FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[ZodWallop]

One I've never heard of, but sounds very good: Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat is going for $1.99 at Amazon.

Appears to be part of a Penguin series on African writers. The author was nominated for a Nobel Prize and this is his most popular book.

Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.

[ZodWallop]

Graham Greene's classic, Our Man in Havana, is $1.99 at Amazon.

James Wormold, a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, finds the answer to his prayers when British Intelligence offers him a lucrative job as an undercover agent. To keep the checks coming, Wormold must at least pretend to know what he’s doing. Soon, he’s apparently deciphering incomprehensible codes, passing along sketches of secret weapons that look suspiciously like vacuum parts, and claiming to recruit fellow operatives from his country club, all to create the perfect picture of intrigue.

But when MI6 dispatches a secretary to oversee his endeavors, Wormold fears his carelessly fabricated world will come undone. Instead, it all comes true. Somehow, he’s become the target of an assassin, and it’s going to take more than a fib to get out of Cuba alive. Her Majesty’s man in Havana may have to resort to spying.

Now, every review says this is the script to a play. But the Look Inside feature shows it is the actual novel. It may be that once again, Amazon is showing the right reviews for the wrong product.

[tch65721]

Speaking of Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory is also $1.99 at Amazon.

Named by Time magazine as one of the hundred best English-language novels written since 1923, The Power and the Glory is “a violent, raw” work on “suffering, strained faith, and ultimate redemption” (The Atlantic).

Several other titles are $2.99.

[ZodWallop]

Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano is $1.99 at Amazon.

In what the New York Times calls “one of the towering novels of [the twentieth] century,” former British consul Geoffrey Firmin lives alone with his demons in the shadow of two active volcanoes in South Central Mexico. Gripped by alcoholism, Geoffrey makes one last effort to salvage his crumbling life on the day that his ex-wife, Yvonne, arrives in town.

It’s the Day of the Dead, 1938. The couple wants to revive their marriage and undo the wrongs of their past, but they soon realize that they’ve stumbled into the wrong place and time, where not only Geoffrey and Yvonne, but the world itself is on the edge of Armageddon.

Hailed by the Modern Library as one of the one hundred best English novels of the twentieth century, Under the Volcano stands as an iconic and richly drawn example of the modern novel at its most lyrical.

[maddz]

The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford is £2.99 in today's Amazon.co.uk Daily Deal:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...d_i=5400977031

This collects all 8 of her novels:
Highland Fling (1931)
Christmas Pudding (1932)
Wigs On the Green (1935)
Pigeon Pie (1940)
The Pursuit of Love (1945)
Love in a Cold Climate (1949)
The Blessing (1951)
Don't Tell Alfred (1960)

[ZodWallop]

Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides is $1.99 at Amazon.

Tom Wingo has lost his job, and is on the verge of losing his marriage, when he learns that his twin sister, Savannah, has attempted suicide again. At the behest of Savannah’s psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein, Tom reluctantly leaves his home in South Carolina to travel to New York City and aid in his sister’s therapy.

As Tom’s relationship with Susan deepens, he reveals to her the turbulent history of the Wingo family, and exposes the truth behind the fateful day that changed their lives forever.

[ReadingManiac]

Paperbacks of Charlton Daines' Jack Dawkins and A Christmas with the Dodger are 25% off at Lulu.com. Very well done Dickensian sequels featuring The Artful Dodger.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?c...utorId=1183126

[sufue]

Here Be Dragons is the first in Sharon Kay Penman's Welsh Princes series. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle and Kobo US. I really really like Penman's Justin de Quincy mystery series, but also like historical fiction, so I'm going to give this one a try.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00457XCV8
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/here-be-dragons-3

Spoiler:

Thirteenth-century Wales is a divided country, ever at the mercy of England's ruthless, power-hungry King John. Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, secures an uneasy truce by marrying the English king's beloved illegitimate daughter, Joanna, who slowly grows to love her charismatic and courageous husband. But as John's attentions turn again and again to subduing Wales---and Llewelyn---Joanna must decide where her love and loyalties truly lie.

The turbulent clashes of two disparate worlds and the destinies of the individuals caught between them spring to life in this magnificent novel of power and passion, loyalty and lies. The book that began the trilogy that includes Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning, Here Be Dragons brings thirteenth-century England, France, and Wales to tangled, tempestuous life.

[sunnysmiles]

It’s very good.

[sufue]

Good to know, I'll bump it up on my TBR list

Originally Posted by sunnysmiles

It’s very good.

[sufue]

"Vanilla" Penguin version of Of Mice and Men has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle and Kobo US.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001BC2ZS6
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/of-mice-and-men-2

Originally Posted by 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

[ZodWallop]

Pearl S. Buck's The Mother is available for $1.99 at Amazon

Dickensian in its epic sweep, one of Buck’s finest novels centers on an unnamed peasant woman in pre-revolutionary China. Without warning, her restless husband abandons her. Shamed by the experience, she is left to work the land, raise their three children on her own, and care for her aging mother-in-law. To save face with her neighbors, she pretends her husband is traveling, and sends letters to herself signed in his name. Surrounded by poverty, despair, and a growing web of lies meant to protect the family, her children grow up and enter society with only the support of their mother’s unbreakable will.

[ZodWallop]

Arthur Hailey's Hotel is $1.99 at Amazon

During five sultry days, the lives of the guests, the management, and the workers at New Orleans’ largest and most elite hotel converge. The owner has four days to raise the money to save his financially ailing property. The general manager, once blacklisted from the hospitality business, struggles with one crisis after another. A rebellious heiress will do anything to attain her secret desires. The duke and the duchess in the lavish presidential suite are covering up a crime. And within one of the many guest rooms hides a professional thief.

[ZodWallop]

Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds is $1.99 at Amazon. It's been a decade since I read it, but I remember really enjoying it. Recommended.

One of the most beloved novels of all time, The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough’s sweeping family saga of dreams, titanic struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian Outback, returns to enthrall a new generation.

Okay, the description could use some work. It really is a good book.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Okay, the description could use some work. It really is a good book.

The description is like a compendium for all my trigger words that mean, "Run away!"

"sweeping" "family saga" "dreams" "titanic" "struggles" "dark passions" "forbidden love" "enthrall"

It could win a Bulwer-Lytton contest in the blurb division.