Amazon has a Grisly Reads for Summer sale going on, with "mysteries and thrillers from Amazon Publishing for $4.99 or less on Kindle and up to 60% off in print." I've included a few of them below, mixed in with a few lighter reads, romance, paranormal fantasy and even a kid's book or two. Most of the bargains are in the Kindle store, but a few are either matched at other stores or are for non-Kindlers, as noted below.
If you are a Christian Fiction fan, be sure to check out Abingdon Press' sale, with just over 100 titles under $4. I'm amazed at how many of them I've picked up free over the last few years; for those that missed one or two in a series, it's a great time to fill in your lists.
Open Road also has a number of titles on sale, including the omnibus All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics by James Herriot for $7.99; most of the others are under $4.
The Bad Beginning ($0.99 Kindle, B&N, KoboBook Description
Imagine tales so terrible that as many as fifty million innocents have been ruined by them – tales so indelibly horrid that the New York Times bestseller list has been unable to rid itself of them for seven years. Now imagine if this scourge suddenly became available in a shameful new edition so sensational, so irresistible, so riddled with lurid new pictures that even a common urchin would wish for it. Who among us would be safe?
Begin at the beginning – even if it is a bad one – with the first in A Series of Unfortunate Events, now even more disposable in paperback[sic]!
Grade Level: 5 and up
Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter ($0.99 Kindle, B&N), by A. E. Moorat, should appeal to those who enjoyed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Also at Amazon (and only there), his Henry VIII: Wolfman, is marked down to $4.97.Book Description
There were many staff at Kensington Palace, fulfilling many roles; a man who was employed to catch rats, another whose job it was to sweep the chimneys. That there was someone expected to hunt demons did not shock the new Queen; that it was to be her was something of a surprise.
London, 1838. Queen Victoria is crowned; she receives the orb, the scepter, and an arsenal of bloodstained weaponry. If Britain is about to become the greatest power of the age, there’s the small matter of the undead to take care of first. Demons stalk the crown, and political ambitions have unleashed ravening hordes of zombies even within the nobility itself.
But rather than dreams of demon hunting, Queen Victoria’s thoughts are occupied by Prince Albert. Can she dedicate her life to saving her country when her heart belongs elsewhere?With lashings of glistening entrails, decapitations, zombies, and foul demons, this masterly new portrait will give a fresh understanding of a remarkable woman, a legendary monarch, and quite possibly the best demon hunter the world has ever seen.
In another incarnation as a more serious (though still satirical) author, A. E. MOORAT has won critical acclaim and been shortlisted for awards. Here, however, he was chained in the dungeon, fed tea and ghost stories, and kept busy writing the adventures of Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter.
A Sweethaven Summer ($0.99 Kindle, B&N), by Courtney WalshBook Description
Campbell Carter’s mother, Suzanne, has just lost her battle with cancer, and Campbell is surprised to learn that Suzanne recently reached out to her childhood friends from a place called Sweethaven, Michigan. Campbell journeys to the town to find answers to her questions about her mother’s history. Suzanne’s three friends—Lila, Jane, and Meghan—torn apart by long-buried secrets and heartbreak, haven't spoken in years, but each has pieces of a scrapbook they made during their summers at this idyllic lakeside town. Just after Suzanne’s death they all receive letters that lead them back to Sweethaven. There, they discover that Suzanne had made many plans before her death to restore their broken friendship. When they meet Suzanne’s daughter, they begin to remember what was so special about their long Sweethaven summers. The scrapbook helps them heal and restore the friendships that have been broken for far too long. As secrets are revealed one by one, old wounds are mended and lives are changed—just as Suzanne intended.
Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book ($2.24), by Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield and Nancy Stevens Book Description
With little skill, surprisingly few ingredients, and even the most unsophisticated of ice-cream makers, you can make the scrumptious ice creams that have made Ben & Jerry's an American legend.
Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book tells fans the story behind the company and the two men who built it-from their first meeting in 7th-grade gym class (they were already the two widest kids on the field) to their "graduation" from a $5.00 ice-cream-making correspondence course to their first ice-cream shop in a renovated gas station.
