Kobo limit your ability to change regions in the way Humble Bundle does. Shopping from a different Kobo region is as simple as going to My Account > Payment Information > Billing Address (conveniently linked for you here) and updating it to the region from which you wish to shop. Some regions stop there (e.g. United Kingdom doesn't require any further info) while others ask for more (Canada and the US both ask you for a province/state and a postal/zip code, though I don't believe they do any matching between those fields).

NOTE: I have always done this with a balance of store credit on my account. In particular, I have no idea what it would be like to try to pay for a Kobo purchase with a credit card if my Kobo account and said credit card had different billing addresses. If your account does have store credit, Kobo automatically converts the currency when changing regions. (Caveat emptor: you may wish to double-check whether their conversion rate is fair before spending your credit in another currency. I do this by checking my credit values before and after conversion and calculating the rate myself. I also note the credit values in my original currency before and after my purchase, so that I can easily calculate the effective purchase price for my records.)

[salty-horse]

Pay the Piper (Novellas of Utter Speculation) by Sarah Connell is $3 (25% off) in the US (Amazon only, but price-matchable on Kobo)
This is a novella, so it's already pretty cheap. From a small publisher, not self-published. The book had Kickstarter in 2024.

In the dark days of plague and poverty, when the church rules with an iron fist, and knowledge is punished with fire, an orphaned girl stumbles upon a legacy of magic. Lucie has only ever known her small farm and the overprotective care of her brother, Tilo, until she learns of the Gathering. Run from the village of Hamelin by the tyrannical White Bishop, these exiles have been forced to live apart from their families. Lucie learns that she and Tilo are part of this group, expelled from the village as the children of an accused witch.

The village of Hamelin is in trouble. Ragged children roam the streets, the poor and downtrodden struggle to fill their bellies, and the homes of the wealthy are infested with rats. A mysterious figure appears with an offer that is too good to be true; reunite the families torn asunder by accusations of witchcraft, provide a home for Lucie and her people, and the rats will be gone.

But this is a contract signed with blood, and for Lucie, the Mayor of Hamelin, and the White Bishop, the price may be too high.

[Quoth]

£3.59 on Kobo UK VIP, or £3.99
£2.22 on Amazon UK in Ireland, but that varies according to who has logged in.

Amazon equivalent print is 114 pages, but 3.2 M Byte.

[salty-horse]

A Different Kind of Tension by Jonathan Lethem is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
2025 release.

A definitive collection of new and selected stories by a master of the form

This dazzling, genre-defying collection from Jonathan Lethem features seven major stories published since his last collection, along with his best work spanning more than three decades. A major new story, “The Red Sun School of Thoughts,” never published before, follows a teenage boy coming to terms with figures of authority and power—those in both his biological family and in the family he creates for himself.

Elsewhere we meet “Super Goat Man,” a down-at-heels bohemian superhero; “The Porn Critic,” whose accidental expertise wrecks his own romantic aspirations; and “Sleepy People,” who pose interpersonal conundrums without ever rousing from their slumber. Fluidly moving between realism and the surreal, the absurd and the mundane, A Different Kind of Tension is a container bursting with life and death, couples in trouble, talking animals, and technologies on the fritz. Through it all are people longing to be seen and to connect; to thrive, love, and be forgiven. “This is the joy of reading Jonathan Lethem: you never know what you’re going to get.” (Financial Times)