$1.99 Deals from 5 Spot

The publisher 5 Spot has five books marked down to $1.99 this month (Amazon only has one on their Big Deals page), all of which look to be light, humorous reads.

Knitting Under the Influence, by Claire LaZebnik

Book Description
When you're in your late twenties and nothing in your life seems to be falling into place, knitting is an awfully seductive way to spend your free time. After all, as long as you're following the instructions, you can knit row after row with the knowledge that the pattern will emerge and you'll end up with just what you wanted. Life, on the other hand, doesn't come with a stitch counter, so Kathleen, Sari, and Lucy, the heroines of Knitting Under the Influence, just have to figure things out as they go along.

Their weekly Sunday knitting circle is the only thing holding them together as Kathleen is cut off financially by her family and forced to enter "the real world" for the very first time at the age of twenty-seven, Sari finds herself falling for the man who made her life a living hell in high school but who now desperately needs her help, and Lucy finds herself torn between emotion and reason when her lab and her boyfriend are assailed by an animal-rights group.

At their club meetings, they discuss the really important questions: how bad is it, really, to marry for money if you like the guy a lot anyway? Can you ever forgive someone for something truly atrocious that they've done? Is it better to be unhappily coupled than happily alone? And the little ones: Can you wear a bra with a hand-knit tube top? Is it ever acceptable to knit something for a boyfriend? And why do your stitches become lopsided after your second martini?

I'm with Stupid, by Elaine Szewczyk

Book Description
A hilarious tale of girl meets boy, girl falls in lust, girl discovers boy is not playing with a full deck...

When Kas meets William while on safari in South Africa he seems perfect-a gorgeous park ranger, both kind and brave (he saved the tour from certain death by water buffalo). Her two best friends, Max, an endlessly scheming personal trainer, and Libby, a jobless bombshell, would like to get their hands on William...but he's only interested in Kas, an editorial assistant at a struggling New York literary agency who thinks William is out of her league. The two have a fling, and Kas returns home to New York wondering if she'll hear from William again. So when he finally sends an email, she's delighted.

Until she opens it.

The email is not quite the love missive Kas expected. Did she misjudge William? A miscommunication ensues, triggering a rapid-fire series of comic developments that, within days, bring William to New York, now under the impression that Kas has offered him a place to live. As he unveils his big plan to take Manhattan by storm and make his fortune, Kas finally recognizes how limited William's intellectual capabilities are: He makes Kevin Federline look like Albert Einstein.

Readers are along for the outrageous ride as Kas copes with her new roommate's eccentricities, including a preoccupation with the Psychic Friends Network and a passion for collecting Big Apple-themed souvenirs, and the realization that her dream man is a comic nightmare.

The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club, by Jessica Morrison

Book Description
28-year-old Cassie Moore has always played it safe, living life according to a meticulously organized Master Plan. But when she loses her Perfect Job and finds her fiancé in bed with his ex on the same day, it's clear that The Plan has failed her. She awakens the next day from a drunken stupor to discover that she's booked herself on a six-month trip to Buenos Aires. She speaks not a word of Spanish, but she's already emailed the news to everyone she knows, so there's no turning back. Once in Buenos Aires, Cassie is reluctantly seduced by this glorious city. Her exuberant landlady introduces her to the handsome but haughty Mateo, a man Cassie clashes with right from the start. She soon befriends other lovelorn travelers and together, they start a "Brokenhearts Club" at a local bar, attracting a cast of characters that includes Dan, a sweet handsome man who lives as carefully and predictably as Cassie. Before long, Cassie's making a new plan: 1. Learn Spanish. 2. Stop obsessing about impossible Mateo and fall for perfect-on-paper Dan. But staying on track isn't so simple anymore and Cassie finally realizes that sometimes life--and love--defies her best-laid plans.

Conversations with the Fat Girl, by Liza Palmer

Book Description
Everyone seems to be getting on with their lives except Maggie. At 26, she's still serving coffee at The Beanery Coffee House, while her friends are getting married, having babies, and having real careers. Even Olivia, Maggie's best friend from childhood, is getting married to the doctor with whom she lives. Maggie's roommate? Her dog Solo (his name says it all). The man in Maggie's life? Well there isn't one, except the guy she has a crush on, Domenic, who works with her at the coffee shop as a bus boy.Maggie and Olivia have been best friends since they were in grade school. Both fatties, they befriended each other when no one else would. Now grown-up, Maggie is still shopping in the "women's section" while Olivia went and had gastric-bypass surgery in search of the elusive size 2, the holy grail for girls everywhere. So now Olivia's thin and blonde and getting married, and Maggie's the fat bridesmaid. Ain't life grand? In this wonderful debut novel that is sure to remind readers of Jennifer Weiner's Good In Bed, Liza Orr is both witty and wise, giving voice to women everywhere who wish for just once that they could forget about their weight.

Carpool Diem, by Nancy Star

Book Description
Annie Fleming's family has always adjusted well to her hard driving career. How could they not? Annie keeps them in line at home with typed, edited, and proofed to-do and not-to-do lists for her husband, her babysitter, and her daughter. (No TV on a school night, please!) But when an obnoxious co-worker conspires to force Annie out of her job, she finds herself out of work and face-to-face with her family, who, it turns out, isn't quite as well-adjusted as Annie thought. Husband Tim doesn't have near the follow-through that Annie does (ordered to downsize his employees, he can't fire anybody!) And daughter Charlotte doesn't even try to make the local soccer team - a cut-throat, take-no-prisoners system run by Winslow West, a man who dreams of the Olympic gold his young charges will someday win for him.

Here Annie is unemployed and Charlotte's the one with the quitting attitude? Annie doesn't think so. She's determined to get Charlotte on the A team, but finds that the soccer sidelines are more cutthroat than a boardroom ever was.

