99 Cent Game Download - Ricochet Xtreme

Amazon's Video Game of the Day deal today is a 99 cent game download, Ricochet Xtreme.

Game Description

• 170 Exciting Levels.
• 4 Unique Environments.
• 15 Awesome Power-Ups.
• 13 Specialty Bricks.

Ricochet is an award winning breakout style game featuring state of the art graphics, sound, and lots of new twists on the old classic. It's a winning combination that your WHOLE family will enjoy. As one person wrote us: "My family is thrilled with Ricochet, we have all played it enthusiastically for months!"

SciFi and Fantasy - Bargains and free reads

If you missed Dragonflight/Dragonquest, by Anne Mccaffrey, last November, when it was $1.25, you can still get a good deal on this double volume at it's current $6.39 price. After you read that one, you'll want to check out Masterharper of Pern ($4.79).

Book Description
In a time when the deadly scourge Thread has not fallen on Pern for centuries--and many dare to hope that Thread will never fall again--a boy is born to Harper Hall. A musical prodigy who has the ability to speak with the dragons, he is called Robinton, and he is destined to be one of the most famous and beloved leaders Pern has ever known. It is a perilous time for the harpers who sing of Thread--they are being turned away from holds, derided, attacked, even beaten. In this climate of unrest, Robinton will come into his own. But despite the tragedies that beset his own life, he continues to believe in music and in the dragons, and he is determined to save his beloved Pern from itself--so that the dragonriders can be ready to fly against the dreaded Thread when at last it returns.

Way of The Wolf ($$2.00) is the first in E.E. Knight's Vampire Earth series. I suspect the price drop is part of a promotion due to the most recent release in the series, Winter Duty ($9.99), but it hasn't been publicized by Amazon.

Book Description
Louisiana, 2065. A lot has changed in the 43rd year of the Kurian Order. Possessed of an unnatural hunger, the bloodthirsty Reapers have come to Earth to establish a New Order built on the harvesting of human souls. They rule the planet. And if it is night, as sure as darkness, they will come.

But on this pitiless world, the indomitable spirit of man still breathes in Lieutenant David Valentine. And his mission is to win back Earth...

MetaGame ($2.39), by Sam Landstrom, is no longer a penny in the Kindle store - but you can download it for free from his website, in several DRM-free formats (get mobipocket for your Kindle).

Book Description
Life is a game, literally. Winners earn immortality, while losers are condemned to aging and death. D_Light, a gifted player, knows this all too well and he-s willing to do anything to win-even kill. It is no wonder then that when given the chance to enter a MetaGame-an exclusive, high-stakes, anything goes contest-he-s quick to jump at the opportunity. The MetaGame starts out well enough for D_Light, the first quest being to hunt down a dangerous fugitive, but through his own ambition, the tables turn and D_Light finds himself the renegade. Now, D_Light pits himself against his world to find the truth behind -The Game- and must decide between winning it and saving what-s left of his humanity.

This 122,000 word (~400 page) novel blends emerging political and cultural trends, such as gaming culture, globalization, and the ever-increasing hegemony of corporations, with technological trends, such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Emerging from this stew is an original world for you to explore through the point of view of its many "players".

The Flame Within ($1.49), by Eric Noss, is Book One of the Keepers' Garden Trilogy

Book Description
The royal seat of Keepers' Garden has been usurped through assassination and the loose confederation of city-states within its borders is crumbling. After months of conflict, the Liberation and Imperials have emerged as the two major contenders for the throne.
But as one battle draws to a climax, another, darker cloud looms on the horizon.

The Flame Within follows Spirit Knight Aralon Mittel, part of a select elite of the soldiery trained in magic and the sword since late childhood. Yet Aralon is less known for his personal achievements than he is for being the younger brother of the missing Hyval Mittel, the Garden's greatest Spirit Knight.

Aralon is accompanied by Darvin Hegg, his former instructor and now his second officer, and Kiyana Irhan, a Mist Elf from beyond the reaches of the Garden. Join them as they attempt to end the Garden's civil war and are propelled into a conflict more profound than any had ever imagined...

Day Omega ($14.95), by Craig Harms, is available for free on his website. His royalties on the book were supposed to go to a charity, but the publisher has apparently disappeared on him, so he hasn't received anything from the Kindle or paperback sales. Instead, he invites you to get the book directly from him and, if you enjoy it, make a donation to www.campcallahan.com.

