If you signed up for the Marvel Comics giveaway, be sure to check your email. Early emails have gone out and their 48-hour time periods are quickly expiring and I suspect most invitations have been sent at this point. Unlike the last time, the process goes quickly and smoothly - you add the comics to your cart, check out and a few minutes later you get an email that they have been added to your account. You do have to add them one at a time, but all one a single page, and the time you take pales in comparison to how long it will take to read thru the stack.
Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Salamander Spell ($1.99), by E. D. Baker [Bloomsbury USA Childrens], prequel to The Frog Princess.Book Description
Grassina, Emma's wonderful, magical aunt, is herself a teen in this prequel to the Frog Princess books. She and her sister, Chartreuse (Emma's irritating mother from the other books) are vying to see who will get the family's inherited magical skills as they navigate the intricacies of being a princess in a magical kingdom-a bevy of mostly terrible would-be suitors, a father who becomes a ghost, a mother who changes from a stressed, but semi-normal human to a selfish witch, and the arrival of some terrible werewolves. When Grassina finds and falls in love with a wizard-in-training, Haywood, and invokes the wrath of her sister, it is the werewolves, who despite their evil ways, bring about Grassina's change from mortal princess to Green Witch powers. Every bit as funny and satisfying as the other stories!
Age Range: 8 and up
Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Shadowy Horses ($1.99), by Susanna Kearsley [Sourcebooks Landmark].Book Description
THE INVINCIBLE NINTH ROMAN LEGION MARCHES FROM YORK TO FIGHT THE NORTHERN TRIBES. AND THEN VANISHES FROM THE PAGES OF HISTORY.
Archaeologist Verity Grey has been drawn to the dark legends of the Scottish Borderlands in search of the truth buried in a rocky field by the sea.
Her eccentric boss has spent his whole life searching for the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion and is convinced he's finally found it—not because of any scientific evidence, but because a local boy has "seen" a Roman soldier walking in the fields, a ghostly sentinel who guards the bodies of his long-dead comrades.
Here on the windswept shores, Verity may find the answer to one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time. Or she may uncover secrets someone buried for a reason.
Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Son of the Morning ($0.99), by Linda Howard [Simon and Schuster].Book Description
A scholar specializing in ancient manuscripts, Grace St. John never imagined that a cache of fragile, old documents she discovered was the missing link to a lost Celtic treasure. But as soon as she deciphers the intriguing legend of the Knights of the Templar -- long fabled to hold the key to unlimited power -- Grace becomes the target of a ruthless killer bent on abusing the coveted force. Determined to stop him, Grace needs the help of a celebrated warrior bound by duty to uphold the Templar's secret for all eternity. But to find him -- and to save herself -- she must go back in time.
Summoning the magic of an arcane ritual, Grace steps back to the barren hills of 14th-century Scotland, enduring the perils of an untamed land to confront Black Niall, a fierce man of dark fury and raw, unbridled desire. Driven by a mix of fear and passion, Grace enlists this brazen knight to join her in a modern-day search for a killer. In their quest to protect a timeless secret, they uncover a love for all time -- and a deadly duel of honor that risks everything they have.
Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Welcome to the Monkey House ($1.99), by Kurt Vonnegut [RosettaBooks].Book Description
This short-story collection Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) incorporates almost completely Vonnegut's 1961 "Canary in a Cathouse," which appeared within a few months of Slaughterhouse-Five and capitalized upon that breakthrough novel and the enormous attention it suddenly brought.
Drawn from both specialized science fiction magazines and the big-circulation general magazines (Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, etc.) which Vonnegut had been one of the few science writers to sell, the collection includes some of his most accomplished work. The title story may be his most famous--a diabolical government asserts control through compulsory technology removing orgasm from sex--but Vonnegut's bitterness and wit, not in his earlier work as poisonous or unshielded as it later became, is well demonstrated.
Two early stories from Galaxy science fiction magazine and one from Fantasy & Science Fiction (the famous "Harrison Bergeron") show Vonnegut's careful command of a genre about which he was always ambivalent, stories like "More Stately Mansions" or "The Foster Portfolio" the confines and formula of a popular fiction of which he was always suspicious. Vonnegut's affection for humanity and bewilderment as its corruption are manifest in these early works.
Several of these stories (those which appeared in Collier's) were commissioned by Vonnegut’s Cornell classmate and great supporter Knox Burger, also born in 1922.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is one of the most beloved American writers of the twentieth century. Vonnegut's audience increased steadily since his first five pieces in the 1950s and grew from there. His 1968 novel Slaughterhouse-Five has become a canonic war novel with Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to form the truest and darkest of what came from World War II.
