Free game - Every Word Updated on Kindle

For those new to Kindle or who missed it the first time, you can once again purchase and download the game Every Word in the Kindle store. For those who already have this game, the one-click button reads Update Available and you can select which of your compatible Kindles to send it to right on the product page, rather than having to go to Manage My Kindle to do so. A new content warning has appeared that there may be words inappropriate for children (just as in any dictionary) and it's been missing from the store long enough that there must have been a team going thru every single word in the dictionary to block anything that might be considered remotely offensive to any particular category of adults (although I suspect that task will never be done). If you read the reviews, you'll find a number of one-star reviews given specifically due to the censorship being applied (although the original no doubt also had some words blocked itself, despite the title implying that every word in the dictionary must be used).

For those who don't have it, this is a fun game (and guaranteed time filler), while those who do will need to decide if they want to update their existing Kindle (for Kindles added to the account, you could still download the old version if it were in your archives, up to today, but may get the new version for future downloads). Unless you play a lot, the chances of running into the expunged words are no doubt fairly small, in any case. My biggest problem with the game is trying to figure out all the extremely obscure (and short) words that it uses.

If you like word scrambles then Every Word is the game for you. Test your vocabulary as you try to find as many words from the scrambled letters in this fun and fast-paced word game.

Here's how it works. You are given six or seven scrambled letters with the goal of finding as many words as you can. You score points by filling out the words in each empty spot on the board using only the letters that appear at the top of the game board. Keep at it until time runs out or until you fill up the board. The more words you make, the higher your score!

Your score is comprised of two components: first make a lot of words, second try to make the longest word possible in each scramble. The best way to increase your score is to do both, but it's a huge bonus to find the longest word possible. Why? Because when you do, you earn the right to play a completely new level with a brand new set of letters. As long as you keep finding the longest word, you can move on to a new level with a new jumble of letters and push your score higher and higher.

Please note: Every Word may contain content inappropriate for children.

Bargain Book Roundup, Part V

Baby Jack ($1.67), by Frank Schaeffer

Book Description
Todd Ogden, an acclaimed painter with work in museums around the world and a seemingly successful thirty-year marriage to the Brahmin Sarah, is living and painting in his two-hundred-year-old Massachusetts farmhouse when his youngest child, Jack, chooses the Marines over college. Feeling puzzled and ultimately infuriated by his son’s incomprehensible switch to "the other side," a situation only further aggravated by his disapproval of Jack’s girlfriend Jessica, Todd ultimately turns his back on his son. Not long after the start of Gulf War II, Jack is deployed to Iraq and killed a week later, trying to fend off an ambush.

From this point on, Baby Jack tells the story of the family Jack leaves behind, of his parents trying to survive as their marriage shatters, of Todd’s own breakdown and after-the-fact attempt to understand his son’s life—and of Jessica’s perseverance and the baby to whom she gives birth after Jack’s death.

Baby Jack is a powerful and moving_human story of sacrifice and redemption, which takes its readers into a territory way beyond the everyday.

Ultimate Weapon ($2.35), by Chris Ryan

Book Description
The new blockbuster from the bestselling author of The Increment and Greed — a former SAS commander and the only member of his team to escape from Iraq during the Gulf War.

Three people. Three stories. And a dangerous struggle for survival in a country ravaged by war.

Nick Scott fought in the SAS during the first Gulf War. Captured and tortured, he was left a broken man. His daughter Sarah Scott is a beautiful young scientist who has cracked one of the scientific secrets of the age. Now, she has vanished.

Her lover Jed Bradley is one of the SAS’s toughest young agents, dropped behind enemy lines in the build-up to the Iraq War to find the truth about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Caught in the midst of a global power play, Nick and Jed must fight their way through a war-ravaged Iraq as the regime of Saddam Hussein collapses around them.

It is a desperate race to find the woman they both love . . . and to unlock the secret of the Ultimate Weapon.