Book Description
Life in Chicago is bad for Sam Dimas, and it’s about to change – for the worse. After an argument with his wife, Sam storms out of the house. A vivid flash seems to rip the sky apart, and his wife has gone – along with millions of other people around the world. This is an exciting and thought provoking story, with unexpected twists and turns. Prepare for a thrilling ride – the end of the world is coming, the seven-year countdown to Christ’s return has just started!

Shayla Black is giving away , a novella introduction to her Doomsday Brethren series. You can get a free copy from Simon and Schuster, if you sign up for a newsletter, or you can read it online or download it from ScribD and skip the signup.

Book Description
They were meant to be together…but will magic tear them apart?

You can't buy Steven Lake's The Oort Perimeter ($15.99 paperback) in the Kindle store, but you can get it for free from his website (Epub or PDF). You can even download the audio version, HERE.

Book Description
Born of a need to protect their homeworld, Earthfleet, the military arm of the Society, struggles continuously to ensure the safety of Earth and all who live on it. But a dark force arises within the galaxy, one who wishes to use Earth as a pawn in their quest for power. In a struggle for survival, the Society, Earthfleet and their allies must race against time to uncover the truth of this dark force, before it can destroy Earth, and the nine races. Failure means extinction of the human race.

Harper Collins is letting you read Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic ($7.99) for free this month, but online as a online read, HERE.

Book Description
Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels are consistent number one bestsellers in England, where they have garnered him a revered position in the halls of parody next to Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen.

The Color of Magic is Terry Pratchett's maiden voyage through the now-legendary land of Discworld. This is where it all begins--with the tourist Twoflower and his wizard guide, Rincewind.

In closing, here's an update to a previous post. Ricky Sides, author of The Peacekeepers series, has dropped the price of books 2-5 down to $2.00, at least for the near term. If his sales stay up, the books will stay at that price; if not, they'll go up to the planned $3.99. I've already finished the first two books and have the next three waiting on my Kindle (although I'm taking a break to read another genre for a bit, so I don't burn out on the series). It may take a day or two for the price drop to hit the Kindle store, but the sale price is already in effect at Smashwords: The Birth of the Peacekeepers, Some Gave All, Liberty or Death, Eternal Vigilance and Descent into Madness.

Kindle Bargain Ebook Roundup - Political / War

Blue Dixie ($2.15), by Bob Moser

Book Description
A powerful case for a new Southern strategy for the Democrats, from an award-winning reporter and native Southerner

In 2000 and 2004, the Democratic Party decided not to challenge George W. Bush in the South, a disastrous strategy that effectively handed Bush more than half of the electoral votes he needed to win the White House. As the 2008 election draws near, the Democrats have a historic opportunity to build a new progressive majority, but they cannot do so without the South.

In Blue Dixie, Bob Moser argues that the Democratic Party has been blinded by outmoded prejudices about the region. Moser, the chief political reporter for The Nation, shows that a volatile mix of unprecedented economic prosperity and abject poverty are reshaping the Southern vote. With evangelical churches preaching a more expansive social gospel and a massive left-leaning demographic shift to African Americans, Latinos, and the young, the South is poised for a Democratic revival. By returning to a bold, unflinching message of economic fairness, the Democrats can win in the nation’s largest, most diverse region and redeem themselves as a true party of the people.

Keenly observed and deeply grounded in contemporary Southern politics, Blue Dixie reveals the changing face of American politics to the South itself and to the rest of the nation.

Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics ($2.99), by Doug Bandow & Marvin Olasky (Editor)

Book Description
Beyond Good Intentions brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to the question of how Christianity and politics interrelate. Author Doug Bandow believes the key lies in the correct use of the Bible in addressing public policy issues. Too often Christians either ignore or misapply the Bible in the political arena. Beyond Good Intentions is a much-needed corrective which takes the Bible seriously yet avoids proof-texting and questionable interpretive methods.

Shadows In The Jungle ($4.30), by LARRY ALEXANDER, the second novel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author.

Book Description
David Power and Clare O'Brien both grew up dreaming of escape from the battered seaside town of Castlebay, but they might as well have had the ocean between them. David is the cherished son of a prosperous doctor, while Clare lives with her large family behind their faltering store, longing for a moment of quiet to study. When they both go to university in Dublin-he as a matter of course, she on a hard-won scholarship-their worlds collide. They find freedom in each other-until the families, lovers, and secrets they left in Castlebay come back to haunt them.

