Free on Kindle as a pre-order,
Between the Panels is now also free from B&N and Sony, while
Prevention Healthy Favorites: Chicken is now free on Kindle.
October Fest (
$1.99), the sixth in the
Murder-By-Month Mysteries series by Jess Lourey, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day.
June Bug was free back in June and I've picked up one more during a sale, so I'll probably get this light murder mystery and keep working on filling in the series.
Book Description
Beer and polka music reign supreme at Octoberfest, Battle Lake's premier fall festival. To kick off the celebrations, the town hosts a public debate between the two congressional candidates: straight-laced Arnold Swydecker, and slippery incumbent, Sarah Glokkmann. As a reporter for the Battle Lake Recall, Mira James is roped into writing up the word war. But the festive mood sours when a well-known Glokkmann-bashing blogger is found dead . . . and the congresswoman herself meets a gruesome fate.
To keep the heat off her best friend's fiancé—an ex-con reporter—Mira wades through the candidates' dirty laundry, their unsavory secrets, and some murderous mudslinging to expose the killer.
Sweet Talk (
$2.16 Kindle,
B&N), the first title in the
Bakery Sisters series by Susan Mallery, is the Nook Daily Find and price matched at Amazon. Checking my library, it appears I already have this one and the next in the series,
Sweet Spot.
Book Description
Is there anything sweeter than first love?
Don't ask Claire Keyes. The twenty-eight-year-old piano prodigy has never had a regular boyfriend, much less a real romance. Her music career has left little room for friends or family--which is just part of the reason she hasn't seen the family bakery or her two sisters in years.
But now Nicole is sick, and Jesse is AWOL. Despite the fact that Claire can't boil water, she's determined to play caretaker. Connecting with her sisters tops her to-do list...along with falling in love, or at least in lust, for the first time.
Ruggedly sexy Wyatt just might fit the bill. Although he keeps saying that he and Claire come from entirely different worlds, he lights up hotter than a bakery oven whenever Claire is near. If this keeps up, she just might sweet--talk him into her bed...and her life.
Lipstick Jungle (
$2.99), by Candace Bushnell
Book Description
In her fourth book, LIPSTICK JUNGLE, best-selling author Candace Bushnell re-creates a real-life world as compelling and fascinating as Sex and the City. In LIPSTICK JUNGLE, high fashion meets the powerful women who actually wear it.
Victory Ford -- single, beautiful, creative and unconventional -- has worked for years to create her own independent fashion house. But when her company goes into a tailspin, Victory falls into the arms of the ruthless cosmetics baron, Lyne Bennett. As she struggles to keep her company afloat, she learns crucial lessons about what she really wants from a relationship.
One of the most powerful women in publishing, Nico O'Neilly seems to have it all -- a stellar career, a well-respected husband, and an eight-year-old daughter whom she adores. But at forty-three, Nico finds that this isn't enough. Her secret ambition is to become the first female CEO of Splatch-Verner (the multimedia company that owns her magazine), but if she's going to achieve her goal, she needs to start acting now.
Wendy Healy, President of Parador Pictures, has chutzpah to spare. It’s propelled her to the very top of the cutthroat movie business, yet as she tries to bring her most important movie to the screen, her drive is not enough to save her. Selden Rose, the president of MovieTime, is secretly lobbying to oust Wendy and take over Parador; meanwhile, her twelve-year-marriage to her metrosexual househusband is falling apart. One has to go--and in a series of unconventional plot twists, Wendy finds a startling answer.
Following these determined but likeable leading ladies through the ups and downs of their careers, their marriages and their affairs, Candace Bushnell shows us how three strong women stay at the top of their fields in the toughest town in the world.
The second and third in Kat Martin's
Raines of Wind Canyon series,
Against the Fire and
Against the Law, are marked down to $4.99. Several of
her other titles are also under $5, while the first in this series,
Against the Wind, is $5.24 and a new title,
Against the Storm, will be released later this month.
Against the Fire
At thirty-two Dev is "mostly retired" from Raines Investigations, content to run operations from his sprawling Arizona home. But Dev has never been able to say no to a beautiful woman, so when Lark Delaney comes to him for help, the former U.S. Army Ranger from Wind Canyon gets back in the game.
Lark is sexy, successful and dedicated to tracking down the baby girl her sister gave up for adoption. It should be a straightforward case, but it's not long before Dev uncovers a shady adoption ring and worse—the child's parents have been murdered and the little girl has been taken.