The Silver Bear ($2.36), by Derek Haas

Book Description
The intense psychological portrait of a hitman--the anti-Jason Bourne--as he stalks his prey from Boston to LA. He wants you to know him, maybe even admire him, but only for his excellence in his craft. Perhaps he was even born for it. ""A natural killer,"" his mentor--a middleman named Vespucci--said he was. He proved it with his first professional hit: a Fifth Circuit Court judge in Boston, executed with a sheet of Saran Wrap in the stairwell of her own courthouse. He's proved his merit often, usually with a Glock semiautomatic, but he's improvised too, with his bare hands, the heel of a shoe, knives, even a sewing machine. He is the consummate assassin, at the top of his form, immune to the psychological strains of his chosen profession. He is what the Russians call a Silver Bear. He calls himself Columbus. It's the name Vespucci gave him, ten years ago, when he discovered a dark, new world of fences, clients, marks, jobs, jack. Not that his real name meant much to him anyway. He never knew his father or his mother, a prostitute who became dangerously involved back in the seventies with an earnest young congressman named Abe Mann, then a rising star in the Democratic Party. The magnetic Abe Mann has since become the Speaker of the House. He is currently running for the Democratic nomination in an exhausting presidential campaign, weaving his way across the country. Columbus is not far behind. But as he pieces together his past and prepares the seamless assassination of his mark, the criminal underworld he has always ruled begins unraveling violently around him.

Fiesta Moon ($1.24), by Linda Windsor, is the second book in the The Moonstruck series.

Book Description
Dear Reader, are you ready for more moonstruck madness? Mix a sassy senorita, an incorrigible Don Juan, and a haunted hacienda, and you get page-turning intrigue and romance.

When American social worker Corinne Diaz arrives at a remote mountain village to volunteer at a local orphanage, she thinks it's a slice of Mexican heaven...until Mark Madison shows up. Saved once again from the clink by his brother, the engineer promises to stay sober and fly right.

Battling the kindling chemistry between them, the stubborn opposites are determined to dispel an old superstition threatening the new orphanage. As the dilemma becomes more sinister, things get hotter than a basket of habaneros. Little do Corinne and Mark realize that while they work to save the project-and their lives-the Mexicalli moon is working on them.

Sometimes an added pinch of faith can make just about anything possible!

The Ruby in Her Navel: A Novel of Love and Intrigue in the 12th Century ($3.07), by Barry Unsworth

Book Description
Set in the Middle Ages during the brief yet glittering rule of the Norman kings, The Ruby in Her Navel is a tale in which the conflicts of the past portend the present. The novel opens in Palermo, in which Latin and Greek, Arab and Jew live together in precarious harmony. Thurstan Beauchamp, the Christian son of a Norman knight, works for Yusuf, a Muslim Arab, in the palace’s central finance office, a job which includes the management of blackmail and bribes, and the gathering of secret information for the king.

But the peace and prosperity of the kingdom is being threatened, internally as well as externally. Known for his loyalty but divided between the ideals of chivalry and the harsh political realities of his tumultuous times, Thurstan is dispatched to uncover the conspiracies brewing against his king. During his journeys, he encounters the woman he loved as a youth; and the renewed promise of her love, as well as the mysterious presence of an itinerant dancing girl, sends him on a spiritual odyssey that forces him to question the nature of his ambition and the folly of uncritical reverence for authority.

With the exquisite prose and masterful narrative drive that have earned him widespread acclaim, Barry Unsworth transports the reader to a distant past filled with deception and mystery, and whose racial, tribal, and religious tensions are still with us today.

Some Dream for Fools ($1.17), by Faiza Guene, translated by Jenna Johnson

Book Description
Ahlème, a young woman living on the outskirts of Paris, is trying to make a life out of the dreams she brought with her from Algeria and the reality she faces every day. Her father lost his job after an accident at his construction site. Her mother was lost to a massacre in Algeria. And her brother, Foued, boils with adolescent energy and teeters dangerously close to choosing a life of crime.

As she wanders the streets of Paris looking for work, Ahlème negotiates the disparities between her dreams and her life, her youth and her responsibilities, the expectations of those back home and the limitations of life in France.