The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq ($2.85), by John Crawford

Book Description
John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition, willingly exchanging one weekend a month and two weeks a year for a free education. But in fall 2002, one semester short of graduating and newly married-in fact, on his honeymoon-he was called to active duty and sent to the front lines in Iraq.

Crawford and his unit spent months upon months patrolling the streets of Baghdad, occupying a hostile city. During the breaks between patrols, Crawford began writing nonfiction stories about what he and his fellow soldiers witnessed and experienced.

In a voice at once raw and immediate, Crawford's stories vividly chronicle the daily life of a young soldier in Iraq-the excitement, the horror, the anger, the tedium, the fear, the camaraderie. But all together, the stories gradually uncover something more: the transformation of a group of young men, innocents, into something entirely different.

Those stories became this book, a haunting and powerful, brutal but compellingly honest book-punctuated with both humor and heartbreak-that represents an important document revealing the actual experience of waging the War in Iraq, as well as the introduction of a literary voice forged in the most intense of circumstances.

The Air We Breathe ($3.12), by Andrea Barrett

Book Description
In the autumn of 1916, Americans are debating whether to enter the first world war. There are 'preparedness parades', and headlines report German spies. But in an isolated community in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, the danger is barely felt. At Tamarack Lake the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, many of them recent immigrants from Europe, fill the sanatorium.

Her, in the crisp air, time stands still. Prisoners of routine and yearning for absent families, the inmates, including the newly arrived Leo Marburg, take solace in gossip, rumour and secret attachments.

An enterprising patient initiates a weekly discussion group. When his well-meaning efforts lead instead to tragedy and betrayal, the war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice and vigilante sentiment. Andrea Barrett pits power and privilege against unrest and thwarted desire, in a spellbinding tale of individual lives in a nation on the verge of extraordinary change.

Homefront ($0.99), by Kristen J. Tsetsi

Book Description
A cab driving former English professor, an unpredictable alcoholic Vietnam veteran, an anti-war soldier, and a morbid mother-in-law come together in this realistic, sensual, and darkly humorous semi-autobiographical tale of waiting through a war deployment.

Written by a former writer for the Journal Inquirer newspaper who is also a Women's eNews correspondent, a former English Professor, an award-winning fiction writer, literary fiction editor, and the wife of a former Chinook pilot for the 101st Airborne Division who deployed to Iraq in 2003, Homefront is the product of an author uniquely qualified to tell the private story.

Taking On the System ($3.09), by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga

Book Description
The Sixties are over -- and the rules of power have been transformed. In order to change the world one needs to know how to manipulate the media, not just march in the streets. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, otherwise known as "Kos," is today's symbol of digital activism, giving a voice to everyday people. In Taking on the System, Kos has taken a cue from his revolutionary predecessor's doctrine, Saul Alinsky's Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, and places this epic hand-book in today's digital era, empowering every American to make a difference in the 21st century. As founder of the largest political blog in the nation, Kos knows how it's done, because he's done it withtremendous success. In Taking on the System, he shares practical guidelines on how grassroots movements can thrive in the age of global information, while referencing historical and present examples of the tragedy caused without those actions. The walls between the people and the power -- the so-called rabble and the so-called elite -- are being torn down by technology, and a new army of amateurs are storming the barriers to effect political, cultural, and environmental transformation. Readers will come to understand how they too can change the world.

King's Dream: The Legacy of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Speech ($1.83), by Eric J. Sundquist

Book Description
-I have a dream--no words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. King's speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the -I have a dream- speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justice-debates as old as the nation itself-and demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom. This book is the first to set King's speech within the cultural and rhetorical traditions on which the civil rights leader drew in crafting his oratory, as well as its essential historical contexts, from the early days of the republic through present-day Supreme Court rulings. At a time when the meaning of the speech has been obscured by its appropriation for every conceivable cause, Sundquist clarifies the transformative power of King's -Second Emancipation Proclamation- and its continuing relevance for contemporary arguments about equality.

