Free (Kindle DRM-free) Grazing the Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones [SF/Fantasy Awards]

[ATDrake]

I thought about appending the preliminary slushpile yield to yesterday's post, the feature title and much of which are still free, since there were late additions and people have been contributing their own finds.

But then this popped up in the otherwise minor-updates-at-best selections, and it's very definitely significant enough to be featured in its own thread.

Gwyneth Jones (ISFDB, Wikipedia) is a longstanding semi-major staple of British SF/Fantasy, with many award nominations and wins and much critical praise to her credit.

I remember reading some of her YA novels written as "Ann Halam" in the grade school library (the ones with a protagonist called Sirato), which had a bunch of ancient sf/fantasy hardcovers which introduced me to Lester Del Rey and Robert A. Heinlein, and liking them.

I am therefore taking the chance that this collection of her short stories, out from PS Publishing, is actually DRM-free, since their previous offerings have tended to be, and I apologize in advance to our non-stripping non-Kindle members, because this should be a high-quality freebie that everyone can pick up.

Grazing the Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones, published in hardcover by PS Publishing in 2009, is a collection of roughly a dozen of her short stories, novelettes, etc. which originally appeared in print between 1988-2007. You can see the list of contents and the provenances for the stories here in the book's ISFDB entry.

This will be free (hopefully without DRM, though I can no longer tell for sure without downloading it and checking on the other computer, no thanks to Amazon's seriously unhelpful Product Info changes which I hope you all went and complained about) for who knows how long @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

Description
Gwyneth Jones’s novels have been acclaimed for three decades, and her modern fairytales Seven Tales And A Fable won two World Fantasy Awards in 1996. And now we have Grazing the Long Acre, the first UK collection of her short fiction. Some of the stories selected, including the BSFA award-winning “La Cenerentola”, have been anthologised; several have never before been reprinted. The earliest here “The Eastern Succession” was written in 1985, the most recent “In The Forest Of The Queen” in 2007.

The settings range from a lyrical, Zelazny-influenced far-future South East Asia, to black comedy sci-fi in the New Space Opera style. There are ghosts and miracles, magical science and scientific magic; characters from novels, investigations of sexual difference, speculations on a future in which physics and neuroscience move into convergence, interrogations of our fascination with the other. Gwyneth Jones’s capacity to move and astonish the reader is undimmed, when distilled into the shorter form.

The rest of the slushpile is not sorted because the only reason why I'm up is because the insomnia woke me early and now I'm going back to sleep. There is some nice backlist stuff in there for the romance and medical thriller readers, though.

Ellora's Cave-published Cynthia Wicklund offers an historical romance (she writes for the non-erotic Blush line) free to all via Smashwords: In the Garden of Temptation (The Garden Series Book 1) She also lists via her profile page a couple of samplers for assorted backlist romance authors which includes recipes and personal tidbits among the novel excerpts, if you're interested: Linkage for them both

Victoria Gordon offers her 1991-Harlequin contemporary romance: THE SUGAR DRAGON (An Australian Romance Classic)

ISFDB-ed Bram Stoker/World Fantasy Award-winner David B. Silva offers another short story whose blurb is buried somewhere under all the accolades he quotes for himself, so I really didn't bother looking for what genre fits: Ice Sculptures

Marilyn Peake's novels are self-pub via vanity press, but she has some minor short story credits (ISFDB entry) in anthologies out from Double Dragon (who do original and fantasy backlist reprints and can be had via Fictionwise). Here is her urban fantasy: Occupy Faerie

Jove-published Robert W. Walker returns with another self-pub sci-fi horror thriller: BISMARCK 2013 - Hitler's Curse This is a sort of sidequel to TITANIC 2012 which was free yesterday and may still be today. I hereby open the MR betting pool on what "[INSERT ALLCAPS OMINOUSLY SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL NAME HERE] 2014 [OPTIONAL OTHER SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL NAME + DOOMY-LOOKING WORD]" and so forth for further years will be. I personally vote "BLACK HAND 2014 - Franz Ferdinand's Revenge".

