FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[tch65721]

Centennial: A Novel by James A. Michener - $1.99

Written to commemorate the Bicentennial in 1976, James A. Michener’s magnificent saga of the West is an enthralling celebration of the frontier. Brimming with the glory of America’s past, the story of Colorado—the Centennial State—is manifested through its people...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FO60B04

[BionicGecko]

Blood Meridian and The Road by Cormac McCarthy are both on sale for £0.99 at Amazon UK (here and here).

The deal doesn’t seem to be available at Kobo UK, but both books should be eligible for their Price Match Guarantee).

Blood Meridian
Through the hostile landscape of the Texas–Mexico border wanders the Kid, a fourteen year-old Tennessean who is quickly swept up in the relentless tide of blood.

A group known as the Glanton gang hunt Indigenous Americans, collecting scalps as their bloody trophies. At the centre of this violence stands Judge Holden: a massive, hairless man, mysterious if not supernatural, erudite and cold-blooded. He is singularly extreme in his sadistic violence.

But the apparent chaos is not without order – the Glanton gang, too, are stalked as prey.

Read as both a brilliant subversion of the Western novel and a blazing example of that form, it is a powerful, mesmerizing and savagely beautiful novel – and one of the most important works in American fiction of the last century.

The Road
A post-apocalyptic classic set in a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The Road is a masterpiece of American fiction from Cormac McCarthy.

The landscape is destroyed. Nothing moves save the ash on the wind. Cruel, lawless men stalk the roadside, lying in wait. Attempting to survive in this brave new world, the young boy and his protector have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves. They must keep walking.

In this unflinching study of the best and worst of humankind, Cormac McCarthy boldly divines a future without hope, but one in which, miraculously, this young family may yet find tenderness.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

[Dr. Drib]

^

I miss Cormac McCarthy's work.

He was a brilliant American stylist and writer.

Blood Meridian is a great work of art - an American classic.

[salty-horse]

Sea of Poppies (Ibis Trilogy #1) by Amitav Ghosh is £1 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)
Historical fiction. Learned about it from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px3KHrzXjj4

At the heart of this epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, is an old slaving-ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its crew a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.

In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed villager, from an evangelical English opium trader to a mulatto American freedman. As their old family ties are washed away they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races and generations.

The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of China. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, which makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive -- a masterpiece from one of the world's finest novelists.

[ZodWallop]

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough is $2 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo US.I read this years ago, knowing nothing about it except that it was made into a famous miniseries with Richard Chamberlain. I really enjoyed it.

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.

The Thorn Birds is a chronicle of three generations of Clearys—an indomitable clan of ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness, frailty, and secrets that penetrate their family. It is a poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit. Most of all, it is the story of the Clearys' only daughter, Meggie, and the haunted priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart—and the intense joining of two hearts and souls over a lifetime, a relationship that dangerously oversteps sacred boundaries of ethics and dogma.

[ZodWallop]

Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy is $2 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo US.

The basis for the Oscar–winning buddy film. “There is no questioning the rampant power achieved through shriveling, shattering scenes” (Kirkus Reviews).

Midnight Cowboy is considered by many to be one of the best American novels published since World War II. The main story centers around Joe Buck, a naive but eager and ambitious young Texan, who decides to leave his dead-end job in search of a grand and glamorous life he believes he will find in New York City. But the city turns out to be a much more difficult place to negotiate than Joe could ever have imagined. He soon finds himself and his dreams compromised. Buck’s fall from innocence and his relationship with the crippled street hustler Ratso Rizzo form the novel’s emotional nucleus. This unlikely pairing of Ratso and Joe Buck is perhaps one of the most complex portraits of friendship in contemporary literature.

The focus on male friendship follows a strong path cut by Twain’s Huck and Jim, Melville’s Ishmael and Queequeg, Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby, and Kerouac’s Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. Midnight Cowboy takes a well-deserved place among a group of distinguished American novels that write—often with unnerving candor—about those who live on the fringe of society.

[sufue]

There's a Joffe Free Friday western today, and also a mystery and a romance - see those threads if you are interested...

Bullet Proof by Neil Webb

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKT9M3VT
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CKT9M3VT

Spoiler:

He’s got a score to settle…

For the past nine years, Scott Logan has made his fortune in gold, out in California.

But he doesn’t care about any riches – he did it all for his true love, Yvonne Kyle.

He’s been in love with Yvonne since they were sixteen years old – but Yvonne’s father Oren Kyle was against him from day one.

Owner of the OK ranch, Oren Kyle was so against Logan, he forbid the boy to come onto his land.

Not that Logan took any notice. Now, Logan’s back in Wyoming and his determination to marry Yvonne is as strong as ever.

But Kyle managed to get wind of his return and the OK ranch is patrolled better than a Sheriff’s office.

Things aren’t that much better in the local town of Clear Springs.

