Amazon and BooksonBoard have started discounting some HarperCollins imprints this week and all the Agency pricing should be gone in a week, except for the two holdouts on the settlement (Penguin, alas, is one of them; they are also the ones holding out their titles from libraries). To celebrate, BooksonBoard claims they have a 24% discount on all Harpercollins titles this week; you still don't get rewards for their titles, but it is a start. Since Amazon's discounts aren't for all the imprints, yet (some titles still have a 'price set by publisher' that I checked), BoB's prices were than Amazon's on every title I checked. Their books are not Kindle compatible (the Kindle links there just lead back to Amazon), but for those with an EPUB ereader from B&N, Sony, Kobo, etc, it's a pretty good sale. If you are new to the company and want a referral email, drop me a comment with your name and email and I'll get one out to you.
Today's Kindle Daily Deal is the bestselling epic Winter's Tale ($1.99), by Mark Helprin.Book Description
New York City is subsumed in arctic winds, dark nights, and white lights, its life unfolds, for it is an extraordinary hive of the imagination, the greatest house ever built, and nothing exists that can check its vitality. One night in winter, Peter Lake--orphan and master-mechanic, attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side.
Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the love between Peter Lake, a middle-aged Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young girl, who is dying.
Peter Lake, a simple, uneducated man, because of a love that, at first he does not fully understand, is driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and beseiged by unprecedented winters, is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature.
The Wife Who Ran Away ($1.58 / £0.99 UK), by Tess Stimson, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).Book Description
Kate Forrest is invisible… Ned, the husband she adores, doesn’t seem to know she’s alive, and her two charming children have grown into stroppy adolescents. Her boss is suddenly shunting her towards career Siberia, and her demanding mother is never off the phone. With her fortieth birthday fast approaching, all Kate wants to do is run away from the lot of them. And so she does. On impulse, Kate walks out of her job, her family and her life, and gets on a plane to Italy. With no ties and no responsibilities, she soon finds herself deliriously caught up in La Dolce Vita – and the arms of a man barely half her age. But when the unthinkable threatens her family, Kate is brutally forced to choose between her past and the future.
The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), by Gretchen Rubin, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.Book Description
Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.
In this lively and compelling account of that year, Rubin carves out her place alongside the authors of bestselling memoirs such as Julie and Julia, The Year of Living Biblically, and Eat, Pray, Love. With humor and insight, she chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier.
Rubin didn't have the option to uproot herself, nor did she really want to; instead she focused on improving her life as it was. Each month she tackled a new set of resolutions: give proofs of love, ask for help, find more fun, keep a gratitude notebook, forget about results. She immersed herself in principles set forth by all manner of experts, from Epicurus to Thoreau to Oprah to Martin Seligman to the Dalai Lama to see what worked for her—and what didn't.
Her conclusions are sometimes surprising—she finds that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that "treating" yourself can make you feel worse; that venting bad feelings doesn't relieve them; that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference—and they range from the practical to the profound.
Written with charm and wit, The Happiness Project is illuminating yet entertaining, thought-provoking yet compulsively readable. Gretchen Rubin's passion for her subject jumps off the page, and reading just a few chapters of this book will inspire you to start your own happiness project.
The Command: Deep Inside the President's Secret Army ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Marc Ambinder and D. B. Grady, is the Nook Daily Find for Families, price matched on Kindle.Book Description
The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has proven to be the most lethal weapon in the president's arsenal. Shrouded in secrecy, the Command has done more to degrade the capacity of terrorists to attack the United States than any other single entity. And counter-terrorism is only one of its many missions. Because of such high profile missions as Operation Neptune's Spear, which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, JSOC has attracted the public's attention. But Americans only know a fraction of the real story.
In The Command, Ambinder and Grady provide readers with a concise and comprehensive recent history of the special missions units that comprise the most effective weapon against terrorism ever conceived. For the first time, they reveal JSOC's organizational chart and describe some of the secret technologies and methods that catalyze their intelligence and kinetic activities. They describe how JSOC migrated to the center of U.S. military operations, and how they fused intelligence and operations in such a way that proved crucial to beating back the Iraq insurgency. They also disclose previously unreported instances where JSOC's activities may have skirted the law, and question the ability of Congress to oversee units that, by design, must operate with minimum interference.
With unprecedented access to senior commanders and team leaders, the authors also:
- Put the bin Laden raid in the larger context of a transformed secret organization at its operational best.
- Explore other secret missions ordered by the president (and the surprising countries in which JSOC operates).
- Trace the growth of JSOC's operational and support branches and chronicle the command's mastery of the Washington inter-agency bureaucracy.
- By Marc Ambinder, a contributing editor at the Atlantic, who has has covered politics for CBS News and ABC News, and D.B. Grady, a correspondent for the Atlantic, and former U.S. Army paratrooper and a veteran of Afghanistan.
Today's Kindle Young Adult Daily Deal is Catcher, Caught ($1.99), by Sarah Collins Honenberger.Book Description
After an earth-shattering diagnosis of leukemia, 15-year-old Daniel Landon sees a reflection of himself in the words of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Inspired by Holden Caulfield, Daniel begins to question the intentions and authority of those around him in his own search for identity as he faces death. Tired of his cramped surroundings and hippie parents’ alternative approaches to his treatment, he follows the footsteps of Caulfield to New York City in search of the same eternal truths, only to discover the importance of home when death looms. A coming of age story, a love story, and a new classic, Catcher, Caught will engage the imagination of more than one generation, searching for lasting values.
