Today's Bargain Books are all Simon & Schuster imprints. Several are part of a $3.99 sale they are holding, thru Nov. 14, but others are sale prices I turned up outside the official sale. All the ones with descriptions are US prices (prices vary wildly outside the US), but at the end I've compile a list of some big bargains for those outside the US (where the US pays considerably more). For each title in the latter list, I've included the region where the price is valid (availability may still vary by country in that region, but I have no way to check that). There are also several that I've already highlighted recently, which I'm listing here only by title:
Also, since not every one is into Star Trek, I'm only listing The Original Start Trek series selections by title, as well. You know who you are, which ones you already have and that these are good prices, so grab then while it lasts.
- The Klingon Dictionary, by Marc Okrand
- Destiny #1: Gods of Night , by David Mack
- Vanguard #1: Harbinger, by David Mack
- Typhon Pact #1: Zero Sum Game, by David Mack
- Typhon Pact #2: Seize the Fire, by Michael A. Martin
- Enterprise: Kobayashi Mar, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels
- Titan: Taking Wing, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels
- Deep Space Nine: Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers , by James Swallow
- Deep Space Nine: A Stitch in Time, by Andrew J. Robinson
- Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock, by Christopher L. Bennett
- Voyager: Full Circle, by Kirsten Beyer
- The Next Generation: Death in Winter, by Michael Jan Friedman
- New Frontier: After the Fall, by Peter David
- The Entropy Effect, by Vonda N. McIntyre
- Starfleet Academy: The Edge, by Rudy Josephs (teen)
- Starfleet Academy: The Delta Anomaly, by Rick Barba (teen)
- Serpents Among the Ruins, by David R. George III
Since these are all Agency titles, the price (
$3.99) should be the same (for those in the US), at
Barnes & Noble,
Kobo and Sony.
Wicked Game, by Jeri Smith-Ready (
recommended author). You can still get her novella
The Wild's Call free on Kindle.
Book Description
LATE NIGHT RADIO YOU CAN SINK YOUR TEETH INTO
Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a (shudder!) real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, '60s psychedelia, '80s goth, and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers just how the DJs maintain their cred: they're vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.
Ciara's first instinct, as always, is to cut and run. But communications giant Skywave wants to buy WVMP and turn it into just another hit-playing clone. Without the station -- and the link it provides to their original Life Times -- the vampires would "fade," becoming little more than mindless ghosts of the past. Suddenly a routine corporate takeover is a matter of life and undeath.
To boost ratings and save the lives of her strange new friends, Ciara rebrands the station as "WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock 'n' Roll." In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs' vampire nature in plain sight, disguising the bloody truth as a marketing gimmick. WVMP becomes the hottest thing around -- next to Ciara's complicated affair with grunge vamp Shane McAllister. But the "gimmick" enrages a posse of ancient and powerful vampires who aren't so eager to be brought into the light. Soon the stakes are higher -- and the perils graver -- than any con game Ciara's ever played....
Surrender the Dark, by L. A. Banks (
recommended author)
Book Description
National bestselling author L.A. Banks’s electrifying new paranormal series is set in a sizzling world where Dark and Light are trapped in an eternal struggle for the fate of mankind.
Celeste Jackson has fought all her life against a fog of hallucination and substance abuse, but it’s not until she meets her protector, Azrael, an angel who has left the safety of the Light, that she learns of the evil forces that have been trying to ruin her, and why. A fierce battle for control of the mortal realm is brewing, and only Celeste—with the help of the Remnant, her half-human, half-angel brethren—can stand in the way. Together, Celeste and Azrael must gather an army of sensitives to defeat the dark powers that have ruled humanity for centuries, but time is running out. If Azrael surrenders to his growing desire for Celeste, he risks being trapped among humanity forever. But the longer he stays, the harder she is to resist. To save the world, Celeste must draw on her own dark experiences with addiction to help Azrael overcome the one temptation that could possibly make him an eternal prisoner—his obsession with her.
Master of None, by Sonya Bateman. As a bonus, you can download
The Getaway, a novella connected to the series, for free.
Book Description
ONE UNLUCKY THIEF. ONE UNLIKELY GENIE. ONE VERY ODD COUPLE.
Gavyn Donatti is the world’s unluckiest thief. Just ask all the partners he’s lost over the years. And when he misplaces an irreplaceable item he was hired to steal for his ruthless employer, Trevor—well, his latest bungle just might be his last. But then his luck finally turns: right when Trevor’s thugs have him cornered, a djinn, otherwise known as a genie, appears to save him.
