Free Audiobook - Religion Saves

ChristianAudio's free download this month is Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions by Mark Driscoll, narrated by Mark Driscoll ($7.99 Kindle). After adding the audiobook to your cart, enter the coupon code FEB2010 during checkout.

In his distinctively edgy—yet theologically sound—style, Pastor Mark Driscoll addresses the nine most pressing questions posed by visitors to the Mars Hill Church website.

Inspired by 1 Corinthians, in which Paul answers a series of questions posed by the people in the Corinthian church, in 2008 Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle polled the visitors of his church's website to determine their most pressing questions. Visitors were allowed to vote up to 10 times per day, and in the end, 893 questions were asked and 343,203 votes were cast. The top nine questions are now each answered in this audio version of Religion Saves.

After an introduction devoted to the misconception that religion can save us, Driscoll tackles questions relating to birth control, humor, predestination, grace, sexual sin, faith and works, dating, the emerging church, and the regulative principle. Because the purpose of this audiobook is to address commonly asked questions, all listeners will find relevant, engaging material, presented in Driscoll's distinctively edgy - yet theologically sound - style.

Get your free audio download HERE (be sure to use the coupon code shown, so you won't get charged). After you finishing checking out, you will be asked which format you prefer - select MP3 if you want to be able to play the book on your Kindle.

Free Book (ADE/PDF) - Piracy

Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates ($23.10 Hardcover), by Adrian Johns, Tom Dreesen & Ron Rapoport, is can be downloaded for free today only, direct from the University of Chicago Press, although only in PDF format (DRM'd, not Kindle compatible; requires Adobe Digital Editions).

Book Description
Since the rise of Napster and other file sharing services in its wake, most of us have assumed that intellectual piracy is a product of the digital age and that it threatens creative expression as never before. The Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, claimed that in 2005 the film industry lost $2.3 billion in revenue to piracy online. But here Adrian Johns shows that piracy has a much longer and more vital history than we have realized—one that has been largely forgotten and is little understood.

Piracy explores the intellectual property wars from the advent of print culture in the fifteenth century to the reign of the Internet in the twenty-first. Written with a historian’s flair for narrative and sparkling detail, the book swarms throughout with characters of genius, principle, cunning, and outright criminal intent: in the wars over piracy, it is the victims—from Charles Dickens to Bob Dylan—who have always been the best known, but the principal players—the pirates themselves—have long languished in obscurity, and it is their stories especially that Johns brings to life in these vivid pages.

Brimming with broader implications for today’s debates over open access, fair use, free culture, and the like, Johns’s book ultimately argues that piracy has always stood at the center of our attempts to reconcile creativity and commerce—and that piracy has been an engine of social, technological, and intellectual innovations as often as it has been their adversary. From Cervantes to Sonny Bono, from Maria Callas to Microsoft, from Grub Street to Google, no chapter in the story of piracy evades Johns’s graceful analysis in what will be the definitive history of the subject for years to come.

Click HERE to sign up for the free download.

Free Book and 50% Sale at ARe/OmniLit

The first book in Leigh Ellwood's Dareville Series, Truth or Dare ($4.80 Kindle), is available for free today from All Romance eBooks, in the following (DRM'd and non-Kindle friendly) formats: Epub, Mobipocket, Rocket, Microsoft Reader, Adobe Acrobat, HTML. Please note the content warning from the ARe site (missing on the Amazon site, which has no cover on the Kindle edition, but a much racier cover on the out-of-print paperback).

Book Description
Dare you let the truth get in the way of love? Rock and roll legend Brady Garriston is in a slump, careerwise and in his love life. He is desperate for a comeback (and a "cum" back), and finds a possible solution in masquerading in small town Dareville, where he can clear the slate and start fresh. Brady finds his muse in the lovely and uninhibited school teacher Ellie Shaw, and soon the two are making more than just beautiful music together. But will Brady's deception bring on a sour note to their relationship? And what of the secret Ellie is keeping from Brady?

Warning: This book includes: scenes of graphic heterosexual and homosexual (M/M, light F/F) sex, three-way sex (MMF), and anal sex (M/F)

Click HERE for the free book.

Even if this book isn't your cup of tea, you might want to check out some of the other titles at AllRomanceeBooks.com and OmniLit.com, as they are having a big sale this weekend. You will receive 50% off on all titles purchased on through this weekend if you enter the code SBTBARe1 in your shopping cart and click on the “Calculate Discount” button. This offer expires at midnight 31 January 2010, 11:59 PM Mountain Standard Time.

Bestsellers for $5 - $7

Dear John ($4.39 Kindle and B&N), by Nicholas Sparks. Read the book the movie is based upon.

Book Description
An angry rebel, John dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army, not knowing what else to do with his life--until he meets the girl of his dreams, Savannah. Their mutual attraction quickly grows into the kind of love that leaves Savannah waiting for John to finish his tour of duty, and John wanting to settle down with the woman who captured his heart. But 9/11 changes everything. John feels it is his duty to re-enlist. And sadly, the long separation finds Savannah falling in love with someone else. "Dear John," the letter read...and with those two words, a heart was broken and two lives were changed forever. Returning home, John must come to grips with the fact that Savannah, now married, is still his true love--and face the hardest decision of his life.

The Last Song ($4.99 Kindle and B&N), also by Nicholas Sparks.

Book Description
Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alientated from her parents, especially her father...until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie's father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church.
The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story of love on many levels--first love, love between parents and children -- that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that love can break our hearts...and heal them.

The Lovely Bones ($4.99 Kindle and B&N), by Alice Sebold, is another book with a movie tie-in.

Book Description
Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages. The Lovely Bones is such a book - a phenomenal #1 bestseller celebrated at once for its narrative artistry, its luminous clarity of emotion, and its astoniishing power to lay claim to the hearts of millions of readers around the world.

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."

---- So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on eath continue without her - her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling.

Let the Great World Spin ($6.75 Kindle and B&N), by Colum McCann, was free as a PDF download from Oprah last August. For those that missed it or just got their Kindle this past holiday season, this is a good time to consider picking it up.

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 stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’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.

Game of the Day - The Great Tree

Amazon's Game Download of the Day is a $1.29 download of The Great Tree. I've played a bit of the demo and it is definitely a gorgeous game, with exceptional graphics. The gameplay is pretty simple, but engaging (although one commenter calls it boring - those addicted to action games on the PS3/Xbox will probably not find this to be their type of game).

Game Description

• Save Your People From The Ixies.
• Fantastical Power-Ups Will Aid You In Your Quest.
• 10 Gorgeous And Engaging Environments.
• Amazing Creatures To Test Your Skills.

Fly into a magical world of mystery and adventure told through beautiful drawings and mesmerizing gameplay with Reflexive's enchanting game: The Great Tree! When the Pollen Collectors are bewitched, the faeries' survival rests upon the shoulders of their children. This quest will lead them directly into the dangers of the forest, where there are whispers of something sinister lurking in the shadows. The tree's life runs short. Set forth now to save the faeries in this grown-up tale of good and evil!