Fight Global Warming Now ($2.48), by Bill McKibben

Book Description
Bestselling author Bill McKibben turns activist in the first hands-on guidebook to stopping climate change, the world's greatest threat Hurricane Katrina. A rapidly disappearing Arctic. The warmest winter on the East Coast in recorded history. The leading scientist at NASA warns that we have only ten years to reverse climate change; the British government's report on global warming estimates that the financial impact will be greater than the Great Depression and both world wars-combined. Bill McKibben, the author of the first major book on global warming, The End of Nature, warns that it's no longer time to debate global warming, it's time to fight it. Drawing on the experience of Step It Up, a national day of rallies held on April 14, McKibben and the Step It Up team of organizers provide the facts of what must change to save the climate and show how to build the fight in your community, church, or college. They describe how to launch online grassroots campaigns, generate persuasive political pressure, plan high-profile events that will draw media attention, and other effective actions. This essential book offers the blueprint for a mighty new movement against the most urgent challenge facing us today.

The U.N. Exposed ($3.73), by Eric Shawn

Book Description
Over the years, and today more than ever, the United Nations has failed to address the most dangerous threats facing the civilized world, refused to condemn terrorist acts, encouraged America's enemies, and supported some of the world's most oppressive governments, all while wasting billions of dollars. As Fox News Channel reporter Eric Shawn points out, the U.N. is now where our so-called allies scheme against us, while Americans pay a whopping 22 percent of the U.N.'s bloated budget. His book offers a rare insider's tour of the United Nations, focusing on many disturbing aspects that have been ignored by the mainstream media.

Letters to President Obama: Americans Share Their Hopes and Dreams with the First African-American President ($3.79), edited by Hanes Walton Jr., Josephine Allen, Sherman Puckett, Donald Deskins Jr.

Book Description
This collection, which will total between 300 and 500 letters from Americans of all walks of life, will become an important piece of history as it describes the variety of feelings and emotions of Americans about the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Central to the book is the African-American experience and the long road from slavery to the civil rights era to the twenty-first century, but Americans of every race, color, gender, and age will be represented. From children and seniors, from cities and farms, all we have something to say and much to share about how Barack Obama’s election was special to them.

Advice and Consent: The Politics of Judicial Appointments ($2.82), by Lee Epstein & Jeffrey A. Segal

Book Description
From Louis Brandeis to Robert Bork to Clarence Thomas, the nomination of federal judges has generated intense political conflict. With the coming retirement of one or more Supreme Court Justices--and threats to filibuster lower court judges--the selection process is likely to be, once again, the center of red-hot partisan debate. In Advice and Consent, two leading legal scholars, Lee Epstein and Jeffrey A. Segal, offer a brief, illuminating Baedeker to this highly important procedure, discussing everything from constitutional background, to crucial differences in the nomination of judges and justices, to the role of the Judiciary Committee in vetting nominees. Epstein and Segal shed light on the role played by the media, by the American Bar Association, and by special interest groups (whose efforts helped defeat Judge Bork). Though it is often assumed that political clashes over nominees are a new phenomenon, the authors argue that the appointment of justices and judges has always been a highly contentious process--one largely driven by ideological and partisan concerns. The reader discovers how presidents and the senate have tried to remake the bench, ranging from FDR's controversial "court packing" scheme to the Senate's creation in 1978 of 35 new appellate and 117 district court judgeships, allowing the Democrats to shape the judiciary for years. The authors conclude with possible "reforms," from the so-called nuclear option, whereby a majority of the Senate could vote to prohibit filibusters, to the even more dramatic suggestion that Congress eliminate a judge's life tenure either by term limits or compulsory retirement. With key appointments looming on the horizon, Advice and Consent provides everything concerned citizens need to know to understand the partisan rows that surround the judicial nominating process.

Dude, Where's My Country? ($2.59), by Michael Moore

Book Description
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Stupid White Men comes a hilarious act of sedition to overthrow the 'Thief in Chief'-and effect the kind of change that just may save the country. Michael Moore is on a mission: He aims to unseat the man who slithered into the White House on tracks laid by guilty Enron execs and greased with his daddy's oil associations. And as for 'The Left,' they're just as satisfied to stand idly by as the chasm between the 'haves' and 'have nots' grows wider and wider. That's right, Michael Moore is back with a new book that reveals what's gone wrong in America and, more importantly, how it can be fixed. In his characteristic style that is at once fearless and funny, Moore takes readers on another wild ride to the political edge of righteous laughter and divine revenge.

Holy Terrors, Second Edition: Thinking About Religion After September 11 ($2.79), by Bruce Lincoln

Book Description
n the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, it is tempting to regard their perpetrators as evil incarnate. But their motives, as Bruce Lincoln shows in this timely offering, were profoundly and intensely religious. What we need, then, after September 11 is greater clarity about what we take religion to be. With rigor and incisiveness, Holy Terrors examines the implications of September 11 for our understanding of religion and how it interrelates with politics and culture.

