Amazon Encore is one of Amazon’s own publishing imprints. This imprint specializes in bringing the most popular and well-reviewed self-published works to a wider audience, as well as both out-of-print and new works written by previously mainstream-published authors. Better still, Amazon brings these carefully selected and professionally produced books to Kindle owners at incredibly low prices, generally $2.99 – $4.99 each.
Here are some current highlights from the Amazon Encore catalog:
Waiting For Spring: rated an average of 4/5 stars across 87 reviews, $2.99. From Amazon:
The pain in Tess Dyer’s heart stems from a lifetime of rejection: by her distant mother, by a string of one-night stands, and by her husband, Jason. He promised to love her forever, yet here she is, divorced and shunned in her own town. She tries everything to dull the pain: sex, work, and endlessly cleaning the house. Finally, in a fit of despair, she abandons the small town of Brookfield, Maine, for an even smaller town, determined to start over with a clean slate. But she can’t run from the demons in her head, and she soon falls back on her old habits, this time with the help of her sexy new neighbor Brian. Though she tells herself he is just a warm body to dull the pain, his kindness has a soothing effect on her bruised heart. But the fear of losing his love is always there, and before long, Tess’s past threatens to destroy her fragile new happiness. Ultimately, she must make a choice: continue drifting through life, or confront the cruel realities of her past and start living. A dramatic departure from contemporary chick-lit, Waiting for Spring is a moving novel about a real woman struggling to find her place in the world.
If dark humor with an apocalyptic twist is more your speed, consider Mercury Falls: rated an average of 4.5/5 stars across 264 reviews, $4.99. From Booklist:
The Apocalypse is nigh in this whimsical, riotous debut. Christine Temetri, a freelancer for a popular religious news magazine, is tired of endless assignments covering cults incorrectly prophesizing the End of Days. When she talks her boss into giving her a better assignment, she doesn’t anticipate it will actually lead her back to a cult leader: the charismatic Galileo Mercury, who turns out not to be a cult leader at all, but a bona fide angel. Mercury is more interested in playing ping pong and drinking beer than he is in being involved in the upcoming Apocalypse. But when he and Christine escape a bit of divine retribution and end up saving the life of the Antichrist, a sulky gamer named Karl Grissom, they find themselves drawn into a miasma of heavenly intrigue and double-crossing. Lucifer himself is determined to find a loophole in the Apocalypse Accords, and Mercury and Christine are the only ones who can stop him. Clever, inventive, and original, Kroese’s hilarious romp has cult favorite written all over it. –Kristine Huntley
Crime thriller fans will want to check out They Never Die Quietly: rated an average of 4/5 stars across 115 reviews, $3.99. From Amazon:
“They Never Die Quietly” tells the story of homicide Detective Sami Rizzo, who is assigned to head a task force investigating serial killings in San Diego. Simon, the highly intelligent, cunning, and deceptively charming villain, redefines the depths of human evil. He believes God has given him absolute authority to purify his unholy victims through a ritual that ends in a grisly crucifixion. Driven by warped religious beliefs and guided by his dead mother, very much alive in his subconscious, Simon abducts “chosen ones” and holds them captive in a Room of Redemption. There, the victims helplessly await their crucifixion. Detective Rizzo urgently yearns to solve the case and gain the respect of her male colleagues, but her obsession to apprehend the killer on her own clouds her thinking. When Simon outsmarts Rizzo and captures her, determined to make her his next victim, she must employ all her resources—both physical and intellectual—to outwit the villain at his own game.
Check out the full catalog of Amazon Encore titles for Kindle here.