Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter ($1.99), by Tom Franklin.Book Description
Tom Franklin's extraordinary talent has been hailed by the leading lights of contemporary literature—Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Lee Smith, and Dennis Lehane. Reviewers have called his fiction "ingenious" (USA Today) and "compulsively readable" (Memphis Commercial Appeal). His narrative power and flair for character-ization have been compared to the likes of Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor, Elmore Leonard, and Cormac McCarthy.
Now the Edgar Award-winning author returns with his most accomplished and resonant novel so far—an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.
More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.
Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell ($1.99), by Susanna Clarke.Book Description
It's 1808 and that Corsican upstart Napoleon is battering the English army and navy. Enter Mr. Norrell, a fusty but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire countryside and the first practical magician in hundreds of years. What better way to demonstrate his revival of British magic than to change the course of the Napoleonic wars? Susanna Clarke's ingenious first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, has the cleverness and lightness of touch of the Harry Potter series, but is less a fairy tale of good versus evil than a fantastic comedy of manners, complete with elaborate false footnotes, occasional period spellings, and a dense, lively mythology teeming beneath the narrative. Mr. Norrell moves to London to establish his influence in government circles, devising such powerful illusions as an 11-day blockade of French ports by English ships fabricated from rainwater. But however skillful his magic, his vanity provides an Achilles heel, and the differing ambitions of his more glamorous apprentice, Jonathan Strange, threaten to topple all that Mr. Norrell has achieved.
Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Rainshadow Road ($2.99), by Lisa Kleypas.Book Description
Lucy Marinn is a glass artist living in mystical, beautiful, Friday Harbor, Washington. She is stunned and blindsided by the most bitter kind of betrayal: her fiancé Kevin has left her. His new lover is Lucy’s own sister. Lucy's bitterness over being dumped is multiplied by the fact that she has constantly made the wrong choices in her romantic life. Facing the severe disapproval of Lucy's parents, Kevin asks his friend Sam Nolan, a local vineyard owner on San Juan Island, to "romance" Lucy and hopefully loosen her up and get her over her anger. Complications ensue when Sam and Lucy begin to fall in love, Kevin has second thoughts, and Lucy discovers that the new relationship in her life began under false pretenses. Questions about love, loyalty, old patterns, mistakes, and new beginnings are explored as Lucy learns that some things in life—even after being broken—can be made into something new and beautiful.
The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is three novels written by Andrew Garve and published by Bello, for $1.59 / £0.99 (no US editions).The Galloway Case (UK)
When the boundaries between reality and fiction become blurred it is left to one man to seek the truth . . . Journalist Peter Rennie discovers more than he bargained for after being sent to the Channel Islands to do an interview for his news paper. A chance meeting with the mysterious Mary Smith not only has Peter falling head over heels in love with the vivacious woman, but also leads him onto a much more intriguing investigation of his own. Using all his professional knowledge, Peter must get to the bottom of a complex murder case in order to win back the woman he has given his heart to. But when the case in question involves two crime authors, two near-identical novels, a gruesome death and an elaborate paper trail the truth seems impossibility out of his grasp . . .A Hole in the Ground (UK)
Have you ever wondered what undiscovered gems lie waiting to be found in your garden? Lawrence Quilter, a man in a position of power, finds some interesting records amongst his great grandfather’s papers. This leads him to uncover a labyrinth of secret underground caves that have been hidden for decades. Julie, Lawrence’s long-suffering wife, knows that her husband is an obsessive man with a quirky personality but she stands by him all the same. That is until her husband’s behaviour becomes increasingly worrying and she is forces to reconsider the man she has married. One moment brings about a tragic chain of events which affects both Lawrence and his wife. This is an exciting and unusual story which takes us into the realms of the frightening as well as the fantastically beautiful and delves into the very depths of human nature.The Narrow Search (UK)
It doesn’t take Clare Hunter many years of married life to discover that her husband, Arnold, is ruthless and unscrupulous. But it is not until she attempts to break up their unsatisfactory marriage that she herself becomes victim of his power-complex. To prevent her leaving him, Arnold resorts to blackmail—of a highly specialised variety. Ordinary legal methods seem powerless to cope with the situation and Clare is becoming desperate when she finds an ally in a former colleague, Hugh Cameron. With little to guide them but their own ingenuity, these two can only rely on each other.
Crashed ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), the first novel in the Junior Bender Mystery series by Timothy Hallinan, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.Book Description
INTRODUCING JUNIOR BENDER, THE FAVORITE BURGLAR-TURNED-PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR OF HOLLYWOOD CROOKS
Junior Bender is a Los Angeles burglar with a magic touch. Since he first started breaking into houses when he was fourteen years old, he’s never once been caught. But now, after twenty-two years of an exemplary career, Junior has been blackmailed by Trey Annunziato, one of the most powerful crime bosses in LA, into acting as a private investigator on the set of Trey’s porn movie venture, which someone keeps sabotaging. The star Trey has lined up to do all that’s unwholesome on camera is Thistle Downing, America’s beloved child star, who now lives alone in a drug-induced stupor, destitute and uninsurable. Her starring role will be the scandalous fall-from-grace gossip of rubber-neckers across the country. No wonder Trey needs help keeping the production on track.
Junior knows what that he should do—get Thistle out and find her help—but doing the right thing will land him on the wrong side of LA’s scariest mob boss. With the help of his precocious twelve-year-old daughter, Rina, and his criminal sidekick, Louie the Lost (an ex-getaway driver), Junior has to figure out a miracle solution.
Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is A Mutiny in Time ($1.99), the first title in the Infinity Ring series by James Dashner, author of The Maze Runner, which is what I am currently reading. The title currently on sale is intended for a bit younger market, as is The 13th Reality, Volume 1: The Journal of Curious Letters, which is also on sale ($3.99).Book Description
Scholastic's next multi-platform mega-event begins here!
History is broken, and three kids must travel back in time to set it right!
When best friends Dak Smyth and Sera Froste stumble upon the secret of time travel -- a hand-held device known as the Infinity Ring -- they're swept up in a centuries-long secret war for the fate of mankind. Recruited by the Hystorians, a secret society that dates back to Aristotle, the kids learn that history has gone disastrously off course.
Now it's up to Dak, Sera, and teenage Hystorian-in-training Riq to travel back in time to fix the Great Breaks . . . and to save Dak's missing parents while they're at it. First stop: Spain, 1492, where a sailor named Christopher Columbus is about to be thrown overboard in a deadly mutiny!
Grade Level: 3 and up
