Update: Price drop on The Red Cross of Gold series

All the books in The Red Cross of Gold series are now marked down to $1.59. The author mentioned that this is a Memorial Day sale, so I would not expect the prices to last much beyond the weekend. If you sample the first one and it catches your fancy, be sure to grab the entire series (which all together will be less $15). In order, they are: I: The Knight of Death, II: The King of Terrors, III: The Head of the Crow, IV: The Hesperian Dragon, V: the Quinta Essentia, VI: the Dragonslayer, VII: The Wisdom of Solomon, VIII: The Silver Caduceus and IX: The Queen of the Abyss.

Here's what the author has to say about the series:

The Red Cross of Gold series is a sort of new twist on some old, but very interesting subjects, including immortality, the Philosopher's Stone, Templar Knights, the Holy Grail, Rosslyn Chapel, the crusades and all those magickal, mystical things.

As fate would have it, I wrote mine long before anyone ever heard of Dan Brown. Let me just say that Dan's book was great, but the ending was a bit disappointing. My books end up as well as they start out.

The main character is one of twelve Council members for the internal circle of the secret Templar Order that has survived the crusades, the Inquisition and banishment over the centuries. They are the ones who know where everything is hidden. The Chevalier Ramsay is a hair-triggered Scotsman from the lowlands who ran away from home back in... oh, about 1180 AD (pardon the use of an old term. I prefer Anno Domine to Common Era because I believe that there is absolutely nothing common about our current era).

Anyway, Mark Ramsay, is called to serve in one of his mystical capacities as Assassin for the Order and sent off to America (known as Merica to those in the know) to fetch back the Grand Master's apprentice who has decided to leave the Order and take up with a rival order. Our fellows, being both ancient and arrogant have little regard for this silly modern order of pretenders and vastly underestimate their high priestess's motivations, means and madness.

He falls prey to her immediately and loses his memory temporarily after a close encounter with her body guard. While under the influence of a debilitating drug, he forgets who he is and what he's doing in America in the first place. One of his captor's, the leading lady as it turns out, has things on her mind other than the secrets of the philosopher's stone and immortality. After a while, he finds himself falling in love only to learn that he is actually 837 years old and supposed to be a celibate monk.

Eventually his Brothers of the Order come after him, thinking him to be a deserter as well. The action heats up as he has to fight his captors and his own Brothers for his life. There's lots of action, love and blood. The best combination for a good yarn. Happy reading.

Free Ebook Short Stories from Harlequin

In addition to the sixteen free ebooks Harlequin is offering five free short stories for you to read, in one of three formats (all with DRM, it appears). You might not be able to read them on your Kindle, but they are short enough to read on your netbook or iphone without any eyestrain. I believe the Adobe PDF versions can be read on the newer Sony Readers and some of the other planned ebook readers coming out. It remains to be seen if Amazon's New Kindle DX will support DRM'd PDF books, but they are licensing the reader technology directly from Adobe, so it is a possibility.

The first of these is by a single author, under their Harlequin Mini label, while the last four are collaborative efforts, where a single published author works with one or more unpublished authors to write a single story (the Harlequin Mini Round Robin label).

Cherokee Christmas by Sheri WhiteFeather. Traci Calhoun, the bright-spirited daughter of a pastor, believes in extending goodwill. But when her son, Parker, convinces her to visit the elusive Daniel Crow, she finds herself falling in love with a moody stranger—a man who needs to face his past and embrace the heritage he left behind.

Stolen by the Sheikh by Kate Walker, et al. Lucy Mannion has traveled with her uncle to the desert kingdom of Dahman to negotiate some vital oil leases. But she awakens to find herself in a different place than she was the evening before -- and the prisoner of the arrogant Sheikh Hakim Bin Taimur Al Fulani.

Bedfellows by Kristi Gold. Lainey Sims Kilgore has returned to her hometown to recover from a painful divorce. To take her mind off the past, she throws herself into opening her own lingerie and swimwear boutique, as well as managing her mother’s mayoral campaign. When she learns her high school crush, Dr. Grant Morgan, is managing the opposing campaign of her mother’s lifelong enemy, Cleatus Ringo, she convinces him to help her uncover the secret behind her mother’s bitter rivalry with Ringo.

Night Magic by Mia Zachary. Lauryn Meade is far too practical to believe in magic -- until a gorgeous genie offers to take her to the heights of sensual pleasure!

The Rancher and the Rose by Carolyn Zane. He wanted a stay-at-home wife; she wanted a high-powered career. What happens when these ex-lovers meet up again?

Kindle Dollar Days: Flying Pen Press

My Kindle Dollar Days posts highlight books that are under or near one dollar in price. Unless otherwise indicated, the titles are priced at 99 cents (or less) for the Amazon Kindle. Often these are from independent authors and publishers, as 99 cents is the lowest possible price they can set (only large publishers can pick prices lower and offer books as free downloads).

