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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Bargain Book Roundup - Military and Action/Thrillers

Some of these are Agency priced books and will be the same in all the stores, while others are discounts offered at Amazon alone. Links are to the Amazon versions, just for simplicity. To start off with, I've chosen some titles that are about the Veteran's to which today is dedicated. After that, it's all military, action and thrillers. Don't stop before the end, as I saved one of the really good ones for the last.

Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War ($1.99), by Michael Sallah & Mitch Weiss, is an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series originally published in the TOLEDO BLADE.

Book Description
At the outset of the Vietnam War, the Army created an experimental fighting unit that became known as "Tiger Force." The Tigers were to be made up of the cream of the crop-the very best and bravest soldiers the American military could offer. They would be given a long leash, allowed to operate in the field with less supervision. Their mission was to seek out enemy compounds and hiding places so that bombing runs could be accurately targeted. They were to go where no troops had gone, to become one with the jungle, to leave themselves behind and get deep inside the enemy's mind.

The experiment went terribly wrong.

What happened during the seven months Tiger Force descended into the abyss is the stuff of nightmares. Their crimes were uncountable, their madness beyond imagination-so much so that for almost four decades, the story of Tiger Force was covered up under orders that stretched all the way to the White House. Records were scrubbed, documents were destroyed, men were told to say nothing.

But one person didn't follow orders. The product of years of investigative reporting, interviews around the world, and the discovery of an astonishing array of classified information, Tiger Force is a masterpiece of journalism. Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for their Tiger Force reporting, Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss have uncovered the last great secret of the Vietnam War.


A More Unbending Battle ($1.35), by Peter Nelson, looks at WWI, The War to End All Wars, and one where nearly all the Veteran's have now passed away. It's a terrific price and looks at the history of the all-black National Guard unit that served in France (and was on the front lines longer than any other US unit).

Book Description
The night broke open in a storm of explosions and fire. The sound of shells whizzing overhead, screeching through the night like wounded pheasants, was terrifying. When the shells exploded prematurely overhead, a rain of shrapnel fell on the men below-better than when the shells exploded in the trenches... In A More Unbending Battle, journalist and author Pete Nelson chronicles the little-known story of the 369th Infantry Regiment-the first African-American regiment mustered to fight in WWI. Recruited from all walks of Harlem life, the regiment had to fight alongside the French because America’s segregation policy prohibited them from fighting with white U.S. soldiers. Despite extraordinary odds and racism, the 369th became one of the most successful-and infamous-regiments of the war. The Harlem Hellfighters, as their enemies named them, spent longer than any other American unit in combat, were the first Allied unit to reach the Rhine, and showed extraordinary valor on the battlefield, with many soldiers winning the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor. Replete with vivid accounts of battlefield heroics, A More Unbending Battle is the thrilling story of the dauntless Harlem Hellfighters.

Turning Idolater ($0.89), by Edward C. Patterson, isn't a military themed title (although he has those), but is by a veteran who is the driving force behind Operation EBook Drop, that matches up soldiers and authors to get them free ebooks while serving overseas. All of his novels do, however, have either LGBT characters or a LGBT theme, so may not be for everyone.

Book Description
Philip Flaxen, who strips past his jockstrap on the Internet for manluv.org, acquires a rare gift - a book that transforms his life. With it, he sparks with a famous author, whittles away at a new craft, swims with an odd circle of new acquaintances and is swept up in mayhem. Philip leaves the world of the Porn Nazi and enters the realm of crisp possibilities - great expectations and dark secrets that unravel over deep waters.

Follow this whodunit as Philip Flaxen "turns idolater" and never looks back - a tale of Internet strippers, back street murders, Provincetown glitz, New York City nightlife and a love story for the ages. If you liked "No Irish Need Apply" and loved "Bobby's Trace", you will absolutely adore "Turning Idolater". Life is filled with serendipity, pleasurable and bracing, but on the fringes and in the heart, life can be a very bloody business.


The Blood Latitudes ($2.99), by William Harrison

Book Description
When retired reporter Will Hobbs learns his son Buck is being sent on assignment to Africa, he is concerned. Will spent his career covering the volatile territory Buck is headed into and the kinds of danger he is likely to encounter. And Buck leaves a family behind, just as Will did years ago; and Will has feelings that go beyond fatherly affection for Buck's attractive young wife. When news comes of Buck's disappearance, Will is compelled to risk his own life to find him or to find out what has happened to him. Once inside the border of civil war--ravaged Rwanda, Will is kidnapped by some very whacked-out "militia" and is forced to witness incredible violence, torture, and gleeful killing in the name of vengeance. As he struggles to survive and to keep his wits about him, Will has an opportunity to take a look at his life and to determine what he wants for his future. Harrison is the author of several novels, short stories, and screenplays.

