Tess Gerritsen under a Buck (Canada only)

For Canadian Kindle readers only, Amazon has three of Tess Gerritsen's pre-Rizzoli and Isles titles on sale. All are medical thrillers (the first two favorably compared to Robin Cook, while the third was compared to Stephen King, at least in setting), which isn't surprising considering her own medical background.

Harvest ($0.99)

Book Description
Medical resident Dr. Abby Matteo is elated when the elite cardiac transplant team at Boston's Bayside Hospital taps her as a potential recruit. But faced with a tormenting life-and-death decision, Abby helps direct a crash victim's harvested heart to a dying teenager -- instead of the wealthy older woman who was supposed to receive it. The repercussions leave Abby shaken and plagued with self-doubt.

Suddenly, a new heart appears, and the woman's transplant is completed. Then Abby makes a terrible discovery. The donor records have been falsified -- the new heart has not come through the proper channels. Defying the hospital's demands for silence, she begins her own investigation that reveals a murderous, unthinkable conspiracy. Every move Abby makes spawns a vicious backlash...and on a ship anchored in the waters of Boston harbor, the grisly truth lies waiting.

Life Support ($0.99)

Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen weaves authenticity into another novel of searing medical suspense, as a dedicated woman doctor probes into the cause of a mystifying and lethal outbreak.

The quiet overnight shift at Springer Hospital ER suits Dr. Toby Harper just fine -- until she admits a man in critical condition from a possible viral infection of the brain. The delirious man barely responds to treatment -- and then disappears without a trace. Before Toby can find him, a second case occurs, revealing a terrifying fact: the virus can only be spread through direct tissue exchange. Following a trail of death that winds from a pregnant sixteen-year-old prostitute to her own home, Toby discovers the unthinkable: the epidemic didn't just happen -- someone let it loose....

Bloodstream ($0.99)

Book Description
With her acclaimed novels Harvest and Life Support, Tess Gerritsen has injected a powerful dose of adrenaline into the medical thriller. Now, in a new blockbuster, Gerritsen melds page-turning suspense with chilling realism as a small-town doctor races to unravel the roots of a violent outbreak -- before it destroys everything she loves.

Lapped by he gentle waters of Locust Lake, the small resort town of Tranquility, Maine, seems like the perfect spot for Dr. Claire Elliot to shelter her adolescent son, Noah, from the distractions of the big city and the lingering memory of his father's death. But with the first snap of winter comes shocking news that puts her practise on the line: a teenage boy under her care has committed an appalling act of violence. And as Claire and all of Tranquility soon discover, it is just the start of a chain of lethal outbursts among the town's teenagers.

As the rash of disturbing behavior grows, Claire uncovers a horrifying secret: this is not the first time it has happened. Twice a century,the children of Tranquility lash out with deadly violence. Claire suspects that there is a biological cause for the epidemic, and she fears that the placid Locust Lake may conceal an insidious danger. As she races to save Tranquility -- and her son -- from harm, Claire discovers an even greater threat: a shocking conspiracy to manipulate nature, and turn innocents to slaughter.

If you missed The Surgeon when it was free (Sept '08) and you are a Canadian Kindle customer, you can still get it for $1.53. It's a great start to the Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles series that you'll definitely want to read if you have watched the series.

Book Description
This enhanced eBook includes the full text of the novel plus the following additional content:

• An exclusive preview chapter from Tess Gerritsen’s Ice Cold, on sale in hardcover June 29, 2010
• Rizzoli & Isles, In Their Own Words: learn more about the lead characters in these special essays written by the author
• Rizzoli & Isles TV Pilot script: read pages from the script for the pilot episode of the TNT drama

In her most masterful novel of medical suspense, New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen creates a villain of unforgettable evil—and the one woman who can catch him before he kills again.

He slips into their homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, unaware of the horrors they soon will endure. The precision of the killer's methods suggests he is a deranged man of medicine, propelling the Boston newspapers and the frightened public to name him "The Surgeon."

The cops' only clue rests with another surgeon, the victim of a nearly identical crime. Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and killed her attacker before he could complete his assault. Now she hides her fears of intimacy behind a cool and elegant exterior and a well-earned reputation as a top trauma surgeon.

Cordell's careful facade is about to crack as this new killer recreates, with chilling accuracy, the details of Cordell's own ordeal. With every new murder he seems to be taunting her, cutting ever closer, from her hospital to her home. Her only comfort comes from Thomas Moore, the detective assigned to the case. But even Moore cannot protect Cordell from a brilliant hunter who somehow understands—and savors—the secret fears of every woman he kills.

Filled with the authentic detail that is the trademark of this doctor turned author . . . and peopled with rich and complex characters—from the ER to the squad room to the city morgue—here is a thriller of unprecedented depth and suspense. Exposing the shocking link between those who kill and cure, punish and protect, The Surgeon is just the beginning of Tess Gerritsen’s pulse-pounding series of crime thrillers featuring the unforgettable characters Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles.