The sheriff Ray Teague seems to be in Kyle’s pocket – and his deputy, Bob Otter, has a look in his eye that Logan doesn’t like…

To make matters worse, he learns that Yvonne is engaged to be married to the town lawyer, Felix Grover.

Not that he has any time to fall into despair – Kyle’s men are already in town to ‘deal’ with Logan.

Including the OK ranch foreman, Spike Milton, and the two gun partners, Drogo Leat and Noll Kerr.

But all those years in California taught him how to draw fast and as deadly as a rattlesnake.

His enemies, Oren Kyle, even the law may try to kill him, but they’ll soon find out that Logan is Bullet Proof…

[tch65721]

Chesapeake: A Novel by James A. Michener - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FO60CK8

In this classic novel, James A. Michener brings his grand epic tradition to bear on the four-hundred-year saga of America’s Eastern Shore, from its Native American roots to the modern age. In the early 1600s, young Edmund Steed is desperate to escape religious persecution in England. After joining Captain John Smith on a harrowing journey across the Atlantic, Steed makes a life for himself in the New World, establishing a remarkable dynasty that parallels the emergence of America. Through the extraordinary tale of one man’s dream, Michener tells intertwining stories of family and national heritage, introducing us along the way to Quakers, pirates, planters, slaves, abolitionists, and notorious politicians, all making their way through American history in the common pursuit of freedom.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by tch65721

Chesapeake: A Novel by James A. Michener - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FO60CK8

Got it

[sufue]

I'm late posting the Joffe Free Friday books, but luckily, as of Sunday morning in the US, they are still free. There are three this week, including this alternate history/conspiracy thriller-type thing, which isn't to my taste, but might be to someone's...

Black Phoenix, by George Bernau
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071H9MBVZ
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071H9MBVZ

Spoiler:

What if they didn’t die in the bunker...?

The time is April 1945.

World War II is coming to a close — and a new war is beginning.

Germany finally has a weapon — code name Phoenix — with an unlimited potential for destruction. Yet, at the same time, no one remains alive to lead an operation as mad as this one.

No one has the incredible combination of power, will, and insane evil that the overlords of the Third Reich had once boasted.

No one is on the monstrous scale of Hitler, Goebbels and the Fuehrer’s other henchmen, who, after all, are safely dead.

Or are they?

Two Allied agents, both partners and lovers, are enlisted in finding some answers.

Sheridan heads down to the bunker to investigate the bodies of some of the most evil men ever known.

Debra is flown out to inspect the carnage of the new weapon.

It’s hard to say who has the worst job.

They must watch history’s most dangerous tyrants rise, terrifyingly, from the ashes.

Just how powerful is this new weapon?

The other two are a mystery and a holiday romance. Check those threads if you are interested...

[SomeSteve]

Re: (Former) Joffe Free Friday books.

Originally Posted by sufue

There are three this week, including this alternate history/conspiracy thriller-type thing, which isn't to my taste, but might be to someone's...

Black Phoenix, by George Bernau

That one is no longer free, but as I write this, his first novel, Promises to Keep, "an imagined post-Dallas life for President Kennedy" (L.A. Times, Dec. 27, 2005), is free at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, and perhaps elsewhere.

https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Keep.../dp/B01N1M7JMW

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Promises-Ke.../dp/B01N1M7JMW

https://www.amazon.de/Promises-Keep-.../dp/B01N1M7JMW

The L.A. Times obituary quoted above also says, "The fledgling author made publishing history in 1987 when his derivative JFK manuscript was purchased by Warner Books for $750,000, a record advance for a first novel at that time."

[ZodWallop]

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett is $2 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo US.

“Follett risks all and comes out a clear winner,” extolled Publishers Weekly on the release of The Pillars of the Earth. A departure for the bestselling thriller writer, the historical epic stunned readers and critics alike with its ambitious scope and gripping humanity. Today, it stands as a testament to Follett’s unassailable command of the written word and to his universal appeal.

The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known . . . of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect—a man divided in his soul . . . of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame . . . and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother.

A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett’s historical masterpiece.

[salty-horse]

Antkind by Charlie Kaufman is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, filmmaker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he’s convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius.

All that’s left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on an increasingly nonsensical existence, trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language, B. scrambles to re-create the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of “likes” and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bête noire and his raison d’être.

A searing indictment of the modern world, Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of every joke.

[SomeSteve]

In Ascension by Martin Macinnes is £0.99 at Kobo UK.

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/in-ascension-2

It was talked about at mobileread a while ago:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...ostcount=31528

His Infinite Ground is also £0.99 at Kobo UK.

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/infinite-ground-2

[SomeSteve]

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is $1.99 at Amazon US and Kobo US.

The novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2011.

https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Ending-.../dp/B004YWKKEG

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-sense-of-an-ending