Today's Deals and Bargain Books

Free on Kindle as a pre-order, Between the Panels is now also free from B&N and Sony, while Prevention Healthy Favorites: Chicken is now free on Kindle.

October Fest ($1.99), the sixth in the Murder-By-Month Mysteries series by Jess Lourey, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day. June Bug was free back in June and I've picked up one more during a sale, so I'll probably get this light murder mystery and keep working on filling in the series.

Book Description
Beer and polka music reign supreme at Octoberfest, Battle Lake's premier fall festival. To kick off the celebrations, the town hosts a public debate between the two congressional candidates: straight-laced Arnold Swydecker, and slippery incumbent, Sarah Glokkmann. As a reporter for the Battle Lake Recall, Mira James is roped into writing up the word war. But the festive mood sours when a well-known Glokkmann-bashing blogger is found dead . . . and the congresswoman herself meets a gruesome fate.

To keep the heat off her best friend's fiancé—an ex-con reporter—Mira wades through the candidates' dirty laundry, their unsavory secrets, and some murderous mudslinging to expose the killer.

Sweet Talk ($2.16 Kindle, B&N), the first title in the Bakery Sisters series by Susan Mallery, is the Nook Daily Find and price matched at Amazon. Checking my library, it appears I already have this one and the next in the series, Sweet Spot.

Book Description
Is there anything sweeter than first love?

Don't ask Claire Keyes. The twenty-eight-year-old piano prodigy has never had a regular boyfriend, much less a real romance. Her music career has left little room for friends or family--which is just part of the reason she hasn't seen the family bakery or her two sisters in years.

But now Nicole is sick, and Jesse is AWOL. Despite the fact that Claire can't boil water, she's determined to play caretaker. Connecting with her sisters tops her to-do list...along with falling in love, or at least in lust, for the first time.

Ruggedly sexy Wyatt just might fit the bill. Although he keeps saying that he and Claire come from entirely different worlds, he lights up hotter than a bakery oven whenever Claire is near. If this keeps up, she just might sweet--talk him into her bed...and her life.

Lipstick Jungle ($2.99), by Candace Bushnell

Book Description
In her fourth book, LIPSTICK JUNGLE, best-selling author Candace Bushnell re-creates a real-life world as compelling and fascinating as Sex and the City. In LIPSTICK JUNGLE, high fashion meets the powerful women who actually wear it.

Victory Ford -- single, beautiful, creative and unconventional -- has worked for years to create her own independent fashion house. But when her company goes into a tailspin, Victory falls into the arms of the ruthless cosmetics baron, Lyne Bennett. As she struggles to keep her company afloat, she learns crucial lessons about what she really wants from a relationship.

One of the most powerful women in publishing, Nico O'Neilly seems to have it all -- a stellar career, a well-respected husband, and an eight-year-old daughter whom she adores. But at forty-three, Nico finds that this isn't enough. Her secret ambition is to become the first female CEO of Splatch-Verner (the multimedia company that owns her magazine), but if she's going to achieve her goal, she needs to start acting now.

Wendy Healy, President of Parador Pictures, has chutzpah to spare. It’s propelled her to the very top of the cutthroat movie business, yet as she tries to bring her most important movie to the screen, her drive is not enough to save her. Selden Rose, the president of MovieTime, is secretly lobbying to oust Wendy and take over Parador; meanwhile, her twelve-year-marriage to her metrosexual househusband is falling apart. One has to go--and in a series of unconventional plot twists, Wendy finds a startling answer.

Following these determined but likeable leading ladies through the ups and downs of their careers, their marriages and their affairs, Candace Bushnell shows us how three strong women stay at the top of their fields in the toughest town in the world.

The second and third in Kat Martin's Raines of Wind Canyon series, Against the Fire and Against the Law, are marked down to $4.99. Several of her other titles are also under $5, while the first in this series, Against the Wind, is $5.24 and a new title, Against the Storm, will be released later this month.

Against the Fire
At thirty-two Dev is "mostly retired" from Raines Investigations, content to run operations from his sprawling Arizona home. But Dev has never been able to say no to a beautiful woman, so when Lark Delaney comes to him for help, the former U.S. Army Ranger from Wind Canyon gets back in the game.