With the same laugh-out-loud, razor-sharp humor that made Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow an international hit, Some Dream for Fools shows Faïza Guène’s evolution as a novelist and reminds us of her extraordinary talent as she explores what happens to people when a lid is put on their dreams.

Moonlight in Odessa ($3.44), by Janet Skeslien Charles

Book Description
Odessa, Ukraine, is the humor capital of the former Soviet Union, but in an upside-down world where waiters earn more than doctors and Odessans depend on the Mafia for basics like phone service and medical supplies, no one is laughing. After months of job hunting, Daria, a young engineer, finds a plum position at a foreign firm as a secretary. But every plum has a pit. In this case, it's Mr. Harmon, who makes it clear that sleeping with him is job one. Daria evades Harmon's advances by recruiting her neighbor, the slippery Olga, to be his mistress. But soon Olga sets her sights on Daria's job. Daria begins to moonlight as an interpreter at Soviet Unions(TM), a matchmaking agency that organizes "socials" where lonely American men can meet desperate Odessan women. Her grandmother wants Daria to leave Ukraine for good and pushes her to marry one of the men she meets, but Daria already has feelings for a local. She must choose between her world and America, between Vlad, a sexy, irresponsible mobster, and Tristan, a teacher nearly twice her age. Daria chooses security and America. Only it's not exactly what she thought it would be... A wry, tender, and darkly funny look at marriage, the desires we don't acknowledge, and the aftermath of communism, Moonlight in Odessa is a novel about the choices and sacrifices that people make in the pursuit of love and stability.

The Spanish Bow ($0.93), by Andromeda Romano-Lax

Book Description
I was almost born Happy.

Literally, Feliz was the Spanish name my mother wanted for me. Not a family name, not a local name, just a hope, stated in the farthest-reaching language she knew—a language that once reached around the world, to the Netherlands, Africa, the Americas, the Philippines. Only music has reached farther and penetrated more deeply.

In a dusty, turn-of-the-century Catalan village, the bequest of a cello bow sets young Feliu Delargo on the unlikely path of becoming a musician. Anarchist Barcelona and the court of the embattled monarchy in Madrid teach him his first serious lessons in creativity, principle, and passion—and their consequences. When he meets up with the charming and eccentric piano prodigy Justo Al-Cerraz, their lifelong friendship and rivalry orchestrate a tumultuous course for them both. Over the span of half a century of creative struggle and international turmoil that sees them paying house calls on Picasso one year and being courted by dictators the next, they make glorious music together, and clash over virtually everything else: love, politics, and the purpose of art. When the tensions propelling a war-torn world toward catastrophe bring Aviva, an Italian violinist with a haunted past, into their lives, Feliu and Justo embark upon their final and most dangerous collaboration.

The Saucier's Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip through the Great Cooking Schools of Europe ($1.53), by Bob Spitz

Book Description
In the blink of an eye, Bob Spitz turned fifty, finished an eight-year book project and a fourteen-year marriage, had his heart stolen and broken on the rebound, and sought salvation the only way he knew how. He fled to Europe, where he hopscotched among the finest cooking schools in pursuit of his dream.Spitz hit the fabled cooking-school circuit in a series of idyllic European villages, and The Saucier's Apprentice is a chronicle of his exploits. Combining an outrageous travelogue with gastronomic lore, hands-on cooking instruction, hot-tempered chefs, local personalities, and a batch of memorable recipes, Spitz's odyssey recounts the transformation of a professional writer (and lifelong kitchen amateur) into a world-class cook.

Bargain Book Roundup, Part IV

Off Armageddon Reef ($2.99), by David Weber, was unavailable in the Kindle store, but is now available (at least to those in the US) at the same price as at Barnes and Noble.

Book Description
Humanity pushed its way to the stars - and encountered the Gbaba, a ruthless alien race that nearly wiped us out.

Earth and her colonies are now smoldering ruins, and the few survivors have fled to distant, Earth-like Safehold, to try to rebuild. But the Gbaba can detect the emissions of an industrial civilization, so the human rulers of Safehold have taken extraordinary measures: with mind control and hidden high technology, they've built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, a religion designed to keep Safehold society medieval forever.