As the case grows dangerous and Lark needs him more than ever, Dev can't ignore his growing attraction for her. He also can't trust his judgment with women or the emotions he's long-since buried. But there's a chance, if he gets this right and saves Lark's niece, that he'll end up saving himself, too.
Against the Law
You can't fight what you can't see. And Gabriel Raines can't be sure just who's setting the fires in his new real-estate development. When two fires hit back-to-back, he knows it's personal, but any number of competitors or ex-employees could be the arsonist.
The police suspect Angel Ramirez, a local teen who's been in trouble before. But Mattie Baker, a volunteer at the Family Abuse center, just can't believe the kid she's been working with would go back to his delinquent ways.
Determined to convince Gabe that she's right, Mattie must get close to him and find out who's putting their neighborhood in jeopardy. And just as the arsonist's flames continue to burn, they find a heat developing between them. It might just turn into a full-fledged fire…if they can survive long enough.
You can get Daniel Woodrell's
The Bayou Trilogy in a single volume for $9.99. The individual titles are not available separately on Kindle and have mostly been out of print for some time.
Book Description
A hard-hitting, critically acclaimed trilogy of crime novels from an author about whom New York magazine has written, "What people say about Cormac McCarthy ... goes double for [Woodrell]. Possibly more."
In the parish of St. Bruno, sex is easy, corruption festers, and double-dealing is a way of life. Rene Shade is an uncompromising detective swimming in a sea of filth.
As Shade takes on hit men, porn kings, a gang of ex-cons, and the ghosts of his own checkered past, Woodrell's three seminal novels pit long-entrenched criminals against the hard line of the law, brother against brother, and two vastly different sons against a long-absent father.
THE BAYOU TRILOGY highlights the origins of a one-of-a-kind author, a writer who for over two decades has created an indelible representation of the shadows of the rural American experience and has steadily built a devoted following among crime fiction aficionados and esteemed literary critics alike.
What You Have Left (
$7.19), by James Sallis, gets you all three titles in
The Turner Trilogy at one very low price. If you already have any title in the series, then Walker Books is making it easy on you, as you can also get any individual title for $2.51 right now.
Book Description
Over the past five years, James Sallis has created three of the most acclaimed mysteries published in America, each of them featuring the complex John Turner--former cop, therapist, and an ex-con, trying to escape his past, yet ever involved in the small community somewhere near Memphis where he has sought refuge. The Turner Trilogy--concise, elegiac, memorable--collects these three classics in one volume.
Cypress Grove (2003)
As he has shown so often in previous novels, James Sallis is one of our great stylists and storytellers, whose deep interest in human nature is expressed in the powerful stories of men too often at odds with themselves as well as the world around them. His new novel, Cypress Grove, continues in that highly praised tradition.
The small town where Turner has moved is one of America's lost places, halfway between Memphis and forever. That makes it a perfect hideaway: a place where a man can bury the past and escape the pain of human contact, where you are left alone unless you want company, where conversation only happens when there's something to say, where you can sit and watch an owl fly silently across the face of the moon. And where Turner hopes to forget that he has been a cop, a psychotherapist, and, always, an ex-con.
There is no major crime to speak of until Sheriff Lonnie Bates arrives on Turner's porch with a bottle of Wild Turkey and a problem: The body of a drifter has been found-brutally and ritualistically- murdered and Bates and his deputy need help from someone with big-city experience who appreciates the delicacy of investigating people in a small town. Thrust back into the middle of what he left behind, Turner slowly becomes reacquainted not only with the darkness he had fled, but with the unsuspected kindness of others.
Brilliantly balancing Turner's past and present lives, Cypress Grove is lyrical, moving, and filled with the sense of place and character that only our finest writers can achieve. It is proof positive that the acclaim James Sallis has enjoyed for years is richly deserved.
Cripple Creek (2005)
As this tale opens, Turner, ex-cop, ex-con, and ex-psychotherapist, remains on the lam in rural Cypress Grove, Tennessee, escaping the demons of past lives in Memphis, but he is starting to mend. There's a developing relationship with Val Bjorn, teacher and country musician; there's the appearance of his daughter from Seattle; and there's the fact that he has come out of hibernation to accept the job as deputy sheriff of Cypress Grove. Then his boss, the kindly sheriff, is assaulted by a gang of mobbed-up toughs in the act of breaking one of their own out of the small-town jail. Turner pursues the thugs to Memphis, confronting his past and giving vent to his suppressed blood lust. Every action prompts a reaction, however, and soon the thugs return to Cypress Grove looking for some blood of their own. Sallis tells the violent tale quietly, effectively using jump cuts, flashbacks, and flashforwards to generate both suspense and, simultaneously, a sense of inevitability.