Lark is sexy, successful and dedicated to tracking down the baby girl her sister gave up for adoption. It should be a straightforward case, but it's not long before Dev uncovers a shady adoption ring and worse—the child's parents have been murdered and the little girl has been taken.

As the case grows dangerous and Lark needs him more than ever, Dev can't ignore his growing attraction for her. He also can't trust his judgment with women or the emotions he's long-since buried. But there's a chance, if he gets this right and saves Lark's niece, that he'll end up saving himself, too.

Against the Law
You can't fight what you can't see. And Gabriel Raines can't be sure just who's setting the fires in his new real-estate development. When two fires hit back-to-back, he knows it's personal, but any number of competitors or ex-employees could be the arsonist.

The police suspect Angel Ramirez, a local teen who's been in trouble before. But Mattie Baker, a volunteer at the Family Abuse center, just can't believe the kid she's been working with would go back to his delinquent ways.

Determined to convince Gabe that she's right, Mattie must get close to him and find out who's putting their neighborhood in jeopardy. And just as the arsonist's flames continue to burn, they find a heat developing between them. It might just turn into a full-fledged fire…if they can survive long enough.

You can get Daniel Woodrell's The Bayou Trilogy in a single volume for $9.99. The individual titles are not available separately on Kindle and have mostly been out of print for some time.

Book Description
A hard-hitting, critically acclaimed trilogy of crime novels from an author about whom New York magazine has written, "What people say about Cormac McCarthy ... goes double for [Woodrell]. Possibly more."

In the parish of St. Bruno, sex is easy, corruption festers, and double-dealing is a way of life. Rene Shade is an uncompromising detective swimming in a sea of filth.

As Shade takes on hit men, porn kings, a gang of ex-cons, and the ghosts of his own checkered past, Woodrell's three seminal novels pit long-entrenched criminals against the hard line of the law, brother against brother, and two vastly different sons against a long-absent father.

THE BAYOU TRILOGY highlights the origins of a one-of-a-kind author, a writer who for over two decades has created an indelible representation of the shadows of the rural American experience and has steadily built a devoted following among crime fiction aficionados and esteemed literary critics alike.

What You Have Left ($7.19), by James Sallis, gets you all three titles in The Turner Trilogy at one very low price. If you already have any title in the series, then Walker Books is making it easy on you, as you can also get any individual title for $2.51 right now.

Book Description
Over the past five years, James Sallis has created three of the most acclaimed mysteries published in America, each of them featuring the complex John Turner--former cop, therapist, and an ex-con, trying to escape his past, yet ever involved in the small community somewhere near Memphis where he has sought refuge. The Turner Trilogy--concise, elegiac, memorable--collects these three classics in one volume.

Cypress Grove (2003)
As he has shown so often in previous novels, James Sallis is one of our great stylists and storytellers, whose deep interest in human nature is expressed in the powerful stories of men too often at odds with themselves as well as the world around them. His new novel, Cypress Grove, continues in that highly praised tradition.

The small town where Turner has moved is one of America's lost places, halfway between Memphis and forever. That makes it a perfect hideaway: a place where a man can bury the past and escape the pain of human contact, where you are left alone unless you want company, where conversation only happens when there's something to say, where you can sit and watch an owl fly silently across the face of the moon. And where Turner hopes to forget that he has been a cop, a psychotherapist, and, always, an ex-con.

There is no major crime to speak of until Sheriff Lonnie Bates arrives on Turner's porch with a bottle of Wild Turkey and a problem: The body of a drifter has been found-brutally and ritualistically- murdered and Bates and his deputy need help from someone with big-city experience who appreciates the delicacy of investigating people in a small town. Thrust back into the middle of what he left behind, Turner slowly becomes reacquainted not only with the darkness he had fled, but with the unsuspected kindness of others.

Brilliantly balancing Turner's past and present lives, Cypress Grove is lyrical, moving, and filled with the sense of place and character that only our finest writers can achieve. It is proof positive that the acclaim James Sallis has enjoyed for years is richly deserved.

