Tax Day Deal from Edward C. Patterson

Two deals at Smashwords today from Edward C. Patterson. First, get Oh, Dainty Triolet ($2.99 list; Kindle), for $0.99 using coupon code LA82Y VU84M at checkout (valid today only thru April 20 ... thanks Ed!).

Book Description
Oh, Dainty Triolet is a compilation of three of Edward C. Patterson’s most popular works into an Omnibus Edition comprising Cutting the Cheese, Bobby’s Trace and No Irish Need Apply. Cutting the Cheese is a comic romp through the world of gay activism. Bobby’s Trace is a ghost story with an unusual twist. No Irish Need Apply is a teenage coming of age story in a world fraught with prejudice.

Second, he has updated Surviving an American Gulag ($0.99 Kindle). Since you can't easily get an update version of a book at Amazon, he is offering all existing and any new readers a free copy at Smashwords, using coupon code XE87F, valid thru April 26.

Book Description
Private Winslow Gibbs has been drafted in 1967 at the height of the Vietnam war. He is out of shape, two-hundred and seventy pounds and a bundle of nerves. He also has issues of a different nature, but in these days before the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, these are dealt with according to the book. Welcome to the Special Training Unit where the misfits are driven in the American Gulag.

New Volume in the Peacekeepers Series

Ricky Sides has completed the sixth volume of The Peacekeepers series, The Citadel ($2.99), and you can pick it up for $1.99 at Smashwords, using (this blog's exclusive) coupon code MT87A, which expires on April 14, 2010. It isn't available on Kindle yet, but he has hit the publish button, so I'd expect it to be there with his other titles by Sunday or Monday. Update: The Kindle version is now available for $2.99, along with the earlier titles in the series at $1.99 each.

Ricky has sent me a copy of the book for review (which I have not gotten to, yet), but having read (and paid for) some of the earlier books in the series, I have no doubt that this will be one I'll enjoy.

Book Description
In the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas, the peacekeepers discover the base for Phoenix Rising, a secret government project that planned to utilize the work of the development team who’d designed the Peacekeeper. Inside that citadel, they discovered an aircraft unlike any other they had ever seen. Calling on all of their resources, the peacekeepers race to prevent a nuclear strike on American soil.

He also has two books you can pick up at no charge, over on Smashwords.

The Ultimate in Women's Self-Defense - Coupon Code: UZ46T ($1.00 Kindle)

Book Description
The information contained within this book could save your life. During an intensive private training course with his master, the author learned the secret techniques that the masters teach their own families. With the blessings and assistance of his master, the author developed a comprehensive training course for his students. He undertook the challenge to write a book detailing that training

Adventures in Reading - Coupon Code: ZM45D ($1.00 Kindle). A short story collection.

Book Description
The Test: (fiction.) A high ranking martial artist takes his master's test.

The Doll: (paranormal fiction.) After a young girl's twin is killed she is
devastated by that loss. Then one day her father gives her a new doll which
has a surprising impact on the girl.

The Blizzard: (fantasy.) Three companions must survive a blizzard in order
to save a city population.

The Tank: (science fiction.) A government funded research project goes bad.

The Hunt: (fiction.) A hunter becomes the hunted.

Round Island Massacre: (paranormal fiction.) A group of friends cross a
river to help a beleaguered family.

America, Land of Mysteries: (true.) A set of mysteries the author has
encountered and dealt with on a personal level.

The Visitor: (fiction.) A visitor to a church reveals some important
secrets.

The Forgotten: (real.) Who are the forgotten?

Night Stalker: (fiction.) Something is killing animals at night, and with
Halloween upon the community some parents wonder if it is safe for their
children to go out into the neighborhood.

The North Room: (paranormal fiction. novella length.) A paranormal
investigator seeks to help a family with a very special need.

Coping with Breast Cancer: (true.) The author relates the experience his
family had with the disease.

Christmas EBook Sales (Part 3)

The last post of my Christmas Sales Roundup. A few of these expire very, very soon, so be sure to read thru the list. The first two are again exclusives for readers of this blog - I ask that you don't repeat these coupon codes on other sites, although you are welcome to post links back to the blog itself.

Land of the Free ($0.99 Kindle and Mobipocket), by Jeffry Hepple, is free on Smashwords with coupon code VM69V, thru January 31. This is sequel to Gone For a Soldier ($4.00 Kindle and Smashwords). Jeff runs not only the EBookGab website, but also the Operation Ebook Drop website, in addition to his day job and writing.

Book Description
The Van Buskirk family saga continues with the exploration of the Louisiana Territory and the War of 1812.

Held captive by the British aboard the warship HMS Surprise, American lawyer, Francis Scott Key, witnessed the British bombardment of American Fort McHenry through the long, rainy night of September 13th and 14th, 1814. As the sun rose the following morning, illuminating the American flag, still flying, he wrote these words on the back of an envelope:

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Death of a Cure ($0.99 Kindle), by Steven H Jackson, is free on Smashwords for the next year, using coupon code HL36N.

Book Description
We know them as humanitarians. Of this we are sure, we are certain, their calling unimpeachable. They have forsaken success in industry and in government that was surely theirs just for the taking. This personal sacrifice is for us. More importantly, for those we love. They are servants of a greater good. In return, we entrust them with our time, our talents and our money -- all we can give. They move the hearts of our children, our friends and our coworkers all of whom enlist sponsors that contribute even more money based on miles hiked or biked along traffic laden thoroughfares. We look to them to lead us from the heartbreak -- the overwhelming emotional devastation that cripples us as our lives derail when someone we love is struck down by a cruel and life-robbing disease. We hold them to a higher standard. They are better. We need them to be. They are the caretakers of our hope.