You can get the same deal on these books in the Sony bookstore and in the Barnes and Noble store:
Knitting Under the Influence
I'm with Stupid
Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club
Conversations with the Fat Girl
Carpool Diem

Fictionwise 100% Rebates: Grafton, Evanovich & Leigh

Fictionwise is running a 100% rebate deal on three authors this weekend: Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich and Lora Leigh. Every one of their ebooks are included and you can use existing micropay to pay for the titles (except for those on the NYT Bestseller list, which require payment by Credit Card or PayPal to qualify for the rebate: Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich and U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton).

Note that all of the titles are available only in DRM'd formats, so are not Kindle compatible. Most are available in Secure Mobipocket and eReader (nook compatible and the FW reader app on the iPhone) and quite a few show an ePub (nook/Sony) or PDF option (Sony). All, of course, have free reader software options for the PC and this is a cheap way to build up your library of these three bestselling authors.

If you don't have any credit there, you could start with the two NYT bestsellers above, then use that credit to buy a couple of books at a time, repeating until you have purchased them all. The deals on Evanovich are set to end today (which often means about 10am EST) and the other two end tomorrow.

Free Audiobook - She's Got It Bad

Audible.com currently has a free, unabridged download of She's Got It Bad, by Sarah Mayberry, narrated by Zoe Hunter.

Book Description
Twelve years ago, Zoe Ford let Liam Masters break her heart. But now? There's not a chance. Zoe is as tough and wild as they come. So when Liam shows up at her tattoo parlor, she's more than ready to take him on again. That's not going to be a hardship, since he's hotter than he ever was.

This time she's staying in charge. And she's not going to consider their score settled until he's hot, bothered, and begging for more! Then she'll move on as callously as he left her. Unless all that deliciously bad sex is just too good to give up....

Click HERE for the free download.

Free Book - Home of the Brave

Jeffry Hepple's Home of the Brave ($2.99 Kindle), the third in his Gone for Soldiers series, is finally being released, after a tussle with UPS, who lost his edited manuscript with the changes he wanted to incorporate before publication. For readers of this blog, he has created an exclusive coupon you can use to purchase a free copy of book, in any of several a DRM-free formats at Smashwords. In addition, the announcement for the book is only being seen here this weekend, so you can be one of the first to read it, before it is posted/announced in the Amazon and other Kindle book forums. Feel free to share the link to this post with anyone you think might want to read the book, but please don't share the discount code in other forums (it helps him track his sales).

Jeff's book are heavy on historical detail, which I consider a plus. You could start reading with Gone For a Soldier ($4.00 Kindle or Smashwords - see below for coupon on this one, also) and Land of the Free ($2.00 Kindle or Smashwords), the first two in the series, or start with this one as a stand-alone novel without feeling you have missed too much backstory.

Book Description
The Van Buskirk family becomes embroiled in the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War when Thomas resigns his commission and purchases a land grant from Stephen F. Austin.

Click HERE to find the book on Smashwords and use coupon code EJ93F during checkout for the discount, valid until the end of February. Although Jeff didn't ask (he's happy you are going to read his book), I'd ask that those who do read it consider adding a small review on either Amazon or Smashwords (links are all above). It doesn't have to be an opus, just a few sentences on what you enjoyed about the book. If you pick up Gone for A Soldier, you can use coupon code GH98N to get $2 off - the entire trilogy then costs you only $4.00.

2/21 Update: Here are some updated coupon codes, that expire at month end (but use the one above to get Home of the Brave for free).

• Coupon HY25U $0.99 Home of the Brave Number 1 best seller in historical fiction.
• Coupon UZ45J $0.99 Land of the Free Number 2 best seller in historical fiction.
• Coupon GH98N $2.00 Gone For a Soldier Number 5 best seller in historical fiction.

Politician pre-order $8.55

Add another another delayed ebook release to the discount bin. This time, it's Andrew Young's Politician ($8.55), which will be released on Kindle on April 27, 2010. The hardcover ($12.00) was released on January 30, so this is another one with a three month delay.

The price of this book will revert to $9.99 after the pre-order period ends on 4/26.

Book Description
The underside of modern American politics -- raw ambition, manipulation, and deception -- are revealed in detail by Andrew Young’s riveting account of a presidential hopeful’s meteoric rise and scandalous fall. Like a non-fiction version of All the King’s Men, The Politician offers a truly disturbing, even shocking perspective on the risks taken and tactics employed by a man determined to rule the most powerful nation on earth.

Idealistic and ambitious, Andrew Young volunteered for the John Edwards campaign for Senate in 1998 and quickly became the candidate’s right hand man. As the senator became a national star, Young’s responsibilities grew. For a decade he was this politician’s confidant and he was assured he was ‘like family.” In time, however, Young was drawn into a series of questionable assignments that culminated with Edwards asking him to help conceal the Senator’s ongoing adultery. Days before the 2008 presidential primaries began, Young gained international notoriety when he told the world that he was the father of a child being carried by a woman named Rielle Hunter, who was actually the senator’s mistress. While Young began a life on the run, hiding from the press with his family and alleged mistress, John Edwards continued to pursue the presidency and then the Vice Presidency in the future Obama administration.

Young had been the senator’s closest aide and most trusted friend. He believed that John Edwards could be a great president, and was assured throughout the cover-up that his boss and friend would ultimately step forward to both tell the truth and protect his aide’s career. Neither promise was kept. Not only a moving personal account of Andrew Young’s political education, THE POLITICIAN offers a look at the trajectory which made John Edwards the ideal Democratic candidate for president, and the hubris which brought him down, leaving his career, his marriage and his dreams in ashes.