Free Book (PDF) - The Surgeon

Tess Gerritsen’s The Surgeon ($4.99 Kindle) was one of the first free books I read on my Kindle and one of the first I posted about here on the blog (on 9/11/08). After reading it, I immediately went and found more books in the series to read. If you missed it then, you can still get this book for free over on Scribd, in PDF format. Just run it thru Calibre or the Amazon conversion services and you can read it on your Kindle or other reader (I wouldn't try it in PDF format, except on a DX or similar size screen).

Book Description
In her most masterful novel of medical suspense, New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen creates a villain of unforgettable evil--and the one woman who can catch him before he kills again.

He slips into their homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, unaware of the horrors they soon will endure. The precision of the killer's methods suggests he is a deranged man of medicine, propelling the Boston newspapers and the frightened public to name him "The Surgeon."

The cops' only clue rests with another surgeon, the victim of a nearly identical crime. Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and killed her attacker before he could complete his assault. Now she hides her fears of intimacy behind a cool and elegant exterior and a well-earned reputation as a top trauma surgeon.

Cordell's careful facade is about to crack as this new killer recreates, with chilling accuracy, the details of Cordell's own ordeal. With every new murder he seems to be taunting her, cutting ever closer, from her hospital to her home. Her only comfort comes from Thomas Moore, the detective assigned to the case. But even Moore cannot protect Cordell from a brilliant hunter who somehow understands--and savors--the secret fears of every woman he kills.

Filled with the authentic detail that is the trademark of this doctor turned author . . . and peopled with rich and complex characters--from the ER to the squad room to the city morgue--here is a thriller of unprecedented depth and suspense. Exposing the shocking link between those who kill and cure, punish and protect, The Surgeon is Tess Gerritsen's most exciting accomplishment yet.

Click HERE for the free download.

Free Audiobook - Haitian Creole

Pimsleur and Audible are giving away a quick intro course on Haitian Creole, Lessons 1 to 5: Learn to Speak and Understand Haitian Creole and Lessons 6 to 10: Learn to Speak and Understand Haitian Creole.

Audiobook Descriptions

1. Includes two-and-a-half hours of spoken-language practice in five 30-minute lessons. Contains lessons 1-5 from the Pimsleur Compact program, plus an introduction to reading. Also includes a User's Guide to introduce you to the Pimsleur Method.
2. Includes two-and-a-half hours of spoken-language practice in five 30-minute lessons. Contains lessons 6-10 from the Pimsleur Compact program, plus an introduction to reading. Also includes a User's Guide to introduce you to the Pimsleur Method.

Shoestring Venture for 99 cents

Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible, by Steve Monas & Richard Hooker, is currently available for 99 cents. There are actually three Kindle editions (the other two are $7.99 and $9.99) in addition to a paperback edition ($27.72), all with supposedly the same publication date (apparently the publisher creates a new edition each time a price change is wanted, which is bit different than other authors and publishers are doing). According to their blog, this is a limited time offer to "celebrate the first days of the decade."

Book Description
Shoestring Venture-The Start-up Bible

All entrepreneurs - even the smallest operating on the tightest of budgets - have the opportunity to build powerful start-up organizations without ever really having to walk out the front door. Using global communications and data networks, even bootstrap entrepreneurs can staff an entire organization with every human resource and skill they need at rock-bottom prices.

It's the magic of outsourcing. For, you see, globalization ain't just for the big kids. We often hear about how globalization exports jobs overseas, but we rarely hear about the opportunities globalization creates for even the smallest of businesses, opportunities that allow even tiny businesses to compete with the majors on a global scale. In short, anyone can run a virtual organization using only a desktop or laptop computer.

Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible gives bootstrap entrepreneurs all the resources they need to build truly effective startups using the magic of outsourcing and offshoring.

A Consultant in a Book
For the millions who start a new business every year on the barest of resources, Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible is like hiring a high-level consultant to deal with the bewildering maze of issues from finance to marketing to technology that all entrepreneurs face.

Every business is nothing but a series of decisions which can make or break the business. You could say that, if there's a science of business, it's the science of making good decisions. And every bootstrap entrepreneur faces the daunting task of making ALL the business decisions, any one of which could either doom the enterprise or catapult it to stratospheric success. That meas that every entrepreneur has to quickly get up to speed on every issue their business faces.

Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible is the most exhaustive set of practical resources collected to empower entrepreneurs to make the right decisions on a limited budget, from business concept to product development to Web marketing. We call a "consultant in a book," there to give considered and experienced answers to the infinite questions that come up.

Free Game - Monster Mash

Sandlot Games has another game up as a free download. This week it's Monster Mash ($6.99 Amazon Game Downloads); no reviews at Amazon yet, but it's not the same type of game I've tried there before (looks like a strategy game, though).

Game Description

• Defend Curly Valley.
• 20 Quirky And Bizarre Monsters.
• 9 Unique Scenes.
• Hours Of Challenging Gameplay.

The villagers of Curly Valley are under attack from legions of quirky and bizarre monsters. Use all of your cunning and might to repel these mysterious invaders by fortifying the vulnerable villages with various towers, upgrades and unusual defensive armaments. With more than 25 increasingly powerful tower upgrades and 9 unique storybook-inspired scenes, the grateful villagers of Curly Valley will cheer you on with every conquest in Monster Mash, an addictive, strategic adventure!

Click HERE to sign up for the free download. For step by step purchase and installation instructions, see this post.

Changes Afoot at Suvudu Free Library?

One of the reasons there have been so many free books, on the Kindle and other eReaders, over the last year has been the Suvudu Free Library. Each month, two or three fantasy or SciFi books were added to the library, each the first in a series and mostly from Del Rey (or one of their other publishing houses). At first, they added the PDF versions to the web page, followed by links for the big ebookstores, as they were marked as free, then holding the announcements until they were free in all the stores (no doubt, to reduce the complaint emails about only having PDF formats available). At first, the books stayed after being placed in the library (if only in PDF format), but now they disappear from the list after a few months, often when they cease being free on Kindle and in the other stores.

This month, though, no new books have been added. Instead, about a week into the month and again this week, they have added short stories, only in PDF format and only available on the Suvudu Free Library page. I haven't tried converting the three that are up so far or viewing them in their native PDF on my Kindle (mostly because I dislike PDF's on any of the small screens, Sony included), but you can currently download these stories:

• John Langan - City of the Dog
• Kelly Meding - The Hoarder
• Kelly Meding - Pride Before Fall

I just hope that this is a one-month changeup in their offerings and that they are not abandoning their earlier strategy of giving away backlisted titles in series or from prolific authors, in order to attract new readers in the new eformats.

Also, if you like Kelly Meding's short stories, you might want to check out Three Days to Dead ($6.39 Kindle), which takes place in the same universe. It doesn't look as though this one will be a series, at least not with the same heroine (but then again, you never know...)

Book Description
They'll never see her coming. . . .

When Evangeline Stone wakes up naked and bruised on a cold slab at the morgue--in a stranger's body, with no memory of who she is and how she got there--her troubles are only just beginning. Before that night she and the two other members of her Triad were the city's star bounty hunters, mercilessly cleansing the city of the murderous creatures living in the shadows, from vampires to shape-shifters to trolls. Then something terrible happened that not only cost all three of them their lives but also convinced the city's other Hunters that Evy was a traitor--and she can't even remember what it was.

Now she's a fugitive, piecing together her memory, trying to deal some serious justice--and discovering that she has only three days to solve her own murder before the reincarnation spell wears off. Because in three days Evy will die again--but this time there's no second chance. . . .