Get a Class Heroes eNovella Free today!

Class Heroes is a series by Steve Henning, and while this novella takes place after books 1 and 2, it's self contained and can be read without knowing what's happened in those stories.

Synopsis:

Lolly is on the run. She has arrived in London, penniless, alone and – worse still – she has lost her fearsome superpowers.

She is being hunted by the police and the Security Service. She has no friends and very few people who would want to help her. She needs money and a place to lie low, while she formulates a plan to rescue Sir Michael Rosewood, her father. He is being held prisoner by the British Government at a secret location.

There is one person who may just agree to help Lolly. An old friend of her father. However, time is running out because the Security Service are hot on her trail...







I've read the first two books and they're quite fun.  This novella is on my to be read pile.  Here's where you can get the eNovella, today*, for free:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon Australia

Amazon Canada

* At the time of posting all the links had the book listed for free.  Check before buying to confirm that's still the case.

Phoenix Pick, Book Bale +

Phoenix Pick, for those of you who haven't heard of them, is an online bookstore for older, classic SF.  They do paperback and ebook editions of mostly (entirely?) out of print titles.  Their monthly newsletter always has a code for a free ebook.  This month's book is Halo by Paul Cook (yes, he of the controversial Amazing Stories "When Science Fiction is Not Science Fiction" post).

Regardless of his definition of 'real' science fiction, his book sounds pretty interesting.  So I may give it a try next year when the retail holiday season is over and my essential reading pile is gone.

The mysterious alien artifact called the Halo came quietly and mysteriously and then sowed the earth with seeds that threatened to destroy humanity by destroying their souls.

But the aliens had underestimated the human spirit and a band of Moon-based scientists survive to fight and take back what is rightfully ours.

A powerful, visionary and scary look into our future and a possible encounter with an alien species almost impossible to beat.

Phoenix Pick is also starting their own book bundle, pay what you want (minimum $2.99) program called Bookbale.  The first bundle will include books by Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton, Kevin J. Anderson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick and Robert J. Sawyer.  It goes on sale November 1st.  I'm curious to see what titles have been chosen (they're not visible yet).  I think these kinds of things are great, even though I haven't had time to read the books from the other bundles I've bought.  Too many books...

Finally, if you like magazines, Issue 4 of Galaxy's Edge is up.  You can buy and download it for $3.99 or read it online for free.

Free Kindle ebooks: Class Heroes

Author Stephen Henning is letting readers get their hands on both of his books, A Class Apart and What Happened in Witches Wood for free on February 5th and 6th.  This only applies to the Amazon kindle editions, but if you don't have a kindle you can still read the books on other devices that allow apps.  The links are to the US editions, but this offer includes the UK editions as well.  I believe Canadian accounts can still get the US book from that site, but I know they've made some changes so don't quote me on that.

I read and really enjoyed A Class Apart, and What Happened in Witches Wood is on my soon to be read pile.

Here's the synopsis for book one, to whet your appetite.

Teenage twins James and Samantha Blake are caught up in a seemingly random terrorist bombing while on a school trip. Many of their friends are killed. When the twins wake up in hospital, their lives have changed forever.

The doctors are amazed at the speed with which James and Sam recover from their injuries and, when the twins begin to exhibit extraordinary powers, it is obvious that something incredible has happened.

As James and Sam attempt to overcome their fears and embrace their new abilities, a series of murders and disappearances start plaguing the hospital. The twins aren't the only ones with special abilities and it becomes apparent that someone is coming for them.

Will James and Sam be able to survive the nightmare into which they have been plunged? Who, or what, is behind the murders at the hospital? And was that terrorist incident quite so random after all?

Atopia Chronicles on Sale

This weekend the first book of Matthew Mather's Atopia Chronicles, Blue Skies, is free, with the 6 book series on sale for 0.99 at Amazon.com.

Want to know about the series?
  

In the story, Dr. Patricia Killiam is rushing to help save the world from itself by giving everyone everything they've always wanted. The question is whether she's unwittingly saving the world only to cast it towards an even worse fate as humanity hurtles across the brink of forever.

The story is set on Atopia, a near future world teetering on the brink of post-humanism and eco-Armageddon. Each book is a stand-alone work that can be read individually in almost any order. Each starts at the same moment in time, and collectively they are puzzle pieces that connect together to reveal the mystery and terrifying danger that lies at the heart of Atopia.

ChiZine Offers Free Ebook for Friday the 13th

For today - up until 2 am (EST), get one free ebook from ChiZine Publications.  Details on their site.  If you're not sure what to request, Eutopia by David Nickle is fantastic.  :)

Machine of Death

Just before Christmas an interesting SF collection arrived at the store, Machine of Death.  The cover was gorgeous and I liked the title, so I read the premise:

The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die.

The problem with the machine is that nobody really knew how it worked, which wouldn’t actually have been that much of a problem if the machine worked as well as we wished it would. But the machine was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. OLD AGE, it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or shot by a bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machine captured that old-world sense of irony in death — you can know how it’s going to happen, but you’ll still be surprised when it does.

The realization that we could now know how we were going to die had changed the world: people became at once less fearful and more afraid. There’s no reason not to go skydiving if you know your sliver of paper says BURIED ALIVE. The realization that these predictions seemed to revel in turnabout and surprise put a damper on things. It made the predictions more sinister –yes, if you were going to be buried alive you weren’t going to be electrocuted in the bathtub, but what if in skydiving you landed in a gravel pit? What if you were buried alive not in dirt but in something else? And would being caught in a collapsing building count as being buried alive? For every possibility the machine closed, it seemed to open several more, with varying degrees of plausibility.

By that time, of course, the machine had been reverse engineered and duplicated, its internal workings being rather simple to construct, given our example. And yes, we found out that its predictions weren’t as straightforward as they seemed upon initial discovery at about the same time as everyone else did. We tested it before announcing it to the world, but testing took time — too much, since we had to wait for people to die. After four years had gone by and three people died as the machine predicted, we shipped it out the door. There were now machines in every doctor’s office and in booths at the mall. You could pay someone or you could probably get it done for free, but the result was the same no matter what machine you went to. They were, at least, consistent.

 Sound cool?  Alas, I currently have too many books to read.  I've put it on my get to quickly pile.  In the meantime, while checking to see who the publisher was (Bearstache Books) I noticed this icon with the publication information:


Yup, creative commons tags: attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives.  So I went to their site (www.machineofdeath.net) and discovered you can download the book for free!  So I did, and put it on my ipad.  Which means I can bring this collection on vacation with me and hopefully review it when I get back.