Free Kindle Game - Pixel Perfect Puzzles

Pixel Perfect Puzzles, by Amazon Digital Services, is a new free game for Kindle. Availability is limited to those in the US (due to technology export restrictions, no doubt) and those with a K2, KDX (both fully updated) or K3 device.

Book Description
Pixel Perfect Puzzles is a logic puzzle game that challenges you to make a picture from numerical clues.

Each picture starts out completely blank. Use the number clues in each row and column to discover the hidden image. Each clue tells you where to draw a run of consecutive black squares. The clues in a row or column appear in the same order as the runs in the puzzle grid, with at least one empty square between each run. Start with the largest clues first, and then cross out squares that you know should be empty. This will allow you to narrow down the possibilities and logically determine the remaining squares.

Pixel Perfect Puzzles contains 50 puzzles. The challenges can be tough, but there are 3 hints available on each puzzle to help you out if you get stuck. The game can even find and erase errors at any time. Time, hints used, and errors are tracked for each puzzle. Can you discover every picture?

If you like using logic to solve puzzles, you will love Pixel Perfect Puzzles!

Free and Bargain Music Downloads

I was poking around in the Amazon MP3 store this morning, after I saw the that Esperanza Spalding's I'll Look Around (from her A Tribute to Billie Holiday album) was free to download today. I found several new free samplers and a few albums that may be of interest.

Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1 - Symphony No. 9 - Liadov: Baba Yaga - A Musical Snuffbox - The Enchanted Lake, by Lynn Harrell, Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, is today's MP3 Deal of the Day, so likely won't be $1.99 for long. This isn't one of those mega compilations, but is well over an hour of solid cello/classical performance.

50 Must-Have Patriotic Favorites: Celebrating America on the 4th of July & Beyond, performed by The Parade Brass & Symphony Orchestra And Bedros Papazian, is also $1.99. I suspect this was yesterday's deal of the day, but I didn't check in on it, as I was out with family for the day. There are 50 cuts on this album from Cobra Entertainment, which is nearly 3 hours in length.

If you don't have Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A., then you should probably grab it while it's only $3.99. You don't have to wait until next July 4th to play it (but you'll be expected to have it playing at your pool party then).

Here are a few free samplers that appear to be newly added:

• The Artist Sampler - A Home for Singer-Songwriters
• Kill Rock Stars 20 Year Anniversary Sampler
• 23 This Year: The Sub Pop Amazon Sampler
• This Is Minty Fresh - Summer 2011
• Cantora Sampler
• Good Fight Music Summer 2011 Sampler

Free and Bargain Book Roundup

The following books are now free from more locations, so there are more formats available (nook/EPUB mostly, some now for US Kindle vs. only UK/DE, the first now free on Kindle):

• Mistress' House
• Back on Murder
• Through the Fire
• All Through the Night
• Heartless
• The Outsider
• Antibiotic Resistance
• The Truth About Perfecting Your Presentation Skills (Collection)
• How to Make Money Marketing Your Business on LinkedIn
• Ignited
• Divorce Sucks

Update: I had to remove two books from the post, as their prices went up while I was adding the ones below them.

First Frost ($0.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Jennifer Estep, is a prequel short story for her upcoming young adult Mythos Academy series.

Book Description
I am Gwen Frost, and I have a Gypsy gift. It’s called psychometry – that's a fancy way of saying that I see images in my head and get flashes of other people’s memories off almost everything I touch, even guys.

My gift makes me kind of nosy. Okay, okay, maybe a lot nosy--to the point of obsession sometimes. I want to know everything about everyone around me. But even I don't want to know the secrets my friend Paige is hiding or the terrible loss that will send me to a new school – Mythos Academy, where the teachers aren't preparing us for the SATs, but to battle Reapers of Chaos. Now I have no friends and no idea how my gift fits in with all these warrior whiz kids. The only thing I do know is that my life is never, ever going to be the same. . .

Shadow Touch ($0.99 Kindle; $1.49 B&N, Kobo), by Erin Kellison, is a novella that fits into her Shadow series.

Book Description
Magic
It is bleeding into our world, bringing with it banshees, wraiths, fae from the twisting forests of Twilight. But Elllie's problem is a very different kind of phenomenon. . .

Shadow
It ought to be attached to her; instead it has a life of its own. And her dark mirror image is a wild thing, willfully seducing the very man Ellie hoped could help.

