Oprah Update!

Don't forget to download your PDF copy of Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. See my earlier post for more details.

Weekend Thrillers

There are several thrillers on special currently, at least one of which promises to raise his price after the weekend: A Treasured Threat ($0.99), by Tim K. Scott. I had not heard of the book, nor known it was on sale until I chanced upon a forum announcement that this sale would end July 31. He extended that until the end of the weekend, so I'd grab this one quickly, if it tickles your fancy (I did, after reading the sample).

Book Description
A Treasured Threat is a historical “What if” of a group of Floridians that are thrown into the deadly repercussions of an Old Testament generational curse. The author integrates several historical, unrelated events and laces them together in fiction. A Treasured Threat was heavily researched with an eye for accuracy and continuity.

With an exciting combination of wit, drama and tragedy, A Treasured Threat will hold the readers' attention until its unexpected, high impact conclusion.

In literary style, there are several sub plots and character building that brings A Treasured Threat to life.

The central character, a retired Naval Commander and salvage diver Malcolm “Johnny” Johns, operates a SCUBA diving charter for tourists from West Palm Beach. He and his crew occasionally search for lost Spanish treasure off shore of the Gold Coast of Florida.

A lead from an old navy buddy guides him and his crew to the discovery of a Biblical artifact. Despite a multitude of tragic events that has surrounded the relic, he is reluctant to acknowledge the obvious destructive power it possesses.

Certain language and situations may keep A Treasured Threat from being categorized as a Christian book, but the main plot is based on Old Testament passages from the books of Kings and Deuteronomy.

Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir ($0.99), by Gary Taylor, is a true life tale that has been made into made into two movies and three TV documentaries. The sale price should be good thru Aug 15.

Book Description
Recognized as one of 2009's top true crime thrillers with medals from ForeWord Magazine, the IPPYs and the National Indie Excellence Awards.

"Remember the movie 'Fatal Attraction'? And the movie 'Basic Instinct'? And the movie 'Play Misty For Me'? Toss all three of the movies in a blender, hit frappe and stand back. What comes out would be Gary Taylor’s new book – 'Luggage By Kroger'."--Randall Radic in "Self-Publishing Review" magazine.

In this true crime memoir, former Houston Post reporter Gary Taylor recounts his true-life fatal attraction involvement in the trail of violence that has dogged Texas attorney Catherine Mehaffey Shelton for nearly three decades, prompting coverage by newspapers, TV, movies and even Oprah Winfrey. Now Taylor invites readers to grab a ringside seat for viewing the wreckage of an obsessive relationship, from its erotic beginning through the violent end and the trials required to clean up the mess. The result is an adventure odyssey of self-discovery through an encounter that nearly cost him his life.

Crack-Up ($1.99), by Eric Christopherson, garnered a five-star review from a reviewer that is quite stingy with them. There is also a one-star review, that is just a complaint the sample has a formatting problem; although true, this does happen now and then, but should be reported to Amazon (or the author, so they can attempt to work with Amazon to correct it), not be the basis for a review that sticks with the book (especially as the "review" is only about the error in the sample.

Book Description
Argus Ward is a former U.S. Secret Service agent who runs a protection agency catering to the rich and famous. His best-kept secret--which he shares with lawyers and doctors and even psychiatrists--is his status as a high-functioning paranoid schizophrenic. One day, with little warning, he turns psychotic for the first time in twenty years. He lands in a secure psychiatric facility, charged with the murder of his most famous client, high tech industry billionaire John Helms, the wealthiest man in America.

Argus has no memory of the killing. A blood test suggests to him that some unknown enemy had switched his anti-psychotic medication with identical-looking dummy pills to purposely drive him insane.

A sign of lingering paranoia? His doctor thinks so. Even his wife.

Yet Argus escapes incarceration to prove his theory. With the law on his trail and a ticking time bomb in his head--due to a lack of medication--he discovers that his disease had been "weaponized" by a powerful group to secretly assassinate John Helms as part of a multiple assassination conspiracy of world-wide significance.

Or has Argus simply lost his mind again? What in the end is "real" and what is only imagination in his story?

And what is justice for the criminally insane?

Come lose your grip on reality. Read "Crack-Up."

Kill The Story and Secrets of the Dead ($1.99 each) are both from John Luciew, author of Fatal Dead Lines ($6.99). The only problem I have with them: Death Notice, which fits between Fatal Dead Lines and Secrets of the Dead, isn't available on Kindle or in print.

Kill The Story
A serial killer known as “The Reader” is murdering journalists in the manner of their most famous stories. Dubbed the “Media Murders” by the press, the killings baffle authorities, turn once-aggressive reporters into prey and shock the country in what soon becomes a national story. The cunning killer’s first strike is cleverly disguised as a political assassination, mirroring John Hinckley’s attempt on Ronald Reagan. As it turns out, the fallen reporter had covered Reagan’s shooting. It’s the first of several bizarre killings with eerie similarities to sensational stories the murdered journalists once covered. The story is so big, The New York Times assigns its new national reporter, Cassandra “Cassie” Jordan, to cover its every development. The assignment returns Cassie to her familiar stomping grounds of Harrisburg, Pa., reuniting her with Frank “Telly” Tellis, chief political reporter for The Harrisburg Herald. Only Telly can put together the murderous truth as the secret motive for the killings is buried deep in his journalistic past. But can he solve the puzzle before falling under The Reader’s deadly crosshairs?

Secrets of the Dead

In the streets of Harrisburg, a man is killed in what appears to be a straightforward hit-and-run – until the victim turns out to have no identity whatsoever. Obituary writer Lenny Holcomb’s ability to glimpse the secrets of his column’s subjects leads him to suspect that his old friend, ex-congressman George Packard, may have had a hand in the “accident.” But if so, why do all the clues point to Packard’s slick political rival? With the help of ambitious reporter Jacqueline Towers, Lenny follows a trail of political spin and corruption to the highest levels of Pennsylvania government – where the right influence can make any problem disappear. Unfortunately, some very powerful people think Lenny Holcomb has just become a problem …

Hope Town ($1.19), by Brendan P. Myers , who also has Sumner Gardens ($1.29), a young adult title, and the short story A Truck Story ($1.00) available on Kindle, is the only one I haven't bought already. I just haven't had time to read thru the sample and decide, though, so it may end up in my TBR stack eventually.

Book Description
The sleepy, seaside village of Hopeton is not all it appears . . .

At the end of a bad day, Parker nurses his wounds at a local watering hole. There he meets a woman. Turns out, her day was almost as bad as his. Almost. After seeking solace in each other's arms, they find themselves unwittingly thrown together in a deadly race for survival.

Because two others are in the bar that evening, one predator: the town bigwig with a cash flow problem, and one prey, the bank president who refuses to help. Big mistake. Because Bobby Jo knows a dark secret and will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

From the high-rises of downtown Boston, to the high seas of the Atlantic, to the dirty sandlots of a sleepy south shore town, events move inexorably towards their pulse-pounding climax . . .

It's a small town. Maybe even something like your town. But all may already be lost for the good citizens of . . . Hope Town.

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.