Leigh Michaels offers a 1993-Harlequin contemporary romance which she says was a RITA contest finalist: The Lake Effect The blurb for this looks familiar and I think it may be a repeat.

ISFDB-ed David Bain offers another short story, this one apparently about corporate downsizing: The Little Guy

Kate Richards who writes for specialty erotic romance imprint Decadent Publishing offers an f/m/m contemporary threesome of such which appears to have been published by them: Avalon for Christmas

Phaze Books-published Jenna Byrnes offers an m/m contemporary erotic romance via Books We Love/BWLPP which ties into some series of hers: Never Say Goodbye (Slippery When Wet) (maybe a repeat)

Tina Gerow who is also published by BWLPP offers a paranormal murder mystery (may also be a romance): Vortex Blues

Previously-featured Richard Mason who wrote an environmental column for some local wildlife federation offers another in what's apparently a series of based-on-his-own-experiences boy-growing-up-in-the-deep-South novels if you happened to get the first one: The Yankee Doctor

Jack Jason Miller co-authored a 2006 travel guide from Avalon Publishing. This is one in his "Appalachian Gothic" "hillbilly horror" series: The Devil and Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey)

Larry D. Names has a bunch of Berkley-published mysteries and some books about a football team in his print listings. This book was apparently hardcovered in 1999 by some small press (the Amazon listing is confusing and it also links up an audiobook edition from 1993): PROSPECTING FOR MURDER (A CHARLIE SIRINGO MYSTERY)

Angelique Armae has been published by both small press Amber Quill (minorly notable for the specialty romance/erotica) and Imajinn who were a Read an E-book Week giveaway participant last year. This is her paranormal romance which involves some kind of Heaven/Hell battle: Shadows of the Soul

Big-6-published Cheyenne McCray writing as Jaymie Holland offers another f/m erotic romance novella: Taking it Home (Taboo)

Big-6-paperbacked Paul Bishop returns with another in his paperbacked Walker/Tamino LAPD mystery/thriller series (may be a continuation instead of one of the printed ones, his paperbacks aren't properly hooked up to his e-editions): Deep Water

If you got specialty-business-hardcover-writer Russell R. Miller's previous mystery/thriller involving a CIA agent posing as a businessman, you might want to pick up what looks like a sequel: Death on the Silk Road

Lee Moan, who has minor ISFDB credits for contributions to a small magazine, offers a horror thriller: Lazarus Island

Harlequin-published Patricia McLinn offers a writing/language-usage advice guide compiled from columns for her local romance chapter's newsletter: Word Watch: A Writer's Guide to the Slippery, Sneaky and Otherwise Tricky

Connie Shelton's 1st Charlie Parker mystery was published by small press Intrigue in 1995 and garnered a Booklist review. She's since self-pub, but she was rather well-behaved on the Amazon Discussion boards for Kindle and related books. She did mainly talk about her books, but she stuck to the unofficial forum-consensus rules on promotion and didn't spam and kept the mentions of her titles quite low key and actually joined the regular discussions every once in a while. She offers a random selection of several of her Charlie Parker mysteries, the 1st of which is playing pricing catch-up with Smashwords and the others which seem to have been yanked for KDP: Linkange to pull them up, mixed in with the apparently Prime Lending "free" ones.

Jo-Ann and Albert S. Klainer (the latter of whom also says he's an MD) offer two political medical thrillers originally published by Pinnacle in 1976 and Ace in 1981: Linkage for both

Echelon Press appears to be a new-ish small imprint which publishes mainly genre fiction. A few of their authors have gotten together to offer a set of tie-ins to their regular series: Hearts and Daggers: Three Valentine Mystery Novellas

For those of you who were disappointed to see it expired early last time, rejoice: The Stoner's Cookbook is back (thanks to Indio777 for noticing) and you too can now enjoy this badly-formatted comedy goldmine of lulz, which includes porno-parody-type recipe renaming (Toke-House Cookies, Cannabaklava, Potcorn, etc.) and a dispute over recipe credit which has been included, verbatim ("If you don't want to put our names at the end of it then You can send me $100 via paypal to this email address for using Our Award Winning Recipe without permission"), in the text of the final official book.

