Music to Read By - Summer Music from Stanford U

Get a free album of music from iTunes U (which includes courses from Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon), that you can download to your Kindle (or iphone) for listening while reading or just while sitting on the beach). You don't have to be a student (at Stanford or otherwise) to get the download. But, you might want to check out the numerous free courses available at Stanford U or Carnegie Mellon U on iTunes.

Get the album, Summer Mix 2009, HERE.

B1G1F on Kindle: Chris Anderson

Assuming you weren't paying attention last week and missed the deal to get FREE: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson, for free, there is a new deal for you, valid through August 21. According to the Kindle blog, if you buy FREE: The Future of a Radical Price (not $9.99), then you will get Anderson's earlier book, The Long Tail, (Revised and Updated)
, for free. The only problem with the offer is that it doesn't seem to be live, yet. Normally, when an offer like this is active, you'll see a note near the top of the listing for the first book, that tells you about the deal on getting the second book free. That is currently missing from the list for FREE: The Future of a Radical Price. My advice: If you want in on this deal, wait a day or so, then check to make sure that you see an indication of the free book being offered, before buying. Otherwise, plan on spending some time on the phone with Customer Service in order to get the second book. Of course, if you are a regular reader, you already have the first title (and in multiple formats), in which case, it's cheaper to just buy the second title if you really want it (or read it from the library, where it's free!).

Book Description
The New York Times bestseller that introduced the business world to a future that-s already here-now in a new edition with a new chapter about Long Tail Marketing and a new epilogue.

Winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book of the Year

In the most important business book since The Tipping Point, Chris Anderson shows how the future of commerce and culture isn-t in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but in what used to be regarded as misses-the endlessly long tail of that same curve.

Free Ebook from Oprah - Heroic Measures

Download Jill Ciment's new novel, Heroic Measures for free until 10:59 a.m. ET Wednesday July 22, 2009, at Oprah.com. You do have to become a member of the website (which is free). If you want to read it on your Kindle (non-DX), you'll need to convert it (via Amazon or one of the free converting programs) -- it isn't the cleanest looking conversion (due to headers and page numbers getting left in the text), but it is readable (although barely).

Book Description

A gasoline tanker truck is “stuck” in the Midtown Tunnel. New Yorkers are panicked . . . . Is this the next big attack?

Alex, an artist, and Ruth, a former schoolteacher with an FBI file as thick as a dictionary, must get their beloved dachshund, whose back legs have suddenly become paralyzed, to the animal hospital sixty blocks north. But the streets of Manhattan are welded with traffic. Their dog, Dorothy, twelve-years-old and gray-faced, is the emotional center of Alex and Ruth's forty-five-year-long childless marriage. Using a cutting board as a stretcher, they ferry the dog uptown.

This is also the weekend that Alex and Ruth must sell their apartment. While house hunters traipse through it during their open house, husband and wife wait by the phone to hear from the animal hospital. During the course of forty-eight hours, as the missing truck driver terrorizes the city, the price of their apartment becomes a barometer for collective hope and despair, as the real estate market spikes and troughs with every breaking news story.

In shifting points of view—Alex’s, Ruth’s, and the little dog’s—man, woman, and one small tenacious beast try to make sense of the cacophony of rumors, opinions, and innuendos coming from news anchors, cable TV pundits, pollsters, bomb experts, hostages, witnesses, real estate agents, house hunters, bargain seekers, howling dogs, veterinarians, nurses, and cab drivers.

A moving, deftly told novel of ultrahigh-urban anxiety.

Download your free copy (PDF), HERE.

Author Spotlight: Frank Tuttle

Dead Man's Rain, (reviewed HERE), was previously free, but is now $2.80. This one earned the number one spot on my TBR stack on the strength of the "warning" alone. It's a short novel (and I suspect that Mister Trophy is, as well) and perhaps not quite up the level of a Jim Butcher novel, but was still a quite interesting read. Now there are three novels in the series available, as well as an unrelated short story compilation.

Can a haunted man help the dead find peace?

Markhat is a Finder, charged with the post-war task of tracking down sons and fathers gone suddenly missing when an outbreak of peace left the army abandoned where they stood. But now it's ten years on after the war, and about all he's finding is trouble.

