Free/Bargain Horror December 2012

[NightBird]

Everyone welcome to post their finds here. Please do a search before posting to avoid duplication, and please try not to post self-pubs. Thanks.

Books listed in my posts are from Amazon US unless otherwise indicated.

The Lucifer Messiah by Frank Cavallo is free from Medallion Press.

Sean Mulcahy answered Uncle Sam's call. In the autumn of 1917, he left his home, his friends, and the girl he loved. On the killing fields of the Western Front, he vanished without a trace. Thirty years later his best friend Vince Sicario is a broken man. Split from his wife, run off the NYPD, his world swirls in the bottom of a bottle. Until Sean comes clawing at his door. Bleeding. Delirious. And looking not a single day older. Vince turns to the only person he trusts, his wife Maggie—the woman Sean left behind three decades earlier. Together they hit the streets of Hell's Kitchen, seeking answers to Sean's disappearance and mysterious return. But others are on the same trail, and something terrible is lurking in the dark alleys and dirty corners of the West Side. Wise guys are disappearing. Mutilated corpses are turning up. The cops are baffled and gangsters are running scared. Rumors abound of strange gatherings in the shadows, of ancient horrors reborn, of blood feasts and pagan rites rekindled. Some say the savior of the damned has come. Sean may be in terrible danger. Or the greatest danger of all—the Lucifer Messiah.

[NightBird]

Free from Hazardous Press - Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel by Jay Wilburn.

Loose Ends is the story of three cooks and a mute boy (the narrator) who are the only survivors of a raider attack after the zombie apocalypse. They proceed to look for a new home, but in the process uncover the darkness in each other's pasts.

Everyone has to eat. This is true for humans and it is true for zombies. Three men have managed to survive the apocalypse by cooking for those that do the work of rebuilding. Sometimes they worked for noble men and sometimes for evil opportunists, but they survived by doing it well. When they become the last survivors by hiding from an attack and they are only cooking for themselves, they begin to think surviving may not be enough. After years of living through a zombie apocalypse apart and together, they find themselves alone again and in need of a new home.

As they strike out together to search, they begin to explore regrets and unfinished business from their past lives. They might lose themselves for a while in their shared art of preparing the food they eat, but they must also keep from being eaten by the monsters that roam the Earth, both living and undead. “Chef” David Sharp, “Short Order” Shaw Porter, “Doc” John Brown, and a mute boy they call Mutt are on a journey to tie up their many loose ends.

They will discover that their past actions have had far-reaching consequences. They may find destruction or redemption, but they will have to fight the past, themselves, and the walking dead every step of the way.

[NightBird]

Another free one from Hazardous Press - His Own Mad Demons by David Riley.

Five stories - 158 pages.

"Lock-In", "The Worst of All Possible Places", "The Fragile Mask on His Face", "Their Own Mad Demons", and "The True Spirit".

[Dr. Drib]

Well, I downloaded "The Lucifer Messiah," because it looks interesting.

However, I'm concerned because one reviewer states "I love it, and so will you."

This is very troublesome news, indeed. Very troublesome....What if I don't like it? In fact, what if I hate it?

I'll leave it at this: "I haven't read it, and so will you."




Dr. (very troubled) Drib

[Dr. Drib]

I just downloaded "Loose Ends and Flabby Parts".....although I think I got the title wrong.

Oh, well: I'll read it in bits and pieces over the next coming days. Get it? 'Bits and pieces!' Do you get it? - Ah, hahahahaha!

Much thanks to NightBird for being such a bad influence!




Dr. Drib

[molly winnie]

thank you molly winnie

[NightBird]

Bad influence?! Humph. (Flounces off.)

You WILLLLLLL like Lucifer's Messiah, (or your money back.)

[NightBird]

Richard Laymon's Funland was picked up by 47 North, Amazon's horror imprint, and is $1.99 (down from $6.99).

A growing group of leering, belligerent punks known as the Trolls are intimidating fun-seekers at the coastal amusement park Funland, and some of the local teens blame the Trolls for a series of missing persons and decide to fight back late one night. But what’s really behind the disappearances is waiting for them all in the funhouse. . .

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by NightBird

Richard Laymon's Funland was picked up by 47 North, Amazon's horror imprint, and is $1.99 (down from $6.99).