But is our dream of a cure really their mission? Have we been deceived? Could it be a cruel duplicity, a personal deceit, phenomenal in its audacity, yet nothing more to them than an evil means to a selfish end? A falsehood perpetrated against the trusting, abetting positions of power. Our hope blinding us from the truth. Have the lifestyles, the position and the money become their true motivation? Have they come to see the disease, our enemy, as their benefactor? How far would they go to protect the enemy?

Would they kill?

DEATH OF A CURE is a novel of mystery, suspense and action. The murder of one good man by a respected colleague is more than a crushing personal deception, it is an unequaled violation of the trust of thousands afflicted by a horrible disease.

In a first person account, the brother of the murdered man, a military surgeon born to wealth and accustomed to success, is thrust into the role of homicide investigator. Quickly discovering that his skills as a detective are frustratingly insufficient, he calls upon a woman from his past for help. Together they unravel layers of evil and organized deception revealing that the true work of this healthcare charity has little to do with curing the terrible disease born by a trusting constituency.

Murder was just another means to a hidden end.

Childproofed ($0.99 Kindle or Smashwords), by Reese Reed

Book Description
Motherhood sometimes seems as though it's not all it's cracked up to be. Sleepless nights, baby fat, encrusted bits of spit up clinging to my clothes and hair...not exactly what I'd pictured it as being. Sometimes I wonder where the real Virginia went - the person I used to be before I was just someone's wife or mother. Now I find out that a hot young girl is after my husband. Perfect. This is the life of a mother. It's real, and it's definitely nothing like a baby ad.

A Plague of Hearts (free Smashwords), by Patrick Whittaker

Book Description
On an otherwise normal day in Wonderland, the Knave of Hearts is arrested by the secret police. Outraged by what he believes to be an injustice, his valet, the March Hare, sets out to free him. Along the way he attends a mad tea party, witnesses the death and resurrection of the Queen of Hearts and uncovers a terrifying secret that could destroy not only his world, but ours too.

Refuge of Delayed Souls, by Miladysa, was free last month, but there is a new coupon code TC44V, thru March 1, for those who missed the last one.

Book Description
Volume 1 ~ RoYds In a story spanning many lifetimes, we follow Elizabeth Whyte's journey as she investigates the supernatural & seeks information about her own past, all while trying to keep a balance between the light & the darkness in her work for an agency known as the Refuge of Delayed Souls. A world where ghosts, angels, the Living & others exist side by side, although not always in harmony.


The Nan Tu - Southern Swallow Book II ($3.99 Kindle and Smashwords), by Edward C. Patterson, just released today!

Book Description
"We all lived in the shadow of K’ai-feng’s ashes now. No denying it. However safe we felt, the world hung by a silken thread." So begins the second book of the Southen Swallow series - The Nan Tu (The Southern Migration) and, like the first book, The Academician, it is told by K’u Ko-ling, servant to the Grand Tutor, Li K’ai-men. The Emperor Kao has proclaimed that his court and government will migrate to the south, a progress filled with adventure, intrigue, war and tragedy, thus setting a series of events in play that shaped the Middle Kingdom.

Set on the broad canvas of Sung Dynasty China, The Nan Tu is a tale of love, separation and sacrifice. Yet heroes emerge from the ashes and restoration is within their grasp. From the mountain lairs of bandits to the sweep of the fleet at sea, The Nan Tu will transport you to a world that should have never been forgotten. Still, there are more important things than empires and history. There’s love and destiny - the destiny of Li K’ai-men’s relics and the enlistment of his helpmates to guard over the membrane of time.

Homefront ($2.00 Kindle or Smashwords), by Kristen J. Tsetsi, can be had for free by emailing the author at kjt AT kristentsetsi DOT com, until late on New Year's Day. Make sure to include your email address in your note and indicate whether you'd rather receive a PDF copy (via email) or a coupon code to use at Smashwords.

Book Description
A cab driving former English professor, an unpredictable alcoholic Vietnam veteran, an anti-war soldier, and a morbid mother in-law come together in this realistic, sensual, and darkly humorous semi-autobiographical tale of waiting through a war deployment.


Angel of the Bus Shelter (free Smashwords), by Layton Buzzzard

Book Description
He was a geek. She was beautiful and insane. When uber-nerd Orson falls in love with a mysterious woman he meets at a bus shelter, he sets off a chain of events that leads to such unlikely events as the stars going out and buses arriving on time.

Lead Me Home (free Smashwords and B&N) and The Life & Times of a Boomer Baby (free Smashwords and B&N), by L.K. Campbell

Lead Me Home
Rick and Annie meet again ten years after high school. It looks as if they could rekindle their romance, but Annie is still feeling guilty about an old secret that caused Rick to have to leave town in disgrace. Is confession really good for the soul?

The Life & Times of a Boomer Baby
Personal anecdotes about growing up on a farm in the rural south during the 1960s. These sometimes humorous and sometimes poignant stories give a picture of life before cell phones, home computers, satellite T.V. and all those other things we think we can't live without.

The Elvis Interviews (free Smashwords), by glen bonham. I haven't looked at this one, but saw a recommendation by someone who paid $5.00 for this recently and claimed it "was worth every penny).

