Free (Kindle KDP) Christopher Uptake by Susan Price [YA Elizabethan Historical Drama]

[ATDrake]

A mildly surprising day for the slushpile, as well have an modest influx of backlist books by new-ish people, and a decent amount of established author offerings.

Today's slushpile feature is something I've never read by an author I've never heard of, but also something I would have liked to have read once upon a time, as the late Tudor period of England is still one of my favourites, which makes this sound kind of awesome because it's the sort of thing I'd have seriously loved reading when I was 10.

Christopher Uptake by Susan Price is a probably-YA adventure tale involving moral dilemmas and intrigue, set during Elizabethan England. This was originally published by Faber & Faber in 1981, and Price has many other listings for children's books out from Scholastic and Usborne and others.

The author has put a note in the front of the book saying that she has fully revised it.

Free with DRM for who knows how long @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

Description
‘Merry England’, during the reign of Good Queen Bess, was a police state. It was a crime to miss attendance at the state church on Sunday, and a crime to hear a Catholic mass. It was a crime to be ‘a free thinker’.

Christopher Uptake, a young playwright, is an atheist. Living and writing in the crowded city, he thinks it has escaped notice that he never attends church – until the red-haired man appears at his door and gives him a choice: spy on your friends or be tortured and executed.

From then on, Chris plays a desperate game, trying to spare his friends yet save his own life…

Other stuff found amidst the slush:

The following Morrigan Books anthology has stories by horror heavyweights Ramsey Campbell, Gary McMahon, and others, originally out from them in 2009: Dead Souls

UK TV writer Jan Needle (IMDB entry) offers several assorted titles, including a Falkland Islands military action thriller that was apparently originally written for BAFTA-nominated ITV serial (A Game of Soldiers) and published by HarperCollins in 1993. He also says that a couple of his other offerings were published, but they're not linked to paper copies and I'll just take his word for it: Linkage for the lot

Award-winning expat South African playwright Ian Fraser returns with another short story: Heart of Flowers

Previously title-featured award-nominated sf writer William Barton returns with the self-explanatory: Changes (Short Story)

Philip K. Dick Award-finalist Jeff Carlson (ISFDB entry) offers a collection of his sf shorts, including some which appeared in Asimov's SF magazine: Long Eyes and Other Stories

Scottish Dundee-prize-nominated BBC Radio writer Catherine Czerkawska returns with an historical literary fiction drama/"epic love story" set in 19th-century Poland: The Amber Heart She also has a repeat of one of her earlier works.

Previously-included Ann Evans offers a 2000-Hippo/Scholastic-published children's mystery/adventure: Stealing the Show (Little Tyke Murder Mysteries)

St. Martin's Griffin-published L.A. Banks contributes to this paranormal romance anthology: Vegas Bites

Well, I suppose this is one way to resurrect a long-sunken ship, and I admit I kind of like the blurb, so: Titanic with ZOMBIES

(ETA: And while I'm including Titanic-themed probably-self-pubs, here's an historical adventure version sans zombies but with reading group guide: Touched By Angels)

Backlist repeats from Lee Killough, Angela Hunt, Joan Marie Verba. Established author repeats/small press stuff from James Roy Daley, Alex Irvine, Chester Burton Brown, Imajin Books, Steel Magnolia Press/Dare to Dream Press.

Happy reading, if indeed you manage to spot something you think you might like, or your inner 10 year old late Tudor aficionado is clapping its hands like a seal in glee.

[ATDrake]

More assorted backlist YA and some humour in the slushpile today (actually, some lingering from late last night, but I wasn't sure it would still be free 20 minutes from when I found it, so I didn't bother updating then).

Title feature author Susan Price has another YA/children's book, this one a collection of re-told folktales apparently relayed by a severed head, out from Faber & Faber in 1993: Heads and Tales

Enid Richemont, who apparently writes books for younger readers which have been published by Candlewick, who sometimes give us official freebies, offers 3 which were published by Walker Books (apparently a division of Bloomsbury) in the 80s and 90s: Linkage for the lot, which includes an sfnal one and something involving a "dragoncat"

Pauline Fisk offers a fantasy-ish escape to another world YA tale which was originally out from Lion in 1990 and later picked up for reprint by Bloomsbury in 2003: Midnight Blue

Australian Colin Bowles, previously included for having the probably-5th-best (I've really lost count) of brazen author lies in the bio for one of his other books, returns with a 1990 Angus & Robertson-published satirical vocabulary: The Wit's Dictionary

The late Joel Townsley Rogers is apparently a minor old-school pulp fiction writer who shows up in magazines available in the Internet Archive. Apparently his son is reissuing some of his works, and here's a WWI-set aviation/espionage pulp thriller, from the looks of it: Secret Operative K-13

Philip Hawley Jr. is apparently using KDP to offer his 2007 HarperCollins medical/suspense (maybe horror-ish) thriller, but still listing it under their publisher name: Stigma I like how his Critical Acclaim section in the blurb is all quotes from "New York Times bestselling author"s until you get to the last one, and then there's this feeling of "one of these things is not like the others".

ISFDBed Stoker-winning fellow MR member author David Niall Wilson offers a new collection of his short fiction and poetry: Etched Deep & Other Dark Impressions

Larry Names, who really should link up his backlist better, or at least put the provenance info in the blurb as well as on low-contrast font on the cover, returns with a 1991-Berkley-published 1st in series western originally released under the penname Bryce Harte: A Texas Creed

The Bandit Creek series of shared-universe multi-author (some of them published authors) western romances has another offering for your collection, this one from newbie writer Steena Holmes: Devil Unknown (Bandit Creek Books)

Richard Mason who wrote some kind of column for an Arizona environmental group magazine returns with another one of his based-on-RL growing-up-in-the-40s/50s Deep South stories if you've been collecting them: The Mystery of the Canebrake

Significant backlist repeats from previously title-featured Canadians Arthur Slade and Sharon Rowse (both award-winners, though not necessarily for the book on offer).

Other backlist/published story repeats from John Matthews, Robert W. Walker, Simon Kewin, Amber D. Sistla, Shock Totem magazine, Alex Irvine. Established author self-pub repeats from fellow MR member Patty Jansen, Donna Fasano. Assorted stuff from Books We Love/BWLPP as usual (some series repeats in case you have a gap to fill).

Happy reading, if indeed you manage to spot something you think you might like, or you've been looking for presumably decent-quality YA stuff to read to the kiddies (bonus points if they'll think your retelling tales retold by a severed head will be awesome).

[GeckoFriend]

Found a couple; thanks.

[Synamon]

As mentioned by ATDrake, a mystery from the slush, Past Imperfect (UK link) by John Matthews originally published in 1999 by Penguin.

John Matthews is a leading British thriller writer. His books span genres of crime, action, mystery and legal-thriller and include: Basikasingo, Crescents of the Moon, Past Imperfect, The Last Witness, The Second Amendment, Ascension Day, The Shadow Chaser and The Prophet.

They have been translated into 12 languages with total sales of 1.2 million. In 2007, Past Imperfect was included in a top ten all-time best legal thrillers list in The Times. He was one of only two British authors in the list.

His other backlist crime thrillers are offered for $2.99 and I picked one of them up back in February as a freebie.