Salt River (2007)
As Salt River begins, two years have passed since Turner's amour, Val Bjorn, was shot as they sat together on the porch of his cabin. Sometimes you just have to see how much music you can make with what you have left, Val had told him, a mantra for picking up the pieces around her death, not sure how much he or the town has left. Then the sheriff's long-lost son comes plowing down Main Street into City Hall in what appears to be a stolen car. And waiting at Turner's cabin is his good friend, Eldon Brown, Val's banjo on the back of his motorcycle so that it looks as though he has two heads. "They think I killed someone," he says. Turner asks: "Did you?" And Eldon responds: "I don't know." Haunted by his own ghosts, Turner nonetheless goes in search of a truth he's not sure he can live with.
If you missed
Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission (
$4.99), by Andrew Kessler, the last time it was on sale, now is your chance to read a great behind-the-scenes account of the Phoenix Mission.
Book Description
Spend a summer exploring the Martian arctic—something that has taken nearly the entirety of human knowledge to achieve
There’s never been a better time to be an armchair astronaut. Forget this planet. The economy is terrible, global warming inevitable, and there are at least eight major wars happening right now. That’s why Kessler left home and moved to Mars. Well, not all the way to Mars. The closest spot on Earth you can get without a rocket. In the summer of 2008, he lived a space dream, spending three months in mission control of The Phoenix expedition with 130 top NASA scientists and engineers as they explored Mars. This story is a human drama about modern-day Magellans battling NASA politics—you haven’t lived until you’ve seen this miracle of birth from the inside—and the bizarre world of daily life in mission control. Kessler was the first outsider ever granted unfettered access to such an event, giving us a true Mars exclusive.
The Phoenix Mars mission was the first man-made probe ever sent to the Martian arctic. They planned to find out how climate change can turn a warm wet planet (read: Earth) into a cold barren desert (read: Mars). That might seem like a trivial pursuit, but it’s probably the most impressive feat we humans can achieve. It takes nearly the entirety of human knowledge to do it. This is only the sixth landing on Mars. Along the way, Phoenix discovered a giant frozen ocean trapped beneath the north pole of Mars, exotic food for aliens and liquid water. This is not science fiction. It’s fact. Not bad for a summer holiday.
The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War (
$3.90), by Norman Stone (winner of the Wolfson Prize for
The Eastern Front 1914-1917)
Book Description
After World War II, the former allies were saddled with a devastated world economy and traumatized populace. Soviet influence spread insidiously from nation to nation, and the Atlantic powers—the Americans, the British, and a small band of allies—were caught flat-footed by the coups, collapsing armies, and civil wars that sprung from all sides. The Cold War had begun in earnest.
In The Atlantic and Its Enemies, prize-winning historian Norman Stone assesses the years between World War II and the collapse of the Iron Curtain. He vividly demonstrates that for every Atlantic success there seemed to be a dozen Communist or Third World triumphs. Then, suddenly and against all odds, the Atlantic won—economically, ideologically, and militarily—with astonishing speed and finality.
An elegant and path-breaking history, The Atlantic and Its Enemies is a monument to the immense suffering and conflict of the twentieth century, and an illuminating exploration of how the Atlantic triumphed over its enemies at last.
The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club (
$2.99), by Gil McNeil
Book Description
For every woman who has ever dreamed of starting over, or being a better mother, or just knitting a really nice scarf . . .
When her husband dies in a car crash--not long after announcing he wants a divorce--Jo Mackenzie packs up her two rowdy boys and moves from London to a dilapidated villa in her seaside hometown. There, she takes over her beloved Gran's knitting shop--a quaint but out-of-date store in desperate need of a facelift. After a rough beginning, Jo soon finds comfort in a "Stitch and Bitch" group; a collection of quirky, lively women who share their stories, and their addiction to cake, with warmth and humor.
As Jo starts to get the hang of single-parent life in a small town, she relies on her knitting group for support. The women meet every week at the shop on Beach Street and trade gossip and advice as freely as they do a new stitch. But when a new man enters Jo's life, and an A-list actress moves into the local mansion, the knitting club has even more trouble confining the conversation to knit one, purl two.
The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club is an uplifting, winning tale about the healing power of friendship and new beginnings. It's a charming novel that will delight all passionate knitters--and win over befuddled, would-be knitters, too.