This is one of the greatest 'fun' horror books I've ever read, full of blood and other zany things that go squirt in the night. It's not a funny book, at least not ostensibly so. I read this when it was first published, about 20 or so years ago.

It has one of the greatest lines ever from a horror novel, one that I've appropriated for my own horror novel (not yet published). Here it is, if my memory is correct:


"I may be dead, but I'm not stupid."



Don

[Indio777]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I just downloaded "Loose Ends and Flabby Parts".....although I think I got the title wrong.

Oh, well: I'll read it in bits and pieces over the next coming days. Get it? 'Bits and pieces!' Do you get it? - Ah, hahahahaha!

Dr. Drib

I downloaded it as well. Although I will most likely read it in chunks as opposed to bits and pieces. Perhaps a bit more "substantial."

[NightBird]

Free from Dark Regions Press - Tales of the Weak and Wounded by Gary McMahon.

The sound of shuffling footsteps across the old cell floor…

A soft voice like a strange tune echoing along the empty corridors…

Dim lights in the windows of the abandoned asylum…

Discarded case files that flip open to reveal the dreams of broken minds…

Welcome to a place where the boundaries of fact and fiction meet.

Acclaimed author Gary McMahon raids the archives of a notorious derelict mental asylum called the Daleside Institute to bring you stories of madness, horror and emotional trauma. In locations as diverse as suburban Germany, the London Underground, an Italian seaside resort and the inhospitable polar icecap, you will meet damaged people with broken lives. Here are terrifying accounts of love, hate, death and madness…

These are the Tales of the Weak and the Wounded

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by NightBird

Free from Dark Regions Press - Tales of the Weak and Wounded by Gary McMahon.

I've been told I have a weak mind, so maybe this is the book for me?



Dr. Drib

[NightBird]

Yes, definitely.

[NightBird]

Happy Holidays from Samhain! Enjoy the gift of 30% off our featured December title with the coupon code "HAPPYHOLIDAYS" (exp. 12/31/12 EST)

Featured Title!
Ink by Damien Walters Grintalis $3.85-30% off=$2.68.
Preorder for 12/4. Multiple formats

A tatto can be a work of art...or a curse. The devil is in the details.
The fearsome griffin inked on Jason’s arm looks real enough to climb off and take flight. Jason thinks his new tattoo is perfect. Until he wakes up one night to find his arm temporarily ink free. He comes to realize a truth as sharp as the griffin’s talons. The tattoo is alive, it’s hungry, and if Jason tries to kill it, he’ll die. The artist will remove it for a price, but he’s not interested in money or Jason’s soul. He wants something far worse…

http://store.samhainpublishing.com/ink-p-7088.html

[NightBird]

Freebie from Evil Jester Press - Seraphim by Jon Michael Kelley.

Duncan McNeil is staring mistrustfully at a photograph of his daughter, Amy. She appears to be at or near her present age of ten, but the studio's dated stamp on the back indicates that the photo was taken nearly a year before her birth. More alarming, however, is the beautiful woman standing beside Amy, a woman with whom he had an affair in the periphery of his new marriage, during the time when Amy was conceived. And the fact that this photograph has been in his wife's possession for more than a decade is perhaps the most disturbing element of all.

Duncan's wife Rachel doesn't know about his affair with this woman, but he will soon tell her. And upon that revelation they will begin a journey that will take them clear across the continent, from California to Massachusetts, then ultimately into the boundless, uncharted territory of the human collective. There, a devil is waiting; the penultimate personification of evil. And he goes by the name of Mr. Gamble.

Free from Wild Wolf Publishing - The Venturi Effect by Andrew Lindzee Gordon.

After you die it takes seven years for you to go to Heaven. Give or take the odd minute or two. This girl I loved told me that, seven years ago, just before she went and topped herself. Now I'm praying for her sake that it's true.

So begins Thomas, The Venturi Effect's faithless narrator, who is lying face-up, freezing and abandoned on the wind-swept tower of a Scottish castle. In his hand is a telescope, with which he hopes to discover, in a minute or two, the truth about his girlfriend's salvation...

Powerful and disturbing, this astonishing first novel leads you on a compelling and thought-provoking journey, on the trail of God's footprints, towards love, loss and letting go.