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Thursday, September 9, 2010

Bargain Book Roundup, Part I

A Slice of Murder ($4.09), by Chris Cavender

Book Description
Not too much happens in the sleepy little town of Timber Ridge, North Carolina--which is fine with pizza-purveyor extraordinaire Eleanor Swift. The spunky owner of A Slice of Delight is trying to mend her broken heart and could use a little quiet time. But when a late night delivery customer turns up dead, she's in for just the opposite in this delicious mystery series debut, featuring pizza as the prima character....

In Cold Blood ($3.96), by Truman Capote

Book Description
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.


Dangerous Jobs: The Adventurer's Guide to High-Risk Careers ($1.24), by Abigail R. Gehring

Book Description
The success of A&E’s hit series “Deadliest Catch” and Discovery Channel’s new reality show, “The World’s Toughest Jobs” prove that Americans are fascinated with danger and the people who make it their livelihood. Here readers will find all the harrying details on dozens of the riskiest jobs on earth. Ever thought about becoming a bounty hunter? Wondered how much bullfighters make? Considered training lions or jumping out of helicopters into forest fires for some extra cash? Did you know truck drivers have steered themselves into one of the most dangerous jobs in America? Dangerous Jobs offers an entertaining and informational guide to employment for the truly adventurous soul.

Grab both Mackenzies Bundle: Mackenzie's Mountain / Mackenzie's Mission / Mackenzie's Pleasure / A Game of Chance ($9.99) and Mackenzie's Magic ($2.39), by Linda Howard, and you get all five books in the Mackenzie Family Saga at a bargain price (even better than picking up all five in The Complete Mackenzie Collection ($13.17)).

Book Description
Mackenzie's Mountain: Wolf Mackenzie is a loner with a way with horses and a deep distrust of outsiders -- until one woman dares to venture onto Mackenzie's Mountain. Schoolteacher Mary Elizabeth Potter is determined to keep Wolf's teenage son from abandoning his dreams -- and finds herself rescuing Wolf along the way.

Mackenzie's Mission: Night Wing -- the revolutionary test plane with a top-secret weapons system -- was Colonel Joe Mackenzie's number-one priority. And weapons expert Caroline Evans was his number-one distraction. True, the stubborn blonde was giving him the cold shoulder, but Joe hadn't become the best of the best by giving up. Then he discovered someone on the inside was sabotaging Night Wing, and with her late hours and specialized expertise, Caroline seemed the obvious choice. Now Joe had to choose between allegiance to his country and love for his prime suspect....

Mackenzie's Pleasure: No mission had ever gotten the better of navy SEAL Zane Mackenzie -- until now. Barrie Lovejoy needed a savior, before the terrorist group holding her hostage lost patience and silenced her -- forever. Rescuing Barrie would be the most important mission of his life. For he would sooner die than let the enemy harm the mother of his child.

A Game of Chance: In an attempt to lure a vicious criminal out of hiding, agent Chance Mackenzie uses his quarry's estranged daughter, Sunny, as bait. It doesn't take long for him to win her trust -- and her heart -- but what Chance hadn't guessed was that Sunny had reasons of her own to be hiding from her father. Now his deception has brought them both one step closer to danger.

Mackenzie's Magic: The final chapter of Linda Howard's beloved Mackenzie family saga! Meet Maris Mackenzie and the sexy stranger she woke up to find in her bed! Unfortunately, she had no memory of Alex MacNeil, the previous day...or the prize Thoroughbred she'd apparently stolen...


The Harry Bosch Novels: The Black Echo, The Black Ice, The Concrete Blonde, by Michael Connelly, is once again $9.99 (volume 2 was for a few minutes, but is once again $17.99), which works out to $3.33 per novel.

