Here are a few books I found for 99 cents, more or less, while roaming around the Kindle store tonight.
Terra Incognita, by Ruth Downie, is once again marked down to 99 cents. Don't expect it to last forever at this price, so even if you haven't finished
Medicus (still free), grab this second in the
Roman Empire series now.
Book Description
It is spring in the year of 118, and Hadrian has been Emperor of Rome for less than a year. After getting involved with the murders of local prostitutes in the town of Deva, Doctor Gaius Petreius Ruso needs to get out of town, so has volunteered for a posting with the Army on the volatile border where the Roman-controlled half of Britannia meets the independent tribes of the North. Not only is he going to the hinterlands of the hinterlands, but it his slave Tilla's homeland and she has some scores to settle there. Soon they find that Tilla's tribespeople are being encouraged to rebel against Roman control by a mysterious leader known as the Stag Man, and her former lover is implicated in the grisly murder of a soldier. Ruso, unwillingly involved in the investigation of the murder, is appalled to find that Tilla is still spending time with the lover. Worse, he is honour bound to try to prove the man innocent - and the Army wrong - by finding another suspect. Soon both Ruso's and Tilla's lives are in jeopardy, as is the future of their burgeoning romantic relationship. "This book, which is even better than the first, opens with the pair headed to northern outposts, where Ruso hopes to gain some advancement. . . This is a terrific series that historical mystery fans shouldn't miss. . . "-Globe and Mail (Toronto)
You may already have a copy of the original edition of
Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help, by Douglas Anthony Cooper, as it was free and nearly free for a bit last year. However, this is the extended edition, rewritten for adults, with lots of additional material, which was selling like hotcakes at $2.99 when introduced last year and has been $4.99 until this week, when it dropped to 99 cents. I don't know how long the price will last, but you should definitely at least sample this book.
Book Description
Milrose Munce is still alive. Which is more than you can say for most of his friends. No, his friends died, some time ago, mostly in gruesome accidents in the school science lab. Bored Beulah, for instance, fell asleep into a vat of hydrochloric acid. Toasted Theresa caught fire - and roasted for some hours - in the chemical store room. Neither of these girls is very pleasant to look at, but Milrose is extremely fond of them. His mentor is Deeply Damaged Dave, who was carrying a vial of something combustible in his pocket, which - sad to say - combusted. Dave is a master of all things dangerous, and specializes in Milrose's favorite activity: the staging of unwise and magnificent explosions.
Milrose is the only one, as far as he knows, who can see these ghosts. This causes some trouble: the teachers witness him talking to the empty air in front of him, and laughing at jokes that nobody else can hear, and slapping non-existent friends on the back. For this Milrose is sentence to receive Professional Help, a nasty business administered by the unhinged Massimo Natica in a hidden room in the school: the loathsome, perilous Den. He and his fellow captive, Arabella, soon discover that they have in fact been caught up in a vast and unspeakably evil plot, which threatens the lives and deaths of everyone they know. Luckily, they have an army of ghosts at their disposal.
Critics in the UK and Canada have compared Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help to the twisted masterpieces of Lemony Snicket and Roald Dahl. While readers as young as eight have loved the book, this dark comedy has an equally large following among adults.
(NOTE: This is an expanded version of the bestselling Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help, which was #1 on both the Children's and Teen bestseller lists on Amazon. Much that was originally cut from the Doubleday edition has been reinstated, and entirely new sections have been added. This version is appropriate for ages ten to adult.)
Knitting For Dummies (
$0.99), by Pam Allen, may not be the best book for a beginner (as alleged by one reviewer), but at this price, it would be hard to pass up, if you have even a passing interest in knitting. You might also want to check out
Interweave or
Patternfish for some free or inexpensive patterns (but use a disposable email address, as you can expect a lot of email from one or both sites).
Book Description
Knitting is a relatively simple process requiring a minimal set of tools – two needles and a ball of yarn. Its basic structure of interlocking loops couldn't be less complicated. Yet the possibilities for design and pattern innovation seem endless. Now is a great time to learn to knit. Never before have you had so many lovely and imaginative yarns from which to choose and so many stylish and sophisticated patterns to work with.
Sure, grandmothers knit, but so do movie stars, football players, doctors, and lawyers. They know what our grandmothers do: Knitting does more than just provide you with warm and cozy things to wear. Knitting also
- Stirs your creativity
- Gives you an ongoing sense of purpose
- Teaches patience
- Soothes the soul from the stresses of everyday life
Practice and perfect your knitting skills with Knitting For Dummies. This friendly, hands-on guide will lead you through the following topics and more:
- Mastering the four elemental moves of knitting
- Deciphering knitting patterns
- Fixing common knitting mistakes
- Getting started with simple projects
- Expanding your horizons with stripes and details
- Relaxing stiff shoulders and fingers
Every chapter explaining a specific knitting technique includes a Knitting Notebook of sample patterns to show you some of the different ways it can be used and a section of Practice Projects that gives step-by-step instructions for simple and attractive knitted accessories nearly al of which are features on the pages of the color insert. Most projects end with a list of project variations – ways to expand on your understanding of how to craft and design projects on your own.
