C Gockel Writes

Featured Fantasy: Truth in the Smoke (Glamour Blind Trilogy Book 1) by SP Neeson

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Featured Fantasy: Truth in the Smoke (Glamour Blind Trilogy Book 1) by SP Neeson

FREE as of May 17, 2024
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But you’re fae. I could feel the magic when I walked in the door.

When a famous actress, says this to me, I’m torn between thinking she’s insane and asking her for more details. But she leaves before I can do either and when I try to find her the next day, she’s dead and I’m left with more questions than before.

Why did she come to me? Why was she killed? Who did it? And was she crazy or did she know something I don’t?

I need answers and she’s not around to offer them anymore. My options are limited. I can forget it ever happened and move on with my life or I can break into her house, and the scene of her murder, to investigate.

What can I say? I’m really good at bad ideas.

Featured Fantasy: Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore

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Featured Fantasy: Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore

$1.99 as of May 17, 2024
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Editor’s note: I haven’t read this one … completely. I started reading it just last night, because I loved the first book, over 10 years ago. I was able to fall back into the world. In fact, I don’t think you need to read the first one at all.

In San Francisco, the souls of the dead are mysteriously disappearing—and you know that can’t be good—in New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore’s delightfully funny sequel to A Dirty Job.

Something really strange is happening in the City by the Bay. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone—or something—is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Death Merchant Charlie Asher is just as flummoxed as everyone else. He’s trapped in the body of a fourteen-inch-tall “meat puppet” waiting for his Buddhist nun girlfriend, Audrey, to find him a suitable new body to play host.

To get to the bottom of this abomination, a motley crew of heroes will band together: the seven-foot-tall death merchant Minty Fresh; retired policeman turned bookseller Alphonse Rivera; the Emperor of San Francisco and his dogs, Bummer and Lazarus; and Lily, the former Goth girl. Now if only they can get little Sophie to stop babbling about the coming battle for the very soul of humankind . . .

Featured Science Fiction: Exhalation – Short Stories by Ted Chiang

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Featured Science Fiction: Exhalation - Short Stories by Ted Chiang

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Editor’s note: I’ve read this one. The first two stories alone are worth the price.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories—two published for the very first time—all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Other

Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory.

Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine.

In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Featured Sci-fi: Machine A White Space Novel by Elizabeth Bear

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Featured Sci-fi: Machine A White Space Novel by Elizabeth Bear

$1.99 in the U.S.
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Also available at: United Kingdom, Germany, Australia

A “spectacularly smart space opera” that follows Ancestral Night in the Hugo Award–winning author’s White Space duology (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Meet Doctor Jens.

She hasn’t had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years. Her workday begins when she jumps out of perfectly good space ships and continues with developing treatments for sick alien species she’s never seen before. She loves her life. Even without the coffee.

But Dr. Jens is about to discover an astonishing mystery: two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a deadly embrace. The crew is suffering from an unknown ailment and the shipmind is trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away.

Unfortunately, Dr. Jens can’t resist a mystery and she begins doing some digging. She has no idea that she’s about to discover horrifying and life-changing truths.

Written in Elizabeth Bear’s signature “rollicking, suspenseful, and sentimental” (Publishers Weekly) style, Machine is a fresh and electrifying space opera that you won’t be able to put down.

[Read more…]

Featured Fantasy: Kissed by Songs of Lillies: A Frog Prince Fairy Tale Romance by E.V Everest

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Kissed by Songs of Lillies: A Frog Prince Fairy Tale Romance by E.V Everest

New Release
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Never bargain with a frog.

There was a chill in the salt air the morning my sister was taken. All they left was a single golden shell in her bed. The fae had claimed another bride.

Now, careless on champagne, I’ve met one myself. By night, an intoxicating gentleman with piercing green eyes. By day, a slimy, conniving frog.

When I drop my precious golden shell, he offers to retrieve it… for a price. By his law, we are betrothed.

To break a bargain is to die, so I will cross the cursed waters with him and go to their hidden isle. But this won’t be a one-way trip. It won’t be so easy to claim the heart of this princess.

Kissed by Songs of Lilies is one of ten books in the Enemies Ever After series, a collection of standalone short novels featuring enemies-to-lovers fairy tale retellings with a touch of steam.