Free Audiobooks - Beastly and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Audiobook Sync's free giveaway continues. This week, there is, once again, one title available globally and one that is limited to distribution.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ($0.00 Kindle), by Robert Louis Stevenson, read by Scott Brick, is available to download by all.

Book Description
Idealistic young scientist Henry Jekyll struggles to unlock the secrets of the soul. Testing chemicals in his lab, he drinks a mixture he hopes will isolate—and eliminate—human evil. Instead it unleashes the dark forces within him, transforming him into the hideous and murderous Mr. Hyde.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dramatically brings to life a science-fiction case study of the nature of good and evil and the duality that can exist within one person. Resonant with psychological perception and ethical insight, the book has literary roots in Dostoevsky’s “The Double” and Crime and Punishment. Today Stevenson’s novella is recognized as an incisive study of Victorian morality and sexual repression, as well as a great thriller.

Beastly ($6.99 Kindle), by Alex Flinn, read by Chris Patton, is geographically restricted to the US and Canada.

Book Description
I am a beast.

A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog but a horrible new creature who walks upright—a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster.

You think I'm talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It's no deformity, no disease. And I'll stay this way forever—ruined—unless I can break the spell.

Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and the perfect life. And then, I'll tell you how I became perfectly . . . beastly.

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).

Map of Bones - Pre-order under Two Bucks!

A new edition of Map of Bones, by James Rollins, is available to pre-order for $1.99. This version will contain an excerpt from Altar of Eden, which is $14.99 on Kindle (but several of us picked up free from B&N last December, when this same book was only priced at $9.99 in the Kindle store).

Update: This one is only $1.59 in Canada!

Book Description
The bestselling master of astonishing adventure James Rollins delivers his most relentlessly exciting page-turner to date—a gripping and explosive novel of an ancient conspiracy to create a terrifying new world order out of the ashes of modern civilization.

The crime is inhumanly cruel with horrific consequences both unthinkable and inevitable. During a service at a cathedral in Cologne, Germany, a band of armed intruders dressed in monks' robes unleash a nightmare of blood and terror, ruthlessly gunning down worshippers and clergy alike. The killers haven't come for the church's gold and valuable artwork, but for a priceless treasure secreted within: the preserved bones of the Three Magi who once came to pay homage to a newborn savior. As they flee the carnage they have wrought, they carry a prize that could reshape the world.

The Vatican is in turmoil, and Lieutenant Rachel Verona of Rome's carabinieri is assigned to lead the investigation. But no ordinary police organization alone can deal with the bizarre theft and massacre, and SIGMA Force—an elite covert arm of the U.S. Defense Department—is called in under the command of Grayson Pierce. New to SIGMA, Pierce assembles a crack team of scientific and Special Forces operatives to unravel the mystery of the stolen bones, and together they set out on a twisting trail through a labyrinth of clues and dark revelations that carry them to the sites of the Seven Wonders of the World—and to the doorstep of the mystical and terrifying Dragon Court.

An ancient, secret fraternity of alchemists and assassins, the master-adepts of the Dragon Court have plans for the sacred remains that will alter the future of humankind in devastating ways that only the maddest of zealots could desire—and they will let nothing and no one stand in their way. Suddenly Pierce, Verona, and the SIGMA team are the hunted as well as the hunters, forced to use every skill they possess to survive as they follow the bones to the ultimate confrontation between darkness and light—in a lost place of history where science and religion will unite to unleash a horror not seen since the beginning of time.

A masterful novel that combines the exhilarating mysticism of The Da Vinci Code with the pulse-pounding action of a Tom Clancy thriller, James Rollins's Map of Bones is destined to be a modern classic that will stand among the very best adventure tales ever written.

Games of the Day - Word Slinger

Today's game download pick is Word Slinger, which Amazon has marked down to $2.99 for today only. There are only two reviews so far, but one has been playing the game regularly for over a year, and there is a trial version so you can test it out for half an hour before committing to buy.

Game Description

• Scrabble And Crossword Combined
• Packed With Power-Ups
• Speed And Strategy Modes
• Action-Packed Crossword Fun.

Word Slinger is packed with bonuses and power-ups! Take advantage of word and score multiplying power-ups as well as Discard and Hint Accumulators. You'll find them placed randomly on the game board, so carefully craft your web of words to earn extra points and pass levels with greater ease. Fit for puzzle game and word game lovers alike, Word Slinger will have you hooked!

Bargain Book Roundup - Mystery/Thrillers

The Sudoku Murder ($4.76), by Shelley Freydont, the first in her Katie McDonald series, is an updated edition (now in mobi format, rather than topaz).