Book Description
The mob has stolen Elvis's 55 pink caddy from Graceland. When a retirement age sheriff with an eerie resemblance to Elvis investigates, he meets a down on his luck Journalist who is snooping around Graceland on a hot tip. The journalist becomes convinced the sheriff is in fact, Elvis Presley. “Yeah, I get that a lot,” grins sheriff Jesse, “but I ain’t Elvis. Elvis died in 1977"

Weekend Kindle Book Sale?

At the end of last month, Amazon marked down a number of Kindle books, at prices under $2, to match or even beat the discounted hardback and paperback prices. Those books went back up to "normal" prices (most over $14) this week. Late yesterday, many of those same books were marked back down, along with a number of newly discounted titles. Here are some of the more interesting looking ones (that I haven't had in an earlier post).

The Interruption of Everything ($0.77), by Terry McMillan, author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Waiting to Exhale and A Day Late and a Dollar Short.

Book Description
Marilyn Grimes, wife and mother of three, has made a career of deferring her dreams to build a suburban California home and lifestyle with her workaholic husband, Leon. She also troubleshoots for her grown kids, cares for her live-in mother-in-law (and elderly poodle, Snuffy), keeps tabs on her girlfriends Paulette and Bunny and her own aging mother and foster sister--and holds down a part-time job. But at forty-four, Marilyn's got too much on her plate and nothing to feed her passion. She feels like she's about ready to jump. She's just not sure where.

Highly entertaining, deeply human, a page-turner full of heart and soul, this time McMillan turns her eye to the question of how one woman can start putting her own needs higher on the to-do list while not shortchanging those she loves. The Interruption of Everything is a triumphant testament to the fact that the detour is the path, and living life "by the numbers" never quite adds up.

Triple Homicide ($0.89), by Charles Hynes

Book Description
The debut novel from longtime Brooklyn district attorney Charles “Joe” Hynes, Triple Homicide is the gritty saga of two generations of New York City police officers fighting to stay on the right side of the law. In the early 1990s in New York, easy money stands to be made at every turn, and temptation proves a bitter struggle for the young and much-decorated NYPD Sergeant Steven Holt---and for Steven and his uncle Robert, an officer before him, an increasingly violent mess endangers their careers and the reputation of the entire department.

Born out of real stories of corruption and centered around two men who ultimately dare to challenge the fabled “blue wall” of silence, the novel works toward a majestic courtroom on Long Island, where Sergeant Holt is about to stand trial for triple homicide and where, as he comes to know his past, he’ll learn that nothing he’s known has ever been as it seemed.

In its intense telling by one of the only writers who could write it with such realism, the story uncovers decades of deceit and corruption that infiltrate families and threaten to ruin the force. Reflecting the proud yet troubled history of the NYPD, Charles Hynes’s debut is a searing, up-close portrait of the men and women who live---and die---in the pursuit of criminal justice.

At the City's Edge ($0.87), by Marcus Sakey

Book Description
Jason Palmer loved being a soldier. But after returning home from Iraq with an "other than honorable" discharge, he's finding rebuilding his life the toughest battle yet.

Elena Cruz is a talented cop, the first woman to make Chicago's prestigious Gang Intelligence Unit. She's ready for anything the job can throw at her.... Until Jason's brother, a prominent community activist, is murdered in front of his own son.

Now, stalked by brutal men with a shadowy agenda, Jason and Elena must unravel a conspiracy stretching from the darkest alleys of the ghetto to the manicured lawns of the city's power brokers. In a world where corruption and violence are simply the cost of doing business, two damaged people are all that stand between an innocent child--and the killers who will stop at nothing to find him.

Homeland ($2.99), by R.A. Salvatore, book one in the The Legend of Drizzt series.

Book Description
Drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, first introduced in The Icewind Dale Trilogy, quickly became one of the fantasy genre’s standout characters. But Homeland first reveals the startling tale of how this one lone drow walked out of the shadowy depths of the Underdark, leaving behind a society of evil and a family who want him dead. It is here that the story of this amazing dark elf truly began.

Star Shadows ($0.73), by Colby Hodge

Book Description
He was the only man she'd ever loved. The one who'd roused her innocent girlhood passions...the one she held responsible for her brother's death. So when Boone's starship was shot down over a faraway planet, Elle resolved to forget him, to devote herself to her duty as the future ruler of Oasis. She focused her formidable mind on honing her powers until the day she witnessed a pair of sweat-sleek, breathtaking gladiators facing each other down in the vicious fight-to-the-death of the Murlacca. Here were the two men she'd thought lost to her forever, and one last chance to save them. It was up to Elle to outwit the Circe witches who held Boone and Zander prisoner, so she could claim a love that had once seemed as elusive as... Star Shadows.

Pressing the Bet ($2.41), by W. L. Ripley

Book Description
Cole Springer returns in this raucous follow-up to Springer's Gambit. Ex-secret service agent Cole Springer has money and time on his hands. He doesn't mind the money part but the extra time has him restless and bored. That's about to change. L.A. grifter Spider John Dupree has a plan to relieve Springer of the extra cash. With the help of a Denver mob soldier, a hood with a violent streak as big as the Rockies, Dupree tries to shake down Springer by threatening to go to Mob bosses and reveal how Springer amassed his fortune. Blackmail. Pay or die. But Springer isn't an easy mark. And he's hard to scare. Or kill.