800 years pass. In a hidden chamber on Safehold, an android from the far human past awakens. This "rebirth" was set in motion centuries before, by a faction that opposed shackling humanity with a concocted religion. Via automated recordings, "Nimue" - or, rather, the android with the memories of Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban - is told her fate: she will emerge into Safeholdian society, suitably disguised, and begin the process of provoking the technological progress which the Church of God Awaiting has worked for centuries to prevent.

Nothing about this will be easy. To better deal with a medieval society, "Nimue" takes a new gender and a new name, "Merlin." His formidable powers and access to caches of hidden high technology will need to be carefully concealed. And he'll need to find a base of operations, a Safeholdian country that's just a little more freewheeling, a little less orthodox, a little more open to the new.

And thus Merlin comes to Charis, a mid-sized kingdom with a talent for naval warfare. He plans to make the acquaintance of King Haarahld and Crown Prince Cayleb, and maybe, just maybe, kick off a new era of invention. Which is bound to draw the attention of the Church?and, inevitably, lead to war.

It's going to be a long, long process. And it's going to be the can't-miss SF epic of the decade.

The Glass Devil ($2.38), by Helene Tursten, is the third Irene Huss mystery from this Swedish writer to appear in the US.

Book Description
The principal of a high school telephones his friend, Inspector Andersson of the Göteborg Crime Police; one of his teachers failed to show up for work. To Inspector Irene Huss’ surprise, on the basis of this vague complaint her boss drives out with her to a remote cottage in snowbound southern Sweden to investigate. There they find a body, its head blasted by a rifle. Teacher Jacob Schyttelius has been murdered. When they go to break the news to his elderly parents, Pastor Sten Schyttelius and his wife, they find the couple dead in their beds, each shot between the eyes. Upside-down pentagrams have been drawn in blood on their computer screens. The only surviving member of the family is a daughter, now residing in London, but she is too distressed to be interviewed. Is the killer a member of a satanic cult? Is it the parish treasurer, rumored to have been embezzling church funds? Or one of the assistant pastors, tired of waiting for a promotion? Perhaps the attractive blonde who sings in church and practices witchcraft? Irene Huss has a hunch that the answer lies in England, and she travels there twice to discover the reason for this triple homicide.

The Sugar House ($1.99), by Laura Lippman, is the fifth in the Tess Monaghan Mystery series.

Book Description
A client named Ruthie -- who seems to know Tess's father a little too well -- asks the newspaperwoman-turned-p.i. to investigate a year-old "Jane Doe" murder and its grim aftermath. Ruthie's low-life brother, Henry, confessed to killing a teenager runaway over a bottle of glue -- and, a month into his prison term, he met the same fate as his victim. Following a precious few tantalizing clues, Tess sets off on a path that is leading her from Baltimore's exclusive Inner Harbor to the city's seediest neighborhoods. But it's the shocking discovery of the runaway's true identity that turns her hunt deadly. Suddenly a supposedly solved murder case is turning up newer, fresher corpses and newer, scarier versions of the Sugar House -- places that look sweet and safe...but only from the outside.

Match Point ($1.99), by Erynn Mangum, is the third in the Lauren Holbrook series.

Book Description
Lauren Holbrook, matchmaker extraordinaire, takes credit for four successful couples now. With her dad happily married and life settling down around her, Lauren feels quite content. That is, until the tables are turned and she’s on the receiving end of the matchmaking!

Lauren and her boyfriend, Ryan, devise a plan to make it look as if they’ve broken up so people will get off their backs about marriage. No problem, right? That’s of course until Lauren realizes she’s in love.

Cloud of Unknowing ($2.07), by Thomas Cook

Book Description
David Sears grew up in the shadow of his brilliant younger sister, Diana, convinced by their father that she would accomplish great things. Instead, she married and had a son, Jason, who—like David and Diana’s father—is schizophrenic. Her husband, Mark, a geneticist, never made peace with Jason’s condition.

