Ellery Queen Mysteries on DVD

If you are a big mystery buff, you may want to check out the Ellery Queen Mysteries DVD set, which is Amazon's Deal of the Day today.

Book Description
From the creators of Columbo and Murder, She Wrote… Match wits with Ellery Queen (Jim Hutton) in all 22 digitally restored, uncut and unedited episodes of this classic NBC series following the exploits of the famed writer as he assists his father, Inspector Richard Queen (David Wayne), in solving the mysteries that baffle the New York City police force.

Guest Stars include: Don Ameche, Dana Andrews, Tom Bosley, George Burns, Joan Collins, Troy Donahue, Anne Francis, Eva Gabor, Larry Hagman, June Lockhart, Robert Loggia, Roddy McDowall, Ed McMahon, Sal Mineo, Donald O'Connor, Dean Stockwell, Dick Van Patten, Vincent Price, Cesar Romero, Betty White, and many more!

Amazon Review
The case of the missing TV series has finally been cracked, but why Ellery Queen lasted only one season (1975-76) and fell into obscurity is a real mystery. Based on the evidence in this six-disc set, this loving homage to the classic murder mystery created by Richard Levinson and William Link was, like their Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, nonviolent and intelligent television of the first order. Set in the 1940s, Ellery Queen stars boyishly charming Jim Hutton, one of the screen's most likable leading men, as the famed mystery writer and sleuth who helps his father, Inspector Richard Queen (David Wayne), solve the most baffling of cases. The pleasures this series affords are anything but guilty. Each intriguing episode begins with the preview of a murder, a roundup of the suspects (Was it the jealous wife? The dictatorial director?), and an irresistible challenge to viewers to "match wits with Ellery Queen and see if you can guess whodunit." Before revealing the killer, Ellery breaks the fourth wall to ask if we amateur sleuths at home have the mystery figured out, offering last-minute clues such as, "Once you figure out how, you'll know who." As with Burke's Law, each episode of Ellery Queen is packed with enough Hollywood legends, venerable character actors, and TV faves to fill The Love Boat. "The Adventure of Veronica's Veils" features George Burns as the victim ("I didn't die of natural causes," he announces via a filmed presentation following his demise), William Demarest, Don Porter, comedian Jack Carter, Hayden Rorke (Dr. Bellows on I Dream of Jeannie), and John Hillerman in his recurring role as radio detective Simon Brimmer, forever trying to one-up Queen. Queen himself makes it a point "to be observant and pay attention to details," particularly for that "dying clue which makes absolutely no sense." You'd be advised to do the same. The intricately plotted stories turn on the most arcane of clues and circumstances, as in the pilot episode "Too Many Suspects," in which solving a fashion designer's murder hinges on the reenactment of a TV news broadcast (maybe that explains the one-season run). An interview with Link, not very lively, but interesting, is included as a bonus feature. --Donald Liebenson

Eight Free Books from Copia

There's a new bookstore in town and it combines the social networking features of Goodreads or LibaryThing with the ability to buy books. Copia's books are in EPUB format (ADE-DRM'd), but you must install their reader in order to download books (when you install it, skip the third step, where you authorize your Adobe login if you PC already has Adobe Digital Editions installed). To bribe you into creating an account (which is free) and installing their reader (required to download the books), Copia is giving every new account holder seven free books, all published by Rosetta Books:

• A Passage To India ($7.39 Kindle), by E. M. Forster
• Brave New World ($6.29 Kindle), by Aldous Huxley
• The Graduate ($7.99 Kindle), by Charles Webb
• Red Alert ($9.99 paperback), by Peter George (the novel "Dr. Strangelove" was based on)
• Shoeless Joe ($7.99 Kindle), by W. P. Kinsella (the novel "Field of Dreams" was based on)
• Slaughterhouse-Five ($5.24 Kindle), by Kurt Vonnegut
• Midnight Cowboy ($7.99 Kindle), by James Leo Herlihy

You can also add fifteen free Harlequin books (that are free in pretty much all the ebookstores), if you wish to do so. I did discover one in the list that hasn't been free on Kindle (although you can get the PDF from Harlequin's website):

• Passion to Die For ($1.77 Kindle), by Marilyn Pappano

When you create an account, you'll have to give them an email address, but other than your name, no other personal information and no credit card info (until you start purchasing non-free books). Click HERE to get started. For each book, click on Get This Book, then on Download Later (since it won't download automatically, anyway). After you've added all the books to your library, start the Copia reader (the links to download it are on their site). First, log in (remember, skip the Adobe activation if you already have ADE installed) and then Sync; once your booklist is showing, double click on each one to download (you can open then, then, but I skipped this part as well).

After they are all downloaded, exit the Copia reader and open Adobe Digital Editions. Click on the down arrow next to Library, then Add item to Library (or just press Ctrl-O). Find the books (under My Documents\Copia Library), click the first one and shift-click the last, to highlight them all, then click on OK. Now the books will all be in Adobe ADE and you can sideload them to the EPUB reader of your choice.

March Black Friday Sale: $5 Magazines

Tiger Direct has been having Black Friday every month (or week) and it looks like Amazon has decided to join them in using the phrase for any big sale, regardless of the time of year. Today thru Sunday, March 6, they are having Black Friday Magazine Madness, with a number of print magazines on sale for $5 for a year's subscription. These do include auto-renewal, but all that means is that as your subscription gets close to the end, you'll get an email from Amazon that it will auto-renew (at whatever rate is currently in force, just like most magazines subscriptions that send you letters in the mail to renew). If you don't want to renew, you follow the link and cancel the renewal.

