HarperCollins is offering Neil Gaiman‘s Neverwhere as a free ebook for a limited time. To take advantage of the offer, click on this page, where you can either download it as a pdf, or read the entire 370-page book online.
In the book, “Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but shrewish fiancee. Then one night he stumbles upon a girl lying on the sidewalk, bleeding. He stops to help her, and his life is changed forever.
“Soon he finds himself living in a London most people would never have dreamed of—a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels.”
Gaiman writes on his blog “For those people who grumbled about reading American Gods online, here’s Neverwhere. You can read it online, and it’s also downloadable. That’s the good news. The bad news is you don’t get to keep it forever. It’s yours for thirty days from download, and then the pdf file returns to its electrons. But if you’ve ever wondered about Neverwhere or wanted to read it for free, now is your chance. And free is free.”
In addition to Gaiman’s book, there’s a link on that page to this page, where you can download Fiona McIntosh‘s Odalisque: Book One of the Percheron Saga, also for a limited time, from Eos. They’re offering the book as a pdf, or in two other formats (but all are downloads).
Eos describes the book: “Captured by slave traders in the inhospitable desert, Lazar fought his way to freedom, earning the coveted position of Spur of Percheron. Charged with protecting his adopted city from enemies on both sides of its walls, he has led a charmed life as confidant to and protector of Zar Joreb for many years. But now Joreb is dead…
“Though Joreb’s well-intentioned fifteen-year-old heir, Boaz, will take the title of Zar, the balance of power lies in the hands of his beautiful and cruelly ambitious mother, a former harem slave who rose to power by the Zar’s favor. Aside from Lazar, whom Boaz trusts and respects, the young Zar’s only friend is Pez, the court jester, a misshapen dwarf whose tricks and diversions are accepted only because he is known to be mad.
“When a stunning young girl is brought to the palace to fill a space in Boaz’s harem, both Boaz and Lazar are surprised by their unexpectedly strong reactions to her. But Ana, the odalisque, finds the closeted world of the harem stifling and unbearable. And unbeknownst to all, the gods themselves are beginning to rise in a cyclical battle that is just beginning, and will enmesh everyone in the palace in a struggle for the very soul of Percheron.”