Saturday Steals 11/2/13

In a nod to Halloween, here are some classic frights for FREE!

 

YES FREE KINDLE EBOOKS!

Sandman Series $0.99 Steal of a Sale Sandman #1by Neil Gaiman and Illustrator Sam Kieth. STEAL.

The first issue of the first volume of Neil Gaiman's horror/fantasy epic! An occultist accidentally traps Morpheus, the embodiment of Dreams, and holds him for 70 years. Finally free, Morpheus seeks his lost objects of power and rediscovers his place in the universe.


I find the story of Campbell fascinating. Along with the synopsis I give some history on Campbell. I hope you enjoy!


Who Goes There? (RosettaBooks into Film) by John W. Campbell. A Steal as part of Amazon Countdown sale. $1.99 will increase to digital price of $5.00 throughout the week. A STEAL! And digital list price is still a deal with the paperback at $14.36 and hardback $25.56.

A remote scientific research expedition at the North Pole is invaded by a monstrous alien, reawakened after lying frozen for centuries after a crash-landing. The alien is intelligent, cunning and a shape-changer who can assume the form and personality of anything it destroys and soon it is among the men of the expedition, killing and replacing them, using its shape-changing ability to lull the scientists one by one into inattention and destruction. The transformed alien can seemingly pass every effort at detection and the expedition seems doomed...

WHO GOES THERE?, according to the science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz (1920-1997), had an autobiographical impetus: Campbell's mother and aunt were identical twins and enjoyed the "game" of substituting for one another in his care as an infant and young child, confusing him again and again with false identity.

It was this uncertainty, this susceptibility to masquerade and his terror at the game which, Moskowitz said, Campbell funneled into this last and greatest of his magazine pieces. (A short novel, THE MOON IS HELL, was published only in book form in the early 1950's.) Carefully and rigorously extrapolated in its portrait of the menaced expedition, the novelette is regarded as perhaps the greatest horror story to emerge form the field of science fiction. It was the basis for one of the great early science fiction films and its excellent remake decades later.

Campbell had become the editor of ASTOUNDING five months before the early 1938 publication of the story. As editor of that magazine, he insisted upon rigorous scientific background, humanized characters and values and a standard of writing comparable to that in the leading consumer magazines of the time. In pursuit, Campbell found a generation of new writers - Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, A.E. Van Vogt, Henry Kuttner, Lester del Rey among them - who collectively (and individually!) produced an extraordinary body of work.

WHO GOES THERE? provided the basis of the 1951 cult horror film THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and was remade into John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), also regarded as a classic science fiction film, who's prequel THE THING launched in 2011. The copyright of the novelette was, typically of the time, owned by Street & Smith Publications to whose magazine Campbell had sold all of the rights. Hawks paid Street & Smith $900 for all film rights, $500 of that was paid over "voluntarily" by Street & Smith to Campbell. "Don't you feel cheated?" Isaac Asimov said he asked Campbell at the time of the film's successful release. "No," Campbell said. "If it's a good film and it will get more people to read science fiction and take it seriously, then it's all a very good thing."


Make Room! Make Room! (RosettaBooks into Film)by Harry Harrison. Another Amazon Countdown book, $1.99 will increase to digital price of $5.99 throughout the week. A STEAL! And digital list price is still a deal with the paperback at $12.27

Movie lovers might recognize Make Room! Make Room! as the basis for the 1973 film Soylent Green, which starred Charlton Heston. While Soylent Green has become a cult classic, fans of the novel have taken issue with its interpretation of what Harrison was really trying to say. Concerned about audiences losing interest, the creators of the film made cannibalism and not overpopulation (as it is in the book) the thematic focus of the story. As a result, fans of the movie and critics alike may want to visit the story in its original unbowdlerized form.

Set in the year 1999 the world has become a grim and terribly overpopulated place, bleak and foreboding. This sets the premise for Harrison's novel, and fans of his earlier more comic works may be surprised at the seriousness of this novel. Although Harrison's fears did not become a reality for the inhabitants of New York or the rest of the United States, the novel remains nonetheless a gripping, thought-provoking work about privacy, deprivation, and desperation.

