FREE/BARGAIN - Science Fiction, Fantasy - 2014

[bookmarked]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Free pre-order at Amazon.
Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2014: A Tor.Com Original. This will be available 01-06-2015. No description or list of authors, but I have 2011, 2012 and 2013 versions and they were good.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P5JNNBE/

Tor.com has a list of the stories and authors
"Pre-order (For Free!) Some of the Best from Tor.com 2014"

Spoiler:

Some of the Best of Tor.com 2014
Table of Contents

“As Good As New” by Charlie Jane Anders (Short Story)
“The End of the End of Everything” by Dale Bailey (Novelette)
“Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch” by Kelly Barnhill (Short Story)
“Sleep Walking Now and Then” by Richard Bowes (Novelette)
“Daughter of Necessity” by Marie Brennan (Short Story)
“Brisk Money” by Adam Christopher (Short Story)
“A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Proposed Trade-Offs for the Overhaul of the Barricade” by John Chu (Short Story)
“The Color of Paradox” by A.M. Dellamonica (Short Story)
“The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys (Novelette)
“A Kiss With Teeth” by Max Gladstone (Short Story)
“A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon a Star” by Kathleen Ann Goonan (Novelette)
“Cold Wind” by Nicola Griffith (Short Story)
“The Tallest Doll in New York City” by Maria Dahvana Headley (Short Story)
“Where the Trains Turn” by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Novella)
“Combustion Hour” by Yoon Ha Lee (Short Story)
“Reborn” by Ken Liu (Novelette)
“Midway Relics and Dying Breeds” by Seanan McGuire (Novelette)
“Anyway: Angie” by Daniel José Older (Short Story)
“The Mothers of Voorhisville” by Mary Rickert (Novella)
“Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome” by John Scalzi (Novella)
“Among the Thorns” by Veronica Schanoes (Novelette)
“The Insects of Love” by Genevieve Valentine (Novelette)
“Sleeper” by Jo Walton (Short Story)
“The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson (Novelette)
“In the Sight of Akresa” by Ray Wood (Novelette)
“A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap (Short Story)

[Little.Egret]

Growing Up Magic (Wine of the Gods Book 9) by Pam Uphoff

Free for a few days.

An SF Author I follow because all her books are fun.


One of the first challenges a person has to meet is growing up. "Magic" doesn't make it any easier. It just makes it stranger.
Whether they are a precocious son, a farm boy who is much smarter than he looks, an orphan, or a prince-every child has to learn to make their own decisions.
Even if they aren't very wise decisions . . .
Four stories

http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Magic-...dp/B00C5KG00C/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Growing-Magi...dp/B00C5KG00C/
http://www.amazon.ca/Growing-Magic-W...dp/B00C5KG00C/

[Fbone]

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel [HarperCollins] is now $1.99 at Kobo, B&N, Google. Amazon reduced the price a few days ago. Also available from Overdrive. GR rating 4.18

https://play.google.com/store/books/...d=8iEe1zKXq0UC

Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean, ferrying wealthy passengers from city to city. It is the life Matt's always wanted; convinced he's lighter than air, he imagines himself as buoyant as the hydrium gas that powers his ship. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies. It is only after Matt meets the balloonist's granddaughter that he realizes that the man's ravings may, in fact, have been true, and that the creatures are completely real and utterly mysterious.

In a swashbuckling adventure reminiscent of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Oppel, author of the best-selling Silverwing trilogy, creates an imagined world in which the air is populated by transcontinental voyagers, pirates, and beings never before dreamed of by the humans who sail the skies

[HarryT]

The Hunger Games Trilogy is part of today's Amazon UK Kindle Daily Deal, at £3.29. Good value at £1.10 per book, if this kind of thing is your cup of tea.

[GeoffR]

The Alex Benedict Collection by Jack McDevitt, an omnibus of A Talent for War, Polaris, and Seeker, is at UK/Can/Aus/NZ retailers for about the same price as one of the individual books. (Google UK seems to be cheapest at £3.99)

These are the first three books in the Alex Benedict series. Seeker won the Nebula award for best novel.

[haydnfan]

The Alex Benedict series is one of my favorite scifi series. It features a couple of antique collectors that solve mysteries and go on adventures. Not big, epic space opera. More like Indiana Jones in space. If you live in one of those countries where the discount bundle is available, I would grab it imo.

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ 99 cents for today only (Nov 10th) according to the newsletter from Open Road Media (couponable @ Kobo, should be in all the standard stores, price good for Canada & US, may or may not be matched in other regions, etc.):

West of January by Scottish & Canadian sf/fantasy author Dave Duncan (ISFDB, Wikipedia), a science fiction space opera adventure of the "planetary romance" type (Wikipedia) set in an unusual solar system, originally out from Ballantine's Del Rey imprint in 1989. This won the 1990 Aurora Award (our top national sf/fantasy prize) for Best Long-Form Work in English.

Linkage to both Kobo and Amazon, since it's pretty late in the day for this deal. This has been on my wishlist since the Fictionwise days and I've enjoyed others of Duncan's works in the past (especially his Italian Renaissance alchemist trilogy featuring a relation of Nostradamus), so I will be snapping this up shortly.

NB: Kobo's pricing is good until 9 PM Pacific Time, but starts to fluctuate in the listings after 8. However, you can actually add something that looks full price to your cart and take it through to the checkout and see the price drop to the sale bargain (and apply a coupon, while you're at it) and successfully get it cheaply until then. Just as long as you still see the price you want on the actual checkout screen (it will not magically change upon clicking the Buy confirmation button). Amazon's pricing switches over sometime between 12:30 AM and 1 Pacific Time. In both cases, I'd still take a screenshot and check my receipts if I were buying anywhere within 20 minutes of the standard server change time, if I were you.