Cripple Creek (2005)
As this tale opens, Turner, ex-cop, ex-con, and ex-psychotherapist, remains on the lam in rural Cypress Grove, Tennessee, escaping the demons of past lives in Memphis, but he is starting to mend. There's a developing relationship with Val Bjorn, teacher and country musician; there's the appearance of his daughter from Seattle; and there's the fact that he has come out of hibernation to accept the job as deputy sheriff of Cypress Grove. Then his boss, the kindly sheriff, is assaulted by a gang of mobbed-up toughs in the act of breaking one of their own out of the small-town jail. Turner pursues the thugs to Memphis, confronting his past and giving vent to his suppressed blood lust. Every action prompts a reaction, however, and soon the thugs return to Cypress Grove looking for some blood of their own. Sallis tells the violent tale quietly, effectively using jump cuts, flashbacks, and flashforwards to generate both suspense and, simultaneously, a sense of inevitability.

Salt River (2007)
As Salt River begins, two years have passed since Turner's amour, Val Bjorn, was shot as they sat together on the porch of his cabin. Sometimes you just have to see how much music you can make with what you have left, Val had told him, a mantra for picking up the pieces around her death, not sure how much he or the town has left. Then the sheriff's long-lost son comes plowing down Main Street into City Hall in what appears to be a stolen car. And waiting at Turner's cabin is his good friend, Eldon Brown, Val's banjo on the back of his motorcycle so that it looks as though he has two heads. "They think I killed someone," he says. Turner asks: "Did you?" And Eldon responds: "I don't know." Haunted by his own ghosts, Turner nonetheless goes in search of a truth he's not sure he can live with.

If you missed Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission ($4.99), by Andrew Kessler, the last time it was on sale, now is your chance to read a great behind-the-scenes account of the Phoenix Mission.

Book Description
Spend a summer exploring the Martian arctic—something that has taken nearly the entirety of human knowledge to achieve

There’s never been a better time to be an armchair astronaut. Forget this planet. The economy is terrible, global warming inevitable, and there are at least eight major wars happening right now. That’s why Kessler left home and moved to Mars. Well, not all the way to Mars. The closest spot on Earth you can get without a rocket. In the summer of 2008, he lived a space dream, spending three months in mission control of The Phoenix expedition with 130 top NASA scientists and engineers as they explored Mars. This story is a human drama about modern-day Magellans battling NASA politics—you haven’t lived until you’ve seen this miracle of birth from the inside—and the bizarre world of daily life in mission control. Kessler was the first outsider ever granted unfettered access to such an event, giving us a true Mars exclusive.

The Phoenix Mars mission was the first man-made probe ever sent to the Martian arctic. They planned to find out how climate change can turn a warm wet planet (read: Earth) into a cold barren desert (read: Mars). That might seem like a trivial pursuit, but it’s probably the most impressive feat we humans can achieve. It takes nearly the entirety of human knowledge to do it. This is only the sixth landing on Mars. Along the way, Phoenix discovered a giant frozen ocean trapped beneath the north pole of Mars, exotic food for aliens and liquid water. This is not science fiction. It’s fact. Not bad for a summer holiday.

The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War ($3.90), by Norman Stone (winner of the Wolfson Prize for The Eastern Front 1914-1917)

Book Description
After World War II, the former allies were saddled with a devastated world economy and traumatized populace. Soviet influence spread insidiously from nation to nation, and the Atlantic powers—the Americans, the British, and a small band of allies—were caught flat-footed by the coups, collapsing armies, and civil wars that sprung from all sides. The Cold War had begun in earnest.

In The Atlantic and Its Enemies, prize-winning historian Norman Stone assesses the years between World War II and the collapse of the Iron Curtain. He vividly demonstrates that for every Atlantic success there seemed to be a dozen Communist or Third World triumphs. Then, suddenly and against all odds, the Atlantic won—economically, ideologically, and militarily—with astonishing speed and finality.

An elegant and path-breaking history, The Atlantic and Its Enemies is a monument to the immense suffering and conflict of the twentieth century, and an illuminating exploration of how the Atlantic triumphed over its enemies at last.

The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club ($2.99), by Gil McNeil

Book Description
For every woman who has ever dreamed of starting over, or being a better mother, or just knitting a really nice scarf . . .

When her husband dies in a car crash--not long after announcing he wants a divorce--Jo Mackenzie packs up her two rowdy boys and moves from London to a dilapidated villa in her seaside hometown. There, she takes over her beloved Gran's knitting shop--a quaint but out-of-date store in desperate need of a facelift. After a rough beginning, Jo soon finds comfort in a "Stitch and Bitch" group; a collection of quirky, lively women who share their stories, and their addiction to cake, with warmth and humor.