The Faraway War ($2.18), by Enrique Clio

Book Description
Henry Reeve was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1850. At fifteen, too young to join the military, he enlisted in the Union Army as a drummer boy. Three years later, he went on an expedition to Cuba to join the Cuban insurgents fighting the Spanish Army. In his first battle, Reeve and other rebels were captured and executed by firing squad. Miraculously, the Brooklynite survived his wounds, was rescued by Cuban rebels, and joined their fight. By the time he was killed in battle, he was a brigadier general in the Liberation Army. Today almost no one in the United States knows who Henry Reeve was, but just about every Cuban knows his story and admires him.

Amusingly, Reeve is known in Cuba as “the Young Englishman,” because he spoke the English language. But Henry Reeve was an American, and a Brooklyn boy all the way.

The Communist dictatorship in Cuba has gone to great lengths to conceal from its people the role that many Americans played in the liberation of Cuba from Spanish colonialism. The story of this one brave man, the most respected American hero in Cuban history, is an engaging, enthralling read.

Ambush ($1.72), by Paul Carson

Book Description
American expat Scott Nolan has recently moved to Ireland and enjoys a flourishing career as a doctor, a rising media profile as a persuasive campaigner against drug abuse, and is very much in love with Laura, his beautiful new wife. But one wintry Dublin morning, Scott’s life is changed forever when a team of contract killers attempts a daring double ambush. Their target: Ireland’s antidrug government minister and his medical spokesman, Dr. Scott Nolan. The attack goes horribly wrong, and in the bloodbath that follows, Laura is killed by a bullet meant for Nolan. Fueled by grief and revenge, and desperate to claim back his life and find the killers, Scott enters into an uneasy alliance with his wife’s brother, police detective Mark Higgins. Together they embark on a highly controversial international covert mission to slowly and systematically infiltrate the drug scene and track down the assassin. Using secret U.S. army interrogation compounds and breaking almost every law in the land, the duo finally close in on their target . . . . This nail biting, heart-pounding blockbuster weaves a tale from the back streets of Dublin to the red-light districts of Amsterdam and the seedy streets of Bangkok, accelerating to a breathtaking climax that will test Nolan’s physical and moral fortitude to the absolute limit.

FOR LIBERTY AND GLORY ($1.12), by James R. Gaines

Book Description
This book tells the story of the French and American Revolutions in a single, thrilling narrative that shows just how deeply intertwined they actually were. Their leaders were often seen as father and son, but the relationship of George Washington and the marquis de Lafayette, while close, was every bit as complex as the long, fraught history of the French-American alliance, of which they were also the founding fathers.

Counterknowledge ($1.81), by Damian Thompson

Book Description
An important and compelling book on the viral dissemination of misinformation in today's world. We are being swamped with dangerous nonsense. From 9/11 conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial to alternative medicine, we are all experiencing an epidemic of demonstrably untrue descriptions of the world. For Damian Thompson, the misinformation industry is wreaking havoc on the once-lauded virtues of science and reason. Unproven theories and spurious claims are forms of "counterknowledge," and, helped by the Internet, they are creating a global generation of misguided adherents who repeat these untruths and lend them credence. Thompson explores our readiness to accept falsehoods and the viral role of technology in spreading quack remedies, pseudo-history, and creationist fanaticism. Following in the footsteps of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, Sam Harris's The End of Faith, and Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great, Counterknowledge is a brilliant defense of scientific proof in an age of fabrication. .

Bitter Sweets ($1.13), by Roopa Farooki

Book Description
With this spellbinding first novel about the destructive lies three immigrant generations of a Pakistani/Bangladeshi family tell each other, Roopa Farooki adds a fresh new voice to the company of Zadie Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri and Arudhati Roy.

Henna Rub is a precocious teenager whose wheeler-dealer father never misses a business opportunity and whose sumptuous Calcutta marriage to wealthy romantic Ricky-Rashid Karim is achieved by an audacious network of lies. Ricky will learn the truth about his seductive bride, but the way is already paved for a future of double lives and deception--family traits that will filter naturally through the generations, forming an instinctive and unspoken tradition. Even as a child, their daughter Shona, herself conceived on a lie and born in a liar's house, finds telling fibs as easy as ABC. But years later, living above a sweatshop in South London's Tooting Bec, it is Shona who is forced to discover unspeakable truths about her loved ones and come to terms with what superficially holds her family together--and also keeps them apart--across geographical, emotional and cultural distance.

Roopa Farooki has crafted an intelligent, engrossing and emotionally powerful Indian family saga that will stay with you long after you've read the last page.

The Brontes (Authors in Context) ($1.15), by Patricia Ingham

Book Description
The extraordinary creativity of the Bronte sisters, who between them wrote some of the most enduring fiction in the English language, continues to fascinate and intrigue modern readers. The tragedy of their early deaths adds poignancy to their novels, and in the popular imagination they have become mythic figures. And yet, as Patricia Ingham shows, they were fully engaged with the world around them, and their writing, from the juvenilia to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, reflects the preoccupations of the age in which they lived. Their novels, which so shocked their contemporaries, address the burning issues of the day: class, gender, race, religion, and mental disorders. As well as examining these connections, Ingham also shows how film and other media have reinterpreted the novels for the twenty-first century.

The Brontes is a lively, accessible, and critically topical exploration of the novels of the three sisters, and includes a chronology of the Brontes, websites, illustrations, a comprehensive index, and suggestions for further reading.