Dragon Ring, by Lettie Prell, is set in the near future, after an devastating L.A. earthquake and the conversion of the country of Guatemala to a single corporation, this book blends Mayan mythology and high tech, virtual reality and magic. I grabbed a copy after reading the sample and have it near the top of my TBR stack.

Nadine is a special young woman. She is the daughter of the man who transformed the small nation of Guatemala into the world’s largest and most powerful corporation. Nadine is an expert at virtual-reality applications, and when she goes undercover to find her father’s killers, she discovers a power within the Earth that can transform civilization — or destroy entire cities. She must face the juggernaut of corporate greed and secrecy to stop an experiment that could have cataclysmic consequences.

Although she is a skeptic, Nadine is finding that the magic claimed by mystics for centuries has real roots, and combining this mystical energy with virtual-reality control gives her the only tool that can stop the impending catastrophe … but at a great cost. She has awakened a beast within her own spirit that threatens to consume her.

While checking out the book's reviews, I looked to see what else might be out there from the same publisher and uncovered three more 99 cent specials. I've grabbed samples of all three and will probably buy the lot sometime this today. It's under $3 total and who knows how long they'll stay at this price; I'd spend that much on gas (more if I grabbed a coffee) just to browse the discount aisles at any of the "local" bookstores.

Migration of the Kamishi (The Feral World) by Gaddy Bergmann, the first book in The Feral World series, tells the odyssey of Blake and Manosh, two young men of the Fifty-First Century, as they journey across a new and unrecognizable expanse of the Great Plains. In the Fifty-First Century, the planet has recovered from a three-thousand-year-old wound - an asteroid strike. In the middle of the Twenty-First Century, the asteroid Apophis struck the planet and wiped out civilization in a disaster of biblical proportions. Civilization was utterly ruined, and all technology - communication, transportation, power, everything - was lost. Faced with the choice to rebuild the past as it was, or to live a simpler life in harmony with nature, the few survivors chose harmony. Meanwhile, nature filled the niches left behind in the great "Rubbletown" cities and the great expanses in between. Blake and Manosh leave their home in the Badlands near Mt. Rushmore, after an invasion by a neighboring tribe massacres their village. They alone must carry the faith and legacy of the Kamishi tribe as they migrate south to the Warmland, where they hope to find safety from the coming winter. They endure only with their faith, hope, and a few stone-age tools. Gaddy Bergmann is a naturalist and scientist, performing research in zoology and microbiology. He infuses his post-apocalyptic world with the sense that humanity has learned from its mistakes. He asks the reader to consider what would happen if the planet were given a chance to escape the endless harvesting and management of its resources and allowed to heal.

Irreconcilable Differences by James R. Strickland.

Rachel Santana is thirty-six years old. She’s an agent for Interpol Covert Services. Before that, she was an interrogator at the White Sands Reeducation Camp, following the breakup of the United States. Before that, she was a prisoner there. Before that, a Yankee, one of a group of corporate mercenaries trying to extract something like a victory in the Middle East. Before that, she was a United States Marine. She’s a survivor. A cop. A soldier. A destroyer. A killer.

Now, Robert Neil, Rachel’s boss and soon-to-be ex-husband, has implanted a digital copy of Rachel’s mind in Michelle Marie (Micki) Blake, a 16 year old farmgirl-hacker in rural Kansas. The mission: Learn the local hacker ecology. Locate the dangerous new player prowling the rural networks. Destroy him. Take no prisoners. Leave no incriminating evidence. As covert missions go, it should be pretty simple.

There’s nothing simple, though, about being conjoined at the cortex with someone else. There’s nothing simple about life on the farm, the life of a high school student, the life of a sixteen year old in post-United States Kansas.

And the rural hacker ecology is unraveling with new forces in play, new powers, new players. It will take all of Rachel’s experience just to survive. All of Micki’s skills as a hacker to dig for the truth. All of their combined abilities to put the pieces together, to find the real threat despite the web of deception and half truth that surrounds both their operation and Copy-Rachel’s very existence.

And somehow, they have to avoid being grounded.

Looking Glass is another by by James R. Strickland (and it looks like he is working on two more).

Looking Glass is set in the not too distant future, in a gritty, unrefined, shattered North America. Hackers and IT security technicians fight a different kind of war in cyberspace. A serial killer has found a way to use the network to reach inside his victim’s brains, and use these brains as his weapon. “Shroud” is a security network team leader for a large retail company. In the realm of cyberspace, inside a sensory deprivation tank and “jacked in” to the network, she is fast, nimble, and ruthless. She is just beginning her shift when the killer strikes for the first time. She survives, but her entire team is dead or missing. She is exiled from her corporate resources, and her search for the killer is fraught with peril and overwhelming odds.

Kindle Ebook Memorial Day Sales

No doubt there are many more than this, but I've found several books where the authors have discounted the price of their books for this weekend. As with all things Kindle, the prices can change at any moment (or stay inexplicably low for a period of time after the author raises the price).

