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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Today's Deals

Today's free Android App is It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and it looks like it should be a good one for anyone with kids (or who grew up during or after the 70's and still watches for the Great Pumpkin!).

For those with little ones, Outback Steakhouse is giving away dinner for the kids (with adult entrees) tonight, plus if you find the "surprise" entry in the drink menu, you get a certificate for a free steak dinner, on a return trip, if you show it to the waiter!

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is supposed to be All Cry Chaos ($1.99), the first title in Leonard Rosen's Henri Poincaré series. but the price hasn't dropped. Definitely worth a call to customer support to assist in buying it (or getting them to jostle the pricing computers), since it's regular price is $11.99. For those who prefer audio, the companion audiobook on this one is only $4.99. Update: Wow, that was fast - I reported the issue to Amazon via email and they fixed it while I finished writing this post. The price is now corrected to $1.99!
Book Description
All Cry Chaos, a debut thriller by the immensely gifted Leonard Rosen, is a masterful and gripping tale that literally reaches for the heavens.

The action begins when mathematician James Fenster is assassinated on the eve of a long-scheduled speech at a World Trade Organization meeting. The hit is as elegant as it is bizarre. Fenster's Amsterdam hotel room is incinerated, yet the rest of the building remains intact. The murder trail leads veteran Interpol agent Henri Poincaré on a high- stakes, world-crossing quest for answers.

Together with his chain-smoking, bon vivant colleague Serge Laurent, Poincaré pursues a long list of suspects: the Peruvian leader of the Indigenous Liberation Front, Rapture-crazed militants, a hedge fund director, Fenster's elusive ex-fiancée, and a graduate student in mathematics. Poincaré begins to make progress in America, but there is a prodigious hatred trained on him—some unfinished business from a terrifying former genocide case—and he is called back to Europe to face the unfathomable. Stripped down and in despair, tested like Job, he realizes the two cases might be connected—and he might be the link.

This first installment in the Henri Poincaré series marries a sharp, smart mystery to deep religious themes that will keep both agnostics and believers turning pages until the shattering, revelatory end. Anyone who enjoys the work of John Le Carré, Scott Turow, Dan Brown, and Stieg Larsson will relish Rosen's story telling and his resourceful, haunted protagonist. Others will appreciate his dazzling prose. Still others, the way he bends the thriller form in unconventional ways toward a higher cause, in the vein of Henning Mankell in The Man From Beijing. In short, All Cry Chaos promises to become a critical success that garners a broad readership throughout the nation and across the globe.

Granta 117: Horror (Granta: The Magazine of New Writing) ($2.08 / £1.29 UK), by John Freeman, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $1.24!).
Book Description
The Horror issue features original cover artwork by Jake and Dinos Chapman and a line-up of contributors that includes some of the greatest names in contemporary fiction.Stephen King tells the story of a retired judge with a deadly secret. Don DeLillo imagines a moviegoer-turned-stalker and Paul Auster writes of his mother's death. Rajesh Parameswaran dips into the mind of a tiger who escapes from a zoo and terrorizes a neighbourhood. Will Self writes of his blood disease and Daniel Alarcon explores the phenomenon of staged, high-camp blood baths. Mark Doty ruminates on a close encounter between Walt Whitman and Bram Stoker. CONTRIBUTORS: Daniel Alarcon, Paul Auster, Tom Bamforth, Roberto Bolano, Don DeLillo, Mark Doty, Sarah Hall, Stephen King, Kanitta Meechubot (artist), Julie Ostuka, D.A. Powell (poem), Rajesh Parameswaran, Santiago Roncagliolo, Will Self, Joy Williams.

Those Who Hunt the Night ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), the first title in the James Asher series by Barbara Hambly (and also published under the title Immortal Blood), is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. An Open Road reprint edition, I would have grabbed this one, if I hadn't already bought it last year.
Book Description
The vampires had been living in London since the time of Elizabeth I, but now they were being ruthlessly murdered by someone who ripped their coffins open for the light of day to burn them to ashes. No vampire could endure the daylight to destroy the murderer. They had to turn to a mortal human for aid.

Thus it was that Professor James Asher, one-time spy, returned home to find his young wife in a strange coma and Simon Ysidro, oldest of the London vampires, waiting for him. Ysidro, although polite, left no doubt of his power to locate his spell on the young woman, wherever she might flee. Asher must agree to find the destroyer of the vampires for them.

But if he found the killer, what must happen to them? What would inevitably be the fate of any mortal human who learned the identities and locations of the vampires? The answer was all too obvious. Whether he succeeded or failed, it seemed that Professor James Asher was doomed!

Someone is killing the vampires of London and Professor James Asher has to find the killer. With his wife a hostage, what would happen if he actually found the killer? Would his fate be doomed by knowing the locations and identities of the vampires? This is a mystery, a history, a fantasy, and a fantastic vampire novel for readers to sink their teeth into.

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase to Catch Lincoln's Killer ($9.78 Kindle, $2.99 B&N), by James L. Swanson, is the Nook Daily Find: Election 2012.
Book Description
The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness.

James L. Swanson's Manhunt is a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you've never read it before.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Ghost of Crutchfield ($1.99), by Mary Downing Hahn.
Book Description
When twelve-year-old Florence boards the crowded horse-drawn coach in London, she looks forward to a new life with her great uncle and aunt at Crutchfield Hall, an old manor house in the English countryside. Anything will be better, she thinks, than the grim London orphanage where she has lived since her parents' death.

But Florence doesn't expect the ghost of her cousin Sophia, who haunts the cavernous rooms and dimly lit hallways of Crutchfield and concocts a plan to use Florence to help her achieve her murderous goals. Will Florence be able to convince the others in the household of the imminent danger and stop Sophia before it's too late?

Grade Level: 4 and up