FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

50 Classic Christmas Stories You Should Read - 49 cents
https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Chris...dp/B077MD3Z9L/

I'll take the one that's not a penny!

-- Thanks!

[GA Russell]

50 Eternal Masterpieces of Western Stories - 49 cents
https://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Maste...dp/B0783NZ2NJ/

[pdurrant]

Amazon UK has five of Philippa Gregory's historical novels for sale at £0.99 today.

[ZodWallop]

John Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus is $5.99 at Amazon. $5.99 ain't cheap. But I haven't seen Steinbeck marked down very often.

In his first novel to follow the publication of his enormous success, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s vision comes wonderfully to life in this imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California’s back roads, transporting the lost and the lonely, the good and the greedy, the stupid and the scheming, the beautiful and the vicious away from their shattered dreams and, possibly, toward the promise of the future.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Got it, just so I can hear another married couple argue and know that I'm not alone in the world.

Let's hope the book is a hoot.

If it isn't, someone should write a book about marital 'bliss'. Oh, wait a moment: Dale M. Courtney already did that!

Well why didn't you say you wanted Cinisajoy's guide to the perfect marriage?
I will pm you the entire book if you like loo.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Well why didn't you say you wanted Cinisajoy's guide to the perfect marriage?
I will pm you the entire book if you like loo.

Your book is completely blank!

[ZodWallop]

Another semi-price drop on a Steinbeck book: Of Mice and Men: Teacher's Deluxe Edition is $4.99 at Amazon.

This edition contains:
• An introduction and suggested further reading by Susan Shillinglaw, a professor of English at San Jose State University and Scholar-in-Residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas
• The poem “To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November 1785” by Robert Burns (the original source of Steinbeck’s title Of Mice and Men)
• The 1962 Nobel Banquet Speech by John Steinbeck
• An exclusive audio interview with award-winning actor James Earl Jones on his stage performances in Of Mice and Men
• Ten exclusive videos of students on major themes from the novel tied to group discussion questions included in the eBook, and an American Dream assignment, for the ultimate educational experience

Curiously, 'vanilla' Of Mice and Men is $7.99

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ $1.99 each in the US only from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Mariner Books imprint (couponable/VIP-discount eligible @ Kobo, price should otherwise be the same in other stores):

Marcovaldo: Or the Seasons in the City by the late Italian novelist and essayist Italo Calvino (Wikipedia), best known for his modern classic experimental literary fiction. This is a collection of linked short stories apparently exploring the human condition via recurring seasonal themes and has its own Wikipedia entry for more info.

A charming portrait of one man’s dreams and schemes, by “the greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century” (The Guardian).

In this enchanting book of linked stories, Italo Calvino charts the disastrous schemes of an Italian peasant, an unskilled worker in a drab northern industrial city in the 1950s and ’60s, struggling to reconcile his old country habits with his current urban life.

Marcovaldo has a practiced eye for spotting natural beauty and an unquenchable longing for the unspoiled rural world of his imagination. Much to the continuing puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams and gives rein to his fantasies, whether it’s sleeping in the great outdoors on a park bench, following a stray cat, or trying to catch wasps. Unfortunately, the results are never quite what he anticipates.

Spanning from the 1950s to the 1960s, the twenty stories in Marcovaldo are alternately comic and melancholy, farce and fantasy. Throughout, Calvino’s unassuming masterpiece “conveys the sensuous, tangible qualities of life” (The New York Times).

Flush by the late British modern classic author Virginia Woolf (Wikipedia; public domain in Life+70 countries), her experimental hybrid literary novel/biography of Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, apparently depicting life, the universe, and everything London and the life and surroundings of his owner through the dog's eyes, which also has its own Wikipedia entry for more info.

This edition contains a 1983 introduction by Trekkie Ritchie (which is an awesome kind of name to have, if you're a science fiction fan, and probably hard to live with if you're not; ETA: apparently it was a nickname, and she was an artist and also Leonard Woolf's lover after Virginia died, according to her Wikipedia entry and obituary @ The Independent) and seems to have some notes in the back, according to the TOC in the preview (ETA: these were apparently part of the original text and not specially added to HMH's edition).