Unfortunately, this genie—who goes by the very non-magical name of “Ian”—is more Hellboy than dream girl. An overgrown and extremely surly man who seems to hate Donatti on the spot, he may call Donatti master, but he isn’t interested in granting three wishes. He informs Donatti that he is bound to help the thief fulfill his life’s purpose, and then he will be free. The problem is that neither Donatti nor Ian has any idea what exactly that purpose is.
At first Donatti’s too concerned with his own survival to look a gift genie in the mouth, but when his ex-girlfriend Jazz and her young son get drawn into the crossfire, the stakes skyrocket. And when Ian reveals that he has an agenda of his own—with both Donatti and the murderous Trevor at the center of it—Donatti will have to become the man he never knew he could be, or the entire world could pay the price. . . .
Raziel, the first in
The Fallen series by Kristina Douglas
Book Description
Kristina Douglas’s sexy new series introduces a realm of fallen angels and ruthless demons, where an eternal rebellion is brewing . . . and one unsuspecting woman can change the fate of the Fallen forever.
She was just an ordinary mortal . . .
“You’re dead” is so not what Allie Watson wants to hear. Unfortunately, it explains a lot. Like the dark, angelically handsome man who ferried her to this strange, hidden land. The last thing she remembers is stepping off a curb in front of a crosstown bus. Now she’s surrounded by gorgeous fallen angels with an unsettling taste for blood—and they really don’t want her around. Not exactly how she pictured heaven.
. . . until death catapulted her into a seductive world she never imagined.
Raziel is unsure why he rescued Allie from hellfire against Uriel’s orders, but she stirs in him a longing he hasn't felt in centuries. Now the Fallen are bracing for the divine wrath brought by his disobedience, and they blame Allie for the ferocious Nephilim clawing at the kingdom’s shrouded gates. Facing impossible odds at every turn, the two must work together to survive. Raziel will do anything to defend his spirited lover against the forces of darkness—because Allie may be the Fallen’s only salvation.
Dark Descendant, by Jenna Black (
recommended author). It's a different series, but her short story
Remedial Magic is still free.
Book Description
From the acclaimed author of the Morgan Kingsley, Exorcist books comes the gripping first novel in a new series about a private eye who discovers, to her surprise, that she’s an immortal huntress.
Nikki Glass can track down any man. But when her latest client turns out to be a true descendant of Hades, Nikki now discovers she can’t die. . . . Crazy as it sounds, Nikki’s manhunting skills are literally god-given. She’s a living, breathing descendant of Artemis who has stepped right into a trap set by the children of the gods. Nikki’s new “friends” include a descendant of Eros, who uses sex as a weapon; a descendant of Loki, whose tricks are no laughing matter; and a half-mad descendant of Kali who thinks she’s a spy. But most powerful of all are the Olympians, a rival clan of immortals seeking to destroy all Descendants who refuse to bow down to them. In the eternal battle of good god/bad god, Nikki would make a divine weapon. But if they think she’ll surrender without a fight, the gods must be crazy. . . .
A Rush of Wings, by Adrian Phoenix, is the first title in her
Maker's Song series. (
recommended author)
Book Description
HIS NAME IS DANTE.
Dark. Talented. Beautiful. Star of the rock band Inferno. Rumored owner of the hot New Orleans nightspot Club Hell. Born of the Blood, then broken by an evil beyond imagination.
HIS PAST IS A MYSTERY.
F.B.I. Special Agent Heather Wallace has been tracking a sadistic serial murderer known as the Cross Country Killer, and the trail has led her to New Orleans, Club Hell, and Dante. But the dangerously attractive musician not only resists her investigation, he claims to be "nightkind": in other words, a vampire. Digging into his past for answers reveals little. A juvenile record a mile long. No social security number. No known birth date. In and out of foster homes for most of his life before being taken in by a man named Lucien DeNoir, who appears to guard mysteries of his own.
HIS FUTURE IS CHAOS.
What Heather does know about Dante is that something links him to the killer -- and she's pretty sure that link makes him the CCK's next target. Heather must unravel the truth about this sensual, complicated, vulnerable young man -- who, she begins to believe, may indeed be a vampire -- in order to finally bring a killer to justice. But Dante's past holds a shocking, dangerous secret, and once it is revealed not even Heather will be able to protect him from his destiny....
Unclean Spirits, by M.L.N. Hanover (aka Daniel Abraham), is the first title in his
Black Sun's Daughter series.
Book Description
In a world where magic walks and demons ride, you can't always play by the rules.
