Free Book (nook) - Scandal Sheet

Scandal Sheet ($6.99 paperback; the Kindle edition is missing from the store), by Gemma Halliday, is free in the Barnes and Noble store today.

Book Description
Gossip columnist Tina is stopped in her tracks when she learns one of the celebrities she's reported on wants her dead. Teamed with an oversized bodyguard, a bubbly blonde, and an alcoholic obituary writer, Tina sets off to find out which juicy piece of Hollywood gossip is worth killing over.

Click HERE for the free download. B&N has been having problems with this one randomly charging people, but it does appear to be fixed now. In any case, be sure to check your confirmation page for the price. If it isn't $0.00, then call their customer service at 1-800-843-2665 and request "Digital Support."

Bargain Book Roundup - Under Three Bucks

In addition to the free books being offered in the Kindle store and elsewhere, several of the big publishers have started discounting one backlist title by an author, either to stir interest before a new title is released or as an introduction to a series. Today's roundup are all $2.99 or less

Raven Black ($2.99), by Ann Cleeves, is the first of the Shetland Island Quartet, which was completed with Blue Lightning ($11.99 Kindle) this month. Also available at B&N, Kobo & Sony ($2.99).

Book Description
Winner of Britain’s coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Ann Cleeves introduces a dazzling new suspense series to U.S. mystery readers.

Raven Black begins on New Year’s Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.

Bad Thoughts ($2.39), by Dave Zeltserman, is the first in the Bill Shannon series. Also available at Kobo ($2.39), B&N & Sony ($2.99).

Book Description
One afternoon 13 year-old Billy Shannon comes home to a living nightmare. His mother being brutally murdered is only the beginning…

20 years later, Bill Shannon is now a cop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As the twenty-year anniversary of his mother’s death is approaching, women are being murdered in the same horrific grisly fashion. And while this is going on, he’s having blackouts which only seem to be getting worse…

Everything seems to be pointing to one of two possibilities: Shannon has gone insane or his mom’s killer is back to his old tricks. Except if it’s mom’s killer, he’s come back a long way to do these new killings… all the way from the grave.

Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House ($2.99 Kindle), by M C Beaton, is the fourteenth in the very long Agatha Raisin series, which is an appropriate read for this time of year (yes, I've seen haunted houses already open); the latest in the series, Busy Body ($11.99 Kindle), releases next month. Also available at B&N, Kobo & Sony ($2.99).

Book Description
Just back from an extended stay in London, Agatha Raisin finds herself greeted by torrential rains and an old, familiar feeling of boredom. When her handsome new neighbor, Paul Chatterton, shows up on her doorstep, she tries her best to ignore his obvious charms, but his sparkling black eyes and the promise of adventure soon lure her into another investigation.

Paul has heard rumors about Agatha's reputation as the Cotswold village sleuth and wastes no time offering their services to the crotchety owner of a haunted house. Whispers, footsteps, and a cold white mist are plaguing Mrs. Witherspoon, but the police have failed to come up with any leads, supernatural or otherwise. The neighbors think it's all a desperate ploy for attention, but Paul and Agatha are sure something more devious is going on. Someone's playing tricks on Mrs. Witherspoon, and when she turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, Agatha finds herself caught up in another baffling murder mystery.

Reign Check ($2.22 Kindle), by Michelle Rowen, is actually the second (and latest) in the Demon Princess series, which starts with Reign or Shine ($7.51 paperback).

Book Description
Fresh from finding out she is a demon princess and meeting her father for the first time, Nikki Donovan is looking forward to getting back to her regular high school life. But then Rhys, the handsome teenage king of the faery realm, enrolls at her school as a "foreign exchange student." Her conflicted feelings for Rhys and her boyfriend are getting in the way of her new relationship with the Shadow-creature Michael. But this love triangle from hell isn't even Nikki's biggest problem: There's a new prophecy that claims she will destroy all the demon and human worlds. Her best friend Melinda just might be a demon-slayer-in-training. Throw in a field trip to none other than the Underworld itself . . . and Nikki's going to be hoping for a rain check on more than just her homework!

You've no doubt heard that David Morrell has signed an exclusive deal with Amazon, bringing 10 of his backlist titles to Kindle exclusively for a year. While all of those are over our limit, his latest novel, The Shimmer ($2.03 Kindle) isn't. Also available at B&N.