Even in the KDP Select exclusive-or-else-hey-let's-dump-the-kitchen-sink-into-the-Kindle-Lending-Library-and-see-if-it-gets-enough-borrows-to-hit-the-jackpot slushpile I don't often get to see books with cover art that looks like it's got some kind of revenant cowboy Templar Knight in a fistfight with some Shakespearean Elizabethan/maybe-Conquistador dude with a mummified-midget tugging on his leg. And as a special cracktastic bonus, the blurb says this has childhood BFFs Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, and Charles Darwin going on wacky magical adventures, to boot. So I therefore include this novelette for the sheer cracktastic lulz I hope it will provide to us all: Charlie Darwin, or The Trine of 1809 (Stories in the Ether) And because context is for the weak, the other place I've seen Darwin referred to as Charlie. Jay Hosler does excellent print-published award-winning educational science comics if you've got kids/yourself to scientifically educate, by the way, and I highly recommend them all.

Happy reading, if you happen to spot something you think you might like.

[scrapking]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

I thought about appending the preliminary slushpile yield to yesterday's post, the feature title and much of which are still free, since there were late additions and people have been contributing their own finds.

As always, thanks so much for taking the time to share your finds with everyone, it's tremendously appreciated!

I find it difficult to know which is the main "slushpile" thread as you call it, versus posts that are about a single book. Maybe a prefix (perhaps "SLUSHPILE" in block caps) that indicates this is the day's thread where you will add other books throughout the day, and a place where you encourage people to add their own? The more threads there are, the more difficult it is for me to make sure I don't miss any throughout the day. Unless I'm missing something and there's a much easier way to follow it?

[ATDrake]

There's generally no room in the thread title if I want to put in the author of a feature as well as the genre (sometimes people don't recognize a high-profile genre writer, other times people may not be interested in what looks like a generic category offering).

I do try to tag with KDP+ or Kindle DRM-free (when applicable) if there's enough space and put the little yellow warning-triangle icon which shows up next to the thread title when I can remember it (technically, I started doing the latter for those regular promo books which I had reason to believe would be very short-lived and only last a day or so, but then Baker started doing their months' worths of 1-day only freebies and I started to forget to do that) but sometimes it's omitted if I forget and only a moderator can edit a thread title icon in after the fact.

Hope this helps.

[Dr. Drib]

Thanks, again.

It's official: I now have over 1,000 archived titles - thanks mainly to you!



Don

[melmac]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Victoria Gordon offers her 1991-Harlequin contemporary romance: THE SUGAR DRAGON (An Australian Romance Classic)

Victoria Gordan is actually a pseudonym for canadian/australian Gordon Aalborg one of the first male authors writing romances for Harlequin the book had its first publication cira 1980 which I find vaugely intriguing

Collected a few
Thanks
Mel

[Blue Tyson]

Nice. I also discovered not so long ago that Gwyneth Jones has made her Rock and Roll Reich series available - 2.99 each, starting with :-

Bold As Love - Gwyneth Jones

All 5 being part of my total of now :-

391

[ATDrake]

Feature title still free and nothing really significant which hasn't already gotten its own thread, so the preliminary haul here, as it'll probably take the KDP slushpile a few more hours to settle and I didn't really feel like checking anything beyond obvious sf/fantasy/sleuthy-mysteries before I got some sleep.

If I hadn't already featured it previously, A.A. Attanasio's short story collection would be getting its own thread. If you don't already know who he is, you're perfectly capable of looking up his extensive ISFDB and Wikipedia entries yourself, and if you do and you missed this earlier, then this is your lucky day: Demons Hide Their Faces I should add that this is a known DRM-free book, back when Amazon still allowed us to see which ones were.