Jayné Heller thinks of herself as a realist, until she discovers reality isn't quite what she thought it was. When her uncle Eric is murdered, Jayné travels to Denver to settle his estate, only to learn that it's all hers -- and vaster than she ever imagined. And along with properties across the world and an inexhaustible fortune, Eric left her a legacy of a different kind: his unfinished business with a cabal of wizards known as the Invisible College.
Led by the ruthless Randolph Coin, the Invisible College harnesses demon spirits for their own ends of power and domination. Jayné finds it difficult to believe magic and demons can even exist, let alone be responsible for the death of her uncle. But Coin sees Eric's heir as a threat to be eliminated by any means -- magical or mundane -- so Jayné had better start believing in something to save her own life.
Aided in her mission by a group of unlikely companions -- Aubrey, Eric's devastatingly attractive assistant; Ex, a former Jesuit with a lethal agenda; Midian, a two-hundred-year-old man who claims to be under a curse from Randolph Coin himself; and Chogyi Jake, a self-styled Buddhist with mystical abilities -- Jayné finds that her new reality is not only unexpected, but often unexplainable. And if she hopes to survive, she'll have to learn the new rules fast -- or break them completely....
The Better Part of Darkness, by Kelly Gay, is the first in her
Charlie Madigan series and won several awards.
Book Description
Atlanta: it's the promised city for the off-worlders, foreigners from the alternate dimensions of heaven-like Elysia and hell-like Charbydon. Some bring good works and miracles. And some bring unimaginable evil....
Charlie Madigan is a divorced mother of one, and a kick-ass cop trained to take down the toughest human and off-world criminals. She's recently returned from the dead after a brutal attack, an unexplained revival that has left her plagued by ruthless nightmares and random outbursts of strength that make doing her job for Atlanta P.D.'s Integration Task Force even harder. Since the Revelation, the criminal element in Underground Atlanta has grown, leaving Charlie and her partner Hank to keep the chaos to a dull roar. But now an insidious new danger is descending on her city with terrifying speed, threatening innocent lives: a deadly, off-world narcotic known as ash. Charlie is determined to uncover the source of ash before it targets another victim -- but can she protect those she loves from a force more powerful than heaven and hell combined?
Soulless, by Christopher Golden (aka Thomas Randall)
Book Description
Times Square, New York City: The first ever mass séance is broadcasting live on the Sunrise morning show. If it works, the spirits of the departed on the other side will have a brief window -- just a few minutes -- to send a final message to their grieving loved ones.
Clasping hands in an impenetrable grip, three mediums call to their spirit guides as the audience looks on in breathless anticipation. The mediums slump over, slackjawed -- catatonic. And in cemeteries surrounding Manhattan, fragments of old corpses dig themselves out of the ground....
The spirits have returned. The dead are walking. They will seek out those who loved them in life, those they left behind...but they are savage and they are hungry. They are no longer your mother or father, your brother or sister, your best friend or lover.
The horror spreads quickly, droves of the ravenous dead seeking out the living -- shredding flesh from bone, feeding. But a disparate group of unlikely heroes -- two headstrong college rivals, a troubled gang member, a teenage pop star and her bodyguard -- is making its way to the center of the nightmare, fighting to protect their loved ones, fighting for their lives, and fighting to end the madness.
The River Kings' Road, by Liane Merciel, is the first of two titles in the
Ithelas series.
Book Description
A thrilling new voice in fantasy makes an unforgettable debut with this "intriguingly twisted tale of treachery and magic" (New York Times bestselling author L. E. Modesitt, Jr.). Liane Merciel’s The River Kings’ Road takes us to a world of bitter enmity between kingdoms, divided loyalties between comrades, and an insidious magic that destroys everything it touches. . . .
The wounded maidservant thrust the knotted blankets at him; instinctively, Brys stepped forward and caught the bundle before it fell. Then he glimpsed what lay inside and nearly dropped it himself.
There was a baby in the blankets. A baby with a tear-swollen face red and round as a midsummer plum. A baby he knew, even without seeing the lacquered medallion tucked into the swaddling—a medallion far too heavy, on a chain far too cold for an infant who had not yet seen a year.