Book Description
Professor P.T. Avondale is found murdered at his desk at the Avondale Puzzle Museum. Katie McDonald, master puzzle-solver, has returned home to save her childhood mentor's museum from being auctioned off when she learns of the Professor's death. Now she finds herself curator of the museum and in charge of the Professor's newest mentee, a fourteen-year-old runaway. Katie is now faced with working to solve the puzzle of the Professor's murder before a ruthless killer applies his own deadly solution.

Stirring Up Strife ($2.99), by Jennifer Stanley, is the first in the Hope Street Church Mystery series.

Book Description
WELCOME TO THE HOPE STREET CHURCH…where good folks study The Good Book, but everyone loves a good mystery!

Cooper Lee can repair a copy machine—but can she repair her life? That’s one of the many Big Questions that lead this newly single Richmond girl to Sunrise Bible Study at the Hope Street Church. Cooper hasn’t attended church in ages, but after getting dumped by her long-time boyfriend—and moving in with her family—she could use some new friends, and a new outlook on life. Happily, the members of the Bible group are anything but cookie-cutter, which suits Cooper just fine. There’s a blind folk artist, a playboy meteorologist, an investment banker with a sweet tooth, an ambitious realtor, and a cute shy web designer who just might be “the one” for Cooper. But the member of Hope Street Church who invited Cooper to join this motley crew—an office worker who got her wedding ring stuck in a copier—is something else altogether: She’s dead And her husband is suspected of murder!

The Sunrise gang jumps into action, vowing to solve this unholy mess—with God’s guidance—and Cooper’s snooping…

Includes heavenly recipes from Mrs. Lee’s kitchen!

Black Widow ($1.30), by Cliff Ryder, who's The Ties That Bind ($2.34) is also marked down right now.

Book Description
Espionage takes to the twentyfirstcentury playing fields, where rules are brokenand remadeoutside the reach of governments and the law. Agents recruited for the clandestine organization known as Room 59 play hard, play for keeps...or die trying. But now new Room 59 agent Ajza Manaev, a top MI6 operative, discovers just how high the stakes really are when she goes undercover inside Chechnya's terrorist training camps, where bitter young widows harness their hate as suicide bombers. Ajza doesn't know she's being manipulated by many sides of a deadly game. Her mysterious Room 59 handler has his own agenda, while the secret, silent mastermind behind a global destabilization plot hopes to push Ajza's loyalties to the breaking point. And in a game where the ground is always shifting, Ajza is inducted by hellfire into Room 59's harsh reality: she's on her own.

The Coffin Ship ($1.25), by Peter Tonkin, is the first in his Richard Mariner series. Although not out on Kindle (at least, not yet), you can also pick up High Wind in Java in hardcover for $1.30 (#18 in the series).

Book Description
The giant supertanker Prometheus sits at anchor in the Persian Gulf, holding 250,000 tons of crude oil. Somewhere on board is a crew member who is determined that the ship not make it to its destination in Europe. As the ship travels through the Indian Ocean, around South Africa, through the Atlantic and into the English Channel, only Captain Richard Mariner can battle subterfuge, sabotage and the elements to see the ship safely to port.

Disclosure ($1.30), by Nancy Holder

Book Description
Allison Gracelyn's worst nightmare has come true: She's on the run from authorities. She's being set up, and everything the Athenas and her mother have always stood for is in jeopardy. Yet clearing her name will mean battling an adversary wielding weapons unlike any she's ever seen. Only the help of her handsome NSA contact, who offers to put his neck and career on the line, will be enough to stop her enemy's deadly reign. But once she's up close and personal with her long-distance partner, full disclosure suddenly seems the greatest risk of all.

The Last Days of Madame Rey ($1.84), by A.W. Hill, the second in his Stephan Raszer Investigation series.

Book Description
Private investigator Stephan Raszer is back. Action-packed, combining spiritual detection, paranormal events reminiscent of The X-Files, this is a metaphysical mystery with a keen postmodern edge.

The Eden Project ($1.99), by John Bolin, is the third Kindle edition, while the second edition is still available, but at $4.95.

Book Description
Deep in the Amazon jungle, a mysterious virus threatens all of humanity. When an ex-Army Ranger and a beautiful anthropologist team-up to find a cure, science and faith collide in an epic struggle for survival.

Anthropologist Alex Forsythe spent three years studying a remote tribe in the Amazon jungle when they mysteriously vanished without a trace. Months later, a teenage girl from the tribe turns up babbling about a horrifying place her people had been taken. The girl’s body is ravaged by a strange malady, and blood tests reveal an unknown, lethal pathogen. Alex realizes she must find the source of the outbreak if there is to be any hope of a cure.