Hard Passage ($2.11) and The Judas Project ($1.24), by Don Pendleton

Hard Passage
Acting as unofficial backup to a CIA mission threatening to go hard, Mack Bolan is ready for action on the frigid streets of St. Petersburg, Russia. Soon a mix of blood and intelligence creates a picture of a deal brokered between militant Russian youth gangs and Jihadists--aimed at the United States. With too many pieces missing from the puzzle, Bolan plays the game he's played and won countless times before: shake up the enemy's infrastructure, derail its timetable and declare total war. But the fuse is lit--all the way to the streets of Portland, where America's most violent gangs are being armed and primed to unleash the enemy's ultimate, shocking agenda....

The Judas Project
The Cold War just got hot again...

The old Soviet Bloc espionage games have resumed on a covert and catastrophic new playing field: the U.S. financial markets. The enemy isn't the Russian government, but long-dormant sleeper cells in America's cities, planted by the KGB decades ago. Now a former Kremlin official has found the top-secret files and stolen the blueprint, ready to pocket and manipulate America's resources. He has hijacked operation Black Judas, enlisted the KGB's most lethal assassin to terminate operatives, and has begun reshaping a brilliant plot to steal billions of American dollars. But he didn't plan on a beautiful Russian cop on a vengeance hunt, or an American warrior named Mack Bolan in deadly pursuit, gunning for blood and justice.


Target Response ($4.09), by William and J.A. Johnstone. You can also pre-order Home Invasion for $4.47, currently.

Book Description
Who Is Killing The Army's Killer Elite?

The attacks strike like lightning, a murder blitz targeting America's most ultra-secret organization, the Army's clandestine assassination arm known as the Dog Team. Without warning, Dog Team operatives are being systematically slaughtered, decimating the republic's last, best hope against those who would destroy our freedom.

Surviving the initial onslaught are two of the Team's master assassins, Major Joe Kilroy and Captain Steve Ireland. Now, this supreme warrior duo gathers the remnants of the unit to form the Dog Team's Death Squad to unleash their counterstrike: complete annihilation of a shadowy global cartel owing allegiance to no flag, with a private army of international mercenaries. . .

The darkest and deadliest secret war that ever rocked a nation is about to begin.


Blood Safari ($4.80), by Deon Meyer & K.L. Seegers

Book Description
When the rich and famous visit South Africa, their first port of call is often Body Armor, the personal security company offering two types of protection: the big and intimidating muscle men called Gorillas or the lean and hungry former government body guards, referred to as Invisibles.

Lemmer is a freelance Invisible. The tiny and beautiful Emma le Roux, a brand consultant from Cape Town, wants to hire him. He needs the money, so he listens to her story. Lemmer’s First General Law is: Don’t get involved. But he has never failed as a body guard and he’s also grown a little too fond of Emma. He uncovers simmering racial and political tensions, greed, corruption, and a network of eco-terrorists. He follows the leads until he finds what he’s after: The people who attacked Emma. Getting to them will be extremely dangerous, and exposing them could have international political implications. If he fails, both he and Emma will end up dead. But Lemmer is sick and tired of being invisible. He goes after them, against all odds.


The Advocate ($3.96), by Larry Axelrood

Book Description
The new charge has been brought by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Owen Dempsey, who is running for governor and knows that prosecuting Tobias will provide him with free, election-year publicity and provide him with the right kind of headlines.

Cole, however, is exhausted, worn out, alone. He has made his career the central focus of his life, and while he appears to be a successful man, he feels old and lost and weary. During his sleepless nights, he sits alone in his penthouse apartment overlooking the lake reflecting on the mistakes he’s made in life and wondering if he has anything to show for it.

By day, however, Cole is energetic and intimidating. He outmaneuvers his opponents and plots brilliant strategies to defend his client. An experienced litigator, he anticipates the dirty tactics of Dempsey’s office and devises a few of his own.

Completing matters is Anthony Benvenuti Jr., the youngest son of Tony “the Babe” Benvenuti, a prominent figure in the Chicago underworld. Tony Jr. is bitter about his conviction for drug-related offenses and blames Cole.

Filled with brilliant legal maneuvering and surprise after surprise, The Advocate spins a complicated, frightening, often humorous path through a spectacular federal trial, ruthless organized crime activity, an unexpected verdict, and a conclusion that will leave even the most avid mystery readers wondering why they didn’t see it coming.


The Cove ($3.99), by Catherine Coulter

Book Description
Into the Cove comes Sally Brainerd, daughter of murdered Amory St. John of Washington, D.C., seeking sanctuary, and FBI Special Agent James Quinlan who's undercover and after her. He's got a murder to solve, and he believes she's the key. But is she really?

Knife Music ($3.99), by David Carnoy

Book Description
Kristen Kroiter was sixteen, a high-school sophomore, when she was injured in a car accident. Dr. Ted Cogan had saved her life when he treated her in the ER six months ago -- but now police detectives were questioning Cogan about her, in intimate detail. What was going on? What had she told them?

That's just it, the cops said. She hadn't told them anything. She had died. Looked like a suicide. And Cogan was in a heap of trouble.

Tense and twisting, Knife Music is the story of a doctor struggling to clear his name after being accused of raping and causing the suicide of a young girl. The novel pits Cogan, a forty-three-year-old surgeon and self-described womanizer, against Hank Madden, a handicapped veteran detective. From the outset it's not clear who is victim and who is victimizer, as the usually dispassionate.