Ambivalence ($1.25), by Jonathan Garfinkel

Book Description
With lofty ideals, spectacular ambivalence, and endearing naivet?, Jonathan Garfinkel explores Israel and Palestine by talking to ordinary people.Jonathan Garfinkel can?t make up his mind?not about his girlfriend, or Judaism, or Israel. After hearing about a house in Jerusalem where Jews and Arabs coexist in peace, he decides it?s time to venture there. In Israel, nothing is as he imagined it, and nothing is as he was taught. Garfinkel gives us the people behind the headlines: from secret assignations with Palestinian activists and an uninvited visit at an Arab refugee camp to Passover with Orthodox Jewish friends and finding the truth about the mythic coexistence house, Ambivalence is the provocative, surreal, and often hilarious chronicle of his travels. In this part memoir and part quest, Garfinkel struggles with the growing divisions in a troubled region and with the divide in his soul.?Marvelous. Garfinkel deftly mines what it means to simultaneously belong, disavow, love, and loathe an identity, a culture, and a history...

Signs of Life: Back to the Basics of Authentic Christianity ($1.71), by David Jeremiah

Book Description
Discover personal transformation that changes the world.

Just as there are physical signs that determine the overall health and wellness of a patient, so too there are signs of life determining the extent to which a man or woman has been transformed into the image of Jesus. It's a smile, a simple lifestyle, compassion in the face of misfortune, willingness to commit random acts of kindness, benevolence, social justice, tears, words.

In Signs of Life bestselling author David Jeremiah leads readers through a forty-day journey to a fuller understanding of what these signs are and how to be a person marked by them. This journey pursues a life characterized by relevancy, surrender, authenticity, generosity, and compassion-and in so doing, transforms individuals, communities, and nations.

Whether new to the Christian faith or considered an old-timer, readers will discover what being transformed personally into the image of Jesus means and be equipped with a greater vision for the life they are freed to live.

Why Jesus Died ($0.73), by Gerard S. Sloyan

Book Description
Jesus of Nazareth died on a cross at the hands of Roman justice around the year 30 C.E. Thousands of others perished in the same way, and many people before and since have suffered far more gruesome torments. Why then is Jesus, asks Gerard Sloyan, uniquely and universally remembered for his suffering death? In this timely, expert, and fully engaging account, this widely acclaimed biblical scholar and historian adroitly discusses:

• how Jesus died
• who was responsible for his death
• how his death came to be seen as redemptive
• how accounts of his death figured in the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment

For all who wondered about what really happened in the passion and death of Jesus and how his legacy grew, Sloyan's book will provide reliable and enlightening reading. With thoughtful study questions and a list of further reading, this short book is perfect for individual or group use.

Jazz Makers: Vanguards of Sound ($3.77), by Alyn Shipton

Book Description
Jazz Makers gathers together short biographies of more than 50 of jazz's greatest stars, from its early beginnings to the present. The stories of these innovative instrumentalists, bandleaders, and composers reveal the fascinating history of jazz in six parts:
* The Pioneers, including Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith
* Swing Bands and Soloists, with Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday
* The Piano Giants, featuring Fats Waller, Art Tatum, and Mary Lou Williams
* Birth of Bebop, including Dizzy Gillepsie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis
* Cool Jazz, Hard Bop, and Fusion, with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Stan Getz
* A Century of Jazz, featuring Wynton Marsalis, Joshua Redman, and other contemporary greats.

Johnny Cash: Life Of An American Icon ($0.97), by Stephen Miller

Book Description
Biography of the 'Man In Black', and one of the greatest country voices of all time.

Kindle Bargain Ebook Roundup - Political / War

Blue Dixie ($2.15), by Bob Moser

Book Description
A powerful case for a new Southern strategy for the Democrats, from an award-winning reporter and native Southerner

In 2000 and 2004, the Democratic Party decided not to challenge George W. Bush in the South, a disastrous strategy that effectively handed Bush more than half of the electoral votes he needed to win the White House. As the 2008 election draws near, the Democrats have a historic opportunity to build a new progressive majority, but they cannot do so without the South.

In Blue Dixie, Bob Moser argues that the Democratic Party has been blinded by outmoded prejudices about the region. Moser, the chief political reporter for The Nation, shows that a volatile mix of unprecedented economic prosperity and abject poverty are reshaping the Southern vote. With evangelical churches preaching a more expansive social gospel and a massive left-leaning demographic shift to African Americans, Latinos, and the young, the South is poised for a Democratic revival. By returning to a bold, unflinching message of economic fairness, the Democrats can win in the nation’s largest, most diverse region and redeem themselves as a true party of the people.

Keenly observed and deeply grounded in contemporary Southern politics, Blue Dixie reveals the changing face of American politics to the South itself and to the rest of the nation.

Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics ($2.99), by Doug Bandow & Marvin Olasky (Editor)

Book Description
Beyond Good Intentions brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to the question of how Christianity and politics interrelate. Author Doug Bandow believes the key lies in the correct use of the Bible in addressing public policy issues. Too often Christians either ignore or misapply the Bible in the political arena. Beyond Good Intentions is a much-needed corrective which takes the Bible seriously yet avoids proof-texting and questionable interpretive methods.

Shadows In The Jungle ($4.30), by LARRY ALEXANDER, the second novel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author.

Book Description
David Power and Clare O'Brien both grew up dreaming of escape from the battered seaside town of Castlebay, but they might as well have had the ocean between them. David is the cherished son of a prosperous doctor, while Clare lives with her large family behind their faltering store, longing for a moment of quiet to study. When they both go to university in Dublin-he as a matter of course, she on a hard-won scholarship-their worlds collide. They find freedom in each other-until the families, lovers, and secrets they left in Castlebay come back to haunt them.