Lincoln begins with a gripping dissection of the instruction manual given to each of the hijackers. In their evocation of passages from the Quran, we learn how the terrorists justified acts of destruction and mass murder "in the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate." Lincoln then offers a provocative comparison of President Bush's October 7 speech announcing U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden's videotape released hours later. Each speech, he argues, betrays telling contradictions. Bin Laden, for instance, conceded implicitly that Islam is not unitary, as his religious rhetoric would have it, but is torn by deep political divisions. And Bush, steering clear of religious rhetoric for the sake of political unity, still reassured his constituents through coded allusions that American policy is firmly rooted in faith.

Lincoln ultimately broadens his discussion further to consider the role of religion since September 11 and how it came to be involved with such fervent acts of political revolt. In the postcolonial world, he argues, religion is widely considered the most viable and effective instrument of rebellion against economic and social injustices. It is the institution through which unified communities ensure the integrity and continuity of their culture in the wake of globalization. Brimming with insights such as these, Holy Terrors will become one of the essential books on September 11 and a classic study on the character of religion.

The Faith of the American Soldier ($2.26), by Stephen Mansfield

Book Description
What goes through the mind of an American warrior spiritually and religiously when facing the enemy? Touching on a subject that few books have treated, The Faith of the American Soldier examines the religious and spiritual issues in America's wars, and then considers what is lost to our military through a secular approach to battle, recording the reflections and testimonies of men and women who have fought on the front lines from Lexington to Iraq.

Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity ($3.72), by Charles Marsh

Book Description
In Wayward Christian Soldiers, leading evangelical theologian Charles Marsh offers a powerful indictment of the political activism of evangelical Christian leaders and churches in the United States. With emphasis on repentance and renewal, this important work advises Christians how to understand past mistakes and to avoid making them in the future.

Over the past several years, Marsh observes, American evangelicals have achieved more political power than at any time in their history. But access and influence have come at a cost to their witness in the world and the integrity of their message. The author offers a sobering contrast between the contemporary evangelical elite, which forms the core of the Republican Party, and the historic Christian tradition of respect for the mystery of God and appreciation for human fallibility. The author shows that the most prominent voices in American evangelicalism have arrogantly redefined Christianity on the basis of partisan politics rather than scripture and tradition. The role of politics in distorting the Christian message can be seen most dramatically in the invasion of Iraq, he argues: Some 87% of American evangelicals supported going to war, while every single evangelical church outside the United States opposed it. The Jesus who storms into Baghdad behind the wheel of a Humvee, Marsh points out, is not the Jesus of the Gospel. Indeed, not since the nazification of the German church under Hitler has the political misuse of Christianity led to such catastrophic global consequences.

Is there an alternative? This book proposes that the renewal of American churches requires a season of concentrated attention to faith's essential affirmations--a time of hospitality, peacemaking, and contemplative prayer. Offering an authentic Christian alternative to the narcissistic piety of popular evangelicalism, Wayward Christian Soldiers represents a unique entry into the increasingly pivotal debate over the role of faith in American politics.

Free copy of The Going Greener Guidebook

Stonyfield Organic has teamed up with Body + Soul Magazine in giving you a free copy of The Going Greener Guidebook. The only catch? You have to use the Zinio.com reader to read it on your PC.

Book Description
This green-living guide that includes not just tips for going green, but also visions of a green future—hopeful, inspiring flash-forwards from green leaders like Annie Leonard, Bill McKibben and Richard Heinberg.

Topics covered in Going Greener include: organics; eco food labels; buying better groceries; America’s farms and you; food safety; resources for green living; green companies; recycling; a healthy home makeover; the earth-friendly diet; and more.

Kindle Bargain Ebook Roundup - Literature

Gregorius ($0.88), by Bengt Ohlsson, Silvester Mazzarella (Translator)

Book Description
Bengt Ohlsson, one of Sweden’s most successful young writers, has responded to the classic Doctor Glas with Gregorius, which is the voice of Pastor Gregorius over the course of what could be his last and fateful summer. Gregorius is a rancorous, malodorous, and unattractive figure married to a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. But his sense of his own mortality, of his personal inadequacy, and his tenuous hold on happiness are uniquely absorbing and haunting. It is a compelling study of loneliness, longing, and the nature of love, the desires that bring people together and the fears that keep them apart.

