Today's free app is a matching game, for those that are looking for a bit of brain exercise. If you are more interested in brain candy, the Angry Birds creators have a new one for us: Amazing Alex, which also comes in a Premium and Kindle Fire edition, which also let you create your own levels. For those who prefer to get them from Google, they also have a similar set of choices (but the Amazon editions work on most other tablets, while the Google apps are a bit harder to move to the Kindle Fire, sometimes), although their HD edition doesn't run on my Asus tablet (but will on my phone, where it is a complete waste).
Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Rosemary's Baby ($1.99), by Ira Levin. This is one of the review copies that Open Road has been kind enough to let me have (although I'm pretty sure my purchases have surpassed the freebies, by far).Book Description
The classic novel of spellbinding suspense, where evil wears the most innocent face of all
Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor husband Guy move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and mostly elderly residents. Neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet soon come nosing around to welcome the Woodhouses to the building, and despite Rosemary’s reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises that she keeps hearing her husband takes a special shine to them.
Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Rosemary becomes pregnant, and the Castavets start taking a special interest in her welfare. As the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castevets’ circle is not what it seems…
At the Sign of the Sugared Plum ($1.53 / £0.99 UK), the first title in the YA series by Mary Hooper, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK. It's $5.39 in the US edition, but some of you probably grabbed in in February, when it was the US Kindle Deal of the Day.. Those in the US can also get a good deal on the next in the series, Petals in the Ashes, currently marked down to $3.99, and on the standalone novel Fallen Grace, currently $1.24 (also on sale for Canada). And for those north of the border, you also get a deal on The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose, on sale for $3.67. Sure seems like Bloomsbury's prices are all over the place in various countries!And everyone should be able to pick up a free one I turned up looking at the author's catalog: Nelson's Home Comforts Thirteenth Edition, written by an entirely different Mary Hooper in the late 1800's. For those who hate advertising in their books, skip this one, as it was sponsored by Nelson Specialties, purveyors of a number of "processed" foods, such as extracts (vanilla, meat), licorice lozenges, gelatin, etc, although I think one can make a number of the recipes without their particular wares. This was a huge bestseller of the times, with this particular edition having a print run of 500,000 copies.
Book Description
‘You be going to live in the city, Hannah?' Farmer Price asked, pushing his battered hat up over his forehead. ‘Wouldn''t think you'd want to go there . . . Times like this, I would have thought your sister would try and keep you away.' Hannah is oblivious to Farmer Price's dark words, excited as she is about her first ever trip to London to help her sister in her shop ‘The Sugared Plum', making sweetmeats for the gentry. Hannah does not however get the reception she expected from her sister Sarah. Instead of giving Hannah a hearty welcome, Sarah is horrified that Hannah did not get her message to stay away - the Plague is taking hold of London.
Based on much research, Mary Hooper tellingly conveys how the atmosphere in London changes from a disbelief that the Plague is anything serious, to the full-blown horror of the death carts and being locked up - in effect to die - if your house is suspected of infection.
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), by Sam Kean, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.Book Description
The Periodic Table is one of man's crowning scientific achievements. But it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.
We learn that Marie Curie used to provoke jealousy in colleagues' wives when she'd invite them into closets to see her glow-in-the-dark experiments. And that Lewis and Clark swallowed mercury capsules across the country and their campsites are still detectable by the poison in the ground. Why did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? And why did tellurium lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?
From the Big Bang to the end of time, it's all in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON.
The Problem Child ($5.21 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), the third in the Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley, is the Nook Daily Find for Families, price matched on Kindle.Book Description
In book three of the series, Sabrina and Daphne Grimm tackle their most important mystery: Who kidnapped their parents more than a year ago? Sabrina enters the hideout of the Scarlet Hand, the sinister group of Everafters who are keeping her parents prisoner. She has a chance to rescue her mom and dad but is foiled by the most famous fairy-tale character in the world. With the help of her little sister (who might be tougher than Sabrina realizes) and a long-lost relative, Sabrina finds a powerful weapon for fighting her enemies, and discovers that magic has a high price.
