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Saturday, November 7, 2009

Free Book (PDF) - Coming Together

Update: As of Monday, the free offer is over, but you can now get this book at Amazon and on Smashwords (DRM-free and multiple formats) at a very reasonable $3.50.

You can't buy Coming Together ($10.76 Paperback), by Joyce Norman & Joy Collins, in the Kindle store. But Chalet Publishing will send you a free copy in PDF form, if you send a blank email to chaletpublishers@cox.net with the subject line FREE BOOK. This was only advertised to be valid thru October 16, 2009, but was still working earlier this week (not sure if anyone there checks emails on weekends, though).

Book Description
Coming Together is a love story. A story of foreign intrigue. A story of the coming together of cultures, of passion, and, most of all, of unbelievable hope in the face of staggering odds. This is also a story of choices, hard choices, where life and death are constant reminders of making the wrong decisions. Lives are at stake when Daisy, Luis, and Isabella take on the Brazilian dictatorship in order to bring freedom and a future to those who matter most. It was written for the heart and spirit in all of us. You will not soon forget this book.

Free Song from Kindle Commercial

You can download the song from the new Kindle TV commercial, Fly Me Away, by Annie Little, for free at Amazon today. If you haven't seen the commercial, you can view it HERE.

I meant to include this book in my earlier post. Kelly's Frontier, by Patricia Bue, is free at Smashwords until November 15, using coupon code CF38F.

Book Description
Kelly's Frontier is a wonderful Children's story about the first year in the life of a puppy named Kelly. This eBook includes Homer, Alaska photographs of birds and animals Kelly encounters while learning to live in her new Alaskan home.

One issue I saw - there were no photos in the Kindle version I downloaded, although they are in the PDF.

Bargain Reads - Young Adult/Children

The Magician's Nephew ($4.74), by C.S. Lewis and illustrated by Pauline Baynes.

Book Description
When Digory and Polly are tricked by Digory's peculiar Uncle Andrew into becoming part of an experiment, they set off on the adventure of a lifetime. What happens to the children when they touch Uncle Andrew's magic rings is far beyond anything even the old magician could have imagined.

Hurtled into the Wood between the Worlds, the children soon find that they can enter many worlds through the mysterious pools there. In one world they encounter the evil Queen Jadis, who wreaks havoc in the streets of London when she is accidentally brought back with them. When they finally manage to pull her out of London, unintentionally taking along Uncle Andrew and a coachman with his horse, they find themselves in what will come to be known as the land of Narnia.


It's nearly over, but you can read the first volume of the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series, Here, There Be Dragons ($7.99 Kindle), by James A. Owen, for free over on Scribd.com. It's 347 pages and you only have the weekend, as the free read expires November 9.

Book Description
An unusual murder brings together three strangers, John, Jack, and Charles, on a rainy night in London during the first World War. An eccentric little man called Bert tells them that they are now the caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica -- an atlas of all the lands that have ever existed in myth and legend, fable and fairy tale. These lands, Bert claims, can be traveled to in his ship the Indigo Dragon, one of only seven vessels that is able to cross the Frontier between worlds into the Archipelago of Dreams.

Pursued by strange and terrifying creatures, the companions flee London aboard the Dragonship. Traveling to the very realm of the imagination itself, they must learn to overcome their fears and trust in one another if they are to defeat the dark forces that threaten the destiny of two worlds. And in the process, they will share a great adventure filled with clues that lead readers to the surprise revelation of the legendary storytellers these men will one day become.


M Is for Magic and InterWorld, by Neil Gaiman (author of Coraline, $4.74), are each $3.99 today. He also has six volumes of short stories (not necessarily for young adults/children) at 99 cents each: Selections from Fragile Things

M Is for Magic
Stories to delight, enchant, and surprise you. Bestselling author and master storyteller Neil Gaiman here presents a breathtaking collection of tales that may chill or amuse readers -- but always embrace the unexpected:
  • A teenage boy who has trouble talking to girls finds himself at a rather unusual party.
  • A sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who owned it.
  • A boy raised in a graveyard makes a discovery and confronts the much more troubling world of the living.
  • A stray cat fights a nightly battle to protect his adopted family from a terrible evil.
These eleven stories illuminate the real and the fantastic, and will be welcomed with great joy by Neil Gaiman's many fans as well as by readers coming to his work for the first time.