The Handmaid's Tale ($3.95), by Margaret Atwood

Book Description
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood first published in 1985. The novel explores themes of women in subjugation, and the various means by which they gain agency, against a backdrop of the establishment of a totalitarian theocratic state. Dress Codes play a key role in imposing social control within the new society.

The novel is often studied by high school and college students.The American Library Association lists it in "10 Most Challenged Books of 1999" and as number 37 on the "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000" due to many complaints from parents of pupils regarding the novel's anti-religious content and sexual references.

The Handmaid's Tale won the Governor General's Award for 1985 and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. It was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. It has been adapted several times into performance works.

Angle of Repose ($3.95), by Wallace Stegner, was selected by the editorial board of the Modern Library as one of the hundred best novels of the twentieth century, winning the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1971. Another of his novels, All the Little Live Things, is also $3.95.

Book Description
Wallace Stegner's uniquely American classic centers on Lyman Ward, a noted historian who relates a fictionalized biography of his pioneer grandparents at a time when he has become estranged from his own family. Through a combination of research, memory, and exaggeration, Ward voices ideas concerning the relationship between history and the present, art and life, parents and children, husbands and wives. Set in many parts of the West, Angle of Repose is a story of discovery--personal, historical, and geographical--that endures as Wallace Stegner's masterwork: an illumination of yesterday's reality that speaks to today's.

On the Road ($3.95), by JACK KEROUAC

Book Description
Kerouac's quintessential novel of America and the Beat GenerationOn the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance.Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than forty years ago.

Comfort Food ($4.45), by Kate Jacobs

Book Description
Shortly before turning the big 5-0, boisterous party planner and Cooking with Gusto! personality Augusta "Gus" Simpson finds herself planning a birthday party she'd rather not -- her own. She's getting tired of being the hostess, the mother hen, the woman who has to plan her own birthday party. What she needs is time on her own with enough distance to give her loved ones the ingredients to put together successful lives without her. Assisted by a handsome up-and-coming chef, Oliver, Gus invites a select group to take an on-air cooking class. But instead of just preaching to the foodie masses, she will teach regular people how to make rich, sensuous meals-real people making real food. Gus decides to bring a vibrant cast of friends and family on the program: Sabrina, her fickle daughter; Troy, Sabrina's ex-husband; Anna, Gus's timid neighbor; and Carmen, Gus's pompous and beautiful competitor at the Cooking Channel. And when she begins to have more than collegial feelings for her sous-chef, Gus realizes that she might be able to rejuvenate not just her professional life, but her personal life as well....

The Konkans ($1.36), by Tony D'Souza

Book Description
Francisco D’Sai is a firstborn son of a firstborn son—all the way back to the beginning of a long line of proud Konkans. Known as the ÒJews of India,Ó the Konkans kneeled before the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s sword and before Saint Francis Xavier’s cross, abandoned their Hindu traditions, and became Catholics. In 1973 Francisco’s Konkan father, Lawrence, and American mother, Denise, move to Chicago, where Francisco is born. His father, who does his best to assimilate into American culture, drinks a lot and speaks little. But his mother, who served in the Peace Corps in India, and his uncle Sam (aka Samuel Erasmus D’Sai) are passionate raconteurs who do their best to preserve the family’s Konkan heritage. Friends, allies, and eventually lovers, Sam and Denise feed Francisco’s imagination with proud visions of India and Konkan history.

Filled with romance, comedy, and masterful storytelling, The Konkans leaves us surprised by what secrets history may hold for us if only we wonder enough to look.