Science
Cam has devoted his career to exploring the boundaries between this world and the Hereafter. But nothing could prepare him for the mischief and mayhem of a soul split in two.

Surrender
Who will give in first: the man struggling to unite two halves of one fascinating female; the shadow fighting for freedom to experience the thrill of every emotion; or the woman who is about to discover her own deepest desires?

Sabine ($2.00 Kindle; $2.50 B&N, Kobo), by Moira Rogers, is the first in her new And the Beast series. Typical of the Samhain titles, there is a content warning (which is more enticing than cautionary).

Book Description
A curse can erase her from his mind, but never from his heart.

After three years at war, the High Lord of the Forest returns to his lands, a victorious wolf leader intent on claiming his mate. Instead Ciar finds an empty bed and a court with no recollection of the woman he loved. Following her long-cold trail proves far easier than facing what awaits him at the end.

Sabine’s first instinct is to beg her beloved to leave. The High Lord’s mother hired a witch to curse Sabine, desperate to wipe the lowborn wolf from her son’s mind. But the spell worked too well, and Sabine has vanished from the thoughts of everyone who sees her. Including her own family.

The edges of his memory already blurring, Ciar and Sabine must race to find a way to reverse the spell. Yet every searing moment together is not enough to stop the curse’s inexorable progress. His only chance is to bind Sabine to him too tightly to be forgotten, before she disappears once and for all.

Warning: This story contains cruel betrayal, destined love, vile curses, smoldering reunions, wicked deeds between wanton shape-shifters and a happily-ever-after worthy of any fairy tale.

Bad Heir Day ($1.99 Kindle), by Wendy Holden

Book Description
Anna’s boyfriend is impossibly handsome, impossibly rich, and generally just impossible. When he inevitably dumps her, she vows to give up men and throws herself into her career as an aspiring novelist. Which is how she ends up working for Cassandra.

The social climber from hell, Cassandra has a huge mansion, a philandering rock star husband, Satan for a son, and a bestselling writing career that has massively stalled.

So when dashing Jamie, charming heir to a castle in Scotland, offers Anna an escape beyond her wildest dreams, she can’t believe her luck. And she probably shouldn’t…

Perfect Timing ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Jill Mansell

Book Description
When you meet the man of your dreams on girls night out, it's hardly…Perfect Timing

In this fresh and funny contemporary romance by bestselling author Jill Mansell, Poppy Dunbar's whole life gets turned upside down after a chance encounter with a handsome stranger...

Never a troublemaker, Poppy had always been content with the way things were supposed to be done—which included marrying predictable Rob McBride. But that was before she met Tom Kennedy the night before her wedding. Could she really be falling in love with a stranger?

Unable to forget Tom, or go through with the wedding, Poppy runs off to London. Her new life and colorful friends are anything but predictable. Misunderstandings, family secrets, and jealous quarrels ensue, but can Poppy stop running long enough to figure out what—or, rather, who—is in her heart?

Blood Prophecy ($1.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Stefan Petrucha

Book Description
Man and monster are in his blood. . .
His name is Jeremiah Fall. A soldier of fortune, he has been fighting his own war for 150 years--ever since the beast in him was born.

Desperate to restore his lost humanity, Fall crosses the sands of Egypt, discovers a lost city off the coast of France, and finally arrives at the birthplace of all mankind. Shunning daylight and feeding only when he must, he battles the monster who transformed him forever. He can share his deepest secret with no one . . . not even the beautiful woman he starts to love, the only human who grasps the mysteries of an ebony stone as old as creation itself.

Across the world, across time, Fall seeks the stone's secret. But has he found a cure for himself or unleashed a final curse on all mankind?

Secret Sanction ($1.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Brian Haig, is the first in his Sean Drummond series. It's also the first of his books that I purchased (in Sep '09, when it was B1G1F at Amazon), but definitely was not the last from this son of former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig.

Book Description
Word of Honor meets A Few Good Men in a stunning thriller that pits the Green Berets, C.I.A., and White House against a top Army lawyer in an Investigation that could put the U.S. military on trial.