The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq ($2.85), by John Crawford

Book Description
John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition, willingly exchanging one weekend a month and two weeks a year for a free education. But in fall 2002, one semester short of graduating and newly married-in fact, on his honeymoon-he was called to active duty and sent to the front lines in Iraq.

Crawford and his unit spent months upon months patrolling the streets of Baghdad, occupying a hostile city. During the breaks between patrols, Crawford began writing nonfiction stories about what he and his fellow soldiers witnessed and experienced.

In a voice at once raw and immediate, Crawford's stories vividly chronicle the daily life of a young soldier in Iraq-the excitement, the horror, the anger, the tedium, the fear, the camaraderie. But all together, the stories gradually uncover something more: the transformation of a group of young men, innocents, into something entirely different.

Those stories became this book, a haunting and powerful, brutal but compellingly honest book-punctuated with both humor and heartbreak-that represents an important document revealing the actual experience of waging the War in Iraq, as well as the introduction of a literary voice forged in the most intense of circumstances.

The Air We Breathe ($3.12), by Andrea Barrett

Book Description
In the autumn of 1916, Americans are debating whether to enter the first world war. There are 'preparedness parades', and headlines report German spies. But in an isolated community in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, the danger is barely felt. At Tamarack Lake the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, many of them recent immigrants from Europe, fill the sanatorium.

Her, in the crisp air, time stands still. Prisoners of routine and yearning for absent families, the inmates, including the newly arrived Leo Marburg, take solace in gossip, rumour and secret attachments.

An enterprising patient initiates a weekly discussion group. When his well-meaning efforts lead instead to tragedy and betrayal, the war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice and vigilante sentiment. Andrea Barrett pits power and privilege against unrest and thwarted desire, in a spellbinding tale of individual lives in a nation on the verge of extraordinary change.

Homefront ($0.99), by Kristen J. Tsetsi

Book Description
A cab driving former English professor, an unpredictable alcoholic Vietnam veteran, an anti-war soldier, and a morbid mother-in-law come together in this realistic, sensual, and darkly humorous semi-autobiographical tale of waiting through a war deployment.

Written by a former writer for the Journal Inquirer newspaper who is also a Women's eNews correspondent, a former English Professor, an award-winning fiction writer, literary fiction editor, and the wife of a former Chinook pilot for the 101st Airborne Division who deployed to Iraq in 2003, Homefront is the product of an author uniquely qualified to tell the private story.

Taking On the System ($3.09), by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga

Book Description
The Sixties are over -- and the rules of power have been transformed. In order to change the world one needs to know how to manipulate the media, not just march in the streets. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, otherwise known as "Kos," is today's symbol of digital activism, giving a voice to everyday people. In Taking on the System, Kos has taken a cue from his revolutionary predecessor's doctrine, Saul Alinsky's Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, and places this epic hand-book in today's digital era, empowering every American to make a difference in the 21st century. As founder of the largest political blog in the nation, Kos knows how it's done, because he's done it withtremendous success. In Taking on the System, he shares practical guidelines on how grassroots movements can thrive in the age of global information, while referencing historical and present examples of the tragedy caused without those actions. The walls between the people and the power -- the so-called rabble and the so-called elite -- are being torn down by technology, and a new army of amateurs are storming the barriers to effect political, cultural, and environmental transformation. Readers will come to understand how they too can change the world.

King's Dream: The Legacy of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Speech ($1.83), by Eric J. Sundquist

Book Description
-I have a dream--no words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. King's speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the -I have a dream- speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justice-debates as old as the nation itself-and demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom. This book is the first to set King's speech within the cultural and rhetorical traditions on which the civil rights leader drew in crafting his oratory, as well as its essential historical contexts, from the early days of the republic through present-day Supreme Court rulings. At a time when the meaning of the speech has been obscured by its appropriation for every conceivable cause, Sundquist clarifies the transformative power of King's -Second Emancipation Proclamation- and its continuing relevance for contemporary arguments about equality.

Fight Global Warming Now ($2.48), by Bill McKibben

Book Description
Bestselling author Bill McKibben turns activist in the first hands-on guidebook to stopping climate change, the world's greatest threat Hurricane Katrina. A rapidly disappearing Arctic. The warmest winter on the East Coast in recorded history. The leading scientist at NASA warns that we have only ten years to reverse climate change; the British government's report on global warming estimates that the financial impact will be greater than the Great Depression and both world wars-combined. Bill McKibben, the author of the first major book on global warming, The End of Nature, warns that it's no longer time to debate global warming, it's time to fight it. Drawing on the experience of Step It Up, a national day of rallies held on April 14, McKibben and the Step It Up team of organizers provide the facts of what must change to save the climate and show how to build the fight in your community, church, or college. They describe how to launch online grassroots campaigns, generate persuasive political pressure, plan high-profile events that will draw media attention, and other effective actions. This essential book offers the blueprint for a mighty new movement against the most urgent challenge facing us today.

The U.N. Exposed ($3.73), by Eric Shawn

Book Description
Over the years, and today more than ever, the United Nations has failed to address the most dangerous threats facing the civilized world, refused to condemn terrorist acts, encouraged America's enemies, and supported some of the world's most oppressive governments, all while wasting billions of dollars. As Fox News Channel reporter Eric Shawn points out, the U.N. is now where our so-called allies scheme against us, while Americans pay a whopping 22 percent of the U.N.'s bloated budget. His book offers a rare insider's tour of the United Nations, focusing on many disturbing aspects that have been ignored by the mainstream media.