Yes, this week I am digging on the Rosettabooks into Film series. Memorable books made into film, cult classics, science fiction and horror along with classics such a E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India . And now for something completely different! (nods to Monty Python.)

Girl Least Likely to Marry (The Wedding Season)by Amy Andrews. FREE!
**CONTENT WARNING: Due to mature content, recommended for readers aged 18+**

Talk nerdy to me Samuel Tucker is absolutely the last person scientist Cassie Barclay would ever date. Yes, he's gorgeous, but he's also far too cocky for his own good and thinks that Pi is a tasty afternoon treat. So when he asks her to dance at her friend Reese's non-wedding she's wondering why on earth she says yes! Tuck is used to people assuming he's all brawn and no brain, and amuses himself by winding Cassie up. But when he finally takes her to bed, suddenly it's Tuck who can show Cassie a thing or two! Can he convince her that love and sex have nothing to do with logic and everything to do with chemistry?

Sisters in Love (Love in Bloom: Snow Sisters #1), Contemporary Romanceby Melissa Foster. FREE! **CONTENT WARNING: Due to mature content, recommended for readers aged 18+**

 

Sisters in Love is a steamy contemporary romance with alpha male heroes and sexy, empowered women. They're flawed, funny, passionate, and very relatable for readers who enjoy new adult romance, contemporary romance, and women's fiction. Sisters in Love is the first book in the Love in Bloom series. Be sure to pick up the next book in the series, Sisters in Bloom! Love in Bloom is a 9-book series with one full-length novel released every 30 days (Complete series available by January 15, 2014)!

 

Finding Cinderella: A Novella by Colleen Hoover. FREE!

A chance encounter in the dark leads eighteen-year-old Daniel and the girl who stumbles across him to profess their love for each other. But this love comes with conditions: they agree it will only last one hour and it will only be make-believe.

When their hour is up and the girl rushes off like Cinderella, Daniel tries to convince himself that what happened between them only seemed perfect because they were pretending it was perfect. Moments like that with girls like her don’t happen outside of fairytales.

One year and one bad relationship later, his disbelief in insta-love is stripped away the day he meets Six: a girl with a strange name and an even stranger personality. Daniel soon realizes the way he pretended to feel about Cinderella and the way he really feels about Six may not be so different after all. Especially when the two loves of his life end up being one in the same. Unfortunately for Daniel, finding Cinderella doesn’t guarantee their happily ever after…it only further threatens it. Colleen Hoover is a bestselling author of Young Adult Books:

 

 

Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1)by Michael R. Hicks. FREE!

If you enjoy stories by James Rollins, Michael Crichton, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, get ready to strap yourself in for a roller coaster ride of terrifying adventure...

You Are What You Eat At a genetics lab where a revolutionary strain of corn is being developed, FBI Special Agent Jack Dawson's best friend and fellow agent is brutally murdered, his body torn apart. Jack is convinced that Naomi Perrault, a beautiful geneticist and suspected terrorist, is behind the murder. But when Jack is framed for setting off a bomb that devastates the FBI lab in Quantico, Naomi becomes Jack's only hope of survival. Confronted by the terrifying truth of what the genetically engineered seeds stolen by his friend are truly for and who is really behind them, Jack joins Naomi in a desperate fight across half the globe to save humanity from extermination...

Dream of Danger (A Brown and De Luca Novella)by Maggie Shayne. FREE!

Murder brought self-help guru Rachel de Luca and Detective Mason Brown together. Their shared secrets drove them apart. But now they're together again in this riveting novella that begins where New York Times bestselling author Maggie Shayne's Sleep with the Lights On ended.

She may have been blind for twenty years, but Rachel's always had an uncanny gift for seeing through people—and she distrusts her assistant's new boyfriend at first sight. Amy isn't interested in Rachel's misgivings, though. She's too eager to celebrate Thanksgiving by introducing her family to the new man in her life. Then Amy doesn't show up for the holiday…. Desperate to find her missing friend, Rachel has no choice but to turn to Mason.

Their investigation into Amy's disappearance takes them ever deeper into danger—and reignites the attraction that they've both sworn to resist. Now it's a race against time as these reluctant partners fight to stave off passion and save a life. Look for Wake to Darkness, the next installment in this suspenseful series, coming in December from Harlequin MIRA and Maggie Shayne.