Game of the Day - 98 Cents (plus one free)

Amazon's Video Game of the Day deal today is a game download, Tradewinds 2, for 98 cents. It's a cute game, so far, where you travel between ports, buying and selling trade goods (with prices changing at ports depending on the season) and fighting off pirates. I quickly played thru the 30 minute trial period and promptly went back to Amazon and purchased the full version.

This game also qualifies as a purchase for the Buy One, Get One Free offer that Amazon is currently running and I've already received the email from Amazon telling me to choose one of the games from that offer to download for free (but I'll try each of them first, to make sure they work on my computer; I've run into some that won't and others that were just unplayable for me, so the 30 minute trial period is something I always take advantage of).

Game Description

• Trade Goods And Fight Pirates.
• Over 100 Swashbuckling Adventures
• Customize Your Ship And Characters
• Over 60 Hours Of Gameplay

Amass a fortune by buying and selling goods in this fantastic seafaring game of chance, skill and adventure! Earn enough gold to upgrade your ship and engage in land and sea battles. Trade magic weaponry and mysterious artifacts as you encounter a fascinating new world and discover uncharted ports. Two game modes and over sixty hours of gameplay await you in your quest to dominate the high seas!

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon, is currently marked down to $2.39, the lowest I've seen it since last December, when it went down to $1.75 (I think it was even lower a day or two before I got a copy then). I know that
by year end it was back up to $6.39, although several others in the series were still marked down then.

Book Description
Claire Randall is leading a double life. She has a husband in one century, and a lover in another...

In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon—when she innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an "outlander"—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of our Lord...1743.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire's destiny in soon inextricably intertwined with Clan MacKenzie and the forbidden Castle Leoch. She is catapulted without warning into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life ...and shatter her heart. For here, James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire...and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

The entire Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon is available for the Kindle. In order, they are:Outlander ($2.39), Dragonfly in Amber ($7.19), Voyager ($6.39), Drums of Autumn ($6.39), The Fiery Cross ($6.39) and A Breath of Snow and Ashes ($6.39) and, of course, the newest in the series, An Echo in the Bone ($13.20 - it appears the publisher intentionally set the list price at $30 in order to prevent it from being sold at $9.99 in the Kindle store, as that is above the cutoff for the automatic pricing system's discount; maybe it will go down as sales for the book increase, otherwise I'm waiting on the paperback).

Free Reads - H.G. Wells

To celebrate the birthday of H.G. Wells (21 Sept 1866) BooksOnBoard is offering The Time Machine for free - in ePub, ADE and Mobi formats. You'll need to set up an account, but should not need a credit card for these formats. There doesn't appear to be any DRM on the files, so the Mobi version should work on the Kindle.

Book Description
The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells, is a novella, written in 1895, that sparked the idea of a usable vehicle that allows its operator to travel through time. Wells’ protagonist, the Time Traveler, sees time as the fourth dimension, meaning it could be as travelable as any of the other dimensions. He ends up in the year 802,701 A.D. and discovers a human-esque race called Eloi. Wells’ The Time Machine explores the utopian existence that the Time Traveler discovers the Eloi living in.

If you don't want to use BooksOnBoard, need another format or just want to check out what a hand-converted public domain book can look like (almost always much better than those poorly formatted gutenberg copies in the Kindle store often are), you might want to check out the free version of both The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds over at mobileread.com. These three are currently at the top of the list of recent uploads, which you can find by clicking HERE.

With either of these two sources, you'll need to make your own backups, since when you delete them from your reader, they will be truly removed. On the other hand, that also means that these books won't be cluttering up your archive forever, either, something that becomes more and more of an issue, as my archive grows and there is no method of organizing two years after the first Kindle shipped.

Free Book from Sony - The Monstrumologist

The Monstrumologist ($9.99 Kindle), by Rick Yancey, is a young adult horror story. To get it free, search for the title in the Sony Ebook Store using the desktop Sony Reader software (it's a free download; with it, you can read books on your PC even if you don't have a Sony Reader).

Book Description
These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed.

But he is dead now and has been for more than forty years, the one who gave me his trust, the one for whom I kept these secrets.

The one who saved me...and the one who cursed me.

So begins the journal of Will Henry, orphaned assistant to Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, a man with a most unusual specialty: monstrumology, the study of monsters. In his time with the doctor, Will has met many a mysterious late-night visitor, and seen things he never imagined were real. But when a grave robber comes calling in the middle of the night with a gruesome find, he brings with him their most deadly case yet.

Critically acclaimed author Rick Yancey has written a gothic tour de force that explores the darkest heart of man and monster and asks the question: When does a man become the very thing he hunts?

B1G1F Game Downloads

Amazon once again has a Buy One, Get One Free Sale going on their game downloads. This one lasts thru the end of the month and you are allowed to choose the first game from anything in the Game Downloads Store other than the free downloads of Big Kahuna Reef or Cake Mania. You can try any (or all) of the games on a 30 minute game-time trial basis and if you buy one of them, you'll get a credit via email for the free game (not a coupon, just a credit). Once you have the credit email, you can buy any other game at the same or lesser price on the sale page, at no charge.

I've picked up a few of the games and they can provide a nice break. Since I usually play them on my netbook, I always use the free trial period, as I've found some of them won't work on it's smaller (shorter than standard) screen. Some of them really need an xternal mouse to work well, also. If only I could get the sprinkler system from Alice Greenfingers to work in Animal Crossing: City Folk (on the WII).