This time, trouble comes in the form of a rich widow with a problem. Her dearly departed husband, Ebed Merlat, keeps ambling back from the grave for nocturnal visits. Markhat saw a lot of during the war, but he's never seen anyone, rich or poor, rise from the grave and go tromping around the landscape. But for the right price, he's willing to look into it.

As a storm gathers and night falls, Markhat finds darker things than even murder lurk amid the shadows of House Merlat.

Warning, this title is rife with the walking dead, sarcastic butlers, barking dogs and ghostly dances.

The Mister Trophy ($2.00)

A troll's missing head could cause Markhat to lose his own.

All the finder Markhat wanted was a beer at Eddie's. Instead he gets a case that will bring him face to fang with crazed, blood-craving halfdead, a trio of vengeful Troll warriors, and Mama Hog's backstreet magic. Plus, the possible resurgence of the Troll War.

All right in his own none-too-quiet neighborhood.

Through the town of Rannit's narrow alleys and mean streets, Markhat tries to stay one step ahead of disaster. And ignore Mama Hog's dire warnings that this time, the head that rolls could be his own.

Warning: This book contains well-dressed vampires, extremely polite Trolls, and occasional bursts of humor. Avoid reading it when landing aircraft, welding in the nude, or taunting grumpy jackals while wearing pork chop earmuffs.

Hold The Dark ($3.60) is the third in the Markhat series and is a longer novel, it appears, at 257K in size, versus the 128K and 175K of the first two.

Demons in a feeding frenzy drive the world-weary Markhat to the brink.

Quiet, hard-working seamstresses aren't the kind that normally go missing, even in a tough town like Rannit. Martha Hoobin's disappearance, though, quickly draws Markhat into a deadly struggle between a halfdead blood cult and the infamous sorcerer known only as the Corpsemaster.

A powerful magical artifact may be both his only hope of survival-and the source of his own inescapable damnation.

Markat's search leads him to the one thing that's been missing in his life. But even love's awesome power may not save him from the darkness that's been unleashed inside his own soul.

Warning: This gritty, hard-boiled fantasy detective novel contains mild romance and interludes of suggestive hand-holding.

Wistril Compleat ($0.99)

All three of Wistril's magical misadventures are included in this complete compilation of cantrips and catastrophes!

Wistril Besieged

Wizard Wistril's wants are simple -- four meals a day, a steady supply of honey-gold Upland beer, and above all else, peace and quiet.

All but the latter are in plentiful supply at Castle Kauph. Despite secreting himself in the Wild, Wistril finds himself battling an army of relentless mercenaries while the entire population of the nearest village takes refuge in his home. Even Kern, Wistril's long-suffering, sharp-tongued apprentice, isn't sure whether the army or the houseguests will prove to be Wistril's undoing!

Wistril Afloat

Wistril doesn't believe in lake monsters -- until they invade the lake that just happens to provide Wistril's favorite fish dinners. Faced with the choice of adjusting his menus or daring the wilderness around Lake Ovinshoon, Wistril and Kern soon have bigger problems than mere lake monsters on their hands.

Because while Wistril wishes only to study the beasts, others wish to hunt them and skin them. Will Wistril's peaceful White Chair magics prevail against a ruthless band of wyvern-hunters who have only profit on their minds?

Wistril Betrothed

If ever there was a determined bachelor, thought Kern, his name was surely Wistril.

So when Wistril's wife-to-be shows up with a pursuing army on her heels, life at Castle Kauph is turned upside down. And when another suitor for Lady Emmerbee's hand arrives, with a dark and menacing wizard of his own in tow, it's up to Kern and the rest of Castle Kauph to get Wistril wed without losing his head!

SciFi Saturday

It seems like only a week ago that I discussed Steve Harper's Silent Empire series (oh, wait, it was just last week). Now the third volume in the series, Trickster, is out and it's also a bargain at $1.79. You can also read a few short stories he's written at the Bookview Cafe, although they are more fantasy than SciFi.

The Dream has been shattered, and the majority of Silent who telepathically communicated through it have been cast out by the event known as the Despair, unable to reenter. Now the remaining Silent still capable of linking to the Dream have become a valuable commodity to those in power seeing to keep the lines of galactic communication open...