Set on a distant planet, far in the future, West of January tells the story of a world in which the sun moves across the sky with agonizing slowness.

It takes lifetimes for a region to experience dawn, midday, and dusk, and because of this the planet’s population does not remember the catastrophes that occur as the sun moves across the sky—entire civilizations have been scorched into oblivion. The only people who remember the dangers of the past are the planet’s “angels”—a people who have tried to preserve past technologies and ancient knowledge, and who work to try to save the other people from the destruction that threatens them when the sun moves.

The hero of this book, Knobil, was born among the herdsmen, a primitive civilization in which the men kill one another and exile their sons so that each man can have as many women and children as possible. Knobil, however, is the son of an angel, and his destiny leads him to move among all the other peoples of his world—the beautiful but unthinking seafolk, the cruel slavers, the manipulative traders, and, worst of them all, the spinsters whose deadly secret he discovers nearly too late.

This action-filled story of a very strange planet showcases Duncan’s remarkable ability to create unique worlds.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by bookmarked

Tor.com has a list of the stories and authors
"Pre-order (For Free!) Some of the Best from Tor.com 2014"

The Best of Tor 2011, 2012 & 2013 are all available over at Kobo. And all are free books.
Kobo

[Mort1997]

Originally Posted by bookmarked

Tor.com has a list of the stories and authors
"Pre-order (For Free!) Some of the Best from Tor.com 2014"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00P5JNNB...=I5IGALBC2C2T1

Now free to pre-order from Amazon UK

[Mort1997]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Child-B...967299031_f_73

Short Story from Jodi Taylor (Chronicles of St Marys)- When a Child is Born - Free at Amazon uk (not Au, Can and no pricing info - I can see for the US)

[septentrion]

Originally Posted by Mort1997

http://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Child-B...967299031_f_73

Short Story from Jodi Taylor (Chronicles of St Marys)- When a Child is Born - Free at Amazon uk (not Au, Can and no pricing info - I can see for the US)

Free at amazon.com too: http://www.amazon.com/When-Child-Bor...+child+is+born

[ATDrake]

Free from the author via KDP Select @ Amazon:

An Eligible Boy by Hugo, BSFA, Sturgeon, & Philip K. Dick Award-winning UK author Ian McDonald (ISFDB, Wikipedia), a novelette which is 6th in his Future Fiction series of stories which tie into his "India 2047" set of science fiction tales (which were among the ones which netted him the Hugo, IIRC), this one originally appearing in the 2008 Pyr anthology Fast Forward 2 and was reprinted in the 26th annual Year's Best SF anthology edited by Gardner Dozois.

Cyrano de Bergerac goes to future India to find a wife.

An Eligible Boy is a funny and profound story focusing on a key aspect of McDonald's future India: selective abortions leading to a hugely imbalanced gender ratio. A four-to-one male to female proportion that forces many men to make desperate appeals to the few women available for marriage.

Young Jasbir had a cosmetic dental surgery and, advised by his roommate Sujay – who codes Avatars software for the popular soap opera Town and Country – decides to use an A.I. relationship coach to help him in the game of courtship on Shaadi, the world’s biggest wedding agency. Such tradition has become much more complex and difficult since the introduction of Avatars and Data Mining. But that’s just one side of the story, as the A.I.s believe that they are alive and act out the soap opera’s characters as if real; with unexpected results. Who will find love? And who will lose it all together? Most of all, who will be the perfect match of such Marriage Game upgraded version?

An Eligible Boy, with its slight humor and innovative courtship rituals, explores the new boundaries of love for both human beings and artificial beings.

Free again from the author via KDP Select @ Amazon:

Demons Hide Their Faces by multiple Hugo & Nebula Award-nominee A. A. Attanasio (ISFDB, Wikipedia), a collection of his previously published shorts.

Featuring seven captivating, terrifying, and poetic short stories giving form to a universe both wonderful and horrific: Visit an alternate America discovered and settled by imperial Chinese — Sleuth with a hardboiled detective in ‘30s Honolulu — Tour hell with an accidental demon hunter — Meet the Designers of our universe — Investigate the inner life of a vampire yoga instructor — Discover branch universes of evil beauty — and watch an AI confront the ghosts of our blood.

[Fbone]

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken [Disney Hyperion] is FREE at Amazon. Listed as YA science fiction/action adventure.

http://smile.amazon.com/Darkest-Mind...=darkest+minds

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government 'rehabilitation camp.' She might have survived the mysterious disease that''s killed most of America''s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control. Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.

[ATDrake]

^ It's the iTunes Canada store's featured Free Book of the Week.

And thus, also free @ iTunes & Google Play (both available to Canadians), as well as B&N. Not free for Canadians at Amazon and probably unlikely to become so, incidentally, since Amazon has for some reason gotten really stingy about price-matching certain official publisher promo freebies that show up for us in the other regular stores.

[ATDrake]

X-link to the Kids/YA megathread since Clare Bell is a dedicated YA sf/fantasy author and this particular series of hers was one of my childhood favourites from the school library which helped turn me onto sf/fantasy reading in the first place:

Bargain @ 99 cents for today only (Nov 13th) from Open Road Media in multiple Canada & US stores (couponable @ Kobo): Ratha's Creature by Clare Bell (ISFDB, Wikipedia), 1st in her The Books of the Named series of YA fantasy adventures set amongst a clan of intelligent pre-historic cheetah-like big cats, this installment originally out from Atheneum in 1983 (and involving the discovery of fire).