Fantasy Book Critic: Winners of the Josh Bazell/Beat the Reaper Giveaway!!! Plus a FREE SHORT STORY from Jonathan Maberry!

Congratulations to Barbara Hunt (Virginia), Paula Savage (North Carolina), and Joe Kershenbaum (Massachusetts) who were all randomly selected to win a SIGNED COPY of Josh Bazell’s superb debut novel, “Beat the Reaper” (US Version), thanks to Little, Brown and Company!!! “Beat the Reaper” is officially out today and for more information on the book, please read Fantasy Book Critic’s review HERE.

In news, St. Martin’s Griffin is offering Jonathan Maberry’s never-before-released short story “Countdown” FREE via email in support of the author’s upcoming book “Patient Zero”:

From multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author Jonathan Maberry comes a major new thriller which mixes together the best of the New York Times bestselling books “World War Z” by Max Brooks and James Rollins’ Sigma Force novels to kick-off a new series featuring Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences…

When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there’s either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills . . . and there’s nothing wrong with Joe Ledger’s skills. And that’s both a good, and a bad thing. It’s good because he’s a Baltimore detective that has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can’t handle. This rapid response group is called the Department of Military Sciences or the DMS for short. It’s bad because his first mission is to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a dreadful bio-weapon that can turn ordinary people into zombies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance…

“Patient Zero” will be published in the U.S. on March 3, 2009 and in the UK on April 16, 2009 (Gollancz). To receive the short story “Countdown”, click on the image below: