FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by elaysee

Cannery Row is included in The Short Novels of John Steinbeck, which was highlighted here when it was on sale a couple of years ago, so check your collection before you one-click.

Yeah, I bought the short novels and still bought Cannery Row. But that's just me.

[sufue]

The Evening and the Morning is, per its blurb, a (somewhat) recently published prequel to Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. It's £0.99 at Kindle UK right now.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B082HZC2HK
Kindle UK/Smile: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B082HZC2HK

Spoiler:

From the bestselling author Ken Follett, The Evening and the Morning is a historical epic that ends where The Pillars of the Earth begins.

A Time of Conflict
It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. The king’s grip on the country is fragile and chaos reigns. A young boat builder dreams of a better future after a devastating Viking raid shatters the life he hoped for.

Lives Intertwined
A Norman noblewoman follows her husband to a new land only to find her life there shockingly different; and a capable monk at Shiring Abbey has a vision of transforming his humble home into a centre of learning admired throughout Europe.

The Dawn of a New Age
Now, with England at the dawn of the Middle Ages, these three people will each come into dangerous conflict with a ruthless bishop, who will do anything to increase his wealth and power, in an epic tale of ambition, rivalry, love and hate.

Thirty years ago we were introduced to Kingsbridge in The Pillars of the Earth, and now in this masterful prequel, international bestseller Ken Follett will take us on a journey into a rich past, which will end where his masterpiece begins.

[sufue]

Six months later, now at £0.99. So if you didn't buy it at £1.99, maybe now's your chance . The links are still good...

Originally Posted by sufue

Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone is the latest (ninth) in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. It has dropped to £1.99 at Kindle UK, much earlier than I expected to see it drop, even for the "one-day UK price-drop on new series titles" thing. I'd grab it now if you want it though...

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B092DTBWN4
Kindle UK/Smile: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B092DTBWN4

[salty-horse]

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead is $3 on Amazon.com
It's also in my Overdrive library, so I'll pass.

"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home.*

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.*

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either.*

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the "Waldorf of Harlem"—and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.*

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?*

Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.*

But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead is $3 on Amazon.com
It's also in my Overdrive library, so I'll pass.

This is going to make my top ten list for this year.

[pdurrant]

Conversations with Rabbi Small by Harry Kemelman is £1.99 at Amazon UK today.

A spin-off of his Rabbi Small mystery series, it's a discussion of Judaism fictionalised as being discussion Rabbi Small has with someone.

Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry which is second of the mystery books, is currently £1.89.

[sufue]

If you haven't read Simon Scarrow's Cato/Macro series (officially known as the Eagles of the Empire series) yet, and you like historical fiction, you may want to give it a try. And right now, you can do so at a good price in the UK, since an omnibus of the first three titles is £4.99 at Kindle UK. That's only £1.66 each if you need all three.

Eagles of the Empire I, II, and III, contains Under the Eagle, The Eagle's Conquest, and When the Eagle Hunts
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086W1TV75
Kindle UK/Smile: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086W1TV75

And, IMO, the first few of Scarrow's books have some nice mystery elements in them too, which is how I happened to pick them up in the first place, and then I just got hooked on the series...

Spoiler:

Available together in one ebook volume for the first time, three of Simon Scarrow's action-packed novels of the mighty Roman army. Introducing heroes Macro and Cato - for everyone who loves tales of courage and camaraderie from the days of the Roman Empire

IF YOU DON'T KNOW SIMON SCARROW, YOU DON'T KNOW ROME

Praise for the Eagles of the Empire novels:

'I really don't need this kind of competition... It's a great read' Bernard Cornwell

'Rollicking good fun' Mail on Sunday

'It's Spartacus meets Master and Commander in this rip-roaring, thoroughly entertaining tale of swashbuckling adventure from one of the most exciting writers of historical fiction Scottish Daily Record

UNDER THE EAGLE (Eagles of the Empire I)

AD 42, Germany. New recruit Cato is finding life in the Roman Second Legion brutal. Promoted above his comrades thanks to his connections, he's resented by the other men. He could really use a friend amongst his fellow soldiers right now.

A brave and determined soldier, Cato quickly earns the respect of his Centurion, Macro, a battle-hardened veteran. On a campaign to Britannia - a land of utter barbarity - an enduring friendship begins. But as they battle to thwart a conspiracy against the Emperor the men find themselves in a desperate fight to survive...