In the midst of the Despair, Father Kendi Weaver and the crew of the Poltergeist have a limited window of opportunity to find the loved ones they have lost--including Kendi's parents and siblings, who were sold into slavery more than fifteen years ago.

But just as Kendi closes in on the whereabouts of his brother and sister, they are taken by a mysterious group intent on using them for their own secret agenda..

The Cloud ($1.99) is a scifi novel by Elmore Hammes, who was featured yesterday with his fantasy novel The Holmes and Watson Mysterious Events and Objects Consortium: The Case of the Witch's Talisman ($1.99).

A story of hope, love and redemption set against the stars.

An unstoppable cloud hurtles through the cosmos, annihilating all life in its path, absorbing the energy of living creatures as it passes from system to system.

A lone survivor of an advanced civilization is rocketed from his doomed planet in an attempt to preserve a race, heading towards the solar system and the green-blue orb called Earth. A simple farm girl holds the key to stopping the approaching menace, but she must find her way to love to do so.

With a beginning inspired by Superman and pulp fiction such as Flash Gordon, the story then transitions into modern space opera.

The Cloud is a science fiction romance with action and adventure, appropriate for teenage readers and above.

A Matter of Oaths is available as a free download from the author's website, in several formats. This one was a UK release and difficult to find in the US. UK authors are still blocked from using the Kindle store (that may change by Christmas, as rumors are that the Kindle will be released there this year; or we may find that those of us in the US are the ones that get geographically excluded from the digital books in the UK store at that point).

If you missed Chris Dolley's Resonance back in March, when it was free for Read an E-Book Week, then you are in luck. It's just been added to the Baen Free Library and can now be downloaded in pretty much any format you might want.

You can't create a world in seven days without cutting corners . . . and it is very dangerous to notice the flaws in the design

Graham Smith is a 33 year-old office messenger. To the outside world he's an obsessive-compulsive mute -- weird but harmless. But to Graham Smith, it's the world that's weird. And far from harmless. He sees things others can't . . . or won't. He knows that roads can change course, people disappear, office blocks migrate across town. All at night when no one's looking. The world's an unstable place, still growing, sloughing off layers of reality like dead skin. One day you drive by, and it's changed.

Annalise Mercado hears voices, all from girls calling themselves Annalise. Sometimes she thinks they're spirit guides, sometimes she thinks she's crazy. But then they start telling her about Graham Smith and the men who want to kill him. That's when they meet. So begins the story of two people whose lives are fragmented across alternate realities. And how the hold the key to the future of a billion planets. . . .

The second free title added this week to the Baen Free Library is Harald, by David Friedman. This one is actually fantasy, but I forgot to post it yesterday.

He Didn't Get the Surrender Memo!

It's the perfect storm for conquest: a dysfunctional kingdom reels under a weak monarch. A powerful order of warrior maidens turns to infighting after suddenly losing its charismatic leader. Worst of all, a disciplined and blooded imperial army stands ready to invade and dominate. If ever a moment called for grit, competence, and an utter lack of wishful thinking it is now. Enter Harald of the Vales. Family man and teller of tales. Warrior's warrior. It's time the Empire got one thing straight: the land of Kaerlia will never be its for the taking.

Free Online Reads

HOMEOSTASIS by Carlos Hernadez is a free near-future scifi short story over at Futurismic.

Homesteading, Nancy Jane Moore, takes place in a near-future, after a apocalyptic war that destroyed worldwide civilization, caused by a misunderstanding and following a series of events that reads a lot like today's news headlines.

Return to Cockaigne, by Paul Di Filippo, originally appeared in Interzone (a UK Scifi/Fantasy magazine).

If you are wondering how to easily get these stories from a web page to your Kindle - check out Instapaper.com. Once you have it installed, you highlight the text you want to read, ciick on a ReadLater icon that gets installed on your toolbar, then either have it automatically sent to your Kindle on a scheduled basis ($0.15/mb Amazon charges apply) or send them manually (or just read them online there). The only thing I don't like about the service is that they will not support your @free.kindle.com address, which is what I would prefer to use (it's the main reason I don't use it nearly as much as I used to, but it is a quick and easy method).

Podcast

Last, check out the podcast of Kelly Link's The Hortlak, read by Frank (Part 1 and Part 2). This story appears in Magic For Beginners, which you can get free HERE, in various formats.