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Sunday, August 7, 2011

Books Under a Buck, Part I

This is the first of a few posts on books for 99 cents in the Kindle store (and some at other stores, as well). This first post is the 20 books currently on sale from HarperCollins. These should be he same price in all the major book stores, but I'll try to get links to the main ones here. It does appear that (at least at Amazon) the prices are for those in the US, only.

Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Neal Pollack

The hilarious true account of an overweight, balding, skeptical guy's unexpected transformation into a healthy, blissful yoga fiend.

Neal Pollack was out of shape. The hair on his head was thinning and the hair on his face was pretentious—traits a New York Times critic gleefully pointed out while panning his second book. Combined with the predestined failure of his punk rock band, it was almost too much for Pollack to bear. He was willing to try anything to get his life back on track . . . even yoga.

While struggling to master difficult poses without kicking other yogis in the face, Pollack actually, remarkably, began to feel better, both in body and mind. Soon he found himself immersed in the "weird and circuslike" world of yoga. He participated in a 24-hour yogathon, attended yoga conferences and Asian retreats, went to yoga rock shows, started getting regular assignments for Yoga Journal magazine, and, finally, began teaching yoga classes himself.

Stretch mercilessly lampoons the bizarre, omnipresent culture of yoga, but it's also a story of profound personal transformation. Pollack started off mocking yoga. Now he's become one of its most enthusiastic proponents.


Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Rachel Shukert

When she lands a coveted nonpaying, nonspeaking role in a play going on a European tour, Rachel Shukert—with a brand-new degree in acting from NYU and no money—finally scores her big break. And, after a fluke at customs in Vienna, she gets her golden ticket: an unstamped passport, giving her free rein to “find herself” on a grand tour of Europe. Traveling from Vienna to Zurich to Amsterdam, Rachel bounces through complicated relationships, drunken mishaps, miscommunication, and the reality-adjusting culture shock that every twentysomething faces when sent off to negotiate "the real world"—whatever that may be.

The Gospel of Anarchy (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Justin Taylor

In landlocked Gainesville, Florida, in the hot, fraught summer of 1999, a college dropout named David sleepwalks through his life—a dull haze of office work and Internet porn—until a run-in with a lost friend jolts him from his torpor. He is drawn into the vibrant but grimy world of Fishgut, a rundown house where a loose collective of anarchists, burnouts, and libertines practice utopia outside society and the law. Some even see their lifestyle as a spiritual calling. They watch for the return of a mysterious hobo who will—they hope—transform their punk oasis into the Bethlehem of a zealous, strange new creed.

In his dark and mesmerizing debut novel, Justin Taylor explores the borders between religion and politics, faith and fanaticism, desire and need—and what happens when those borders are breached.


Celebrity Chekhov (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Ben Greenman

  • Q: What do Tiger, Paris, Lindsay, Alec, and Oprah have in common with the enduring characters of Anton Chekhov?
  • A: Love, loss, pride, yearning, heartbreak, renewal, transcendence: the very stuff of life.
The immortal stories of Anton Chekhov have long entranced readers with their insights into the universal truths of human behavior . . . but you've never read them quite like this.
  • Former friends Nicole and Paris exchange prickly pleasantries in "Tall and Short."
  • Talk-show host Dave narrowly averts another potential domestic crisis in "A Transgression."
  • Reality star Kim shares her newfound notoriety with Khloe and Kourtney in "Joy."
In a witty, graceful, and revelatory feat of literary reinvention, acclaimed novelist and humorist Ben Greenman takes nineteen of Chekhov's greatest stories and recasts them with some of the best-known luminaries of our time—with eye-opening, and oddly ennobling, results.


Diary of a Very Bad Year: Interviews with an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Keith Gessen

The First Book from n+1—an Essential Chronicle of Our Financial Crisis

HFM: Where are you going to buy protection on the U.S. government's credit? I mean, if the U.S. defaults, what bank is going to be able to make good on that contract? Who are you going to buy that contract from, the Martians?

n+1: When does this begin to feel like less of a cyclical thing, like the weather, and more of a permanent, end-of-the-world kind of thing?

HFM: When you see me selling apples out on the street, that's when you should go stock up on guns and ammunition.