Perhaps this is why, when Jason drowns, Diana will not accept the authorities’ conclusion that his death was accidental. Or perhaps Diana is going mad. She begins to send David faxes and e-mails about ancient murders, driven by her growing belief that the earth is Gaia, a living witness to her son’s murder who could give evidence in the case she is building against her husband. David soon fears for his own family’s safety as the seductive qualities of Diana’s manic energy become impossible to ignore.

In The Cloud of Unknowing, Thomas H. Cook explores the devastating power of blood and family mythology.

The Eleventh Man ($1.68), by Ivan Doig, is a new mobi-formatted edition (the topaz format edition has been bargain priced previously).

Book Description
Driven by the memory of a fallen teammate, TSU’s 1941 starting lineup went down as legend in Montana football history, charging through the season undefeated. Two years later, the "Supreme Team" is caught up in World War II. Ten of them are scattered around the globe in the war’s lonely and dangerous theaters. The eleventh man, Ben Reinking, has been plucked from pilot training by a military propaganda machine hungry for heroes. He is to chronicle the adventures of his teammates, man by man, for publication in small-town newspapers across the country like the one his father edits. Ready for action, he chafes at the assignment, not knowing that it will bring him love from an unexpected quarter and test the law of averages, which holds that all but one of his teammates should come through the conflict unscathed.

A brilliantly told tale of the effects of war on small town life by the bestselling author of The Whistling Season.

Once In A Blue Moon ($2.66), by Eileen Goudge

Book Description
Lindsay and Kerrie Ann are sisters who have known hardship from an early age. Without guidance from their neglectful mother, their only aid came from an unlikely source, a retired exotic dancer by the name of Miss Honi Love. When the girls' mother was sent to prison, Miss Honi tried unsuccessfully to save them from being separated and sent into foster care. Thirty years later, Lindsay is still trying to reconnect with her sister. The owner of a bookstore in the sleepy California seaside town of Blue Moon Bay, she was lucky enough to have been adopted by a loving couple. Unbeknownst to her, Kerrie Ann has suffered a very different life. Bounced from one foster home to the next, she ran away as a teenager before becoming a drug-addicted single mother. Now, newly sober, Kerrie Ann is fighting to regain custody of the little girl who was taken from her.

Third Wish ($4.28), by Robert Fulghum, has 21 20 related MP3's that can be downloaded on the Amazon product page for the book (since you don't get the CD that the paper edition comes with).

Book Description
In fairy tales, the third wish is the last one left when the first wish was foolish, and the second wish was used to undo the first wish. Now the remaining wish must be used wisely and well--with the help of co-conspirators. The main thread of Third Wish--like Ariadne's string guiding Theseus into the labyrinth with the Minotaur--begins at a table on a terrace on the Greek Island of Crete, winds its way into the center and back out to the same table, passing through Greece, Japan, France, England, and Seattle. Its main characters are Alice, Max-Pol, Aleko, Wonko, Zenkichi, Polydora, Alice-Alice, and Dog. Woven into the fabric of the novel are cultural history, art, philosophy, archeology, poetry, theater and music. The mode of the novel is contained in the words Slowly, Surprise, and Witness. More than anything else, Third Wish is a long love story--not in the usual sense--but the story of people who love life and will go to great lengths to find a flourishing Way onward.

The Air We Breathe ($1.76), by Andrea Barrett, is the topaz edition (the mobi format is $10).

Book Description
In the autumn of 1916, Americans are debating whether to enter the first world war. There are 'preparedness parades', and headlines report German spies. But in an isolated community in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, the danger is barely felt. At Tamarack Lake the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, many of them recent immigrants from Europe, fill the sanatorium.

Her, in the crisp air, time stands still. Prisoners of routine and yearning for absent families, the inmates, including the newly arrived Leo Marburg, take solace in gossip, rumour and secret attachments.

An enterprising patient initiates a weekly discussion group. When his well-meaning efforts lead instead to tragedy and betrayal, the war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice and vigilante sentiment. Andrea Barrett pits power and privilege against unrest and thwarted desire, in a spellbinding tale of individual lives in a nation on the verge of extraordinary change.