I looked thru the selection and all of them are the type of magazine that the Kindle just doesn't handle well (at least, not yet). Gardens, wildlife, photography, aviation, boating, surfing, the Carribean, Bahamas and Florida are amongst the topics. I also saw several Science magazines that would be nice for kids as well as adults (and several on parenting and working mothers). Most of these are magazines with lots of glossy pictures that won't translate well to eInk. Although I doubt anyone pays the up to $60 list price quoted on some of them, I also don't think you'll find a better deal than the five bucks Amazon is asking. That, no doubt, doesn't even cover the postage for delivery.

A second magazine sale is also going on at Amazon, with $5 off the regular subscription price. That leaves a number under $10 (and Redbook is only $3).

New Kindle App - My Yoga Studio

My Yoga Studio ($1.99), by Nickel Buddy, is an interesting looking app/game for the Kindle. I'd say it is just as useful as most yoga videos, after you have run thru them once or twice and are just using them as timers, and a lot more portable. Even better, you can customize the routine (try that with a DVD) and run thru the poses you have chosen (and that fit into the time you have to work out).

App Description
My Yoga Studio is like having a personal yoga teacher on your Kindle.

There are many benefits to practicing yoga. Done properly, yoga can help you increase your strength, flexibility, and balance. It can improve your posture as you become more aware of your body, and it can help you relax, even in the midst of a stressful environment.

My Yoga Studio will guide you step-by-step through a series of poses illustrated with a picture and a text description. As you move through the routine, a timer will count down, showing you how long to hold each pose before gently transitioning to the next. 25 different poses are included. You can use one of three included routines (Sun Salutation, Stress Melter, or Balance & Peace), do poses individually, or create your own custom routine. Exercises are designed to strengthen your core, and do not require any special equipment. As you can do these exercises anywhere you have floor space, My Yoga Studio is a perfect companion for frequent travelers or home use.

My Yoga Studio is ready to be your personal guide anytime you want to steal a few moments to center yourself.

If you are not in the US, you can't get My Yoga Studio. Instead, you might want to take a look at Everyday Pilates: From the Top Down ($7.99 US), by Alycea Ungaro, which is one of several Kindle Edition with Audio/Video titles in this series (the rest of which are $5.59). Best of all, if you are a UK customer (only), you can get this one for $1.16 in the US store (£5.98 in the UK store).

Book Description
No time to exercise? No problem! Alycea Ungaro's 15-Minute Everyday Pilates series gives you all the tools you need to squeeze regular exercise into your life. In the Everyday Pilates: From The Top Down Vook, Ungaro shows you how to get a toned, strong body, and graceful posture in just 15-minutes a day. This fantastic new format offers easy, step-by-step instruction, full color images and 11 videos to take you through the full Top Down routine, which focuses on centering and activating your Pilates box. You will also learn how to incorporate weights in your Pilates workout. Strengthen, stretch, and build your way to a more toned, more healthy you.

Free Book (ADE/PDF) - Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey

Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey ($9.99 Kindle), by James Attlee, is free this month, directly from the University of Chicago Press.

Book Description
Through the centuries, people from all walks of life have heard the siren call of a pilgrimage, the lure to journey away from the familiar in search of understanding. But is a pilgrimage even possible these days for city-dwellers enmeshed in the pressures of work and family life? Or is there a way to be a pilgrim without leaving one’s life behind? James Attlee answers these questions with Isolarion, a thoughtful, streetwise, and personal account of his pilgrimage to a place he thought he already knew—the Cowley Road in Oxford, right outside his door.

Isolarion takes its title from a type of fifteenth-century map that isolates an area in order to present it in detail, and that’s what Attlee, sharp-eyed and armed with tape recorder and notebook, provides for Cowley Road. The former site of a leper hospital, a workhouse, and a medieval well said to have miraculous healing powers, Cowley Road has little to do with the dreaming spires of the tourist’s or student’s Oxford. What Attlee presents instead is a thoroughly modern, impressively cosmopolitan, and utterly organic collection of shops, restaurants, pubs, and religious establishments teeming with life and reflecting the multicultural makeup of the surrounding neighborhood.

From a sojourn in a sensory-deprivation tank to a furtive visit to an unmarked pornography emporium, Attlee investigates every aspect of the Cowley Road’s appealingly eclectic culture, where halal shops jostle with craft jewelers and reggae clubs pulsate alongside quiet churchyards. But the very diversity that is, for Attlee, the essence of Cowley Road’s appeal is under attack from well-meaning city planners and predatory developers. His pilgrimage is thus invested with melancholy: will the messy glories of the Cowley Road be lost to creeping homogenization?

Drawing inspiration from sources ranging from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy to contemporary art, Attlee is a charming and companionable guide who revels in the extraordinary embedded in the everyday. Isolarion is at once a road movie, a quixotic stand against uniformity, and a rousing hymn in praise of the complex, invigorating nature of the twenty-first-century city.

Click HERE to sign up for the free book. You'll need to enter your email address, then check your email for the link to download the book. Mine arrived within seconds -- you get a .ACSM file, which, when opened, will load the PDF book inside of Adobe ADE. This is a DRM'd PDF and is not compatible with the Kindle.