Bad Marie (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Marcy Dermansky

Bad Marie is the story of Marie, tall, voluptuous, beautiful, thirty years old, and fresh from six years in prison for being an accessory to murder and armed robbery. The only job Marie can get on the outside is as a nanny for her childhood friend Ellen Kendall, an upwardly mobile Manhattan executive whose mother employed Marie's mother as a housekeeper. After Marie moves in with Ellen, Ellen's angelic baby Caitlin, and Ellen's husband, a very attractive French novelist named Benoit Doniel, things get complicated, and almost before she knows what she's doing, Marie has absconded to Paris with both Caitlin and Benoit Doniel. On the run and out of her depth, Marie will travel to distant shores and experience the highs and lows of foreign culture, lawless living, and motherhood as she figures out how to be an adult; how deeply she can love; and what it truly means to be "bad".

Kapitoil (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Teddy Wayne

"Sometimes you do not truly observe something until you study it in reverse," writes Karim Issar upon arrival to New York City from Qatar in 1999. Fluent in numbers, logic, and business jargon yet often baffled by human connection, the young financial wizard soon creates a computer program named Kapitoil that predicts oil futures and reaps record profits for his company.

At first an introspective loner adrift in New York's social scenes, he anchors himself to his legendary boss Derek Schrub and Rebecca, a sensitive, disillusioned colleague who may understand him better than he does himself. Her influence, and his father's disapproval of Karim's Americanization, cause him to question the moral implications of Kapitoil, moving him toward a decision that will determine his future, his firm's, and to whom—and where—his loyalties lie.


Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Bryan Charles

A wise, bighearted, and hilarious look at one teenager's life by a remarkable new voice in contemporary fiction

It's 1992, and as Vim Sweeney deals with the recent end of his high school career and the uncertainty of his future, America shares his angst. In Seattle, Kurt Cobain reeks of teen spirit. In Washington, George Bush (the first one) has just finished rattling his saber at Saddam Hussein. And in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Vim is trying to put off adulthood and all that comes with it, whatever that is, for as long as he can. He's already juggling guitars, girls, and a long-absent biological father who's suddenly making noise about Wanting to Be Involved. And he still can't convince his friends why local schoolboy hero Derek Jeter is bound for obscurity.

Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way traces Vim's stumble toward adulthood as he comes to terms with his parents, balances friendships and infatuation with varying levels of success, and accepts that the things he thought would last forever probably won't. Generous in spirit and laugh-out-loud funny, here is a novel that introduces a tremendous new talent and deftly captures the alternately amusing and harrowing process of holding on until you find your way.


Who by Fire (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Diana Spechler

Bits and Ash were children when the kidnapping of their younger sister, Alena—an incident for which Ash blames himself—caused an irreparable family rift. Thirteen years later, Ash is living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel, cutting himself off from his mother, Ellie, and his wild-child sister, Bits. But soon he may have to face them again; Alena's remains have finally been uncovered. Now Bits is traveling across the world in a bold and desperate attempt to bring her brother home and salvage what's left of their family.

Sharp and captivating, Who by Fire deftly explores what happens when people try to rescue one another.


Everything Is Wrong with Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Jason Mulgrew

A memoir of startling insight, divine comedy, and irreversible, unconscionable stupidity

Fans of Jason Mulgrew's wildly popular blog know that everything really is wrong with him. The product of a raucous, not-just-semi-but-fully-dysfunctional Philadelphia family, Jason has seen it all—from Little League games of unspeakable horror to citywide parades ending in stab wounds; from hard-partying longshoremen fathers to feathered-hair, no-nonsense, kindhearted mothers; and from conscience-crippling Catholic dogmas to the equally confounding religion of women. With chapter titles like "My Bird: Inadequacy and Redemption" (no, he is not referring to a parakeet) and "On the Relationship Between Genetics and Hustling," Everything Is Wrong with Me proves that, as Jason puts it, "writing is a fantastical exercise in manic depression"—but he never fails to ensure that laughter is part of the routine.

With echoes of Jean Shepherd transplanted to Philly in the eighties and nineties, this book is a must-read for every person who looks back wistfully on his or her childhood and family and wonders, "What were we thinking?"


Down and Out on Murder Mile (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Tony O'Neill

After exhausting their resources in the slums of Los Angeles, a junkie and his wife settle in London's "murder mile," the city's most violent and criminally corrupt section. Persevering past failed treatments, persistent temptation, urban ennui, and his wife's ruinous death wish, the nameless narrator fights to reclaim his life.

In prose that could peel paint from a car, Tony O'Neill re-creates the painfully comic, often tragic days of a recovering heroin addict.


