Another free book from Oprah: Let the Great World Spin

On Monday, August 3, 2009, Random House will offer Colum McCann's new novel, Let the Great World Spin ($9.99 Kindle), as a free download for 48 hours exclusively on Oprah.com. The book will be available for download from 11 a.m. ET Monday until 10:59 a.m. ET Wednesday August 5, 2009.

Book Description
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s ... most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.” A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a “fiercely original talent” (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.

Oprah.com membership will be required to download your copy. For more details, click HERE. And make sure you remember to check back on Monday to get the free PDF.

August Orbit $1 Book - Night Shift

The August One Dollar book from Orbit is Night Shift, by Lilith Saintcrow. This is the first in her Jill Kismet series, the latest of which is now available for pre-order: Redemption Alley ($6.39).

Book Description
Not everyone can take on the things that go bump in the night.

Not everyone tries.

But Jill Kismet is not just anyone.

She's a Hunter, trained by the best - and in over her head.

Welcome to the night shift...

I don't have the links, but this should also be available in other ebookstores (links above are for the Kindle version) for a dollar (although some sources never did reach a dollar last month; I'm not sure Fictionwise ever discounted last month's selection).

Apocalyptic Fiction, Part Two

See this post for Part One.

This one isn't a book at all, but a new television series from Discovery. This is a reality series, of sorts, but without the competive gaming features. It's on the Discovery Channel, if you can remember to watch or record it, or you can just get a free season pass using Amazon Video on Demand. The first episode, Arrival and Survival, is already available to download, but be sure to get a Season Pass while it is still free.

Synopsis
Ten volunteers enter an experimental post-apocalyptic world to see if they can survive and rebuild after a global disaster. Cordoned off in a downtown Los Angeles warehouse, they must secure shelter, filter water, and defend their new home from thieves.

One I am looking forward to reading isn't a "bargain" in the sense of being under $5, but at $9.99 is a great deal compared to the hardback (it just came out; wait a year and the price will drop more). It's Winter Duty, by E.E. Knight, the latest in his Vampire Earth series (all but number 4, Valentine's Rising, are available for the Kindle). In this series, a vampiric species has conquered Earth, but not all of humanity has been subjugated. Technology still works, but resources are limited due to availability and difficulty of travel in a hostile environment.

Major David Valentine and his fugitive battalion are the remnants of an expeditionary force shattered in its long retreat from disaster in the Appalachians. Between a raging blizzard, bands of headhunters, and the need to recover wounded soldiers lost during the retreat, Valentine is in for the toughest winter of his life.

And Valentine is losing allies fast. Some of the clans in the region have declared themselves in favor of the Kurians, throwing Kentucky into civil war. But the Kurian overlords have determined that the region isn-t worth the effort of another conquest. Their order: extermination.

I've mentioned Keith Knapp's Moonlight ($0.99) before and it's still a bargain at 99 cents. The one dips into the horror genre as well, so you might not want to read it late at night (or at least keep all the lights on when you do).

Book Description
It began with a power outage. A power outage that went beyond lights and televisions. Clocks stopped telling time. Cell phones no longer received signals. Cars became dead relics that wouldn't start.

As the world around them becomes darker, so do the inhabitants of the small town of Westmont, Illinois. A mysterious and evil presence has taken a hold over the village, making the once peaceful town a place of violence and despair.

A small group of individuals, untouched by this presence, must uncover the mystery of why they remain normal and discover what (or who) is taking control of their town, one soul at a time.

Because the Man in the Dark Coat is out there. Hunting them.

And not everyone can remain untouched forever.

Also in the Horror end of the spectrum is Gone, the Day ($0.80) by Erik Williams, a short novella that can be easily read in one sitting.

Book Description
Mike wakes up to discover that darkness has consumed the world. No sun. No sky. No stars. Only blackness. Before he can question what has happened, or even his own sanity, great beasts swarm out of the void and begin a lethal assault on mankind.

No review of the genre would be complete without at least one Zombie Apocaplyse story (would that be the Zombocalyse?). The problem is, finding just one to include here. There is Braaaaaains ($0.99; novella), by Keith Blenman, The Fence Mender ($1.99), by Anghus Houvouras, The Zombie Chronicles, by Mark Clodi, Z Day Is Here ($5.99), by Rob Fox, theAs The World Dies Trilogy, by Rhiannon Frater, and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War ($9.99) by Max Brooks. You can even subscribe to The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse ($0.99/month) for more zombies on a regular basis.

These are but a sampling of what is out there ... if you find any other bargain titles, be sure to leave a comment, so I can check them out. One I recommend you skip, however, is Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse ($9.99), by James Wesley Rawles. That is, unless you think a book is improved by endless, detailed lists of exact weapons to stockpile for the coming collapse of society, along with what seems every military weapon that might be used by a UN force when taking over what is left. Somewhere in this book, which I have nearly finished (I picked it up on a whim when it was $6.39 one weekend), there really is a good novella; unfortunately, it is buried under the novel length minutia (and in need of an editor to polish up what would be left after this was all removed). If you do want a checklist of survivalist gear, there are many such on the web, for free. If you want to read a great tale of the aftermath of a catastrophic collapse of civilization, check out the Vampire Earth series above, or the Change Saga by S.M. Stirling, instead.

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.