Easy Innocence and
Doubleback, by Libby Fischer Hellmann, the first two books in her Chicago PI
Georgia Davis series, are both marked down to 99 cents for Valentine's Day.
Book Description
When pretty, smart Sara Long is found bludgeoned to death, it's easy to blame the man with the bat.
But Georgia Davis -- former cop and newly-minted PI -- is hired to look into the incident at the behest of the accused's sister, and what she finds hints at a much different, much darker answer. It seems the privileged, preppy schoolgirls on Chicago's North Shore have learned just how much their innocence is worth to hot-under-the-collar businessmen. But while these girls can pay for Prada pricetags, they don't realize that their new business venture may end up costing them more than they can afford.
Mickey Spillane's
Mike Hammer series is locked up by Penguin, it appears, except for the posthumously published
The Goliath Bone (
$1.47), that was completed by Max Allan Collins. If you want those early novels, though, there are three ebook bundles that will get you started (each contains three titles):
The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume I (
$14.99),
The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume II (
$14.99) and
The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume III (
$9.99).
Book Description
In the midst of a Manhattan snowstorm, Hammer halts the violent robbery of a pair of college sweethearts who have stumbled onto a remarkable archaeological find in the Valley of Elah: the perfectly preserved femur of what may have been the biblical giant Goliath. Hammer postpones his marriage to his faithful girl Friday, Velda, to fight a foe deadlier than the mobsters and KGB agents of his past — Islamic terrorists and Israeli extremists bent upon recovering the relic for their own agendas.
A week before his death, Mickey Spillane entrusted his nearly finished manuscript and extensive notes to his frequent collaborator, Max Allan Collins, to complete.The result is a thriller as classic as Spillane’s own I, the Jury and as compelling as Collins’s Road to Perdition.
Gregorius (
$1.17), by Bengt Ohlsson
Book Description
Bengt Ohlsson, one of Sweden’s most successful young writers, has responded to the classic Doctor Glas with Gregorius, which is the voice of Pastor Gregorius over the course of what could be his last and fateful summer. Gregorius is a rancorous, malodorous, and unattractive figure married to a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. But his sense of his own mortality, of his personal inadequacy, and his tenuous hold on happiness are uniquely absorbing and haunting. It is a compelling study of loneliness, longing, and the nature of love, the desires that bring people together and the fears that keep them apart.
Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature (
$1.46), by David Quammen
Book Description
"Lively writing about science and nature depends less on the offering of good answers, I think, than on the offering of good questions," said David Quammen in the original introduction to Natural Acts. For more than two decades, he has stuck to that credo. In this updated version of curiosity leads him from New Mexico to Romania, from the Congo to the Amazon, asking questions about mosquitoes (what are their redeeming merits?), dinosaurs (how did they change the life of a dyslexic Vietnam vet?), and cloning (can it save endangered species?).
This revised and expanded edition best-loved "Natural Acts" columns, which first appeared in Outside magazine in the early 1980s, and includes recent pieces such as "Planet of Weeds," an influential new Natural Acts is an eye-opening journey that will please both Quammen fans and newcomers to his work.
Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom (
$1.35), by Maria Laurino
Book Description
In the second-generation immigrant home where Maria Laurino grew up, “independent” was a dirty word and “sacrifice” was the ideal and reality of motherhood. But out in the world, Mary Tyler Moore was throwing her hat in the air, personifying the excitement and opportunities of the freedom loving American career woman. How, then, to reconcile one’s inner Livia Soprano—the archetypal ethnic mother—with a feminist icon?
Combining lived experience with research and reporting on our contemporary work-family dilemmas, Laurino brews an unusual and affirming blend of contemporary and traditional values. No other book has attempted to discuss feminism through the prism of ethnic identity, or to merge the personal and the analytical with such a passionate and intelligent literary voice. Prizing both individual freedom and an Old World in which the dependent young and old are cherished, Laurino makes clear how much the New World offers and how much it has yet to learn.
Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict (
$1.45), by Sandra Mackey
Book Description
It is crucial to the interests of the West to grasp the complexities of the Arab world. In this clear, concise volume, Sandra Mackey provides a unique view of this tortured and tortuous region through the lens of Lebanon.A small, fractured country at the gateway of the Arab east, Lebanon signals the challenges that the Arab world poses to itself and to the West. As Mackey vividly demonstrates, the Lebanese have experienced every issue currently roiling the Middle East: borders contrived by others, a weak state housing weak institutions, a Palestinian presence, civil war, resistance to societal and political change, Sunni/Shia sectarianism, occupation, militant Islam as a political ideology, conflict over the common identity essential to turning a fragile state into a viable nation, a troubled democratic tradition, and war perpetrated by forces inside and outside its borders. Lessons learned from these conflicts will ease understanding and resolution elsewhere.
Puzzazz has introduced an interesting looking variant of Sudoku, Symdoku Unbound #1 ($2.99), for the Kindle. Rather than numbers or letters (Wordoku Unbound #1 has you use letters from a word in each square). I found Wordoku more difficult in some ways, as it seems to force a different part of your brain to solve the puzzle, so I suspect this one will be more challenging as well. From the pictures, it looks like you use the letters at the left side of the Kindle keyboard to enter the symbols (or the 5-way controller), so you don't have to fight with the SYM key or the number keys.
