In order to download free, you do need to subscribe your email address.  They don't flood you with other marketing emails.  You do have to act lightning fast when you get the email because these stay available free almost no time.

This one I'd consider a novella or short story at only 96 pages.  Usually it's a full length novel, often the first of an ongoing series with an upcoming new release.

There's a bookclub on booklikes for these at http://booklikes.com/book-clubs/88/tor-monthly-free-ebook-science-fiction-and-fantasy   (TOR publishes mainly science fiction and fantasy genre books).  

This was an amazing collection, each story focusing on a different part of life, each one entirely different from the last, and each one completely amazing.

There are a lot of reasons why these stories were each amazing and beautiful. For starters, they are #ownvoices, which in itself lends depth to them that is hard to come by from people not familiar with others experiences, but the stories are also varied in many other ways.

I remember first hearing about Adichie from her TEDtalk, the Danger of a Single Story, so I knew not to expect the stories to be similar to each other or to any idea that I had about Africa or African people. Each one is a different part of life for African people. I know that several stories were about Nigerians specifically, but not whether all were. I know Adichie is Nigerian (yes, I even looked up her Wikipedia page to double check), but I don't want to make either assumption that it means all her characters must be Nigerian nor that the experience of people from different countries within Africa are interchangeable. Instead, I'll just point out that I don't know. I do know that one story pointed out where secondary characters were from and the protagonist even refers to them by their country more than their name as they are all new to her.

Getting back to the way the stories were varied, some were immigration stories to the US and others took place in Africa, but even one of those could be loosely categorized as an immigration story because it is about a woman attempting to obtain refugee status to go to the US. It would be difficult to judge the stories against each other on a level of enjoyable as not all are happy or sad, but they all make the reader think about their ideas of how they treat people and how they are treated by people.

I was glad that I listened to the audiobook, read by Adjoa Andoh, because of the character names. Not only would I have mispronounced, but I would have missed out on the lyrical beauty of many of them. The many accents required to read through all the stories were masterfully done as one should expect from an actress of Andoh's accomplishments.

Altogether, it's an enlightening set of stories that should definitely be read by anyone interested in stories about the lives of women. This does not mean that it should be relegated to "chick lit", though. None of the stories are delivered in the "humorously and lightedhardly" style of what is often referred to as chick lit. These are serious stories about women's lives, the struggles, the many forms that heartbreak takes, the difficult decisions that must be contended with. While I wouldn't use the book alone to indicate what African or Nigerian culture is completely about (then we'd fall into the narrow view that Adichie herself cautions against), I would say that it paints an interesting picture of what it is like for some women.

So again, an excellent pick for anyone interested in women's stories, particularly those looking to expand their reading to include stories in more than one country, of moving between countries, of the way lives mix between people of different cultures in several ways. The collection on its own, it still expands the idea of what African stories are and takes us a beyond a single story.

This is also historical fantasy, set in 1818 Geneva. It’s a steampunk alternate history of the writing of Frankenstein. I wondered how well this might work for readers who either haven’t read Frankenstein or who don’t know that Mary Shelley was born Mary Godwin (although it’s eventually spelled out for us). But I liked the way Lee translated the concerns of early 19th century Europe into this society anxious about clockwork men (created in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars), about the rise of technology and the concern with what is natural vs. monstrous. The uprising aspect didn’t work quite as well for me, but I did appreciate that it was an attempt to draw on actual historical events. Alisdair is a mostly sympathetic main character, although I liked him best when he was interacting with Clemence. All in all, this is a pretty solid and interesting look at Frankenstein and some of its concerns.

Also, I had a Hamilton moment, because it turns out that Aaron Burr (sir) was close friends with the Godwin-Wollstonecraft household and knew Mary Shelley fairly well when she was young. He even had a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft copied and sent to his daughter Theodosia! (So now I want that AU fanfic where Theodosia and Philip Hamilton both live and fall in love and hang out with the Shelleys and Lord Byron because tell me THAT wouldn’t have ended in at least one duel and maybe a continental war.)

“There is no love in the gay world!” Daniel is told.
“Be a servant in the world of cocks! That’s our religion! Cock is our God Almighty!”

Daniel cannot accept this philosophy. He longs for more.

Growing up in the absence of his emotionally unstable mother, Daniel suffers at the hands of his cold and rejecting father and his second wife. His childhood insecurities deepen with the early recognition that he is gay, and he soon realizes that, because he is different, answers will have to come from within. He conceals his inner truths but secretly goes to the porn cinema and soon finds himself alone in a world of erotic fantasies. Although he fervently yearns to find true love, his insecurities propel him to choose solitude and the pleasures of anonymous sex, which so reliably protect him from being hurt and disappointed by others.

With the magic of an unexpected encounter, Daniel’s life begins to change. Although he has to face seemingly intractable prejudices—and even overt homophobia—the most difficult battle of his life is overcoming his own self-protective defenses as he tries to find love.

This One Thing documents with great subtlety and nuance Daniel’s determined odyssey of self-discovery and growth in a world where being gay remains a challenge. It will contribute to the legacy of insightful and heartfelt novels depicting experiences shared by gay men the world over.