THE EAGLE'S CONQUEST (Eagles of the Empire II)

Britannia, AD 43. Britannia is bleak, rainy and full of vicious savages. As right-hand man to Centurion Macro, young soldier Cato battles alongside his commander in bloodier combat than he could ever have imagined.

But the Britons are fighting back with Roman weapons - which means someone in their own ranks is supplying arms to the enemy. Cato and Macro are about to discover even deadlier adversaries than the British barbarians...


WHEN THE EAGLE HUNTS (Eagles of the Empire III)

Britannia, AD 44. Cato and Macro are pawns in Rome's lust to conquer Britain. During the freezing winter, the two men and their legion fight the bloodthirsty natives in hand-to-hand battles that haunt Cato for days afterwards.

But in a place full of enemies, the most vicious are the Druids of the Dark Moon; brutal men who have captured the wife and children of General Plautius. Macro and Cato must travel deep into enemy territory and recover the hostages. The fate of the Roman army depends on the outcome...

[ZodWallop]

The Ploughmen by Kim Zupan is $1.99 at Amazon US.

Steeped in a lonesome Montana landscape as unyielding and raw as it is beautiful, Kim Zupan's The Ploughmen is a new classic in the literature of the American West.

At the center of this searing, fever dream of a novel are two men—a killer awaiting trial, and a troubled young deputy—sitting across from each other in the dark, talking through the bars of a county jail cell: John Gload, so brutally adept at his craft that only now, at the age of 77, has he faced the prospect of long-term incarceration and Valentine Millimaki, low man in the Copper County sheriff's department, who draws the overnight shift after Gload's arrest. With a disintegrating marriage further collapsing under the strain of his night duty, Millimaki finds himself seeking counsel from a man whose troubled past shares something essential with his own. Their uneasy friendship takes a startling turn with a brazen act of violence that yokes together two haunted souls by the secrets they share, and by the rugged country that keeps them.

[ZodWallop]

Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins is $1.99 at Amazon US.

What if the Second Coming didn’t quite come off as advertised? What if “the Corpse” on display in that funky roadside zoo is really who they say it is—what does that portend for the future of western civilization? And what if a young clairvoyant named Amanda reestablishes the flea circus as popular entertainment and fertility worship as the principal religious form of our high-tech age? Another Roadside Attraction answers those questions and a lot more. It tell us, for example, what the sixties were truly all about, not by reporting on the psychedelic decade but by recreating it, from the inside out. In the process, this stunningly original seriocomic thriller is fully capable of simultaneously eating a literary hot dog and eroding the borders of the mind.

[sufue]

The Short Novels of John Steinbeck is $4.99 right now in the US. This isn't as nice as when @tch65721 caught it at $1.99 a couple of years ago, but still is a pretty good price for what you get, always assuming you don't have too many of them already...

@tch65721's link below is still good, and here's the link for Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the...hn-steinbeck-1

Originally Posted by tch65721

The Short Novels of John Steinbeck by John Steinbeck - $1.99
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002L4EX9C

[ZodWallop]

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata is $1.99 at Amazon US. Won the author a Nobel Prize

This masterpiece from the Nobel Prize-winning author and acclaimed writer of Thousand Cranes is a*powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan.*•*“Kawabata’s novels are among the most affecting and original works of our time.”*—The New York Times Book Review

At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages—a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.

[Tarana]

Wheels By Arthur Hailey $1.99 Amazon, Kobo and B&N
Well known author

Ambitious motor executive Adam Trenton is determined to change the industry with his new car design. But first, he’ll have to survive the web of blackmail, violence, and betrayal that’s closing in on him…

[Tarana]

The World That We Knew By Alice Hoffman $1.99 Amazon, Kobo and B&N

In 1940s Berlin, a Jewish widow endeavors to protect her daughter from the Nazis by bringing a supernatural guardian to life.

[salty-horse]

Deadwood by Pete Dexter is $2 on Amazon.com

DEADWOOD, DAKOTA TERRITORIES, 1876: Legendary gunman Wild Bill Hickcock and his friend Charlie Utter have come to the Black Hills town of Deadwood fresh from Cheyenne, fleeing an ungrateful populace. Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepeneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane.

Fueled by liquor, sex, and violence, this is the real wild west, unlike anything portrayed in the dime novels that first told its story.

[tch65721]

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BNMZ9CMW

New publisher I think. Verify ownership... Amazon won't flag your old book.