Nearby, former Army Ranger Peter Zachary leads a small team into the jungle to film a reality show created to explore and explain paranormal phenomena. When Alex and Peter’s paths cross and they join forces, they face the most dangerous adversary they’ve ever encountered—and a technology that threatens the future of humanity. Faith and science collide as Peter and Alex discover the dark secret at the heart of The Eden Project.

Most Wanted ($2.02), by Mark McHugh

Book Description
It’s one of the greatest mysteries of our time. Where is he? Where did he go after Afghanistan? How did the world’s most wanted terrorist vanish without a trace? Despite the reward of twenty-five million dollars and an exhaustive global manhunt, he has remained in hiding ever since the terrifying events of 9/11 … at least until now.

Written in the style of the great Cold War spy novels, the adventure starts with a tip-off by a Yemeni government official. Two MI6 agents embark on a dramatic chase across the Arabian Peninsula. Hot on the heels of their high profile target, they quickly discover that nothing is what it seems. The CIA, the Yemenis, the Cubans, the Israelis and Iranian intelligence all pursue competing interests.

The suspense is heightened, as treacherous alliances lead to innocent lives being threatened. The hunters become the hunted. The plot follows their escapes through the deserts of Arabia, the warm waters of the Caribbean and the steamy Amazon jungle.

This fast-paced, entertaining read is full of spectacular settings, an assortment of carefully crafted characters and many unexpected twists and turns. It will keep you on the edge of your seat until the last word.

Origin ($2.17), by Diana Abu-Jaber

Book Description
Lena Dawson is a fingerprint expert at a crime lab in the small city of Syracuse, New York. Her investigation of a series of crib deaths leads her back to the mystery of her own childhood and the possibility of the inconceivable: that there is an infant murderer at work. "With prose as cool as a razor yet as wildly impressionistic as a fever dream, Diana Abu-Jaber takes us deeply into Lena Dawson and her search for a killer that must first begin in the lost forest of her own psyche. Origin is a gripping exploration of the elusive nature of identity and one's own remembered past, the innocent and guilty alike. This is a superbly written and entirely compelling novel."-Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog

The Abduction ($2.19), by Mark Gimenez

Book Description
Ben Brice lives alone in the New Mexico wilderness where he battles memories of Vietnam with oceans of Jim Beam. Miles away in Texas, his estranged son, John, an internet geek-turned-billionaire, half watches his daughter Gracie’s soccer game while conducting business on his cell phone. When her mother Elizabeth arrives, the coach reports that her uncle has already collected Gracie. But Gracie has no uncle - she was kidnapped.

From international bestselling author Mark Gimenez comes a terrifying child-in-jeopardy thriller in which dark family secrets make the finding of 10-year-old Gracie Brice more uncertain with every passing minute. And so begins a furious race against time to save Gracie from unknown kidnappers. With the FBI camped out in the Brice mansion, the family offers a reward of $25 million. Somehow, Ben and John Brice must find Gracie before it is too late. As the story unfolds with riveting twists and turns, the listener discovers that behind the kidnapping is an extraordinary government plot that could change the course of American history.

Deadly Freedom ($2.51), by Dave Spicer

Book Description
Transitioning the world out of its dependence on oil to using clean, renewal energy is nature’s biggest and most important puzzle to solve. After years of research, professor Jason (Doc) Davidson and his team have cracked the code, but bringing their solution to market requires that they overcome the obstacles put in place by those who see renewable energy as a threat – OPEC, the oil and automotive industries, and the government. Deadly Freedom weaves fiction and fact into a fascinating tapestry of intrigue and conspiracy.

Fried Green Zombies ($2.39), by John A. Allen

Book Description
Chett and Harry are two recently unemployed construction workers on their way to a weekend of beer, Southern Comfort, and frog gigging at their musty-rusted 1970's RV parked at their favorite hunting camp when they stumble on Bob, the mysterious, busty, burqa-clad, non-English speaking beauty just standing in the middle of nowhere on the side of dusty Nine Mile Cutoff in rural Bovina, Mississippi.

Then all hell breaks loose. Their favorite pond is missing. They're being chased by truck driving zombies, dirty cops, UFOs and other ne'er-do-wells. Someone stole Chett's jacked up Scottsdale four-by-four. Zombies are traipsing around their trailer, and crazy Uncle Crank is trying to feed them zombie chicken for dinner.

Aided by a classic computer nerd, a crazy man wielding a frying pan, and a space babe who gets nekkid any time someone turns out the lights, follow Chett and Harry as they battle their way across the rural countryside and ultimately save the world.

Why is their pond missing, and why did the Dodge of Death spring from the muddy crater left in its center? Who is Bob and why is she so good with shotguns? Why are they being chased by two really skinny, pale, bald, goatee-clad wierdos? What is the dirty county sheriff hiding? And will Chett and Harry ever make it out alive?