Category Archives: Backlist Books

Finds and Deals: Collections – Inspector Rebus, Dresden Files and more

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ian_rankinAs someone who like to buy complete series from authors I like, I have been excited to see more and more multi-book collections by a single author being offered by traditional publishers. Some of them are available at substation discounts; others are offered as a simple, convenient way to buy all of the books in a series by an author.

Here are a few of my latest finds from Amazon:

The Complete Rebus Collection: Eighteen Books by Ian Rankin for $58.99. (This averages out to an amazing $3.33 per book!)

The Complete Navarone 4-Book Collection: The Guns of Navarone, Force Ten From Navarone, Storm Force from Navarone, Thunderbolt from Navarone features all four books for only $2.99.

You can also find The Dresden Files Collection 1-6 (The Dresden Files Box-Set) and The Dresden Files Collection 7-12: A Fragment of Life (The Dresden Files Box-Set)  for $53.99 each. (That’s an average of $1 off the usual price of each book.)

I also have seen more and more collections being offered as Daily Finds on Barnes and Noble. 🙂

The only problem I am having is finding a systematic way to search for them – at this point, it is often a matter of chance or someone else finding them and posting them first. Using the word collections has not brought good results!

How do you find your collections? Any tips to share?

(Note: All prices subject to change. They were current at time of writing this post.)

Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries available as e-books

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neroI always get excited when I see that entire series of backlist books have been released as e-books.  As a lover of mystery novels, I was delighted to discover that all 47 of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe Mysteries are now available in versions for the Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iPad.

The corpulent Nero Wolfe is a perennial favorite among lovers of armchair detective mysteries.  The series of Books is comprised of 33 novels and 39 short stories and novellas which have been adapted into radio,  film and television versions..  The series begins with the 1934 Fer-de-Lance, and concludes with the posthumously published volume of three stories,  Death Times Three. You can read more about the series on its Wikipedia page.

So. The good news is that the books are now available in e-versions. The bad news is, the pricing for the books is all over the map. Thirty of the books in the series are priced at $7.99, which is the exact same price as the paperback versions. Fifteen of the books are priced as high as $11.99. The prices on the other two varied from $2.99 to $7.99, depending on the retailer. The order of the books doesn’t seem to be a factor. Book 1, Fer-de-Lance, is $7.99.  Book 2, The League of Frightened Men, is $11.99.  The covers are also inconsistent. Some of the books have new covers; others do not.

Needless to say, the pricing was a deal-breaker for me. Like most mystery lovers, I am a serial reader and I would have bought the whole series if they had been priced along the lines of how Amazon priced the Ed McBain 87th Precinct mysteries ($1.99 to $4.99) or the Gladys Mitchell Mrs. Bradley mysteries ($1.99 to $3.99). I don’t know if this is protectionist pricing for the new Nero Wolfe novels by Robert Goldsborough’s Nero wolfe mysteries, but the prices are just too high, especially if you want them all. 😦 I think Random House’s agency pricing is showing.

Since these are now available as e-books, I am hoping that soon we also might see The Nero Wolfe Cookbook finally come out as an e-book. The cookbook features  excerpts from the books alongside recipes for dishes served in the Nero Wolfe mysteries. The hardcover is great for the kitchen, but the book is as much a joy to read as it is to cook from….

Ellis Peters’ Cadfael mysteries available as e-books

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cadfaelOver the years, I have written about a lot of my favorite books that were not available as e-books. But thanks to the explosion of tablets, smartphones as well as e-ink devices, many, many backlist titles are finally appearing in digital editions. Today, I discovered that we can add all 21 of Ellis Peters’ Cadfael mysteries to the finally available as digital editions list! I am seeing publication dates of 2014, so I may have just missed these… They were previously only available in print or as audiobooks.

The books are published by Open Media and are available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and iTunes and other places where e-books are sold. The prices on the books  average in the $8 to $9 range; although today, I found the first title in the series, A Morbid Taste for Bones,  for only $3.82 ( The odd amount sounds like it might be  a price match to me.)

The Wikipedia article contains the series order and can be found here.

ETA: The Cadfael books are also available on the Scribd and Oyster services.

2 Lost novels by Ed McBain to be published

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mcbainThere has been a lot of interest in my two previous posts (here and here) on the availability of Ed McBain’s popular 87th Precinct mysteries. So, fans of police procedurals may be as excited as I was to read on Ed Goreman’s blog that Hard Case Crime will be publishing two lost novels by Ed McBain, both of which have been unavailable for over 50 years.

The two books are Cut Me In and So Nude, So Dead. So Nude, So Dead will be released in July 2015. Cut Me In is scheduled for release in January 2016.  Sample chapters of both books are available on Hard Case Crime’s website.

And, there’s more good news! According to Goreman:

… The same month, Hard Case Crime will also re-issue its one previous McBain title, THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE, for the first time ever in trade paperback format. CUT ME IN is scheduled for a January 12, 2016 publication and will feature a new cover by legendary painter Robert McGinnis.
As a special bonus, each of the three books will also include a long-lost private-eye novelette by McBain starring Matt Cordell, the detective from THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE. These three novelettes were originally published in pulp magazines of the 1950s and haven’t been seen in more than half a century.

If you are a fan of the genre, please indulge yourself and check out Hard Case Crime’s website. They have goodies by Max Allan Collins, Michael Crichton writing as John Lange and many more. The covers are absolutely brilliant representations of the genre!

Hard Case Crime also published Stephen King’s Joyland.

Daily Deals: Iris Johansen mysteries and William Gibson’s Neuromancer

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iris_Johansen_coverAmazon has a couple of great Daily Deals today.

First, there are twenty of New York Times best-selling author Iris Johansen mysteries and thrillers on sale at Amazon for $2.99 each. This is a super deal if you are trying to fill in some backlist titles. 🙂

Also, for sale today, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the now-classic book that started the cyberpunk genre for only $1.99.

Is it Midnight at the Well of Souls?

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Any Jack L. Chalker fans out there?

A chance conversation overheard on Twitter today referencing sentient plant life started me thinking about the Well World series and the Czill species. It also led me to a very strange description in this alien wiki that sure doesn’t jive with my recollection of the books. Time for a re-read.

That thought, of course,  led me to search to see any of these incredible books were available as ebooks. And to my surprise, they are! Baen Books has them available, and at reasonable prices, starting with Midnight at the Well of Souls…

Have you ever read this incredible science-fiction series?