The story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel—by Virginia Woolf, who has “made him a real and vivid personality . . . in her most delightful style” (Kirkus Reviews).

Wanting to “ease [her] brain” after writing The Waves, Virginia Woolf turned to the correspondence between poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—and found in their love letters an unexpected inspiration in their shared joy and affection for Flush, their cocker spaniel. As she put it, “the figure of their dog made me laugh so I couldn’t resist making him a Life.”

Here Flush tells his story as well as the love story of Robert Browning and his wife, complete with horrid maids, bullying fellow dogs, mysterious illnesses, and clandestine romance. Along the way, plenty of other topics are explored, including the barriers between man and animal, the miseries of London, and the oppression of women by “father and tyrants.”

Imbued with Woolf’s philosophical views about the repressive Victorian mindset, Flush is a unique and imaginative story of a dog, of what it means to love—spiritually, emotionally, and unconditionally—and of what it means to human. A unique literary treat, it is “a brilliant biographical tour de force” (The New York Times) and “a canine classic” (The Guardian).

[maddz]

Not sure if I ought to be posting this deal or not given the content, but today's Christmas Deal is the 3 titles in the Fifty Shades of Grey series and the spin-off Grey, all at 99p each.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/b/ref=s9_ac...d_i=5400977031

[WestCactus]

James Michener THE SOURCE A NOVEL which is rarely discounted. $2.99

https://smile.amazon.com/Source-Nove...5V7AB7HXJ19N10

[maddz]

Robert Graves: I, Claudius is 99p in today’s Amazon.co.uk Daily Deal.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/I-Claudius-...3841658&sr=1-2

[ReadingManiac]

Heartwarming Christmas story with the Artful Dodger on .99 today.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Christmas-D.../dp/B00RBLQ2F8

[Little.Egret]

Endeavour Books, free


The Young Haggards (Haggard Chronicles Book 3) by Christopher Nicole

Historical novel


Roger Haggard has grown older and settled down. He is now divorced from his first wife, the embittered Jane, and married to his new love Rosalind (Lindy). His legacy rests entirely on Harry Haggard, Roger’s only legitimate son and rightful heir to the Derleth estate.

But matters are complicated as Harry has been forbidden by his mother to set foot on the estate until his father's death and Lindy's downfall.

Christopher Nicole has published over fifty novels.

First in series is 99p
Haggard (Haggard Chronicles Book 1) by Christopher Nicole

https://www.amazon.com/Young-Haggard...dp/B077QB3RY8/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Young-Hagga...dp/B077QB3RY8/

https://www.amazon.ca/Young-Haggards...dp/B077QB3RY8/

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ $3.99 CAD for today only as part of what Kobo CA says is a 1-day Xmas sale in Canada only from Simon & Schuster (also available at Amazon.ca):

Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition by the late Joseph Heller (Wikipedia), his vintage classic literary fiction war satire. This edition is substantially enhanced with an introduction by novelist Christopher Buckley, and what the blurb says are personal essays by the author about the writing of the book, as well as contextual bonus materials such as contemporary critical responses and reviews, publicity materials from a vintage advertising campaign, and more.

In the US, this is $11.99 and has never gone below $4.99 USD since 2010, according to eReaderIQ, so this is a very good deal, especially if you like annotated editions. There's also one for Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: 50th Anniversary Edition which is similarly enhanced, for the same price as part of the same sale (details and linkage in the SF/Fantasy megathread).

Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American lit-erature and one of the funniest—and most celebrated—novels of all time. In recent years it has been named to “best novels” lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer.

Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. Since its publication in 1961, no novel has matched Catch-22’s intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; personal essays on the genesis of the novel by the author; a wealth of critical responses and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and a selection of advertisements from the original publishing campaign that helped turn Catch-22 into a cultural phenomenon. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.

[sufue]

Cross-post to the Mystery thread for some very historical-military-fiction-ish mysteries...

Several titles in the Captain Rawson series by Edward Marston have dropped in price at Kindle UK. If you are interested, info is in this post: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh....php?p=3631097