But the best part comes next. Dastardly Mash, featuring nuts, raisins, and hunks of chocolate. The celebrated Heath Bar Crunch. New York Super Fudge Chunk. Oreo Mint. In addition to Ben & Jerry's 11 greatest hits, here are recipes for ice creams made with fresh fruit, with chocolate, with candies and cookies, and recipes for sorbets, sundaes, and baked goods.
Only Time Will Tell ($3.61 Main / £2.51 UK), the first title in The Clifton Chronicles by Jeffrey Archer, is on sale for UK customers only in both the Kindle store and at KoboBooksBook Description
From the internationally bestselling author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes Only Time Will Tell, the first in an ambitious new series that tells the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph.
The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war.” A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle, who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he’s left school. But then an unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys’ school, and his life will never be the same again.
As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question, was he even his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole life on the docks, or the firstborn son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line?
This introductory novel in Archer’s ambitious series The Clifton Chronicles includes a cast of colorful characters and takes us from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford or join the navy and go to war with Hitler’s Germany. From the docks of working-class England to the bustling streets of 1940 New York City, Only Time Will Tell takes readers on a journey through to future volumes, which will bring to life one hundred years of recent history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined.
Great Impressionist and Post/Impressionist Paintings: The Musée d'Orsay ($0.99 iTunes), by Charles Stuckey, is on sale at iTunes this week, as a Bastille Day promotion (exp July 23). Only available in the iBookstore, it features scalable reproductions of nearly 200 paintings by 26 artists including such favorites as Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh; over three hours of original audio information about the artists and their paintings; and more than 500 hyperlinks to some of the best sites on the Internet to learn more about the artists and their work.Book Description
Welcome to this exciting enhanced ebook, Great Impressionist and Post/Impressionist Paintings: The Musée d'Orsay. We hope that this e/book will give you the pleasure not just of the art of the Impressionists, but also lead you to discover on your own more about the artists’ lives, their work, and their world.
Vanishing and Other Stories ($1.99 Kindle, B&N, KoboBook Description
A French teacher who collects fiances; a fortune-teller who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter; an aging cowboy seduced by a city girl . . . these are some of the unforgettable people who live in these pages.
In Vanishing and Other Stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents, and children. With wisdom and dexterity, moments of dark humor, and a remark- able economy of words, Deborah Willis captures an incredible array of characters that linger in the imagination and prove that nothing is ever truly forgotten.
The Humbling ($1.42) is Philip Roth's thirtieth book.Book Description
Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, he has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, "are melted into air, into thin air." When he goes onstage he feels like a lunatic and looks like an idiot. His confidence in his powers has drained away; he imagines people laughing at him; he can no longer pretend to be someone else. "Something fundamental has vanished." His wife has gone, his audience has left him, his agent can’t persuade him to make a comeback.
Into this shattering account of inexplicable and terrifying self-evacuation bursts a counterplot of unusual erotic desire, a consolation for a bereft life so risky and aberrant that it points not toward comfort and gratification but to a yet darker and more shocking end. In this long day’s journey into night, told with Roth’s inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, all the ways that we convince ourselves of our solidity, all our life’s performances—talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation—are stripped off.
The Hangman's Daughter ($3.99), by Oliver Pötzsch and Lee Chadeayne (Translator)Book Description
Germany, 1660: When a dying boy is pulled from the river with a mark crudely tattooed on his shoulder, hangman Jakob Kuisl is called upon to investigate whether witchcraft is at play. So begins The Hangman's Daughter--the chillingly detailed, fast-paced historical thriller from German television screenwriter, Oliver Pötzsch--a descendent of the Kuisls, a famous Bavarian executioner clan.
Vaccine Nation ($2.99), by David LenderBook Description
Dani North is a filmmaker who just won at the Tribeca Film Festival for her documentary, The Drugging of Our Children, a film critical of the pharmaceutical industry. When she is handed "whistleblower" evidence about the U.S. vaccination program, she has to keep herself alive long enough to expose it before a megalomaniacal pharmaceutical company CEO can have her killed.
Excerpts from Trojan Horse, The Gravy Train and Bull Street, David Lender's other thrillers, follow the text of Vaccine Nation.