Ugly Man (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Dennis Cooper

A short story collection from author of the George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels: Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period. His other works include My Loose Thread; The Sluts (winner of France's Prix Sade and the Lambda Literary Award); God, Jr.; Wrong and The Dream Police.

86'd (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Dan Fante

In Los Angeles, struggling telemarketer-writer and part-time drunk Bruno Dante is jobless again. The publication of his book of short stories has been put off indefinitely. Searching the want ads for a gig, he finds a chauffeur job. When Bruno calls the number in the ad, he discovers the boss is his former Manhattan employer David Koffman, who is opening a West Coast branch of his thriving limo service. Koffman hires Bruno as resident manager of Dav-Ko Hollywood under one condition: he must remain sober. But instant business success triggers an abrupt booze-and-blackout-soaked downward spiral for Bruno, forcing him to confront his own madness as he struggles to keep his old familiar demons from getting the best of him yet again.

A Common Pornography: A Memoir (Kindle, B&N, Google, iBooks), by Kevin Sampsell

Kevin Sampsell always thought he was part of a normal family growing up in the Pacific Northwest. He never wondered why his older siblings had different last names or why one of them was black. But when his estranged father passed away in 2008, his mother revealed to him some of the family’s mysterious and unsettling history. A history of betrayal, madness, and incest.

A Common Pornography is a uniquely crafted, two-pronged "memory experiment": a collection of sweet and funny snapshots from his childhood, and an unsensational portrait of a family in crisis. Sampsell blends the catastrophic with the mundane and the humorous with the horrific. From his mother's first tumultuous marriages and his father's shocking abuse of his half sister to Kevin's own memories of first jobs, first bands, and first loves, here is a searing, intensely honest memoir that exposes the many haunting shades of a family—both its tragedy and its resiliency.


Postcards from a Dead Girl (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Kirk Farber

Sid is going crazy...

A telemarketer at a travel agency, Sid is becoming unhinged and superneurotic. Lately he's been obsessed with car washes and mud baths. His hypochondria is driving his doctor sister mad. And it's all because of his ex-girlfriend, Zoe, who's sending him postcards from her European adventure, one that they were supposed to take together. It's all quite upsetting.

A fact-finding tour of local post offices—and a new friendship with postman Gerald—followed by a solo European jaunt will do little to ease his anxiety. A long talk with his mother's spirit in a wine bottle doesn't help either. But what he really needs are a few more tentative dates with the chatty Candyce. Sid needs to get over Zoe and find love again—even though Zoe, apparently, has no inclination to be gotten over.

Wonderfully poignant, funny, odd, and more than a bit macabre, Postcards from a Dead Girl marks the emergence of a truly gifted and original literary voice.


Town House (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Tish Cohen

Jack Madigan is, by many accounts, blessed. He can still effortlessly turn a pretty head. And thanks to his legendary rock star father, he lives an enviable existence in a once-glorious, now-crumbling Boston town house with his teenage son, Harlan. But there is one tiny drawback: Jack is an agoraphobe. As long as his dad's admittedly dwindling royalties keep rolling in, Jack's condition isn't a problem. But then the money runs out . . . and all hell breaks loose.

The bank is foreclosing. Jack's ex is threatening to take Harlan to California. And Lucinda, the little girl next door, won't stay out of his kitchen . . . or his life. To save his sanity, Jack's path is clear, albeit impossible—he must outwit the bank's adorably determined real estate agent, win back his house, keep his son at home, and, finally, with Lucinda's help, find a way back to the world outside his door.


The Average American Male (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Chad Kultgen

Are you ready to meet the average American male?

The accepted image of the Average American man as created by Oprah, Dr. Phil, network sitcoms, and a slew of other mass media outlets is one of an oafish retard happy to swallow down gallons of his significant other's crap in the hopes of being allowed to have sex with her once a week or at least watch some football. The unnamed narrator of AVERAGE AMERICAN MALE is in his late twenties, has an unimportant job, plays video games, and hangs out with his friends and his girlfriend. But that's not all. He unabashedly reveals every thought that goes through his head, from his sexual fantasies involving his annoying girlfriend and other women he encounters, his masturbation sessions while watching porn, and his disgust with his annoying girlfriend and a majority of the people he comes across. In the course of this hilariously honest book, our narrator suffers through a relationship with his fatassed girlfriend until he finds the perfect girl. But when he moves into the new relationship, he slowly learns that all women are pretty much the same, that man's true desires will never be fullfilled, and the decision between living life alone or biting the marriage bullet must be made.