Book Description
For the first time in one volume, the three novels that introduced Michael Connelly's great LAPD homicide detective, maverick Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch. The Black Echo (Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel) For Harry Bosch-hero, loner, nighthawk-the body stuffed in a drainpipe off Mulholland Drive isn't just another statistic. This one is personal. Billy Meadows was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat," fighting the VC and the fear they used to call the Black Echo. Harry let Meadows down once. He won't do it again. The Black Ice The corpse in the hotel room seems to be that of a missing LAPD narcotics officer. Rumors abound that the cop had crossed over-selling a new drug called Black Ice. Now Harry's making some dangerous connections, leading from the cop to a string of bloody murders, and from Hollywood Boulevard's drug bazaar to Mexico's dusty back alleys. In this lethal game, Harry is likely to be the next victim. The Concrete Blonde When Harry Bosch shot and killed Norman Church, the police were convinced it marked the end of the hunt for the Dollmaker-L.A.'s most bizarre serial killer. But now Church's widow is accusing Harry of killing the wrong man-a charge that rings terrifyingly true when a new victim is discovered with the Dollmaker's macabre signature. For the second time, Harry must hunt the murderer down, before he strikes again. Together, these three novels are the perfect way to discover, or rediscover, the sleuth the New York Times Book Review called a "wonderful, old-fashioned hero who isn't afraid to walk through the flames."

Family Tree ($0.99), by Barbara Delinsky, has been getting a lot of positive press (despite a premise that isn't physically possible).

Book Description
Dana Clarke has always longed for the stability of home and family-her own childhood was not an easy one. Now she has married a man she adores who is from a prominent New England family, and she is about to give birth to their first child. But what should be the happiest day of her life becomes the day her world falls apart. Her daughter is born beautiful and healthy, but no one can help noticing the African American traits in her appearance. Dana's husband, to her great shock and dismay, begins to worry that people will think Dana has had an affair.
The only way to repair the damage done is for Dana to track down the father she never knew and to explore the possibility of African American lineage in his family history. Dana's determination to discover the truth becomes a poignant journey back through her past and her husband's heritage that unearths secrets rooted in prejudice and fear.
Barbara Delinsky's Family Tree is an utterly unforgettable novel that asks penetrating questions about race, family, and the choices people make in times of crisis-choices that have profound consequences that can last for generations.


Lone Star Rising: The Texas Rangers Trilogy ($2.99), by Elmer Kelton, is over 700 pages in print, containing all three novels of the trilogy.

Book Description
In 1999, with Forge's publication of The Buckskin Line, Elmer Kelton launched a series of novels on the formative years of the Texas Rangers. In Texas Justice, the first three of these critically acclaimed books are now brought together in a single volume.

In The Buckskin Line, Kelton introduces the red-haired boy captured by a Comanche war party after the massacre of his family. Rescued by Mike Shannon, a member of a Texas "ranging company" protecting settlers from Indian raids, the boy known as Rusty is adopted by the Shannon family. In 1861, Mike Shannon is ambushed and killed, and Rusty follows in his footsteps and joins the Rangers. In the throes of the coming War Between the States, Rusty searches for the Confederates who lynched his adoptive father and awaits meeting the Comanche warrior who killed his family two decades past.

At the end of the Civil War, Rusty Shannon is thrown adrift when the Rangers are disbanded, and makes his way to his home on the Red River, where he hopes to marry the girl he left behind, Geneva Monahan. But as Badger Boy, the second novel of the saga, unfolds, Geneva has married another man in Rusty's absence. Faced with this betrayal, he must contend with the hate-filled Confederate and Union soldiers infesting Texas and with the continuing Indian raids against innocent settlers. Rusty's own childhood captivity returns to haunt him when he rescues Andy, a white child called Badger Boy by his Comanche captors.

In The Way of the Coyote, Andy rides with Rusty Shannon as the Rangers are re-formed in postwar turmoil. With Texas overrun with outlaws, disenfranchised Confederate veterans, nightriders, and marauding Comanche bands, Rusty tries to resume his pre-war life. When his friend Shanty, a freed slave, is burned out of his home by Ku Klux Klan and Rusty's own homestead is confiscated by a murderous band of thugs, he must follow perilous trails before he can put the war and its aftermath behind him.