A fragile period of peace between the eternally warring kingdoms of Oakharn and Langmyr is shattered when a surprise massacre fueled by bloodmagic ravages the Langmyrne border village of Willowfield, killing its inhabitants—including a visiting Oakharne lord and his family—and leaving behind a scene so grisly that even the carrion eaters avoid its desecrated earth. But the dead lord’s infant heir has survived the carnage—a discovery that entwines the destinies of Brys Tarnell, a mercenary who rescues the helpless and ailing babe, and who enlists a Langmyr peasant, a young mother herself, to nourish and nurture the child of her enemies as they travel a dark, perilous road . . . Odosse, the peasant woman whose only weapons are wit, courage, and her fierce maternal love—and who risks everything she holds dear to protect her new charge . . . Sir Kelland, a divinely blessed Knight of the Sun, called upon to unmask the architects behind the slaughter and avert war between ancestral enemies . . . Bitharn, Kelland’s companion on his journey, who conceals her lifelong love for the Knight behind her flawless archery skills—and whose feelings may ultimately be Kelland’s undoing . . . and Leferic, an Oakharne Lord’s bitter youngest son, whose dark ambitions fuel the most horrific acts of violence. As one infant’s life hangs in the balance, so too does the fate of thousands, while deep in the forest, a Maimed Witch practices an evil bloodmagic that could doom them all. . . .
Gears of War: Coalition's End, by Karen Traviss
Book Description
Understand what a world had to do to survive.
When the Locust Horde burst from the ground fifteen years ago to slaughter the human population of Sera, mankind began a desperate war against extinction. Now after a decade and a half of bloody fighting, and with billions dead, the survivors—the Gears of the Coalition of Ordered Governments, along with a small band of civilians—have been forced to destroy their own cities and sacrifice their entire civilization to halt the Locust advance.
The last-ditch measures have succeeded, but at an enormous cost: the survivors have been reduced to a handful of refugees.
Escaping to a haven on the remote island of Vectes, they begin the heartbreaking task of rebuilding their devastated world. For a while, there’s hope . . . making peace with old enemies, and once again planning for the future.
But the short respite is shattered when Vectes comes under siege from an even deadlier force than the Locust—the Lambent, a hideous and constantly mutating life-form that destroys everything in its path. As the Lambent’s relentless assault spreads from the mainland to the island, the refugees finally understand what drove the Locust from their underground warrens and sparked the global war.
While Marcus Fenix and the Gears struggle to hold back the invasion, the Coalition faces a stark choice—fight this new enemy to the last human, or flee to the wastelands to take their chances and live like the human pariahs known as the Stranded . . . even as Coalition chairman Richard Prescott still guards one last, terrible secret about the Locust, the Lambent, and the future of mankind. . . .
Wicked, by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié, is an omnibus of the first two titles in the
Wicked series,
Witch and
Curse. A second omnibus,
Wicked 2 ($7.99), contains the third and fourth titles in the series,
Legacy and
Spellbound.
Book Description
Holly Cathers's world shatters when her parents are killed in a terrible accident. Wrenched from her home in San Francisco, she is sent to Seattle to live with her relatives, Aunt Marie-Claire and her twin cousins, Amanda and Nicole.
In her new home, Holly's sorrow and grief soon give way to bewilderment at the strange incidents going on around her. Such as how any wish she whispers to her cat seems to come true. Or the way a friend is injured after a freak attack from a vicious falcon. And there's the undeniable, magnetic attraction to a boy Holly barely knows.
Holly, Amanda, and Nicole are about to be launced into a dark legacy of witches, secrets, and alliances, where ancient magics yield dangerous results. The girls will assume their roles in an intergenerational feud beyond their wildest imaginations...and in doing so, will attempt to fulfill their shared destiny.
Such a Lovely Couple, by Linda Yellin
Book Description
A charming and bittersweet novel about falling in love, drifting apart, and realizing a terrible mistake.
Cigarette Girl, by Carol Wolper, is still in pre-release (Dec 27), but there are some reviews already at GoodReads.
Book Description
A furiously funny, clear-eyed novel about a non-bimbo's dating adventures in a town that celebrates bimbosity.
Elizabeth West is twenty-eight, which means she's just entered The Zone--that seven-year span in a woman's life when the pressure to find Mr. Right is at its most intense. For Elizabeth, however, the quest is not about Mr. Right so much as it is about Mr. Maybe. And on some nights, all she's looking for is a little distraction . . .
What complicates Elizabeth's quest are the particulars of her situation. She is a writer of testosterone-heavy screenplays--the blow-'em-up vehicles for eight-figure stars and their bad-boy directors--and therefore deals on a daily basis with men who traffic nearly exclusively in bimbos, which, like smog and palm trees, are a fixture of the L.A. landscape. Though her job requires her to sound like one of the boys (sample dialogue: "I don't deal with dickbrains"), she's very much a girl, from her cell-phone codependency to her chronic attraction to dangerous men. With her female friends succumbing to marriage or morphing into Spermtrappers (women who hunger to be impregnated--husband optional), Elizabeth finds herself questioning the long-term benefits of remaining an SCU (self-contained unit) and looking with new eyes at the mating options around her
