We’re continuing our Best of 2020 with our bestselling sales! Through Saturday, we’re featuring the books that you all bought in record numbers through our affiliate links (thanks so much for that). This isn’t a definitive list as we’re only including books that are still priced at $3.99 or less.
We also have the Best Reviews, Best Cover Snark, Best Books, and Best Podcasts of 2020!
All Systems Red
RECOMMENDED: All Systems Red by Martha Wells is $3.99! I think everyone at SBTB HQ who has read these books has absolutely loved them, myself included. Sarah in particular has been re-reading them consistently. I recommend her squee-filled review of the latest Murderbot book, Network Effect.
“As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.”
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
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We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!The Spymaster’s Lady
The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne is $2.99! This book has been recommended in five (FIVE!) podcast episodes, and is often attributed to being readers’ first foray into romance. Have you read it? What’d you think?
She’s never met a man she couldn’t deceive…until now.
She’s braved battlefields. She’s stolen dispatches from under the noses of heads of state. She’s played the worldly courtesan, the naïve virgin, the refined British lady, even a Gypsy boy. But Annique Villiers, the elusive spy known as the Fox Cub, has finally met the one man she can’t outwit…
British spymaster Robert Grey must enter France and bring back the brilliant, beautiful-and dangerous-Fox Cub. His duty is to capture her and her secrets for England. When the two natural enemies are thrown into prison, they forge an uneasy alliance to break free. But their pact is temporary and betrayal seems inevitable as the fates of nations hang in the balance.
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As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Grumpy Jake
RECOMMENDED: Grumpy Jake by Melissa Blue is $2.99! This is a contemporary romance novella and Maya gave it an A-:
Grumpy Jake is a bite-sized delight that was joy to tear through in a sitting. It was low-drama, while also being compelling, empathetic, and kind. It’s a great example of how well a novella can work as it expertly delivers you to a HEA just brimming with possibility and I look forward to seeing what Melissa Blue writes next!
Bailey Thorne doesn’t hate Jake the Rake, just despises him. She blames the rumor mill at her school…and, okay, him. His adorable son has only been in preschool, but Jake has already made an impressive dent in dating the unmarried faculty. She’s had to hear of his every exploit from the broken hearts he’s left behind. She was fine to loathe him from afar, but now his son has entered kindergarten–and she’s the teacher. It’s going to be a very long school year.
Jake Polaski was more than fine to avoid Ms. Thorne after it became clear she was not amused by his very existence. But then they get stuck in an elevator for an evening. He finds out that underneath that baleful glare she always gives him, lies a warm, funny and sexy as hell woman. He does his best to not be smitten after every exchange afterward. His son needs him rational, steadfast…and love is the most uncertain thing.
It was the elevator’s fault. Had it worked like it should, Bailey would have gone on with her life without seeing why so many of her co-workers had fallen for the grumpy single dad. (It’s his dry wit, his playful teasing and the drool-worthy cut of his jawline.) And now she’s caught in the way he doles out smiles and the dark depths of his secrets. If nothing else, she knows from rumor there’s a clock ticking on their affair before it implodes because things always do with Jake the Rake, but she can’t seem to walk away first.
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As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Reborn Yesterday
Reborn Yesterday by Tessa Bailey is $3.99! This, I think, was mentioned on a previous Hide Your Wallet, and it may be Bailey’s first paranormal romance. I’m a Bailey fan, but have been let down by her most recent contemporaries, but this one certainly had me interested. Have you read this one?
A timeless love story with bite.
It was a night like any other for funeral home director Ginny Lynn, until the exceptionally handsome—and unfortunately deceased—young man on her embalming table sat up, opened his emerald eyes and changed the course of her life forever, making her feel quite fluttery while he was at it.
Humans aren’t supposed to know Jonas Cantrell, or any vampire, exists. It’s kind of a major rule. Despite his instantaneous bond with perfectly peculiar Ginny, he has no choice but to erase her memories of their one and only meeting.
That was the plan. Before a reluctant Jonas can wipe Ginny’s mind clean, she reveals a secret that brings their worlds crashing together. Human and vampire. Past and present. Darkness and light. And while their love is strictly forbidden, it might be the only thing that can save them…
Reborn Yesterday is a standalone paranormal romantic comedy with a happily ever after.
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I read and enjoyed REBORN YESTERDAY. The characters were natural and fresh, the plot was original, and the secondary characters were a lot of fun. I’d recommend it.
Spymaster’s Lady, and in fact that entire series, is fantastic. I highly recommend it. I have them in print and audio, & have really enjoyed all the books.
The Murderbot series is also great.
I love Murderbot so much! If you haven’t, definitely get all of the Murderbot Diaries series. Do it now!