The Unpossessed City ($2.54), by Jon Fasman

Book Description
In this taut, atmospheric novel by the author of The New York Times bestseller The Geographer's Library, a young American finds himself adrift in Russia amid murderous bureaucrats, Central Asian mobsters, and a conspiracy to sell Soviet bioweapons to the highest bidder.Jim Vilatzer was going nowhere-working in his parents' restaurant, sleeping in his childhood bedroom-until he ran up gambling debts that forced him to go somewhere far away-fast. He uses his Russian-language skills (learned from his emigre grandparents) to cadge a job in Moscow finding and interviewing survivors of the Gulag. At first, he only finds that they are well hidden and leery of sharing their horrific stories, but he also discovers that he's falling in love with their homeland. He is intoxicated by Moscow's brooding, ironic atmosphere, its vast reservoir of entrepreneurial energy, its otherworldly churches and majestic subways. On any given day, petty indignities are more than offset by random acts of kindness.Jim's taste for gambling is satisfied merely by living in a city that teems with risk and promise. So he blithely accepts a big win when a chance meeting with a lovely aspiring actress leads not only to romance but also to her grandfather, a concentration camp survivor who does actually want to share his story. Soon Jim is on a roll, scoring interviews with four other survivors in as many days, learning harrowing and fascinating things about bygone atrocities and feeling like he has finally found where he belongs.But his apparent success has earned him the attention of Russia's Interior Ministry and the CIA. Jim has become an unwitting cog in a scheme to spirit Soviet scientists and their deadly secrets out of Russia and into the hands of the highest bidder. Pursued ruthlessly by both sides, he must flee again, this time to the lawless border country, where an economist-cum- mobster is preparing to peddle the world's most dangerous technologies to whichever terrorists can muster the cash first.

Like Donna Leon's novels of Venice or John Burdett's Bangkok series, The Unpossessed City makes of its setting an intricate, irresistible character. With taut, ingenious plotting and incisive prose, Fasman engages our most visceral fears and throws brilliant light on our most primal drives-to feel that we belong, to find love, to become better than we are.

Loyal to the Sky: Notes from an Activist ($3.51), by Marisa Handler

Book Description
The most high-minded excuse for doing nothing is that the means with which to do it or the company you'd keep are flawed, the justification that you're keeping your hands clean (which is another way to say that you'll save only yourself). There are unambiguous realities in this book - the reality of poverty and of exploitation - but every situation still requires a tightrope-walker's balancing act: of pragmatism and idealism, of solidarity and independent-mindedness, of purposefulness and flexibility. And this is where the book becomes more than a conventional tale of an activist's evolution: spirituality, eventually in the clear form of Buddhism, enters in, and Buddhism itself offers the nonattachment, the recognition of ephemerality and the need to let go, the sense of life as an ever-moving river, that helps Marisa make sense out of all that she witnesses and does. At a very young age, she has gone very far. This book is an invitation to the rest of us to keep going.

The Stone Diaries ($3.74), by Carol Shields

Book Description
In celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of its original publication, Carol Shields's Pulitzer Prize?winning novel is now available in a Penguin Classics Deluxe EditionONE OF THE MOST successful and acclaimed novels of our time, this fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett is a subtle but affecting portrait of an everywoman reflecting on an unconventional life. What transforms this seemingly ordinary tale is the richness of Daisy's vividly described inner life-from her earliest memories of her adoptive mother to her awareness of impending death.

A Family Daughter ($2.28), by Maile Meloy

Book Description
Maile Meloy's debut novel, Liars and Saints, captured the hearts of readers and critics alike. Now Meloy returns with a novel even more dazzling and unexpected than her first. Brilliantly entertaining, A Family Daughter might also be the most insightful novel about families and love that you will read this year.

It's 1979, and seven-year-old Abby, the youngest member of the close-knit Santerre family, is trapped indoors with the chicken pox during a heat wave. The events set in motion that summer will span decades and continents, change the Santerres forever, and surprise and amaze anyone who loved Meloy's Liars and Saints.

A rich, full novel about passion and desire, fear and betrayal, A Family Daughter illuminates both the joys and complications of contemporary life, and the relationship between truth and fiction. For everyone who has yet to meet the Santerres, an unmatched pleasure awaits.

Red Is for Remembrance ($2.30), by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Book Description
I know you're alone . . . Shattered by her boyfriend's tragic death, Stacey is struggling in her first year of college, hoping that somehow, somewhere, Jacob is still alive. Now her nightmares are back, haunted by ghosts and misery. Casting healing spells brings Stacey closer to Porsha-a troubled girl who's also dreaming of death-and to a strange boy whose life is in danger. To save him, it'll take all the strength and magic they've got. And maybe even cost them their lives.

Woman in Red ($1.70), by Eileen Goudge

Book Description
The stories of two generations intertwine in this tale, set on an island in the Pacific Northwest, that revolves around a mysterious portrait.

A powerful story of love and redemption and what one woman will do to overcome the buried secrets of her past. It’s a tale that weaves the past with the present, revealing a forbidden wartime romance and from which we come to know the story behind the “woman in red.”