Red Helmet ($1.98), by Homer Hickam

Book Description
Song Hawkins is a beautiful, tough, but lonely New York City businesswoman who thinks she's met the man of her dreams in Cable Jordan, the superintendent of a West Virginia coal mine. But soon after they impulsively marry, Song realizes they're in big trouble. She can't imagine life outside of New York, and Cable has no intention of leaving his beloved town of Highcoal.

Song's visit to the little mining community only makes things worse. It looks like the marriage is over. But in a shocking turn of events, Song realizes it's up to her to put on the red helmet of the new coal miner and descend into the deep darkness. There she faces her greatest challenge with choices and courage that will forever impact the life of Cable and the entire town.

Free Book (ADE/PDF) - Manual of Style

The original 1906 edition of the Manual of Style ($11.65 paperback), by University of Chicago Press, is free this month from (of course) the University of Chicago Press. Since they have just released the 16th Edition ($39.47 Hardcover and in a subscription-based electronic form (but not for Kindle), they decided to release the original edition in electronic form, as well (although, again, not in a Kindle friendly format).

Book Description
What is now known as The Chicago Manual of Style was first published in 1906 as a "Manual of Style: Being a compilation of the typographical rules in force at the University of Chicago Press, to which are appended specimens of type in use." From this earliest, 200-page edition, the manual has evolved into a reference style guide of 984 pages in its 15th edition. But sometimes, as the saying goes, less is more. Now you can get back to the basics with this reprint of the original 1906 edition of the Manual of Style. It includes rules for capitalization, the use of italics, quotations, spelling, punctuation, divisions, footnotes, and tabular work, along with definitions of technical terms. It also includes valuable hints for authors, editors, proofreaders, and copyholders, along with a table of proofreader's marks and specimens of type then in use at the University of Chicago Press. The hints for proofreaders alone are worth the price of admission, but the entire manual provides succinct, essential guidance for anyone who works with words.

Click HERE to sign up for the free book. You'll need to give them an email address and then check for their message to get the download link. The book is a DRM'd PDF and will requires Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) to download and read.

Games of the Day - Three Agatha Christie Downloads

Three Agatha Christie dame downloads at Amazon are marked down today to $2.79 (each).

Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile

Game Description
Voted 2007 Best Game of the Year! A "Seek and Find" adventure bringing the great and timeless Agatha Christie story of Death on the Nile to life. Assume the role of renowned detective Hercule Poirot seeking clues to a mysterious murder aboard a ship cruising the Nile River. Find needed objects, question suspects and uncover the truth behind the Death on the Nile.

Agatha Christie: Peril at End House

Game Description
Fans of classic mystery stories and great Seek and Find games alike, rejoice! Hercule Poirot is at it again - Mon dieu! - in another Seek and Find mystery of murderous proportions. The follow up to the blockbuster Seek and Find game,Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile. Peril at End House celebrates its 75th anniversary with an interactive retelling that remains true to the Agatha Christie classic while delivering an unforgettable interactive experience.

Agatha Christie: Dead Man's Folly

Game Description
You are invited to a Murder Hunt!

As a guest at the beautiful Nasse House in the English countryside, you are invited to take part in a thrilling mock-murder game. While visitors follow clues to figure out "whodunit", those in charge find themselves with a rising sense of uncertainty. Could an insider be using this charade as the perfect disguise for some despicable scheme?!

With famed detective Hercule Poirot in attendance, help uncover the possible motives leading to a buried secret. Find hidden clues, decode messages, solve complicated puzzles and link crucial facts to unravel a story of deception, dark secrets and a fatal end. Is this Murder Hunt innocent fun, or a Dead Man's Folly?

Following the success of Death on the Nile (Game of the Year, 2007) and Peril at End House with over 27 million downloads, the Agatha Christie PC game series delivers pure suspense to mystery fans worldwide and Dead Man's Folly brings another Queen of Crime's classic tale to life.