Game of the Day - Build-a-lot 3

Amazon's Game Download of the Day is a $2.99 download of Build-a-lot 3: Passport to Europe (normally $6.99).

Book Description

• Restore Many Different Houses.
• Paint And Landscape To Increase Curb Appeal.
• Play Campaign Or Casual Mode.
• Construct Service Buildings.

Build-a-lot 3 is your passport to fun! Travel all over Europe as you restore rundown houses, develop friendly services and beautify neighborhoods with picturesque landmarks. The changing needs of the neighborhood will definitely keep you busy--you may need to brave the rain and snow, deal with noisy neighbors, or even put out a small fire to get the job done on time! Pack your bags and let the fun take flight in the exciting sequel to Build-a-lot 1 & 2!

2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

This morning, Amazon added 500 free "books" to the Kindle store, which are excerpts from the quartefinalists for the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

Amazon.com, along with Penguin Group (USA) and CreateSpace, is pleased to announce the third annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, the international competition seeking the next popular novel. For the first time, the competition will award two grand prizes: one for General Fiction and one for Young Adult Fiction. The 2010 competition is open to unpublished and previously self-published novels waiting to be discovered. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance.

Last year's winner, Bill Warrington's Last Chance ($16.47 Hardcover), is now available for pre-order (but not yet announced for the Kindle).

A magnificent debut about a man's odyssey toward family redemption- with his granddaughter along for the ride

Bill Warrington realizes he has Alzheimer's and his lucid days are numbered. Determined to repair a lifetime of damage to his estranged adult children, Bill takes off with his fifteen-year-old granddaughter April on a cross-country drive, bound for San Francisco, where she dreams of becoming a rock star. As the unlikely pair heads west, Bill leaves clues intended to force his three children-including April's frantic mother-to overcome their mutual distrust and long-held grievances to work together to find them.

In this dazzling road trip novel, James King masterfully explores themes of aging, sibling rivalry, family dysfunction, and coming of age, against a backdrop of the American heartland. Unflinching, funny, and poignant, Bill Warrington's Last Chance speaks to that universal longing for familial reconciliation, love, and forgiveness.

You can get more information on the award and download an extended excerpt [PDF] from last year's winner, HERE.

Free Game - Slyder Adventures

The free game this week at Sandlot Games is Slyder Adventures ($6.99 Amazon Game Downloads), a "topsy-turvy" puzzle adventure game.

Game Description

• Crazy Topsy-Turvy Adventure
• Secrets Around Every Corner
• Unique Toe Tapping Soundtrack!
• Over 150 Challenging Levels
• 4 Dazzling Worlds To Explore
• 2 game modes: Exploration & Timed
• 30+ interactive objects and items

The spherical hero Slyder returns in his latest topsy-turvy adventure. Guide Slyder and three of his friends through worlds packed with fun, excitement, peril and danger! Explore more than 150 increasingly challenging levels in four vast worlds in two unique game modes, each with unique characters and distinctive items, and collect unique items to help you in your quest! Play with simple controls using only the mouse to tilt and turn Slyder's world around him.

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

Author Spotlight - F. Paul Wilson

F. Paul Wilson's The LaNague Federation Chronicles is now out and exclusive on Kindle. Each volume is $2.99 and several contain an exclusive, bonus short story (or two) in addition to the main title. I've included them below, in series order. Wilson is perhaps more recently known for his Repairman Jack series; his novels and short fiction have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, and the Bram Stoker Award and he was the first winner of the Prometheus Award!

Healer

Steven Dalt should have died in that cave on the planet Kwashi. After all, as the natives say, of a thousand people attacked by the cave-dwelling alaret, one will not die. But Dalt is that one. He survives, but not without personal cost: he has picked up a passenger: an alien intelligence transferred itself from the alaret to take up residence in his brain. Steven Dalt will never be alone again.

But Pard, as Dalt names the alien who shares his life, doesn’t believe in freeloading. He pays his rent by using cellular-level consciousness to maintain Dalt’s body in perfect health—no disease, no aging. And now Dalt appreciates the full meaning of the Kwashi natives’ saying: Of a thousand struck down by an alaret, one will not die . . . ever.

Spanning twelve hundred years, HEALER follows Dalt and Pard through the centuries as they become known as The Healer, an enigmatic figure with the power to cure diseases of the mind. And when a wave of interstellar slaughter threatens the civilizations of the LaNague Federation, only The Healer has the resources to face the onrushing doom.

(Bonus LaNague short story: "To Fill the Sea and Air" - plus a foreword by the author)

Wheels Within Wheels

A monstrous conspiracy is brewing against the LaNague Federation and the freedoms its guarantees to its member planets—at least that’s what Old Pete says. He's come to the offices of Interstellar Business Advisors, a firm he co-founded more than half a century before, to enlist the aid of its current CEO, Josephine Finch. Dubious at first, Jo humors the old man by promising to look into the matter.

She does not have to look far before she is convinced that something is afoot, something that will not bear the light of day, something involving a revolutionary means of interstellar travel. And when one of the trails leads to the planet Jebinose, site of her father’s bizarre death, Jo finds herself personally involved.

She is soon pitted against one of the shrewdest, most devious minds in Federation politics, and against a wild-card psi who might well destroy them both. But what Josephine Finch begins, she finishes.