First up in the sale is Felonious Jazz by Bryan Gilmer. This book debuted at a "normal" price (at $7.99, close to a paperback in price, but under the $12.87 that this book commands in print). The author had exactly one sale at the initial price, despite posting in several locations. He discovered that many other authors were getting better sales at the $1.99 price point and changed his book's list price ($2.49 = $1.99 after the standard Amazon discount, at least for now). Suddenly, his book shot up to #1 in the "hard-boiled mysteries" category and #17 in Mysteries and Thrillers. He describes his sales at that point as in the "low hundreds" per day. Flush with success (and his high ranking), he raised the price ($4.99 as discounted by Amazon, at a point where he earned significantly more per copy than he did on the $12.87 paperback book) and the sales slowed. Comments about the price increase rose, on the other hand, especially since he had only had the $1.99 price for such a short number of days -- many who downloaded the sample found the price higher when they went to purchase the book. Well, he is apparently listening (at least when the rankings dropped and so did sales), as he has lowered the price back to $1.99 for the weekend (and has climbed back to #14 in the hard-boiled category). So, if you missed the earlier sale, this is your chance to grab it before it returns to the $4.99 price point.

Next up is Brendan Carroll, author of The Red Cross of Gold series. The list price of the series has been dropped to $1.99 each (resulting in a sale price of $1.59), but Amazon's pricing genies have not yet caught up. The first in the series, The Knight of Death, for example, is still at $7.99 (but shows the lower list price). My advice is, if you want to read the series, is to grab the ones where the price has dropped (II:. The King of Terrors, V:. the Quinta Essentia, VI:. the Dragonslayer, VII:. The Wisdom of Solomon and VIII: The Silver Caduceus), then check back on the others (I: The Knight of Death, III:. The Head of the Crow and IV:. The Hesperian Dragon) later today or tomorrow (perhaps even Monday). For the entire series, this sale means a savings of $38.40 from the previous $6.39 each sales price ($7.99 list with the 20% Kindle discount).

2012: Seeking Closure by Gregory Bernard Banks, based on a story by Tom Townsend, is about to be released as an independent film (www.seekingclosurethemovie.com or see the trailer) and has a debut price of $3.19 ($11.99 in print).

It's December 21, 2012. The President of the United States has just gone on the air to inform the world that in three hours time, the world will end, and there is nothing he can do about. And then he and all the world leaders walk away and leave the people to fend for themselves.

What would you do?

Based on a story by Tom Townsend, and soon to become a motion picture from Inner Glow Pictures, 2012: Seeking Closure is the story of a world gone mad in a time of chaos, of disaster and destruction and people desperate to seek closure while the society goes mad.

Kindle Dollar Days

My Kindle Dollar Days posts highlight books that are under or near one dollar in price. Unless otherwise indicated, the titles are priced at 99 cents (or less) for the Amazon Kindle. Often these are from independent authors, as 99 cents is the lowest possible price they can set (only large publishers can pick prices lower and offer books as free downloads). If they set the price at $1.00 instead, the price is often automatically discounted by Amazon and will show as $0.80 instead.

Master Of The Game by Sidney Sheldon.

One of Sidney Sheldon's most popular and bestselling titles.... Kate Blackwell is one of the richest and most powerful women in the world. She is an enigma, a woman surrounded by a thousand unanswered questions. Her father was a diamond prospector who struck it rich beyond his wildest dreams. Her mother was the daughter of a crooked Afrikaaner merchant. Her conception was itself an act of hate-filled vengeance. At the extravagent celebrations of her ninetieth birthday, there are toasts from a Supreme Court Judge and a telegram from the White House. And for Kate there are ghosts, ghosts of absent friends and of enemies. Ghosts from a life of blackmail and murder. Ghosts from an empire spawned by naked ambition! Sidney Sheldon is one of the most popular storytellers in the world. This is one of his best-loved novels, a compulsively readable thriller, packed with suspense, intrigue and passion. It will recruit a new generation of fans to his writing.

A Lifetime of Vengeance by P. J. Grondin.

While still in their teens the McKinney brothers enter the world of illicit drug trade. Just as their business appears to be running on auto-pilot, events turn their charmed lives into a living hell. Their friends turn against them and commit an act so heinous that the brothers are forced to leave their home in central Florida. They vow to come back and exact revenge on their friends-turned-enemies. After 6 years of military training they return to Florida to carry out their plan but their plan takes on a life of its own. But their enemies have a new, powerful friend. He’s a big player in the central Florida drug trade and he has help from inside the sheriff’s vice squad. Will the brothers survive this new threat? Will they carry out their plan and succeed in eliminating their adversaries, or will they forever harbor A Lifetime of Vengeance?

Kindle Shortcuts and Kindle-friendly Websites by MobileReference.

This Kindle user guide describes keyboard shortcuts and hidden Kindle features for both Kindle 2 and Kindle 1.