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Saturday, August 7, 2010

Game AND Book of the Day - L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Today's game download pick is L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , which Amazon has marked down to $2.99 for today only. This game is a bit different, though, in that it ALSO includes a digital copy of the original novel. So, it's a game, it's a book (it's entertainment!). I haven't played it yet, but I am downloading the free trial; the graphics look good on the product page, much better than some hidden object games I've tried.

Game Description
  • Based on L. Frank Baum's literary classic!
  • Visit over 30 unique locations in the land of Oz
  • Three modes of gameplay to appeal to all users
  • Several varieties of hidden object gameplay keep things fun, fresh, and exciting.
  • Includes a digital copy of the original novel
Join Dorothy, The Tinman, The Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and even Toto as you travel through the wonders of the Land of Oz on a quest to see the wizard to send Dorothy back home to Kansas. Dorothy needs your help as she journeys through Munchkinland, the field of poppies, dark forests, the witch's castle, the Emerald City where the companions meet the great and terrible Oz, and much more.

Free Book (nook) - Shadow Bound

Shadow Bound ($5.59 Kindle), by Erin Kellison, the first in her Shadow series (and only released this past June), is free to download in the Barnes & Noble store.

Book Description
When a demon breaches the barrier between death and life, the salvation of the world depends on the passions of a beautiful banshee just coming into her power and the man willing to use her to avenge the destruction of his family.

Death
Some people will do anything to avoid it. Even trade their immortal souls for endless existence.

Wraiths
Secretly, inexorably, they are infiltrating our world, sucking the essence out of unsuspecting victims with their hideous parody of a kiss.

Segue
Adam Thorne founded the Institute to study and destroy his monster of a brother, but the key to its success is held in the pale, slender hand of a woman on the run. There is something hauntingly different about Talia O’Brien, her unknowing sensuality, her uncanny way of slipping into Shadow.

Twilight
This is the place between life and what comes after - a dark forest of fantasy, filled with beauty, peril, mystery. And Talia is about to open the door.


Click HERE to get the free book.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Free Audiobooks - Does My Head Look Big In This? and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Audiobook Sync's free giveaway continues. This week, there is, once again, one title available globally and one that is limited to distribution in the "US, Canada, and Open Market (excludes UK, Australia, British Commonwealth)."

Does My Head Look Big In This? ($8.99 Paperback), by Randa Abdel-Fattah, is available to download by all.

Book Description
Sixteen-year-old Amal makes the decision to start wearing the hijab full-time and everyone has a reaction. Her parents, her teachers, her friends, people on the street. But she stands by her decision to embrace her faith and all that it is, even if it does make her a little different from everyone else.

Can she handle the taunts of "towel head," the prejudice of her classmates, and still attract the cutest boy in school? Brilliantly funny and poignant, Randa Abdel-Fattah's debut novel will strike a chord in all teenage readers, no matter what their beliefs.


A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ($10.99 Kindle), by Betty Smith, is geographically restricted.

Book Description
The American classic about a young girl's coming of age at the turn of the century.

Amazon.com Review
Francie Nolan, avid reader, penny-candy connoisseur, and adroit observer of human nature, has much to ponder in colorful, turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. She grows up with a sweet, tragic father, a severely realistic mother, and an aunt who gives her love too freely--to men, and to a brother who will always be the favored child. Francie learns early the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny. She is her father's child--romantic and hungry for beauty. But she is her mother's child, too--deeply practical and in constant need of truth. Like the Tree of Heaven that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, resourceful Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive. Betty Smith's poignant, honest novel created a big stir when it was first published over 50 years ago. Her frank writing about life's squalor was alarming to some of the more genteel society, but the book's humor and pathos ensured its place in the realm of classics--and in the hearts of readers, young and old. (Ages 10 and older) --Emilie Coulter


Click HERE to get the free downloads.

For those who are just finding out about Audiobook Sync, there are two new ones each week, so you have to keep checking back. You can't get any titles that have been missed, but once they are loaded into, they are yours to keep (there is no expiration date). Get today's titles quickly, as there will be two new ones up each Thursday. You'll have to sign up for an account and install Overdrive (if you are not already using it for library books). In addition, you end up clicking about three pages, for each book, before the audiobook actually downloads. Don't stop so long as you still see a button that talks about your Sync download (or until you see the Overdrive software open up). Once in Overdrive, you'll need to tell it where to save the files (just click OK to use the default location, since Overdrive will keep track of them for you), then again to actually start the download (by default, all parts of the book are downloaded; I would suggest not changing this in the last dialog box, just click on OK to get the download started).

Free Classics from B&N (nook)


Barnes and Noble is continuing their free Classics in the B&N Free Library this week, with a new set of free classics. This weeks theme is Uncensored... Books That Were Banned:
  1. Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis
  2. Candide - Voltaire
  3. Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H. Lawrence
  4. Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
  5. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
  6. Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
  7. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
  8. Jungle - Upton Sinclair
  9. Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
  10. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
  11. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
  12. Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence
These editions are not exactly the same as you would find at Gutenberg; Barnes and Noble Classic Series editions generally have been more carefully proofread and have introductions and scholarly notes inserted in the beginning to aid in understanding the text. If you are building a summer reading list for a student, stocking up for lit classes in college or just want to revisit the classics, these are a great (free) resource.These are DRM'd epubs, though, so will only be readable on a nook or one of the B&N reader apps.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

The Burnt House for Two Bucks

A special edition of The Burnt House , the sixteenth in Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series, is available for pre-order at $1.99. You can get a sample of the book from the original edition, but be sure not to order that one, as it is full price ($7.99). Some "bonus material" is apparently contained in this special edition and, although there is no indication on the product page, I'd bet that it is an excerpt from her newest, Hangman, which released this month.

Book Description
At 8:15 in the morning, a small commuter plane carrying forty-seven passengers crashes into an apartment building in Granada Hills, California. Shock waves ripple through Los Angeles, as L.A.P.D. Lieutenant Peter Decker works overtime to calm rampant fears of a 9/11-type terror attack. But a grisly mystery lives inside the plane's charred and twisted wreckage: the unidentified bodies of four extra travelers. And there is no sign of an airline employee who was supposedly on the catastrophic flight.

Decker and his wife, Rina, have personal reasons for being profoundly shaken by the tragedy, since the "accident" occurred frighteningly close to their daughter Hannah's school. Luckily, their child and her schoolmates escaped unscathed. But the fate of the unaccounted-for flight attendant—twenty-eight-year-old Roseanne Dresden—remains a question mark more than a month after the horrific event, when the young woman's irate stepfather calls, insisting that she was never onboard the doomed plane. Instead, he claims, she was most likely murdered by her abusive, unfaithful husband. But why, then, was Roseanne's name included on the passenger list?

Under intense pressure from the department to come up with answers, Decker launches an investigation that carries him down a path of tragic history, dangerous secrets, and deadly lies—and leads him to the corpse of a three-decades-missing murder victim. And as the jagged pieces slowly fall into place, a frightening picture begins to form: a mind-searing portrait of unimaginable evil that will challenge Decker's and Rina's own beliefs about guilt and innocence and justice.

Combining relentless suspense with intense, multilayered human drama, The Burnt House is Faye Kellerman at her mesmerizing best.