FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[tch65721]

John Jakes never seems to get a mention here but I see from the Early Bird Books email that his North and South Trilogy (North and South, Love and War, and Heaven and Hell) is currently $1.99 at Amazon and Google.

[GA Russell]

Fight the Rooster - Nick Cole - free
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IA9M9DI

[maddz]

A couple of Cecelia Holland at 99p on Amazon.co.uk:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_st...price-asc-rank

Ghost on the Steppe is a current countdown deal, Hammer for Princes appears to be the standard price.

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ $1.99 from assorted HarperCollins imprints in Canada & presumably also the US (redeemable for points @ Kobo, should be the same price in all the other retailer stores):

• Don Quixote the 17th century Spanish classic by Miguel de Cervantes, in the recent translation by Edith Grossman, which the Wikipedia page for the novel quotes praise for this particular translation from the late notable Mexican author Carlos Fuente, whom Wikipedia says was often considered to be a potential Nobel Prize candidate.
  
  I had a peek inside the sample, and it comes with a translator's note and a couple of introductory essays (usually best read after the novel, as I got spoilered for the resolution of the love triangle in Ivanhoe by a passing mention in the introduction to the B&N Classics edition; years later I haven't actually read the novel and still don't know what else happens in the plot, but I sure remember exactly whom he married ). Plus it looks like there are also footnote explanations for stuff in the actual text. All in all, a really nice-looking edition.
• The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition containing selected poems by the 13th century Persian poet and scholar (Wikipedia), translated (or in Wikipedia's words, interpreted since he apparently doesn't speak/read the original language) by Coleman Barks, who is himself a poet.
• Beaches by Iris Rainer Dart (Wikipedia), her contemporary literary fiction 1950s-80s period novel about a lifelong friendship between two women, which was turned into the hit movie with Bette Midler in it.
• The Stepford Wives by the late Ira Levin (Wikipedia), his classic psychological suspense thriller cum societal satire which was the basis for the cult sfnal movie(s) and the ensuing trope.

[bfisher]

A couple of W. P. Kinsella titles on sale now at Amazon.ca

Shoeless Joe for $CDN 1.99
https://www.amazon.ca/Shoeless-Roset.../dp/B00514IHIW
This book was filmed as Field of Dreams

The Essential W. P. Kinsella for $CDN 1.99
https://www.amazon.ca/Essential-W-P-.../dp/B00TQ7M0Y2
The blurb:
"This career retrospective celebrates the 80th birthday of baseball's greatest scribe, W. P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe), as well as the 25th anniversary of Field of Dreams, the film that he inspired.

In addition to his classic baseball tales, W. P. Kinsella is also a critically-acclaimed short fiction writer. His satiric wit has been celebrated with numerous honors, including the Order of British Columbia.

Here are his notorious First Nation narratives of indigenous Canadians, and a literary homage to J. D. Salinger. Alongside the "real" story of the 1951 Giants and the afterlife of Roberto Clemente, are the legends of a pirated radio station and a hockey game rigged by tribal magic.

Eclectic, dark, and comedic by turns, The Essential W. P. Kinsella is a living tribute to an extraordinary raconteur."

[GA Russell]

This Sporting Life - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106XL1EO

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

This Sporting Life - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106XL1EO

I've heard that it's a great book. Sadly, not on sale in Ca

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ 99 cents from Amazon's exclusive AmazonCrossing translation imprint in Canada & the US (possibly the last day for these, sometimes they have specials they rotate monthly):

• Becoming Marta by Mexican novelist Lorea Canales (Wikipedia), a translation of her coming-of-age literary novel Apenas Marta
• Avishag by the late Israeli author Yael Lotan, an historical novel based on the titular Biblical character (Wikipedia) who was a servant to King David. Previously published by Toby Press in 2002, according to the author's memorial website.
• Nirzona: A Love Story, a drama novel with f/m romantic elements set in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, by Indonesian writer Abidah El Khalieqy, a recipient of the Jakarta Arts Council Novel Competition Prize (Wikipedia) who has had one of her earlier novels adapted to film

@ $1.99 from Open Road Media (US-only, IIRC some Hachette imprint has the Commonwealth rights for her work) @ Amazon US, which I think is a glitch since the price @ B&N & Kobo is $3.99 ; you can request a price-match from Kobo US if you'd rather have ePub (and get points):

The Novels of Alexander the Great: Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy, and Funeral Games 3-book omnibus of historical fiction by the late novelist Mary Renault (Wikipedia), among some of her most acclaimed books

@ $2.99 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Mariner Books imprint (available at multiple retailers):

So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood by French 2014 Nobel Prize recipient Patrick Modiano (Wikipedia), a literary noir psychological thriller translated from his Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ 99 cents from HarperCollins in Canada & presumably also the US (should be the same price at all the usual retailers):

Alexander and Alestria: A Novel by prize-winning Paris-resident Chinese expat author Shan Sa (Wikipedia), her standalone literary historical drama novel with f/m romantic elements about Alexander the Great and an Amazon queen. I haven't read this one, but I'm pretty sure I read another of Shan Sa's historical novels, about the Empress Wu, a long time ago and liked it enough (albeit in the original French, so I've no idea how her writing comes across in translation) that I'll give this a try, especially at this price.

Re-creating the lives of two of the most intriguing rulers in history, Shan Sa brings us a novel filled with the sound of hooves, the whistle of arrows, blood, passion, and betrayal. The familiar figure of Alexander the Great comes to new life in this richly imagined tale, which entwines his historical legacy with a fantastic love affair set in a wartime between Western and Eastern civilizations.