The Finkler Question (
$2.99), by Howard Jacobson, won the Man Booker Prize in 2010.
Book Description
"He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one…"
Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular and disappointed BBC worker, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czechoslovakian always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results.
Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor's grand, central London apartment.
It's a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you had less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends' losses.
And it's that very evening, at exactly 11:30pm, as Treslove hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country as he walks home, that he is attacked. After this, his whole sense of who and what he is will slowly and ineluctably change.
The Finkler Question is a scorching story of exclusion and belonging, justice and love, ageing, wisdom and humanity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.
Awakening and
Believing (
$4.79 each) are the first and second in the (young adult)
Lily Dale series by Wendy Corsi Staub. You may be more familiar with her adult suspense titles, such as
Live to Tell, which is currently discounted to 99 cents.
Awakening
Calla thought that her boyfriend breaking up with her in a text message was the worst thing that could ever happen to her. But just two weeks later, her mother died in a freak accident, and life as she knew it was completely over. With her father heading to California for a new job, they decide that Calla should spend a few weeks with the grandmother she barely knows while he gets them set up.
To Calla's shock, her mother's hometown of Lily Dale is a town full of psychics-including her grandmother. Suddenly, the fact that her mother never talked about her past takes on more mysterious overtones. The longer she stays in town, the stranger things become, as Calla starts to experience unusual and unsettling events that lead her to wonder whether she has inherited her grandmother's unique gift. Is it this gift that is making her suspect that her mother's death was more than an accident, or is it just an overactive imagination? Staying in Lily Dale is the only way to uncover the truth. But will Calla be able to deal with what she learns about her mother's past and her own future?
Believing
After spending the summer in Lily Dale, Calla has decided to stay for a few more months, and will soon be starting school at Lily Dale High. She's finally getting used to her new home and her newly realized gift. But lately, the visions occur much more frequently and have a greater sense of urgency. There may be someone who needs her help but there might also be a killer on the loose. Now that Calla believes in her own ability, can she learn to use it properly? And will she be able to learn more about her mother's mysterious death without putting herself in serious danger?
Talli Roland's
The Hating Game (shortlisted for Romance Reader Awards!) and
Watching Willow Watts, both from small UK publisher Prospera, are marked down to 99 cents each.
The Hating Game
When Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she's confident she'll sail through to the end without letting down the perma-guard she's perfected from years of her love 'em and leave 'em dating strategy.
After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £200,000 prize? Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it's revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes.
Can Mattie confront her past to get the prize money she so desperately needs, or will her exes finally wreak their long-awaited revenge? And what about the ambitious TV producer whose career depends on stopping her from making it to the end?
Watching Willow Watts
For Willow Watts, life has settled into a predictably dull routine: days behind the counter at her father's antique shop and nights watching TV, as the pension-aged residents of Britain's Ugliest Village bed down for yet another early night. But everything changes when a YouTube video of Willow's epically embarrassing Marilyn Monroe impersonation gets millions of hits after a viewer spots Marilyn's ghostly image in a frame.
Instantly, Willow's town is overrun with fans flocking to see the 'new Marilyn'. Egged on by the villagers -- whose shops and businesses are cashing in -- Willow embraces her new identity, dying her hair platinum and ramming herself full of cakes to achieve Marilyn's legendary curves.
But when a former flame returns seeking the old Willow, Willow must decide: can she risk her stardom and her village's newfound fortune on love, or is being Marilyn her ticket to happiness?
Shopgirl (
$2.51), by Steve Martin
Book Description
One of our country's most acclaimed and beloved entertainers, Steve Martin has written a novella that is unexpectedly perceptive about relationships and life. Martin is profoundly wise when it comes to the inner workings of the human heart.
Mirabelle is the "shopgirl" of the title, a young woman, beautiful in a wallflowerish kind of way, who works behind the glove counter at Neiman Marcus "selling things that nobody buys anymore..."
Slightly lost, slightly off-kilter, very shy, Mirabelle charms because of all that she is not: not glamorous, not aggressive, not self-aggrandizing. Still there is something about her that is irresistible.
Mirabelle captures the attention of Ray Porter, a wealthy businessman almost twice her age. As they tentatively embark on a relationship, they both struggle to decipher the language of love -- with consequences that are both comic and heartbreaking. Filled with the kind of witty, discerning observations that have brought Steve Martin critical success, Shopgirl is a work of disarming tenderness.
