FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[gbm]

Then you might like this box set, the price is right--free at this time.
Amazon Kobo

Bad Magic: 5 Novels of Demons, Djinn, Witches, Warlocks, Vampires, and Gods Gone Rogue
by Christine Pope (Author), Pippa DaCosta (Author), C. Gockel (Author), A.W. Exley (Author), C.J. Archer (Author)
Bad magic can be so good ...

These 5 full-length novels of paranormal romance and urban fantasy will keep you on the edge of your seat and up past the witching hour. Black magic, adventure, and romance … they’re all here.

Spoiler:

Something this good can’t last forever … download this set before it’s gone!

About the Books:

Chosen by Christine Pope
When a fatal fever nearly wipes out the entire world's population, the survivors of what became known as "the Dying" believe the worst is in the past ...

Wolves by C. Gockel
When Amy prays for help, Loki the Norse God of Mischief and Chaos isn't the savior she had in mind.

Hidden Blade by Pippa DaCosta
The once-revered ancient Egyptian gods aren’t dead. They’re back. And soul eater Private Investigator, Ace Dante, is in their way.


The Last Necromancer by C.J. Archer
For 5 years, Charlie has lived as a boy in the slums, but when she's arrested, her only means of escape lies with raising the dead. Now people are hunting her for her necromancy, but only one man succeeds in capturing her: a man known as Death, as compelling as he is frightening.

bernie

Originally Posted by Joykins

In January I bought a Humble Bundle of Fierce Women of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror for $25. It contained 60 ebooks. I already owned about 7 of them but it was still a steal. As you can probably tell from my avatar, it suited my interests perfeclty.

[JSWolf]

I do like the Humble Bundles.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Wizard's Tower Press is now on Smashwords, and they're part of the Smashwords sale with 25% off everything. Not much, but maybe an excuse to grab something.

I'll probably get The Sword Garden by Peadar Ó Guilín for $4.5

I've been buying their reissues of Chaz Brenchley's Outremer books. Too bad the six and final book wasn't released this month

I've already spent too much on the July sale and I have a full cart waiting for me to click buy.

Smashwords has really improved since I first started buying from them.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Crossposted to Horror.

New British SF / Horror StoryBundle: https://storybundle.com/bestof
Many of these are not repeats from previous bundle, and things I wanted to read.

The Green Man's Heir by Juliet E. McKenna
Fight Like a Girl: Vol. 2 by Roz Clarke and Joanne Hall
Devil Inside by Tom Lloyd
The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar
The Anechoic Chamber by Will Wiles
The Hungry Gods by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Age of Ra by James Lovegrove
The Great West Wood by Philip Palmer
The Hamlet by Joanna Corrance
Make-Believe and Artifice by Rose Biggin
The Last Ghost and Other Stories by Marie O’Regan
A Woman of the Sword by Anna Smith Spark
The Light Ages by Ian R. MacLeod
The Broken Land by Ian McDonald (aka Hearts, Hands and Voices)

Of those I've only read The Green Man's Heir and The Age of Ra and hated both.

Not making judgements on the rest of the bundle. Just seeing those two titles made me draw back.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by maddz

Lee would have been Heavy Metal to DC or Marvel.

That is the best recommendation for an author I have heard in a long time!

[salty-horse]

The Cold Between (Central Corps #1) by Elizabeth Bonesteel is $2 in the US (Amazon only, for now, but price-matchable on Kobo)
This is a self published edition, but the series used to be traditionally-published.
The second book in the series is also on sale for $2, and a short story collection by the author (that was also traditionally-published, and not set in that universe) is also $1.

In this first entry in the critically acclaimed Central Corps space opera series, a starship mechanic turns detective after her crewmate is murdered.

Chief of Engineering Elena Shaw has never been one for shore leave, but when her starship stops at the prosperous colony world of Volhynia, she ends up spending a diverting night with a local man. She takes nothing from the encounter but fond memories-until he's arrested the next day for the overnight murder of one of her crewmates. And Elena is the only one who knows he couldn't possibly have committed the crime.

