The Handmaid's Tale ($1.49), by Margaret Atwood, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day. This is a fairly new ASIN, as it looks like I have this one in my Kindle Library from a couple of years ago, but it doesn't show up on the product page for the new edition.Book Description
The Handmaid's Tale is not only a radical and brilliant departure for Margaret Atwood, it is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men of its population.
The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment's calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions. The Handmaid's Tale is funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing. It is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force. It is Margaret Atwood at her best.
Into Thin Air ($1.54 / £0.99 UK), the first in the Kurt Muller mystery series by Thomas Zigal, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $7.99).Book Description
Sheriff Kurt Muller, aging hippie, single father, and son of one of Aspen’s founders, finds himself confronted by more than the usual tensions between the chic international celebrity jet set and the local community fighting the resort’s enormous growth. A man is dead, his washed-out body found in the Roaring Fork with a bullet hole behind one ear. A woman is missing, her handbag still hidden under Kurt Muller’s Jeep seat. And the violence that is erupting around Aspen-—violence laced with kinky sex, international politics, and local power-—is leading Muller to the darkest truths a man can confront: about his past, about his family, and about another murder in the high Rocky Mountain air...
The Ghosts of Belfast (Jack Lennon Series #1) ($9.52 Kindle; $3.49 B&N), by Stuart Neville, is the Nook Daily Find; it's still full priced on Kindle.Book Description
Fegan has been a “hard man,” an IRA killer in northern Ireland. Now that peace has come, he is being haunted day and night by twelve ghosts: a mother and infant, a schoolboy, a butcher, an RUC constable, and seven other of his innocent victims. In order to appease them, he’s going to have to kill the men who gave him orders.
As he’s working his way down the list he encounters a woman who may offer him redemption; she has borne a child to an RUC officer and is an outsider too. Now he has given Fate—and his quarry—a hostage. Is this Fegan’s ultimate mistake?
Stuart Neville is a partner in a multimedia design business based in Armagh, northern Ireland. This novel, also known as The Twelve in the UK and Ireland, is the first in a series.
