How to read The Cold City free, and in what order

Two questions arrive more than any others. Where do I start, and do I have to pay for all of it? Here is the honest map.

Start free: the prequel novella

Blood at the Old Gate is the night the first gate in the Cold City was kept, and what it cost the one who kept it. It is a complete novella, it comes before everything else, and it is free to anyone on my reader list. You give an email address, BookFunnel sends the book to whatever you read on, and you can leave the list the same day if you want to. Nobody will chase you.

Get the free prequel here. It takes about a minute.

Then the three novels, in any order you like

Each novel is one couple’s complete story with a happy ending. If the ferry is what caught you, start with the ferry. But if you want the whole city, read them in the order I wrote them, because the doors open in that order:

1. Blood Under the Lights. Yankee Stadium. A night-shift electrician named Marisol touches the line she was warned never to touch, and meets the guardian who has held it for a hundred years.
2. Blood Across the River. Roosevelt Island. A Queens blood-bank tech named Maya gives clean blood to a starving vampire, and the old ruins across the river wake up.
3. Blood Beneath the Harbor. The Staten Island Ferry. A deckhand named Anjali re-ties a vampire’s line with her missing father’s hitch, and the harbor learns her name.

Book Four, Blood Below the Bridge, is coming. The Brooklyn Bridge. The list hears the date first.

Reading them without buying them

All three novels are in Kindle Unlimited. If you already have it, they cost you nothing. If you don’t, Amazon usually offers new members a free trial, and three novels in a month is a comfortable pace, not a sprint. Here is the Kindle Unlimited page. If you join through that link I may earn a small commission. It does not change your price, and I would tell you the same thing if it paid me nothing.

If you would rather own them, each novel is $3.99 on Kindle. Blood Under the Lights is also in paperback, for people who like to see where they are in a book by the thickness of what is left.

If you would rather listen

Books One and Two are audiobooks on ElevenReader. Blood Under the Lights and Blood Across the River are both there. Book Three’s audiobook is not out yet. When it is, the list will know before this page does.

The short version

• Free prequel by email, then Book One, Two, Three for the whole city.
• Every novel stands alone, so you can also just start with the one that called you.
• Kindle Unlimited covers all three. $3.99 each if you want to keep them.
• Audio for Books One and Two now. Book Three in audio later.

If you get stuck anywhere on that map, reply to any email from the list. I read them.