Free to a good home

FOUND: TWO EBOOKS, FREE TO A GOOD HOME

Do you like to read? I will assume you do, since you are here, now, reading these words I am writing.

Do you like free reading material? I will further assume so, since you are reading these words, and have not given me any money (or at least, not lately).

Those two things being true or truish, I have two lovely Steampunk short stories for you to read. They are by good (or great) authors, and they are, as I mentioned, free.

The first is The Strange Case of Finley Jane, by Kady Cross. This prequel to her Steampunk Chronicles series (which is continued in The Girl in the Steel Corset) is a highly worthwhile bit of fiction: steamy and toothsome and full of potentiality. Kady Cross (better known as bestselling author Kathryn Smith) has crafted a tale of nefarious criminals, machine/human conflict, and a thoughtful exploration of what makes us truly human: form, or function?

The second is Clockwork Fagin, by the inimitable Cory Doctorow (activist, science fiction author and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing; you may have heard of it). In this tale, set in an alternate version of Canada, orphans use the puppet of a dead man to take control of their lives. The reference, Fagin, comes from Charles Dickens' classic tale Oliver Twist - and like the famous line of the title character of that story of an orphaned boy adrift in the world of the Industrial Revolution, we, too, want some more.

So there you have it. Two free ebooks in search of good homes. Maybe yours? You could do a lot worse than to take them in; goodness knows what might happen if you don't...