The rest is unsorted, but we've a number of award-winners freebieing some non-award-winning stories. Enjoy.

Nebula Award-winner Eric James Stone repeats his humorous horror short: P.R. Problems

Ann Herrick once wrote a Harlequin. This is not it, but a contemporary romance via Books We Love/BWLPP, who've also got a bunch of other books free today: Snowed in Together

I don't immediately recognize any of the contributors to this anthology, and I'm not in the mood to check against ISFDB, but it's from the same Dybbuk Press which released the other anthology to which Hugo/World Fantasy Award-nominee Catherynne M. Valente contributed earlier, so: Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre

J.D. Rhoades offers a 2004-St. Martin's/Minotaur hard-boiled mystery/thriller: The Devil's Right Hand (Jack Keller)

Katy Munger offers a 1997-Avon 1st in series: Legwork (Casey Jones Mystery Series) This is not KDP, but playing pricing catch-up with Smashwords, where the sequels are $2.99 and will hopefully have a coupon during Read an E-book Week.

Minor-ISFDB-ed Annie Bellet offers another in her epic fantasy setting: A Stone's Throw (The Gryphonpike Chronicles)

Minor-ISFDB-ed Amber D. Sistla offers a collection and another short: Linkage for both the new ones and the Prime Lending "free" stuff which won't filter out.

Bram Stoker/World Fantasy Award-winner David B. Silva offers another short: Slipping

Skhye Moncrief had a few books out from specialty romance/erotica The Wild Rose Press (available via Fictionwise). This is her time-travel fantasy romance novella: Sacrificial Hearts (Time Guardians)

Mark Wheaton says he has a bunch of horror screenwriting credits and praise from Fangoria magazine. I'm not bothering to check against IMDB because he's also got a graphic novel from Dark Horse Comics in his paperback section and that's good enough for me. He offers 6 assorted horror/thriller/crime-looking things: Linkage to pull them all up.

Lisa Morton (ISFDB entry) won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. This is her e-book original novella: Wild Girls

Kate Richards has another Decadent Publishing-released f/m erotic romance, this one a festive-themed contemporary: Madame Eve's Gift (1 Night Stand Series)

I saw Eden Elgabri's name in the Fictionwise new releases section when I was using the 60% off coupon yesterday. So they've been published by someone somewhere and that makes their probably-erotic contemporary romance short eligible to be included: Conference with Cupid

[rmkoske]

Anne Bellet's Twice Drowned Dragon, also part of the Gryphonpike Chronicles, was freebied a while back. It is apparently DRM free, so I suspect Stone's Throw will be too.

ETA: Confirmed: A Stone's Throw is DRM free.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Mark Wheaton says he has a bunch of horror screenwriting credits and praise from Fangoria magazine. I'm not bothering to check against IMDB because he's also got a graphic novel from Dark Horse Comics in his paperback section and that's good enough for me. He offers 6 assorted horror/thriller/crime-looking things: Linkage to pull them all up.

The Littlest Post-Apocalyptic Hero? (speaking of Canada) This I have to check out :-

"When mankind is visited by Three Great Apocalypses, the only thing standing in their way is a feckless but loyal, easily distracted yet occasionally ferocious German shepherd named Bones, a one-time cadaver dog with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. This is his amazing story."

Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga

Now 396

[koland]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

The Littlest Post-Apocalyptic Hero? (speaking of Canada) This I have to check out :-

"When mankind is visited by Three Great Apocalypses, the only thing standing in their way is a feckless but loyal, easily distracted yet occasionally ferocious German shepherd named Bones, a one-time cadaver dog with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. This is his amazing story."

Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga

Now 396

Note to Dr Drib - complete with zombies, of course!

[koland]

also Dybbuk Press: God Laughs When You Die By: Michael Boatman

[CWatkinsNash]

Doggie? Zombies? Yay!

13 today (so far), total 411.