Letters to President Obama: Americans Share Their Hopes and Dreams with the First African-American President ($3.79), edited by Hanes Walton Jr., Josephine Allen, Sherman Puckett, Donald Deskins Jr.

Book Description
This collection, which will total between 300 and 500 letters from Americans of all walks of life, will become an important piece of history as it describes the variety of feelings and emotions of Americans about the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Central to the book is the African-American experience and the long road from slavery to the civil rights era to the twenty-first century, but Americans of every race, color, gender, and age will be represented. From children and seniors, from cities and farms, all we have something to say and much to share about how Barack Obama’s election was special to them.

Advice and Consent: The Politics of Judicial Appointments ($2.82), by Lee Epstein & Jeffrey A. Segal

Book Description
From Louis Brandeis to Robert Bork to Clarence Thomas, the nomination of federal judges has generated intense political conflict. With the coming retirement of one or more Supreme Court Justices--and threats to filibuster lower court judges--the selection process is likely to be, once again, the center of red-hot partisan debate. In Advice and Consent, two leading legal scholars, Lee Epstein and Jeffrey A. Segal, offer a brief, illuminating Baedeker to this highly important procedure, discussing everything from constitutional background, to crucial differences in the nomination of judges and justices, to the role of the Judiciary Committee in vetting nominees. Epstein and Segal shed light on the role played by the media, by the American Bar Association, and by special interest groups (whose efforts helped defeat Judge Bork). Though it is often assumed that political clashes over nominees are a new phenomenon, the authors argue that the appointment of justices and judges has always been a highly contentious process--one largely driven by ideological and partisan concerns. The reader discovers how presidents and the senate have tried to remake the bench, ranging from FDR's controversial "court packing" scheme to the Senate's creation in 1978 of 35 new appellate and 117 district court judgeships, allowing the Democrats to shape the judiciary for years. The authors conclude with possible "reforms," from the so-called nuclear option, whereby a majority of the Senate could vote to prohibit filibusters, to the even more dramatic suggestion that Congress eliminate a judge's life tenure either by term limits or compulsory retirement. With key appointments looming on the horizon, Advice and Consent provides everything concerned citizens need to know to understand the partisan rows that surround the judicial nominating process.

Dude, Where's My Country? ($2.59), by Michael Moore

Book Description
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Stupid White Men comes a hilarious act of sedition to overthrow the 'Thief in Chief'-and effect the kind of change that just may save the country. Michael Moore is on a mission: He aims to unseat the man who slithered into the White House on tracks laid by guilty Enron execs and greased with his daddy's oil associations. And as for 'The Left,' they're just as satisfied to stand idly by as the chasm between the 'haves' and 'have nots' grows wider and wider. That's right, Michael Moore is back with a new book that reveals what's gone wrong in America and, more importantly, how it can be fixed. In his characteristic style that is at once fearless and funny, Moore takes readers on another wild ride to the political edge of righteous laughter and divine revenge.

Holy Terrors, Second Edition: Thinking About Religion After September 11 ($2.79), by Bruce Lincoln

Book Description
n the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, it is tempting to regard their perpetrators as evil incarnate. But their motives, as Bruce Lincoln shows in this timely offering, were profoundly and intensely religious. What we need, then, after September 11 is greater clarity about what we take religion to be. With rigor and incisiveness, Holy Terrors examines the implications of September 11 for our understanding of religion and how it interrelates with politics and culture.

Lincoln begins with a gripping dissection of the instruction manual given to each of the hijackers. In their evocation of passages from the Quran, we learn how the terrorists justified acts of destruction and mass murder "in the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate." Lincoln then offers a provocative comparison of President Bush's October 7 speech announcing U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden's videotape released hours later. Each speech, he argues, betrays telling contradictions. Bin Laden, for instance, conceded implicitly that Islam is not unitary, as his religious rhetoric would have it, but is torn by deep political divisions. And Bush, steering clear of religious rhetoric for the sake of political unity, still reassured his constituents through coded allusions that American policy is firmly rooted in faith.

Lincoln ultimately broadens his discussion further to consider the role of religion since September 11 and how it came to be involved with such fervent acts of political revolt. In the postcolonial world, he argues, religion is widely considered the most viable and effective instrument of rebellion against economic and social injustices. It is the institution through which unified communities ensure the integrity and continuity of their culture in the wake of globalization. Brimming with insights such as these, Holy Terrors will become one of the essential books on September 11 and a classic study on the character of religion.

The Faith of the American Soldier ($2.26), by Stephen Mansfield

Book Description
What goes through the mind of an American warrior spiritually and religiously when facing the enemy? Touching on a subject that few books have treated, The Faith of the American Soldier examines the religious and spiritual issues in America's wars, and then considers what is lost to our military through a secular approach to battle, recording the reflections and testimonies of men and women who have fought on the front lines from Lexington to Iraq.

Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity ($3.72), by Charles Marsh

Book Description
In Wayward Christian Soldiers, leading evangelical theologian Charles Marsh offers a powerful indictment of the political activism of evangelical Christian leaders and churches in the United States. With emphasis on repentance and renewal, this important work advises Christians how to understand past mistakes and to avoid making them in the future.