A battalion of Serbs has been senselessly murdered in Kosovo and the Green Berets stand accused. Now, Major Sean Drummond, a top Army lawyer, is assigned to investigate this unspeakable atrocity. But of course, no one saw anything. Drummond gets consistently suspicious depositions from all of the Green Berets: Supposedly pursued by Serb soldiers, they left the engagement with wounded Serbs firing at them, and no one can explain the number of deaths. Teamed with a straight-laced prosecutor and a sexy defense attorney, Drummond probes further but forces continue to hide the truth. Soon a reporter is found dead, Drummond suspects there's a traitor on his team, and everyone from the CIA to the president may be involved in a cover-up that could threaten the stability of the most powerful nation in the world.

Free Book (nook) - Hunted By The Others

Hunted By The Others ($4.47 Kindle), by Jess Haines, is free from B&N. This title has previously been free on Kindle (Dec '10).

Book Description
They are the Others--the vampires, mages, and werewolves once thought to exist only in our imaginations. Now they're stepping out of the shadows, and nothing in our world will ever be the same again. . .

In A Town Like This, Being A P.I. Can Be Murder

Shiarra Waynest's detective work was dangerous enough when her client base was strictly mortal. But ailing finances have forced her to accept a lucrative case that could save her firm--if it doesn't kill her first. Shiarra has signed on to work for a high-level mage to recover an ancient artifact owned by one of New York's most powerful vampires.

As soon as Shiarra meets sexy, mesmerizing vamp Alec Royce, she knows her assignment is even more complicated than she thought. With a clandestine anti-Other group trying to recruit her, and magi being eliminated, Shiarra needs back-up and enlists her ex-boyfriend--a werewolf whose non-furry form is disarmingly appealing--and a nerdy mage with surprising talents. But it may not be enough. In a city where the undead roam, magic rules, and even the Others aren't always what they seem, Shiarra has just become the secret weapon in a battle between good and evil--whether she likes it or not. . .

Click HERE for the free book from B&N.

Free Book (EPUB) - The Chinese Maze Murders

The University of Chicago Press' free book this month is The Chinese Maze Murders ($9.79 Kindle), by Robert Van Gulik. If you are willing to go a bit above free, you can also get two more in the series on sale at Fictionwise (see below), both in DRM free formats.

Book Description
Poisoned plums, a cryptic scroll picture, passionate love letters, and a hidden murderer with a penchant for torturing and killing women lead Judge Dee to the heart of the Governor’s garden maze and the answers to three interwoven mysteries. The Chinese Maze Murders represents Robert van Gulik’s first venture into writing suspense novels after the success of Dee Gong An, his translation of an anonymous Chinese detective novel from the sixteenth century.

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 EPUB book inside of Adobe ADE. This is a DRM'd EPUB and is not compatible with the Kindle. If you downloaded it the very first day it was available, then you probably got a DRM'd PDF and may want to redownload (the EPUB is better formatted for reading on smaller screens like the nook or Kobo/Sony readers.) There are two titles (Murder in Canton and The Red Pavilion ) you can get at 30% off on the same page (using coupon code DEE30, which drops them just below the Kindle prices (although not in a Kindle compatible format).

The Haunted Monastery ($7.38 Kindle) is the first of the two ebooks available at Fictionwise for $5.99, less 60% using the coupon code below (which I expect to work all day today, but not tomorrow).

Book Description
Judge Dee and his entourage, seeking refuge from a mountain storm, become trapped in a Taoist monastery, where the Abbott Jade mysteriously dies after delivering an ecstatic sermon. The monks call it a supernatural experience, but the judge calls it murder. Recalling the allegedly accidental deaths of three young women in the same monastery, Judge Dee seeks clues in the eyes of a cat to solve cases of impersonation and murder. A painting by one of the victims reveals the truth about the killings, propelling the judge on a quest for justice and revenge.

The Poisoned Bride and Other Judge Dee Mysteries is the second of the titles available at Fictionwise. This one is available as a paperback at Amazon under the title Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee ($8.95) or from Audible ($14.95) or as an audio CD ($76.00!).

Book Description
Authentic 18th-century Chinese detective novels. Dee and associates solve 3 interlocked cases: The Case of the Double Murder at Dawn, The Case of the Strange Corpse, and The Case of the Poisoned Bride.

Click HERE for the two books at Fictionwise. You can still use coupon code 070111 today for 60% off, which means they are $2.40 each (less for members). Best of all, they are multiformat, which means no DRM and you can download the format of your choice.