Abused by his father, King Philip, who loved and hated his beauty; shadowed by his mother, the mystical and overbearing Queen Olympias; educated by Aristotle who wanted him to be a wise philosopher of Macedonia, Alexander develops a complex character. He becomes a brutal warrior, a pitiless strategist, and a poet longing for the world's wonders. Meanwhile, in the remote steppes of Siberia, an abandoned girl grows up among the wild mares, then adopted by the queen of the Amazons—the tribe of female warriors who dominates a wild world of snow and volcano. As a future queen, the young girl is trained to hate men and to fight against all invaders.

In the course of his great conquest of Asia, Alexander first meets the stunning Alestria on the battlefield. Surprised to find that his adversary is a woman, he is instantly smitten by the fierce queen. Dazzled by his strength, she decides to kidnap him and make him her "wife." At last, this legendary king—renowned for his beauty and love of men—has found his equal. And at last, this indomitable young woman has found a reason to leave her tribe. Their love, deeply passionate and problematic, evolves against an exotic backdrop of warfare and political turmoil, sweeps from antique Greece to Egypt, across the ancient Iraq and Iran, unto the mysterious kingdoms of India.

[GA Russell]

Auntie Mame - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/Auntie-Mame-A...dp/B000FC1GPG/

*****

Point of No Return - John P. Marquand - $2.51
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YBF2GAC

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ $1.99-$2.99 from Open Road Media as the Amazon Kindle Gold Box Deal of the Day in Canada & the US (apparently not matched in other stores):

10 titles by Pulitzer Prize-winning literary, speculative, and non-fiction author Michael Chabon (ISFDB, Wikipedia, SFE)

Too many to list and link separately (this should bring up the promo page for the lot), but there are:

2 non-fiction collections: Maps & Legends (essays about writing and literature) & Manhood for Amateurs (essays about childhood, adulthood, and parenting)

3 sfnal titles according to ISFDB: The Yiddish Policeman's Union (an alt-history mystery solving a murder in Alaska in a world where the Nazis won WWII; this was on my wishlist), Summerland (young adult novel which won the 2003 Mythopoeic Prize for Children's Fantasy), A Model World & Other Stories (sfnal shorts)

ISFDB also thinks that his Sherlock Holmes pastiche The Final Solution may have sfnal elements.

The other 4 titles seem to be straightforward literary fiction.

[Little.Egret]

Free

Evenfield by Rachel Ferguson

Barbara Morant spent a crucial part of her childhood in the unremarkable suburban house which lends this novel its name. For her siblings, it’s merely a place to live; for her mother, it’s a symbol of the provincial drudgery of suburban living. But for Barbara, the house and the routines of those years are invested with a halo of happiness, and she yearns for them long after the family’s return to London.

A Footman for the Peacock by Rachel Ferguson

Controversial when first published in the early days of World War II, due to its treatment of a loathsome upper-crust family dodging wartime responsibility, A Footman for the Peacock can now be enjoyed as a scathing satire of class abuses, a comic masterpiece falling somewhere between Barbara Pym and Monty Python.





https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search...r=dean+street*

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=sear...r=dean+street*

https://www.amazon.ca/s/?url=search-...r=dean+street*

[GA Russell]

To Sir, With Love - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HG1SZKI

[Little.Egret]

Historical by Barbara Hambly

As expected, the US reduced price for Dragonsbane (fantasy) didn't make it to UK

BUT Homeland: A Novel by Barbara Hambly came into view

Bantam (15 Aug. 2009)

https://www.amazon.com/Homeland-Nove...dp/B002LLRDRY/

$1.99

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Homeland-No...dp/B002LLRDRY/

£0.49

https://www.amazon.ca/Homeland-Novel...dp/B002LLRDRY/

CDN$ 1.99

As brother turns against brother in the bloodbath of the Civil War, two young women sacrifice everything but their friendship. Susanna Ashford is the Southerner, living on a plantation surrounded by scarred and blood-soaked battlefields. Cora Poole is the Northerner, on an isolated Maine island, her beloved husband fighting for the Confederacy. Through the letters the two women exchange, they speak of the ordeal of a familiar world torn apart by tragedy. And yet their unique friendship will help mend the fabric of a ravaged nation.

The two women write about books and art, about loss and longing, about their future and the future of their country. About love. About being a woman in nineteenth-century America. About the triumphant resilience of the human spirit.

[ATDrake]

Until May 30th, acclaimed historical novelist Bernard Cornwell, OBE (Wikipedia), is the featured Author of the Month at Kobo Canada (Kobo US has someone else), and nearly all his HarperCollins books are on sale for $4.99 CAD or less (probably matched elsewhere, since they're HC).

These include the Last Kingdom series (Anglo-Saxon England during the Danelaw, mostly $3.99, with two latest @ $4.99), the Sharpe series (Napoleonic Wars, mostly $2.99), and various standalones ($1.99-$3.99) NB: There are money-saving omnibus editions for the series books which are considerably cheaper, with various 3-book Sharpe bundles for just $4.99 each, and the Last Kingdom #1-6 omnibus at $8.99 CAD (previously on sale for $6.99 CAD several years ago) is cheaper than either of the #1-3 + #4+6 combined, much less the individuals, though not cheaper than $14.99 CAD for #1-8 if you don't already have some portion of the lot (#7 and #8 have been on sale cheaper than the current $3.99 CAD discount price).

Main feature page, with categories: The Last Kingdom Series, The Sharpe Series, More from Bernard Cornwell (Grail Quest #1-3 are just $1.99 each, and there's a Special Edition of 1356 for $3.99 which says it has exclusive author content including an extended historical note, and is considerably cheaper than the non-SE at $12 CAD), Bundles (for some reason, only lists #2-7 of the Sharpe 3-Book Colletion bundles, apparently the hypothetical #1 is MIA)