Madden grapples with his long-suppressed prejudices and his obsession with bringing Ted Cogan to justice at any cost. It all leads up to the most stunning surprise ending since Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent.


MetaGame ($2.99), by Sam Landstrom, has just been re-published by AmazonEncore. Unlike many of their new releases, this one is currently at a bargain price (often they come back in the $7.99 range).

Book Description
Speculative science fiction at its finest, MetaGame by Sam Landstrom is a ‘future gamers’ field guide and a philosophical cyberpunk adventure. In this original and disturbingly irreverent prospective world, gaming is more than a diversion—and gamers are, literally, in it for life. The OverSoul, an enigmatic, unifying force, offers winners points that add up to currency. Reigning champs are given the gift of immortality—while losers are condemned to aging and death. D_Light is one of the best players in his Family and will do anything to win, even if it means committing murder. When he’s invited to a MetaGame—an exclusive, high-stakes competition—he jumps at the chance. But after the first quest, D_Light’s overly ambitious ways brand him a renegade. With a warped sense of freewill that is needed to prevail, D_Light must either kill someone he’s grown to love—or lose everything.

Pretty Little Dead Things ($3.99), by Gary Mcmahon

Book Description
THOMAS USHER HAS A MOST TERRIBLE TALENT.

Following a car crash in which his wife and daughter are killed, he can see the recently departed, and it's not usually a pretty sight. When he is called to investigate the violent death of the daughter of a prominent local gangster, Usher's world is torn apart once more. For the barriers between this world and the next are not as immutable as once he believed.

Mashing together the grittiest British police procedural with dark supernatural terror, author Gary McMahon creates a refreshingly new take on horror fiction.


Amortals ($3.99), by Matt Forbeck

Book Description
THE VERY BEST PERSON TO CATCH YOUR KILLER…IS YOU.

Matt Forbeck arrives as the new king of high-concept - with a blockbuster action movie in a book. In the near future, scientists solve the problem of mortality by learning how to backup and restore a persons memories into a vat-bred clone. When Secret Service agent Ronan "Methusaleh" Dooley is brutally murdered, he's brought back from the dead one more time to hunt his killer, but this time those who wanted him dead are much closer to home.


A Bomb Built in Hell ($4.99), by Andrew Vachss, author of The Flood, which was briefly free at the end of 2008.

Book Description
Andrew Vachss' pre-Flood novel A Bomb Built in Hell was written in 1973. It was rejected by every publisher, one of whom described it as a "political horror story," others of whom berated it for its "lack of realism," including such things as Chinese youth gangs and the fall of Haiti. And the very idea of someone entering a high school with the intent of destroying every living person inside was just too ... ludicrous.

Readers of Vachss' Burke series will immediately recognize Wesley, the main character of A Bomb Built in Hell. This is his story.


Cypress Point ($4.68), by Diane Chamberlain, is being re-issued under the name The Shadow Wife at the end of the month (and as a trade paperback), but at least for now, you can get it under the previous title at a bargain price. The description reads romance, but the publisher has categorized it as suspense/thriller.

Book Description
It is not a love Joelle D'Angelo would ever have chosen. But it is one she can't deny.

Joelle D'Angelo's best friend, Mara, is left with brain damage after she suffers an aneurysm during the delivery of her son. Alone and grieving, Joelle turns to the only other person who understands her pain: Mara's husband, Liam. And what starts out as comfort between friends gradually becomes something more. Something undeniable. Now all Joelle needs is a miracle.

Torn by guilt and the impossibility of her feelings for Liam, Joelle seeks help from someone she's not even sure she believes in--a healer named Carlynn Kling Shire. Joelle sets out to find Carlynn, knowing that Mara needs something conventional medicine can't supply. And hoping that if Mara is well, Joelle's feelings for Liam will end.

Her search leads her to a mansion in Monterey, California, and into the life of a woman shrouded in mystery. And as Joelle is guided down an unfamiliar path by a woman who is clearly keeping her own secrets, she discovers that some love is doomed, while some love can survive anything.


Hopefully you kept reading until the end, as When Will There Be Good News? ($1.99), by Kate Atkinson, is the "stellar third novel to feature ex-cop turned PI Jackson Brodie" according Publisher's Weekly. All three have been discounted to $1.99 over the last couple of months and with this one, I now have all three (the other two have since returned to their pre-sale $9.99 prices).

Book Description
On a hot summer day, Joanna Mason's family slowly wanders home along a country lane. A moment later, Joanna's life is changed forever...

On a dark night thirty years later, ex-detective Jackson Brodie finds himself on a train that is both crowded and late. Lost in his thoughts, he suddenly hears a shocking sound...

At the end of a long day, 16-year-old Reggie is looking forward to watching a little TV. Then a terrifying noise shatters her peaceful evening. Luckily, Reggie makes it a point to be prepared for an emergency...

These three lives come together in unexpected and deeply thrilling ways in the latest novel from Kate Atkinson, the critically acclaimed author who Harlan Coben calls "an absolute must-read."