Read Wall Street Journal for free

Just a quick note - The online Wall Street Journal site is free for all to read today, due to sponsorship by Acura. It's an interesting model and perhaps it will catch on -- rather than making all news sites by subscription only, they will sell daily sponsorships (Acura has a banner across the top of the page) and let people read for free. Of course, then they'll need another hook for subscribers, to keep them paying, as well.

Free Shipping on Kindle for Valentines Day

You can give (or get) a Kindle or Kindle DX for Valentine’s Day with FREE Two-Day Shipping (offer valid for Continental U.S.). Giving Kindle as a gift? Be sure to check the box labeled “show gifting options” before you proceed to checkout so you can add a custom gift note and send the Kindle unregistered (although it does ship in an outer box that is clearly marked as a Kindle from Amazon).

Fine print:

Order Kindle or Kindle DX from 11:00 am PST on February 3 to 9:00 am PST on February 11 for delivery on or before February 13.

Free Book (DRM) - All the Pretty Girls

All the Pretty Girls ($3.60 Kindle), by J.T. Ellison, is free (for a limited time) at the eHarlequin website, in either PDF, LIT or MOBI format. Their formats all have DRM, so are not Kindle compatible. This is the first in her Taylor Jackson series, the rest of which are also available on Kindle: 14 ($5.04 Kindle), Judas Kiss ($5.04 Kindle) and, coming in March, The Cold Room ($5.76 Kindle).

Book Description
When a local girl falls prey to a sadistic serial killer, Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson and her lover, FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin, find themselves in a joint investigation pursuing a vicious murderer. The Southern Strangler is slaughtering his way through the Southeast, leaving a gruesome memento at each crime scene the prior victim's severed hand.

Ambitious TV reporter Whitney Connolly is certain the Southern Strangler is her ticket out of Nashville; she's got a scoop that could break the case. She has no idea how close to this story she really is or what it will cost her.

As the killer spirals out of control, everyone involved must face a horrible truth that the purest evil is born of private lies.

Click HERE to get the free book.

Free Book (ADE-PDF) - The Nature of the Book

It looked like University of Chicago Press' free book this month was only going to be a one-day download of Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates, but they've actually switched to another of Adrian Johns' titles for the rest of the month, the 776 page tome The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making ($29.92 Paperback). This one is also in PDF format (DRM'd, not Kindle compatible; requires Adobe Digital Editions).

Book Description
In The Nature of the Book, Adrian Johns transports his readers back to early modern England and the cauldron of creative and commercial forces in which print culture was formed. His uncanny eye for detail allows us to visit booksellers' shops and the Royal Society, paper manufactories and type foundries. We can eavesdrop on the often-bitter disputes between authors and printers, printers and booksellers, clerics and intellectuals as they debate and resolve the meaning and rights attached to the creation of ideas, their appearance in written form and then in print, and the opportunity to sell, buy, and read printed work. Johns focuses on the interplay between the scientific and print revolutions and on their roles, both complementary and antagonistic, in the production and dissemination of knowledge.

Click HERE to sign up for the free download.

Free Book (EPUB) - My Husband's Sweethearts

Random House in Australia has another free EPUB book in return for signing up for one of their newsletters: My Husband's Sweethearts ($9.99 Kindle), by Bridget Asher. Bridget also has a second book out in the Kindle store, The Pretend Wife ($9.99).

Book Description
When Lucy discovered that her charming, cheating husband was dying, she came home, opened up his little black book, and decided she wasn’t going through this alone. After all, Artie’s sweethearts were there for the good times—is it fair that Lucy should have to manage the hard times herself? In this wise, wickedly funny new novel, Lucy dials up the women in Artie’s black book and invites them for one last visit. The last thing she expects is that any will actually show up.

But one by one, they do show up: The one who hates him. The one who owes her life to him. The one he turned into a lesbian, and the one he taught to dance. And among them is a visitor with the strangest story of all: the young man who may or may not be Artie’s long-lost son.

For Lucy, the jaw-dropping procession of women is an education in the man she can’t forgive and couldn’t leave. And as the women find themselves sharing secrets and sharing tears, they start to discover kindred spirits—and even something that’s a lot like family. But Lucy knows one thing for certain: the biggest surprises are yet to come....

Full of heart, Bridget Asher’s unforgettable novel is about mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and the deep friendships between women. It’s about sweet liars and tenderhearted cheaters—about loving those we love for reasons we can’t always fully rationalize, and about the sort of forgiveness that can change someone’s entire life in the most unexpected and extraordinary ways.

Click HERE to sign up for the free book, which is not Kindle compatible and requires Adobe Digital Editions. Unlike the book last month, this one downloaded right away for me, so you shouldn't have any problems with it.