Warning: rant below
In many arenas of western society the baseline is considered to be male… for example, in science (the place where I live) so much clinical research assumes that the average person is a biological male and as a result recommended dosages of medications are often wrong for a huge swath of the population. Seat belts are sized for the “average man” and not for anyone larger or smaller than that. This bias in research and manufacturing is slowly changing, but there is a long history of this implicit bias that materially impacts the daily life of people who do not physiologically fit into the category “average male.”
So it irks me that the narrator of Murderbot audiobooks is a man. He is a fine narrator (and I like his interpretation of ART), but it’s been bothering me that he was chosen as Murderbot’s voice. Murderbot has no sex organs, nor does Murderbot want sex organs and when given the option to self identify a gender for an alias being used in Artificial Condition, chooses “indeterminate.” Why is this character being voiced by a man? The baseline is male. But it doesn’t have to be. There have to be non-binary narrators out there. And if not… my personal opinion is that if there is not a non-binary narrator anywhere in the world for Murderbot, then the narrator should be a woman. Having a man voicing a genderless character is reinforcing the implicit bias that many of us carry that the neutral, baseline, average is male.
My goodness, the cover of Reborn Yesterday fascinates me anew each time I see it. I may eventually even read the book despite it being totally not my “kind” of story. Vampires? Please. Modern fiction set in nineteenth century England is my limit on fantasy.
I need to get Spymaster’s Lady already!
Really enjoyed Reborn Yesterday and the sequel, This Time Tomorrow, I think those might actually be my favorites of Tessa Bailey. Really hoping for a third book in the series.
Grumpy Jake was a fun read–I really loved Bailey, her internal monologue was hilarious and made the book for me. I read it in one sitting after a streak of really underwhelming books and it was a great quick palate cleanser of a novella.
@Penny – I feel the same way about the audiobooks. I got one and avoided the rest because it messed with my mental image of Murderbot to have the voice be so obviously male. Murderbot is non-gendered and happy that way, dammit!
I confess my internal voice for Murderbot sounds a lot like Tig Notaro, now that I’ve heard her as Jett Reno on Star Trek Discovery. Not non-binary, but the deadpan snark level is pitch perfect.
Yeah, I felt the same way about the audiobooks. It doesn’t bother me as much since I read them first, I guess? In that I’ll keep listening, because I like having the option, but he’s not ideal. I also didn’t like some of the voices for different characters and he definitely sounds male.
As much as I would love it to be a show, this is why I hope it won’t be.
Hey, I got all of these! So far, I’ve only read Murderbot (LOVED) and Reborn Yesterday, which I bought because of the cover (had no idea who Tessa Bailey was). It was very pleasant to find the inside matched the cover! The heroine made the book for me, she was off-beat, sincere, quirky; she also was a mortician, and her relationship to death and grieving was… an inspiration. My parents are getting older and sicker and it scares me, so when I come accross stuff that helps shift perspectives, I appreciate.
@LisaF: Read the whole Spymasters series (preferably in order, since some characters cross over); you won’t regret it.
@harthad Tig Notaro would be amazing as Murderbot!! Perfect Snark!
@Emily I picked up the audiobooks after reading first too (I like having comfy audiobooks on while I’m puttering around the apartment) and initially I couldn’t pin down what was bothering me SO much about them until I was reccing to a friend and it just popped out of my mouth, that the narrator was a guy and, huh that’s disappointing. Oh yeah, I worry that a show would… not turn out great. Partly because of fears about casting, but also because so much of the book is internal dialogue which rarely translates well to screen…
@Penny: The heart buttons rarely work properly for me anymore so I couldn’t “like” your comment. If they couldn’t find a narrator with a gender-neutral voice, another option would have been to do what was done with Scalzi’s Lock In. Since Chris’s gender was never identified, the audiobook was available with both a male and female narrator.
I’m another fan of Joanna Bourne’s series as well as the Murderbot books.
I lovw Spymaster’s Lady but there is a CW scene involving enemies and a family protecting the Fox Cub that makes me so, so mad whenever I thing about it.
I am intrigued by Grumpy Jake, but am holding back because I’d like to know how or if the issue of a teacher dating the parent of a kid in her class is handled in the book. It’s not an employee/boss relationship, but I think there could be some issues. Is this addressed at all?
Not related, but did y’all hear the author who wrote under the name “Emma Darcy” passed? https://blog.harlequin.com/2020/12/remembering-emma-darcy/
@Susan oh that’s an interesting way to handle the narrator! I do wonder what the decision making process was for Murderbot…
(In rereading my post I wish I’d said *agender* instead of genderless…)