I Am Not Myself These Days (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

I Am Not Myself These Days follows a glittering journey through Manhattan's dark underbelly -- a shocking and surreal world where alter egos reign and subsist (barely) on dark wit and chemicals...a tragic romantic comedy where one begins by rooting for the survival of the relationship and ends by hoping someone simply survives. Kilmer-Purcell is a terrifically gifted new literary voice who straddles the divide between absurdity and normalcy, and stitches them together with surprising humor and lonely poignancy.

The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Jessica Anya Blau

Fourteen-year-old Jamie will never forget the summer of 1976. It's the summer when she has her first boyfriend, cute surfer Flip Jenkins; it's the summer when her two best friends get serious about sex, cigarettes, and tanning; it's the summer when her parents throw, yes, naked swim parties, leaving Jamie flushed with embarrassment. And it's the summer that forever changes the way Jamie sees the things that matter: family, friendship, love, and herself.

It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Google, iBooks), by Ariel Leve

Meet Ariel. Her glass is half empty . . . and leaking.

If someone tells her everything will be okay, she asks: How do you know? If there's a wrong thing to say, she'll say it. If there's a downside to see, she'll see it. She lives in a permanent fear of what's to come. But at least she's prepared.

In these witty and entertaining tales from the front lines of woe, Ariel highlights the humor in our everyday anxieties and delivers insight that will ring hilariously true if you are inclined to view the world through gray-tinted glasses.

So whether you've been dumped by the love of your life, lost your job to the guy in the cubicle next to you, said the wrong thing at the party, or weren't invited to the party at all, Ariel is here to remind you that it could be worse, you could be her.

Two Free LGBT Novellas from All Romance

Here's a pair of LGBT novellas that are free from AllRomance, in several DRM-free formats and both with five lips on the sensuality meter! Neither is on Kindle, but both have mobipocket versions that can be loaded without any conversion.

Sink or Swim, by Xara X. Xanakas and Lissa Kasey
Book Description
Beau has always been the center of attention, the first responder, dive master, and all around life-saver. When he gets a job overseas, Abram feels that he has to follow his lover, but he still harbors doubts of his own worthiness.

Those doubts come to a head during the long flight to begin their new lives. How far is Abram willing to go to keep Beau to himself? Sometimes in matters of the heart, you just have to dive in and sink or swim.

Wanting, by Piper Vaughn
Book Description
Jonah Beckett has been in love with his older brother's best friend, Laurie, for years. When his boyfriend, Dirk, breaks up with him for refusing to put out, Jonah uses his heartbreak over the situation to ask Laurie to teach him all about sex before he starts college. Problem is, he made Dirk up, and he has no idea what will happen when Laurie finally finds out.

Free Book (iBooks) - The Great Bridge

The Great Bridge ($14.99 Kindle), by David McCullough, is free in the iBooks store. This is one of the Agency publishers, so the book should not be at different prices in different stores (especially not from Apple!), so be sure to take the extra step to leave a note as well as report the price.
Book Description
This monumental book is the enthralling story of one of the greatest events in our nation's history, during the Age of Optimism -- a period when Americans were convinced in their hearts that all things were possible.

In the years around 1870, when the project was first undertaken, the concept of building an unprecedented bridge to span the East River between the great cities of Manhattan and Brooklyn required a vision and determination comparable to that which went into the building of the great cathedrals. Throughout the fourteen years of its construction, the odds against the successful completion of the bridge seemed staggering. Bodies were crushed and broken, lives lost, political empires fell, and surges of public emotion constantly threatened the project. But this is not merely the saga of an engineering miracle; it is a sweeping narrative of the social climate of the time and of the heroes and rascals who had a hand in either constructing or exploiting the surpassing enterprise.
Click HERE to get the free book from iTunes.

Free Book (iBooks) - Jolie Blon's Bounce

Jolie Blon's Bounce ($7.99 Kindle), the twelfth title in the Robicheaux series by NYT best-selling author James Lee Burke, is free in the iTunes iBooks store. Thanks to reader Marilyn for the tip on this one!
Book Description
When a beautiful teenage girl is killed, the victim of a particularly savage rape, New Iberia, Louisiana, police detective Dave Robicheaux senses from the very start of the investigation that the most likely suspect, Tee Bobby Hulin, is not the actual killer. Though a drug addict and general ne'er-do-well, Hulin just doesn't fit the profile for this kind of brutal crime.

