Every month, Amazon offers a special discount on over 100 different Kindle ebooks — and I’m especially excited about their selection for June. For the first time, they’re offering a discount on an ebook that I’d actually just started reading — and for an extra $1.99 more, they’re also offering a full audiobook version, too! The sale is called “100 eBooks for $3.99 or Less”, and like every month, you can see the whole selection by pointing your web browser to:
But in addition, Amazon’s also offering “20 Kindle Books for $2” at the bottom of the same page (including the classic western, The Sixth Shotgun by Louis L’Amour for just $2.00). And there’s even another link promising 30 Kindle Books for $3 Each.
Here’s some of the most interesting discounted ebooks this month.
To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner ($1.99)
This book gives you the real history behind the legendary outlaw and the man of justice who apprehended him — while also painting an accurate picture of the American West. I found it to be really engrossing, and one reviewer at Amazon described it as “a vivid telling of the true story behind one of the wild west’s most enduring legends.” That’s why I’m so excited that for another $1.99, I can also get the professionally-narrated audiobook, hearing the wise old voice of Alan Sklar telling it like a tale of the old frontier. “For others to survive, Billy could not,” his introduction begins. “Garrett could not. These two men perished long ago, and that is the cold truth of history, but their ghosts are still there. Billy forever calls out to us from the darkness of the past…
Saturday Night by Susan Orlean ($2.99)
The author of The Orchid Thief once asked a surprisingly interesting question — why do Americans feel that Saturday Nights are special? “To answer it, she embarked on a remarkable journey across the country,” reads the book’s description at Amazon, “and spent the evening with all sorts of people in all sorts of places – hipsters in Los Angeles, car cruisers in small-town Indiana, coeds in Boston, the homeless in New York, a lounge band in Portland, quinceanera revelers in Phoenix, and more – to chronicle the one night of the week when we do the things we want to do rather than the things we need to do.” One reviewer at Amazon described it as “exquisite voyeurism”, while another applauded her wide-sweeping research which according to Amazon leads to “an irresistible portrait of how Saturday night in America is lived.”
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke: The Star, Volume III (Arthur C. Clarke Collection: Short Stories) – $2.99
He’s best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey — and for years he was considered one of the world’s greatest science fiction authors. This month, Amazon’s discounting a massive 976-page anthology of over 100 short science fiction pieces by Clarke, in a lavish Kindle ebook showcasing “not only Clarke’s technological imagination – but also a deep poetic sensibility that led him to ponder the philosophical and moral implications of technological advances.” One reviewer at Amazon described it as “surely the greatest single volume of short Science Fiction ever published” (and Amazon’s web page reports that “13 reviewers made a similar statement.”) He quotes the amazon first lines of one Clarke short story, which almost seem like a symbol for the author’s grand and sweeping imagination. “Many and strange are the Universes that drift like bubbles in the foam upon the River of time. Some – a very few – move against or athwart its current; and fewer still are those that lie forever beyond its reach, knowing nothing of the future or the past…”
Folly and Glory: A Novel by Larry McMurtry ($2.99)
In 2004, the famous novelist (and Texas enthusiast) Larry McMurtry completed the epic finale to his four-volume series, the Berrybender Narratives. His characters encounter real figures from history, like
Kit Carson the explorer and Captain Clark (from the Lewis & Clark expedition). Amazon’s description promises the book offers both “a sense of closure and a meditation on the nature of the American frontier.” (Though some reviewers recommend you read the entire series). “The story is gritty, with lots of hardship…” notes one reviewer on Amazon, calling the book “entertaining and enjoyable.” And Amazon’s also offering a huge discount on the audiobook version of this novel — just $2.99. (When I listened to its sample at Audible.com, the first line that I heard the narrator reading was “GIve your brother his rooster!”)
When you also purchase the audiobook, Amazon will enable their special “WhisperSync for Voice” feature, which lets you switch back and forth between the text version on your Kindle and the professionally-narrated audiobook version. (Without ever losing your place!) And of course, these aren’t the only books being discounted this month. Some other interesting titles include:
They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie ($1.99)
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut ($2.99)
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness by Alice Walker ($3.99)
Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley ($2.99)
Amazon’s even offering a discount on a Harlequin Historical Romance titled “Never Trust a Rake”!
Which just goes to show that this month, there’s something for everybody…