Over the past several years, Marsh observes, American evangelicals have achieved more political power than at any time in their history. But access and influence have come at a cost to their witness in the world and the integrity of their message. The author offers a sobering contrast between the contemporary evangelical elite, which forms the core of the Republican Party, and the historic Christian tradition of respect for the mystery of God and appreciation for human fallibility. The author shows that the most prominent voices in American evangelicalism have arrogantly redefined Christianity on the basis of partisan politics rather than scripture and tradition. The role of politics in distorting the Christian message can be seen most dramatically in the invasion of Iraq, he argues: Some 87% of American evangelicals supported going to war, while every single evangelical church outside the United States opposed it. The Jesus who storms into Baghdad behind the wheel of a Humvee, Marsh points out, is not the Jesus of the Gospel. Indeed, not since the nazification of the German church under Hitler has the political misuse of Christianity led to such catastrophic global consequences.

Is there an alternative? This book proposes that the renewal of American churches requires a season of concentrated attention to faith's essential affirmations--a time of hospitality, peacemaking, and contemplative prayer. Offering an authentic Christian alternative to the narcissistic piety of popular evangelicalism, Wayward Christian Soldiers represents a unique entry into the increasingly pivotal debate over the role of faith in American politics.

Kindle Bargain Ebook Roundup - History/Military

Miracle at St. Anna ($2.70), by James McBride

Book Description
James McBride's memoir, The Color of Water, was a literary achievement that topped bestseller lists for more than two years. Now McBride turns his extraordinary gift for storytelling to fiction. Miracle at St. Anna is a tale of courage and redemption inspired by the famed Buffalo soldiers of the 92nd Division and a little-known historic event in a small Tuscan village at the end of World War II-the massacre at St. Anna di Stazzema.

The acclaimed novel is now a major motion picture directed by Spike Lee, coming to theaters Sept. 28.

The Raiders: Sons of Texas($4.79), by Elmer Kelton

Book Description
In 1816, Mordecai Lewis, a veteran of Andrew Jackson's Indian campaigns and battles against the British, moves his family into the western Tennessee canebrakes. But Mordecai, a born wanderer, is not satisfied with farming, and with his sons Michael and Andrew and some other backwoodsmen, he leads a foray into Spanish-held Texas to hunt wild horses and return the mustang herd to sell in Tennessee.

Crossing the Sabine River, Mordecai's party encounters a Spanish patrol determined to repel all American invaders. After a bloody skirmish leaves their father dead, Michael and Andrew find their way back to their Tennessee farm.

Five years later, after the Spanish government in Mexico City has agreed to permit 300 American families to settle in Texas, the Lewis brothers have their opportunity to re-enter Texas. They ride to the frontier town of Natchitoches, Louisiana, where Michael falls in love with Marie Villaret, daughter of a wealthy French landowner, then cross the Sabine to find Stephen F. Austin, a Missouri entrepreneur in charge of the new American colony.

But the Lewises are considered interlopers and horse thieves and are dogged by a patrol led by the same ruthless Spanish offer who killed their father five years before.

Sons of Texas is the first volume in a trilogy that follows the lives and adventures of the Lewis family through the era of the Alamo and Texas Independence under Sam Houston.

The Warrior ($2.54), by FRANCES RICHEY

Book Description
A heart-rending memoir-in-verse that speaks to a mother's love for her son. When Frances Richey's only child, Ben, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Green Beret, went on the first of his two deployments to Iraq, she began to write the twenty-eight unflinching poems that make up The Warrior. This urgent and intensely personal collection describes the world of those who wait while their loved ones are in combat or perilous situations; it is universal in its expression of the longing, anguish, love, and hope that constitute close relationships.

Thugs: How History's Most Notorious Despots Transformed the World through Terror, Tyranny, and Mass Murder ($2.42), by Micah D. Halpern

Book Description
From Hitler to Hussein, Napoleon to Pol Pot, Alexander the Great to Idi Amin, this is a trenchant look into the lives, politics, and horrible deeds of history's most notorious world leaders-and how they shaped our world for the worst.

Slavery, Resistance, Freedom ($3.54), by Gabor S. Boritt & Scott Hancock (Editors)

Book Description
Americans have always defined themselves in terms of their freedoms--of speech, of religion, of political dissent. How we interpret our history of slavery--the ultimate denial of these freedoms--deeply affects how we understand the very fabric of our democracy.

This extraordinary collection of essays by some of America's top historians focuses on how African Americans resisted slavery and how they responded when finally free. Ira Berlin sets the stage by stressing the relationship between how we understand slavery and how we discuss race today. The remaining essays offer a richly textured examination of all aspects of slavery in America. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger recount actual cases of runaway slaves, their motivations for escape and the strains this widespread phenomenon put on white slave-owners. Scott Hancock explores how free black Northerners created a proud African American identity out of the oral history of slavery in the south. Edward L. Ayers, William G. Thomas III, and Anne Sarah Rubin draw upon their remarkable Valley of the Shadow website to describe the wartime experiences of African Americans living on both borders of the Mason-Dixon line. Noah Andre Trudeau turns our attention to the war itself, examining the military experience of the only all-black division in the Army of the Potomac. And Eric Foner gives us a new look at how black leaders performed during the Reconstruction, revealing that they were far more successful than is commonly acknowledged--indeed, they represented, for a time, the fulfillment of the American ideal that all people could aspire to political office.
Wide-ranging, authoritative, and filled with invaluable historical insight, Slavery, Resistance, Freedom brings a host of powerful voices to America's evolving conversation about race.

SUMMER OF THE DRUMS ($0.92), by T. V. Olsen

Book Description
An innocent family becomes embroiled in the turbulence of the Black Hawk War. Living in Wisconsin territory in the 1830's, fifteen-year-old Kevin and his family try to remain neutral in the increasingly violent war between the Sac Indians and the white settlers.