Wheels Within Wheels follows her on a course that involves five planets and three alien races. Before she is through she will bring the galaxy’s largest corporation to its knees, avenge her father’s death, abort a cynical political plot, and start an interstellar war.

Don’t mess with Josephine Finch.

(Bonus LaNague short stories: "The Man with the Anteater" and "Higher Centers" - plus a foreword by the author)

An Enemy of the State

Peter LaNague’s voice was low but his eyes blazed as he spoke:

"I propose a revolution, one without blood and thunder, but one that will shake this world and the entire outworld mentality as no storm of violence ever shall. History is filled with cosmetic revolutions where a little new paint is daubed on an old face or, in the more violent and destructive examples, a new head set on an old body. Mine will be different, truly radical . . . which means striking at the root. I’m going to teach the outworlds a lesson they will never forget. When I’m through with the Imperium, the people of the outworlds will swear never again to allow matters to reach the state they are in. Never again!"

Meet Peter LaNague—citizen of the planet Tolive, devotee of the Kyfho philosophy, revolutionary agent provocateur.

But LaNague is planning a unique revolution. One that not only topples the entrenched Outworld Imperium, but fundamentally alters every outworlder’s concept of government as well. To accomplish this he must ally himself with a madman, trust the word of the last of Sol System’s robber barons, make incisive use of the consummate warriors from the planet Flint without letting them run amok, confound at every turn the omnipresent forces of the Imperium, and every now and then make it rain money.

But those are the easy parts. His greatest challenge will be to see his plan through to successful completion without becoming the very enemy he has vowed to destroy.

AN ENEMY OF THE STATE is the heart and the cradle of the LaNague series. It is the story of the apocalyptic birth of the LaNague Federation.

Dydeetown World

Welcome to the future...

Where the cream of humanity has left for the outworlds, leaving the rest behind...

Where genetically redesigned T. rexes have supplanted pit bulls...

Where population control measures have created an underclass of Urchins, unlicensed children who have no rights - not even the right to exist...

Where wireheads with chips in their brains live vicariously through the downloaded experiences of others...

Where the UN has been turned into a brothel known as Dydeetown, peopled by clones of famous personalities from history and entertainment...

Where a Dydeetown clone of Jean Harlow asks a down-and-out private eye named Sig Dreyer to find her missing lover.

Though Sig loathes the idea of working for a clone, Harlow-c is paying in gold, and that's hard to turn down. Just a missing-person case...should be simple enough.

But neither realizes that Sig's investigation will tip the first domino in a cascade of events that will turn their world upside down.

DYDEETOWN WORLD whips the classic tropes of noir fiction and far-future cyberpunk into a relentlessly paced novel about freedom, friendship, and self-esteem. Beneath its hardboiled voice, its seamy settings, and violent events, are people trying to make a human connection...and changing the world in the process.

The Tery

Heroes don’t always look the part.

He was a tery, a lean, bearish creature with no name. The human soldiers left dead. Just another dumb animal on their extermination list.

But he didn’t die.

Animals weren’t the only beings on the list. Certain humans were marked for extinction as well. A fugitive band found him and brought him back from the brink. He became their pet, their mascot.

And still he had no name. He was simply “the tery.”

He soon learned that these were no ordinary humans, and learned too that he was no ordinary tery. The humans had no idea that the creature they fed table scraps and patted on the head would soon turn their world upside down and change it forever.

By then he had a name.

THE TERY – A beauty-and-the-beast fable that only F. Paul Wilson could tell, full of wonder and horror, brimming with strange landscapes and hideous mutations from science run amok. An unforgettable tale of the extremes of the human spirit—of bravery and depravity, of innocence and evil.

Free Book - Favorite Food at Home (Abridged)

Harper Collins and Kerrygold are giving away a sampler book taken from Favorite Food at Home: Delicious Comfort Food from Ireland's Most Famous Chef ($16.49 paperback), by Rachel Allen, which contains twenty recipes (which no doubt include butter or cheese as an ingredient).

Book Description
In this beautifully illustrated cookbook, Rachel Allen offers the delicious, inspiring, and easy-to-follow recipes that have made her Ireland's most famous chef. Favorite Food at Home draws on international influences, classic regional Irish fare, and good old family favorites to provide creative options for every occasion, whether planning a simple family meal, hosting a festive dinner, cooking a romantic meal for two, or just relaxing on the sofa with your favorite comfort food.

Here are the details on the giveaway:

While supplies last, we're offering consumers a download of recipes selected from Rachel Allen's new cookbook, Favorite Food at Home, absolutely FREE. This download includes twenty recipes and photos specially chosen by Kerrygold. We're confident you'll enjoy trying these recipes at home using Kerrygold butters and cheeses!

Click HERE to get the free book. After clicking on the REDEEM button, enter this redemption code and follow the prompts: KGLD-0319-2010-RACB. You'll be told that you need Adobe Digital Editions to read the book (implying that the format is either PDF or EPUB with ADE DRM), but ignore this and keep going. Once you enter the redemption code and log in to your Harper Collins account (create one free, if you don't already have one), you'll be able to download the free book in one of several formats, including one marked "Kindle". I downloaded a few and all appear to be DRM-free.