When the corrupt local cops show no interest in giving up their suspect, Elena investigates the victim's final hours, seeking evidence of the real killer. But what begins as pursuit of justice evolves into a search of another sort. Seems Elena's dead crewmate was digging into the unexplained destruction twenty-five years ago of the Phoenix-a starship with ties to Elena's increasingly secretive captain. The longer she follows in her late crewmate's footsteps, the more her senior officers push her to drop the investigation-and the more she suspects everything she's been told of the Phoenix is a lie.

As Elena realizes she can't trust her chain of command, finding justice means not only proving one man's innocence, but also exposing the truth of the loss of the Phoenix. And it may cost Elena her career-or her life.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Of those I've only read The Green Man's Heir and The Age of Ra and hated both.

Not making judgements on the rest of the bundle. Just seeing those two titles made me draw back.

I liked The Green Man's Heir. That's the only one I've read, I think, and I'd consider it a plus. But yeah, the storybundle split between pay what you want for almost nothing and pay $30 for the whole set is not all that appealing unless there are a lot more A-list books.

(BTW, I'm also seeing Best of British Science Fiction 2025 edited by Donna Scott in that bundle, which was missing from the above list.)

[salty-horse]

Modern Classics of Fantasy by Gardner Dozois is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
Contents: https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?275064

While humanity has been telling fantastic stories for millennia, fantasy fiction has only come into its own as a genre in the latter half of the twentieth century, as the works of such writers as J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard have found a wide audience.
This wonderful collection celebrates fantasy's heyday with 33 masterpieces of short fiction, ranging from 1940s stories by L. Sprague de Camp, H.L.Gold, Fritz Leiber, and Manly Wade Wellman to more recent tales by such towering modern talents as Peter S. Beagle, Terry Bisson, James P. Blaylock Suzy McKee Charnas, John Crowley, Tanith Lee, Michael Swanwick, Judith Tarr, Howard Waldrop, Jane Yolen, and Roger Zelazny.
Just as Gardner Dozois's Modern Classics of Science Fiction has helped longtime fans and new readers alike discover the genre's finest short stories, so too shall this anthology allow readers to find in one volume more than two dozen masterworks of fantasy.

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

(BTW, I'm also seeing Best of British Science Fiction 2025 edited by Donna Scott in that bundle, which was missing from the above list.)

Sorry, I created the list from the "selected reviews" section, which was missing it.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I liked The Green Man's Heir. That's the only one I've read, I think, and I'd consider it a plus.

I wrote a review. I gave it three stars, so I guess it has gone down in my estimation since I read it. I think it just came off as a poor man's Neil Gaiman.

[salty-horse]

Icehenge by Kim Stanley Robinson is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

A mysterious monument on Pluto's North Pole holds the key to a forgotten past in this haunting tale of memory and identity from SF master Kim Stanley Robinson.
Tor Essentials presents new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles of proven merit and lasting value, each volume introduced by an appropriate literary figure.
Decades before his massively successful The Ministry for the Future (2020), Kim Stanley Robinson wrote one of SF's greatest meditations on extended human lifespan, the limitations of human memory, and the haunted confabulations that go with forgetting.
On the North Pole of Pluto there stands an enigma: a huge circle of standing blocks of ice, built on the pattern of Earth's Stonehenge—but ten times the size, standing alone at the edge of the Solar System. What is it? Who could have built it?
The secret lies in the chaotic decades of the Martian Revolution, in the lost memories of those who have lived for centuries.
This new Tor Essentials edition of Icehenge includes a new introduction by Henry Farrell, co-author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.

Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille by Steven Brust is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

Steven Brust's Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille is a time-traveling, science fiction thriller and a rollicking, fun read.
Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille serves the best matzoh ball soup in the Galaxy, and hires some of the best musicians you'll ever hear. It's a great place to visit, but it tends to move around—just one step ahead of whatever mysterious conspiracy is reducing whole worlds to radioactive ash. And Cowboy Feng's may be humanity's last hope for survival.