Texas Justice is not only a masterful re-creation of the early years of the Texas Rangers, it is vintage Elmer Kelton, the undisputed master of the Western story.


Evermore: The Immortals ($2.99), by Alyson Noël

Book Description
Since a horrible accident claimed the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever can see auras, hear people’s thoughts, and know a person’s life story by touch. Going out of her way to shield herself from human contact to suppress her abilities has branded her as a freak at her new high school—but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste . . .

Ever sees Damen and feels an instant recognition. He is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy, and he holds many secrets. Damen is able to make things appear and disappear, he always seems to know what she’s thinking—and he’s the only one who can silence the noise and the random energy in her head. She doesn’t know who he really is—or what he is. Damen equal parts light and darkness, and he belongs to an enchanted new world where no one ever dies.


Lamentation ($2.99), by Ken Scholes

Book Description
An ancient weapon has completely destroyed the city of Windwir. From many miles away, Rudolfo, Lord of the Nine Forest Houses, sees the horrifying column of smoke rising. He knows that war is coming to the Named Lands.

Nearer to the Devastation, a young apprentice is the only survivor of the city – he sat waiting for his father outside the walls, and was transformed as he watched everyone he knew die in an instant.

Soon all the Kingdoms of the Named Lands will be at each others' throats, as alliances are challenged and hidden plots are uncovered.

This remarkable first novel from an award-winning short fiction writer will take readers away to a new world – an Earth so far in the distant future that our time is not even a memory; a world where magick is commonplace and great areas of the planet are impassable wastes. But human nature hasn’t changed through the ages: War and faith and love still move princes and nations.


Master Of None ($2.99), by N. Lee Wood

Book Description
In the bestselling tradition of Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Sheri S. Tepper comes a compelling novel of power and gender on a planet ruled exclusively by women. Botanist Nathan Crewe planned a smash-and-grab mission to steal samples of a rare plant found only in the remote wilderness of Vanar, ignoring the planets ban on foreigners. Instead, he was betrayed by a jealous lover and left marooned, impoverished, and friendless in a strict matriarchal world he could barely understand. After a member of an influential family takes an interest in him, he slowly adapts to their culture, but discovers an ancient malice buried deep in the history of the planet and its people, threatening him and everyone he has come to care for. And he discovers his arrival on Vanar was anything but accidental...

Santa Olivia ($2.99), by Jacqueline Carey

Book Description
Lushly written with rich and vivid characters, SANTA OLIVIA is Jacqueline Carey's take on comic book superheroes and the classic werewolf myth. Loup Garron was born and raised in Santa Olivia, an isolated, disenfranchised town next to a US military base inside a DMZ buffer zone between Texas and Mexico . A fugitive "Wolf-Man" who had a love affair with a local woman, Loup's father was one of a group of men genetically-manipulated and used by the US government as a weapon. The "Wolf-Men" were engineered to have superhuman strength, speed, sensory capability, stamina, and a total lack of fear, and Loup, named for and sharing her father's wolf-like qualities, is marked as an outsider. After her mother dies, Loup goes to live among the misfit orphans at the parish church, where they seethe from the injustices visited upon the locals by the soldiers. Eventually, the orphans find an outlet for their frustrations: They form a vigilante group to support Loup Garron who, costumed as their patron saint, Santa Olivia, uses her special abilities to avenge the town. Aware that she could lose her freedom, and possibly her life, Loup is determined to fight to redress the wrongs her community has suffered. And like the reincarnation of their patron saint, she will bring hope to all of Santa Olivia.

Reno's Chance: A Navy Seals Story ($1.99), by Lora Leigh

Book Description
Reno's Chance- never before released as a standalone novella! Previously published in the anthology Honk If You Love Real Men.

Ever since she was a little girl, Raven McIntire has secretly pined and longed for her best friend's sexy older brother, Reno, a Navy SEAL who has just returned home from duty. What she doesn't realize is that his only true mission is to get into her heart and get her into his bed.