InterWorld
Joey Harker isn't a hero. In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house. But then one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension. Joey's walk between the worlds makes him prey to two terrible forces -- armies of magic and science who will do anything to harness his power to travel between dimensions. When he sees the evil those forces are capable of, Joey makes the only possible choice: to join an army of his own, an army of versions of himself from different dimensions who all share his amazing power and who are all determined to fight to save the worlds. Master storyteller Neil Gaiman and Emmy Award-winning science-fiction writer Michael Reaves team up to create a dazzling tale of magic, science, honor, and the destiny of one very special boy -- and all the others like him.

Johnny and the Dead ($1.76), by Terry Pratchett, is the second in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy. Unfortunately, the end of the trilogy, Johnny and the Bomb, isn't available on Kindle (yet), but you can get the start, Only You Can Save Mankind, for $3.99, as well as most of his Children's Discworld series at the same price: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents , The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky. Only Wintersmith ($5.69) is above the usual cutoff for bargains (but has a $9.99 digital list price).

Book Description
The town council wants to sell the cemetery, and its inhabitants aren't about to take that lying down! Johnny is the only one who can see the outraged ghosts, and the previously alive need his help to save their home and their history. Johnny didn't mean to become the voice for the lifeless, but if he doesn't speak up, who will?

There are many versions of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women in the Kindle store, with prices ranging from zero to $5.00. However, you can now get an illustrated volume free over at MobileRead that also contains Good Wives (sometimes simply titled "Part II"), taken from the 1880 version titled Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Click HERE for the download (it's large, over 6MB, so I'd transfer to your Kindle using USB).

Game of the Day - Chicken Invaders 2 (99 cents)

Amazon's Video Game of the Day is a 99 cent download of Chicken Invaders 2 . I've played a couple of the Chicken Invaders series and so far they've all been worth several hours of arcade style shooting fun.

Game Description
  • Journey To Every Planet.
  • 110 Waves Of Invading Chickens.
  • Collect 14 Skill Bonuses.
  • 10 Weapon Power Upgrades.
Just when you thought it was safe to eat chicken again, the chickens have returned with an organized invasion to take over the entire solar system! Journey to each planet and fight your way to saving the world again! Advance through waves of invading chickens, avoiding falling eggs and collecting power-ups to boost your spaceship's firepower. It's fast-paced arcade action, for one or two players, with Chicken Invaders 2!

Friday, November 6, 2009

B1G1F on Kindle: Martin Limon

Through November 8, 2009, buy G.I. Bones ($9.99), by Martin Limon, volume six of the Sergeants Sueno & Bascom Mystery series and receive a free download of the first in the series, Jade Lady Burning. As always with these Buy One, Get One Free offers in the Kindle store, you don't actually click to buy the second book (nor will it show as having been purchased when you look at the book detail page) - it simply shows up on your Kindle with the one you do purchase (G.I. Bones) and will also appear in your Kindle Media Library, so you can redownload as desired.

G.I. Bones
A Korean fortune-teller is being bothered by a dead American soldier who wants his bones found and buried. An underage officer’s daughter is missing together with a Latino soldier. Several of the leading Korean gangsters who own the bars in the ville have been killed. SueƱo and Bascom of Military Intelligence must go back to the founding of Itaewon, Seoul’s red-light district, in order to learn who killed the soldier, who’s taking revenge on the gang lords, and where to find the missing girl.

Jade Lady Burning
The bizarre killing of Miss Pak should have belonged to the Korean police. But her amorous associations with American servicemen in Seoul also made her death the business of the U.S. Army's criminal investigation arm, of which Sgt. Ernie Bascom and Sgt. George Sueno were prized digits.

George is from East L.A., Ernie is from another planet. In the army, going after the truth is usually seen as a criminal waste of time, so they are well suited to the case. The Eighth Army command is anxious only to squelch the bad press, and the boys are really only interested in enjoying their tour of duty. The two of them know Korea, they like Korea (George even speaks the language), and they are all too happy to check the tawdry dives the woman had trawled for customers. Even if they don't find the perpetrator, the consequences are minimal.

There is something odd about the Korean cops' nervousness. Also, the actual killing is pretty heinous; the oddly trussed-up victim is little more than a youngster. Nobody can't die but there are ways no one should. The case gets to George and Ernie. They even work on it after hours. In their line, though, getting involved with a victim isn't smart because you increase tremendously the odds of becoming one.