Book Description
When a high-speed chase goes terribly wrong, Santa Fe police officer Dan Page watches in horror as a car and gas tanker explode into flames. Torn with guilt that he may be responsible, Page returns home to discover that his wife, Tori, has disappeared. Frantic, Page follows her trail to Rostov, a remote town in Texas famous for a massive astronomical observatory, a long-abandoned military base, and unexplained nighttime phenomena that draw onlookers from every corner of the globe. Many of these gawkers-Tori among them-are compelled to visit this tiny community to witness the mysterious Rostov Lights. Without warning, a gunman begins firing on the lights, screaming "Go back to hell where you came from," then turns his rifle on the bystanders. A bloodbath ensues, and events quickly spiral out of control, setting the stage for even greater violence and death. Page must solve the mystery of the Rostov Lights to save his wife. In the process, he learns that the decaying military base may not be abandoned at all, and that the government may have known about the lights for decades. Could these phenomena be more dangerous than anyone could have possibly imagined?

Shadowfae ($2.99 Kindle), by Erica Hayes, is the first in the series by the same name; the second and third in the series, Shadowglass ($9.99 Kindle) and Poison Kissed ($7.99 Kindle), both released this year.. Also available at B&N, Kobo & Sony ($2.99).

Book Description
Imagine a secret world veiled in fairy glamour and brimming with unearthly delights. A city swarming with half-mad fairies, where thieving spriggans rob you blind, beautiful banshees mesmerize you with their song, and big green trolls bust heads at nightclubs. And once you’re in, there’s no escape…

Enslaved by a demon lord, Jade is forced to spend her nights seducing vampire gangsters and shapeshifting thugs. After two hundred years as a succubus, she burns for freedom and longs to escape her brutal life as a trophy girl for hell’s minions. Then she meets Rajah, an incubus who touches her heart and intoxicates her senses. Rajah shares the same bleak fate as she, and yearns just as desperately for freedom. But the only way for Jade to break her bonds is to betray Rajah—and doom the only man she’s ever loved to a lifetime in hell.

The Up And Comer ($1.99 Kindle), by Howard Roughan, is a first novel, although not part of a series. Also available at Kobo & Sony ($1.99).

Book Description
On an island of glitz, in a season of ambition, Philip Randall is getting what everyone wants. A rising career in a big New York law firm. A rich and beautiful wife. A cavernous downtown loft. And enough disposable income to turn Manhattan into a movable feast. So why is Philip testing fate by sleeping with his best friend's wife? And who is the man watching every move Philip makes-and waiting to make a move of his own?

Set against a glittering backdrop of success, money, and power, this tale of a brilliantly calculating "man on the rise" has sent waves of anticipation through the literary world. Heralding the debut of a gifted young writer, it is a thriller for our time: funny, hip, and terrifying.

Devil In My Bed ($2.99 Kindle), by Celeste Bradley, is the first in her Runaway Brides series, the latest of which, Scoundrel In My Dreams ($7.99 Kindle), released this month. Also available at B&N, Kobo & Sony ($2.99).

Book Description
The three-year-old girl sitting on the steps of Brown’s Club for Distinguished Gentlemen insists that one of its members is her papa. Aidan de Quincy feels obligated to help the wee thing, even though she certainly isn’t his—or is she? To find answers, Aidan must first track down the lovely widow he swore to forget when their passionate affair came to a painful end. It doesn’t help that Madeleine Chandler is as sensual and enticing as ever…

For three years, Madeleine had dreamed of seeing Aidan on her doorstep. The secret that once forced her to leave him now compels her to pretend that this sweet child is hers—a lie Aidan will surely never forgive. Yet the contented days and exquisite nights that follow are worth the heartbreak she knows must come. The truth will out—and when it does, there will be the devil to pay…

Free Book - The Tempest

The Tempest: A Guy of Gisborne Story ($1.79 Kindle), by Charlotte Hawkins, is not only currently being discounted in the Kindle store, but is free (today only) at Smashwords. The author has updated the version on Kindle, correcting some formatting issues and decided to make it free for a day, since those who had previously purchased it in the Kindle store could not get the new version.

Book Description
Guy of Gisborne is a fierce, brooding knight. He is both feared and scorned by those under his command. But under his harsh exterior is a tormented soul, haunted by his many sins...

Cassia is a peasant with a gift for healing, and a secret longing for the feared lord Gisborne. When fate thrusts him into her hands, she quickly finds that he lives up to his dark reputation. But she also learns there is more to him than meets the eye...

Soon they are drawn into a passionate affair, discovering that love is a power that can overcome all things.

Click HERE to get the free download at Smashwords (be sure to back it up on your computer, as you can't save this one in your library at Smashwords, as it will disappear when the price goes back up).

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.