But when another murder occurs -- this victim a drugged-out prostitute who happens to be the daughter of one of the local mafia bigwigs -- all clues once again point to Tee Bobby Hulin, and the cries for arrest become too loud to ignore. The dead girl's father, however, prefers to take matters in his own hands and sets out to find -- and punish -- the killer himself.

But before Robicheaux can solve these crimes and bring the killer or killers to justice, he is forced to battle his own inner demons, including a painkiller addiction, a habit that begins as the result of a brutal and humiliating beating he suffers at the hands of the mysterious and diabolical character known as Legion. A fixture in the area for years, Legion was once the overseer on a local sugarcane plantation and now gets by doing odd jobs. In temperament, however, he's still the malicious and malevolent bully he always was, a man defined by evil and seemingly possessed with supernatural skills of survival.

Added to the mix, and on the good guy side of the balance sheet, is Clete Purcel, a longtime buddy of Robicheaux's and a confirmed boozer and womanizer. Clete comes to New Iberia for a visit and is quickly drawn into the struggle between the various forces of evil in the town, including Jimmy Dean Styles, a black man intent on maintaining his empire of corruption; Joe Zeroski, a trailer park mafioso with palatial aspirations -- and of course, Legion Guidry, the devil incarnate, in whom Robicheaux finds himself facing a challenge and an enemy unlike any he has ever known. And soon, what began as a duel of wits has turned into a dance of death.
Click HERE to get the free book from iTunes.

If you want to report a lower price, be sure to see the new section I've included on the Reporting a Lower Price to Amazon post, on how to find the web page address for an iBook. This is one of the Agency publishers, so the book should not be at different prices in different stores (especially not from Apple!), so be sure to take the extra step to leave a note as well as report the price.

Free Audiobook - Hannah Coulter

Christianaudio teamed up with David C Cook to give away an unabridged audiobook download of Hannah Coulter ($8.99 Kindle; $14.98/$10.49 Audible), by Wendell Berry, narrated by Susan Denaker, for free during the month of August. Unlike many of their previous free offerings, this one is a novel that is classified as literary fiction, rather than religious in content. The paper/Kindle edition is from Counterpoint (which bought Shoemaker & Hoard), which specializes in fiction, literature, and poetry in addition to nonfiction, including history, memoir, biography, and nature. If you've been a follower here, you should have The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, as it was offered free on Kindle the first of June. I've been eyeing his Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food ($8.84), with an introduction by Michael Pollan, ever since getting the book of essays,

Chronologically, this is the eighth book in Berry's loosely ordered Port William series, which take place in the same rural Kentucky in which this award-winning author resides. Port William is a fictitious town, near a bend in the river and those that like maps will find one on the author's website, along with a family tree that covers the people who populate his fiction. You'll find eight more of Berry's audiobooks (all of them that ChristianAudio has recorded), marked down to $4.98 each for this month only, at the bottom of the order page. Six of them are from the Port William series, plus two that make up the Port William Membership series. The same two titles are missing on Kindle (only one is in print), but there 30 titles on Kindle (including several poetry volumes), although only The Memory of Old Jack is currently at a bargain price ($14.95 $4.70).
Book Description
"Ignorant boys, killing each other,” is just about all Nathan Coulter would tell his wife about the Battle of Okinawa in November 1945. Life continued as some boys returned from the war while the lives of others were mourned. Nathan’s wife, Hannah, has time now to tell of the years since the war. In her eighties, twice widowed and alone, Hannah shares her memories: of her childhood, of young love and loss, of raising children and the changing seasons. She turns her plain gaze to a community facing its own deterioration, where, she says, “We feel the old fabric torn, pulling apart, and we know how much we have loved each other.” Hannah offers her summation: her stories and her gratitude for membership in Port William. We see her whole life as part of the great continuum of love and memory, grief and strength.

Hannah Coulter is the latest installment in Wendell Berry’s long story about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky. In his unforgettable prose, we learn of the Coulters’ children, of the Feltners and Branches, and how survivors “live right on.”
Get your free audio download HERE and scroll down the page for the discounted titles. The checkout process is very streamlined (a coupon code is no longer required), as is the download process (no longer do you have to download each part of the book separately). You can also send a gift download of the free audiobook to someone else!

After finishing your order, download a zip file with the entire audiobook: select MP3 if you want to be able to play the book on your Kindle (M4B for the iOS, iTunes or QuickTime). Unzip the contents to the \audiobooks directory on your Kindle (not \music) in order to have audiobook controls and see it on your Kindle home page.