Good Guys by Steven Brust is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

A snarky, irreverent tale of secret magic in the modern world, the first solo standalone novel in two decades from Steven Brust, the New York Times bestselling author of the Vlad Taltos series
Donovan was shot by a cop. For jaywalking, supposedly. Actually, for arguing with a cop while black. Four of the nine shots were lethal—or would have been, if their target had been anybody else. The Foundation picked him up, brought him back, and trained him further. "Lethal" turns out to be a relative term when magic is involved.
When Marci was fifteen, she levitated a paperweight and threw it at a guy she didn't like. The Foundation scooped her up for training too.
"Hippie chick" Susan got well into her Foundation training before they told her about the magic, but she's as powerful as Donovan and Marci now.
They can teleport themselves thousands of miles, conjure shields that will stop bullets, and read information from the remnants of spells cast by others days before.
They all work for the secretive Foundation…for minimum wage.
Which is okay, because the Foundation are the good guys. Aren't they?

[Cactus Chef]

Possibly not even worth mentioning, given that according to eReaderIQ it reaches this price about once a month. But for those interested...

Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

A detective hunts down a killer in a dystopian, overpopulated NYC in this classic science fiction novel that inspired the film Soylent Green.

Originally published in 1966, Make Room! Make Room! imagines a world at the end of the twentieth century where Earth is so overwhelmed by rampant population growth that it teeters on the edge of self-destruction. In New York City alone, thirty-five million people are squeezed into its packed boroughs, scrambling like rats for the world's dwindling resources. The only food available is a product called soylent. And while the government tries to maintain order, the rich get richer and the poor stay underfoot.

Finding a killer in this broken world is one hell of a job. But that's exactly what Det. Andy Rusch has been assigned to do. If he can stay alive long enough, he might just solve the biggest case he's ever been on—unless humanity finally fulfills its promise and destroys itself first.

[salty-horse]

Cross-posted to Horror.
Exiles by Mason Coile is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

A terrifying locked-room mystery from the author of William—this time set on a remote outpost on Mars.

The human crew sent to prepare the first colony on Mars arrives to find the new base half-destroyed and the three robots sent to set it up in disarray—the machines have formed alliances, chosen their own names, and picked up some disturbing beliefs. Each must be interrogated. But one of them is missing.

In this barren, hostile landscape where even machines have nightmares, the astronauts will need to examine all the stories--especially their own--to get to the truth.

Exiles is a terrifying, taut, one-sitting read, and Mason Coile once again blends science fiction and psychological horror to engage some of humanity’s deepest questions.

[salty-horse]

Agyar by Steven Brust is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
Two posts by Jo Walton:
2009: Like a red-figure vase: Steven Brust’s Agyar
2012: eDiscover… Agyar by Steven Brust

From bestselling fantasy author Steven Brust comes this paranormal novel of immortality—and its price...
Born over a century ago, Agyar was once a frivolous young man, before he found unwanted immortality in a woman's blood-red lips. Now he goes from woman to woman, and decade to decade, finding himself at last in an Midwestern college town, where he must choose between the seductions of salvation—and of destruction.

[salty-horse]

After The Fall by Edward Ashton is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

Part alien invasion story, part buddy comedy, and part workplace satire, After The Fall by Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (inspiration for the film Mickey 17), asks an important question: would humans really make great pets?

Humans must be silent. Humans must be obedient. Humans must be good.

All his life, John has tried to live by those rules. Most days, it’s not too difficult. A hundred and twenty years after The Fall, and a hundred years after the grays swept in to pick the last dregs of humanity out of the wreckage of a ruined world, John has found himself bonded to Martok Barden nee Black Hand, one of the "good" grays. Sure, Martok is broke, homeless, and borderline manic, but he’s always treated John like an actual person, and sometimes like a friend. It’s a better deal than most humans get.

But when Martok puts John’s bond up as collateral against an abandoned house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for wealthy grays, John learns that there are limits to Martok’s friendship. Soon he finds himself caught between an underworld boss who thinks Martok is something that he very much is not, a girl who was raised by feral humans and has nothing but contempt for pets like John, and Martok himself, whose delusions of grandeur seem to be finally catching up with him.

Also, not for nothing, something in the woods has been killing people.

John has sixty days before Martok’s loan comes due to unravel the mystery of how humans wound up holding the wrong end of the domestication stick and find a way to turn Martok’s half-baked plans into profit enough to buy back his life, all while avoiding getting butchered by feral humans or having his head crushed by an angry gray. Easy peasy, right?