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Friday, December 23, 2011

Today's Deals

Play the Puzzle contest at Kobo, daily thru Christmas!

If you are a gamer (or have one in the family), you should check out the Game Downloads Day over at Amazon - there are 48 Sega games for $7.50 and a bigger pack that includes everything in the sale, as well as individual games for as little $1.99 (the DLC's need the main game download first and are not stand-alone games).

If you are a music buff or want to give some music for a gift (which isn't possible with the games above), check out the 1,000 Albums for $5 each that Amazon has just put up. This special will run thru January, rather than the 100/$5 that they usually have. They are calling it the Fuel your Kindle Fire sale and I will say that playing music on the Kindle Fire works well, either on the Cloud or for items downloaded to play when offline. It's pretty easy to hook up to an external speaker (but I really wish they had included Bluetooth, so the wireless and portable speaker docks would work with it -- then you could listen on larger speakers while reading, while now you need to either use the internal speakers or a personal headset (in which case, it works best to hold the unit upside down, so the speaker wire feeds out of the top -- do the same when charging and you are less likely to damage the cable or connector). There are also a number of single songs marked down to 49 cents, I suspect in reaction to the big sale at Google Music; the best way to find them, I've found, is to look at the MP3 Bestsellers page.

Additional formats on free books (the first ones are now available for Kindle US):
Today is the last day to take advantage of these KSO deals:

"The Dead Man" Books 1-5 ($0.99 each), by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day. This is a series I've been lucky enough to get as review copies; for those of you that haven't snagged copies on various giveaways or sales earlier, this is a good time to get caught up, with only the last title at it's full price of $2.99 (Kill Them All). Each title in the series has a different primary author, but the team of Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin runs thru them all and these two set the theme/story line for each title, running the series much in the same way as a television show. The concept seems to work, with great reviews on each title and high sales rankings (right now, the series fill the first five slots in the Horror/Dark Fantasy category).
  1. Face Of Evil - Matt Cahill is a widower leading a quiet, solitary life...cutting wood at a lumber mill in the Pacific Northwest, watching out for his trouble-prone friend Andy, and making his first, tentative attempt at a new romance with Rachel, a co-worker. But a trip with Rachel to a ski resort goes tragically wrong... and he is killed in an avalanche. That should be the end of his story. But for Matt, it's only the beginning, the first step in a horrifying odyssey across a dark world that exists within our own...and where he must confront a violent, supernatural entity that spreads evil among us like a plague...
  2. Ring of Knives - Matt believes an institutionalized madman may hold the secret to defeating Mr. Dark, the horrific jester with the rotting touch who has tormented him ever since his miraculous resurrection. So he infiltrates a lunatic asylum, where is swept up in a spiral of bloodshed and insanity, all stoked by supernatural forces that he's never faced before....and that might just drive him to madness. His only chance of escaping with his life and sanity intact is to face the unspeakable terror that awaits him deep in the asylum's fog-shrouded woods...and within the Ring of Knives.
  3. Hell In Heaven - The sign on the exit reads "Heaven." What better place could there be for a dead man to visit? But when Matt takes the ramp, he finds a banner welcoming him by name to a tiny town that has seemingly been left behind by the 21st century...and is in the grip of an unspeakable horror. Cast as an unwilling savior, Matt comes to their rescue, but soon discovers that evil has more lethal forms than he ever imagined...and that they can't all be defeated with courage and an expertly-wielded ax.
  4. The Dead Woman - Matt thought he was alone with his torment, that he was the only one who could see the evil in people’s souls as rotting flesh. But in a small town in Tennessee, terrorized by a vicious serial killer, Matt meets a woman who may see the same dark world that what he does…and who may be able to reveal the secrets behind to his mysterious rebirth. But Mr. Dark, the depraved, immortal enemy that Matt has chased across the country, is here too and determined to stop him before he can find what he seeks.
  5. The Blood Mesa - Matt signs on as a laborer for a group of archeologists and graduate students unearthing Native American ruins in a desolate corner of New Mexico. But the dig atop a blood-red mesa uncovers more than artifacts, awakening an ancient evil with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Now Matt, armed only with his trusty ax, must protect a handful of terrified innocents from imminent slaughter...and battle a horror so powerful, it once wiped out an entire civilization... and could do it again.

Sex and Stravinsky ($1.54 / £0.99 UK), by Barbara Trapido, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).
Book Description
The time is 1995, but everybody is linked by their past. Brilliant Australian Caroline can command everyone except her own ghoulish mother, which means that things aren't easy for Josh and Zoe, her husband and twelve-year-old daughter. Josh has bizarre origins in a South African mining town, but now teaches mime in Bristol. Zoe reads girls' ballet books and longs for ballet lessons; a thing denied her until, on a school French exchange, she meets a runaway boy in a woodland hut. Meanwhile, on the east coast of Africa, Hattie Thomas, Josh's first love, has taken to writing girls' ballet books from the turret of her fabulous house - that's when she can carve out the space between the forceful presence of Herman and her crosspatch daughter Cat who, after some illicit snooping, is secretly planning a make-or-break essay on mask dancers in Mali. Hattie wakes from a dream of Stravinsky's Pulcinella and asks herself about the composer, 'Do his glasses look sexy?' His glasses are just like Josh's glasses from two decades earlier. From far and wide, they are all drawn together; drawn to Jack's place. Or is he Jacques? Or Giacomo? Beautiful, mysterious Jack, the one-time backyard housemaid's child who, having journeyed via Mozambique and Senegal to Milan, is back exactly where he started - only not for long. In its mix of people from different spheres, the book throws up the complexity, cruelty and richness of the global world while, as a sequence of personal stories, it comes together like a dance; a masquerade in which things are not always what they seem.

Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words ($2.69 Kindle; $2.99 B&N), by Albert Einstein, is the Nook Daily Find, better than price matched on Kindle. This one was actually free on Kindle, very briefly, last August.
Book Description
An inspiring collection of essays, in which Albert Einstein addresses the topics that fascinated him as a scientist, philosopher, and humanitarian

Divided by subject matter—“Science,” “Convictions and Beliefs,” “Public Affairs,” etc.—these essays consider everything from the need for a “supranational” governing body to control war in the atomic age, to freedom in research and education, to Jewish history and Zionism, to explanations of the physics and scientific thought that brought him world recognition. Throughout, Einstein’s clear, eloquent voice presents an idealist’s vision and relays complex theories to the layperson.

Einstein’s essays share his philosophical beliefs, scientific reasoning, and hopes for a brighter future, and show how one of the greatest minds of all time fully engaged with the changing world around him.

This authorized Philosophical Library ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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