As Jo starts to get the hang of single-parent life in a small town, she relies on her knitting group for support. The women meet every week at the shop on Beach Street and trade gossip and advice as freely as they do a new stitch. But when a new man enters Jo's life, and an A-list actress moves into the local mansion, the knitting club has even more trouble confining the conversation to knit one, purl two.

The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club is an uplifting, winning tale about the healing power of friendship and new beginnings. It's a charming novel that will delight all passionate knitters--and win over befuddled, would-be knitters, too.

The Finkler Question ($2.99), by Howard Jacobson, won the Man Booker Prize in 2010.

Book Description
"He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one…"

Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular and disappointed BBC worker, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czechoslovakian always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results.

Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor's grand, central London apartment.

It's a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you had less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends' losses.

And it's that very evening, at exactly 11:30pm, as Treslove hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country as he walks home, that he is attacked. After this, his whole sense of who and what he is will slowly and ineluctably change.

The Finkler Question is a scorching story of exclusion and belonging, justice and love, ageing, wisdom and humanity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.

Awakening and Believing ($4.79 each) are the first and second in the (young adult) Lily Dale series by Wendy Corsi Staub. You may be more familiar with her adult suspense titles, such as Live to Tell, which is currently discounted to 99 cents.

Awakening
Calla thought that her boyfriend breaking up with her in a text message was the worst thing that could ever happen to her. But just two weeks later, her mother died in a freak accident, and life as she knew it was completely over. With her father heading to California for a new job, they decide that Calla should spend a few weeks with the grandmother she barely knows while he gets them set up.

To Calla's shock, her mother's hometown of Lily Dale is a town full of psychics-including her grandmother. Suddenly, the fact that her mother never talked about her past takes on more mysterious overtones. The longer she stays in town, the stranger things become, as Calla starts to experience unusual and unsettling events that lead her to wonder whether she has inherited her grandmother's unique gift. Is it this gift that is making her suspect that her mother's death was more than an accident, or is it just an overactive imagination? Staying in Lily Dale is the only way to uncover the truth. But will Calla be able to deal with what she learns about her mother's past and her own future?

Believing
After spending the summer in Lily Dale, Calla has decided to stay for a few more months, and will soon be starting school at Lily Dale High. She's finally getting used to her new home and her newly realized gift. But lately, the visions occur much more frequently and have a greater sense of urgency. There may be someone who needs her help but there might also be a killer on the loose. Now that Calla believes in her own ability, can she learn to use it properly? And will she be able to learn more about her mother's mysterious death without putting herself in serious danger?

Talli Roland's The Hating Game (shortlisted for Romance Reader Awards!) and Watching Willow Watts, both from small UK publisher Prospera, are marked down to 99 cents each.

The Hating Game
When Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she's confident she'll sail through to the end without letting down the perma-guard she's perfected from years of her love 'em and leave 'em dating strategy.

After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £200,000 prize? Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it's revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes.

Can Mattie confront her past to get the prize money she so desperately needs, or will her exes finally wreak their long-awaited revenge? And what about the ambitious TV producer whose career depends on stopping her from making it to the end?

Watching Willow Watts
For Willow Watts, life has settled into a predictably dull routine: days behind the counter at her father's antique shop and nights watching TV, as the pension-aged residents of Britain's Ugliest Village bed down for yet another early night. But everything changes when a YouTube video of Willow's epically embarrassing Marilyn Monroe impersonation gets millions of hits after a viewer spots Marilyn's ghostly image in a frame.

Instantly, Willow's town is overrun with fans flocking to see the 'new Marilyn'. Egged on by the villagers -- whose shops and businesses are cashing in -- Willow embraces her new identity, dying her hair platinum and ramming herself full of cakes to achieve Marilyn's legendary curves.

But when a former flame returns seeking the old Willow, Willow must decide: can she risk her stardom and her village's newfound fortune on love, or is being Marilyn her ticket to happiness?

Shopgirl ($2.51), by Steve Martin

Book Description
One of our country's most acclaimed and beloved entertainers, Steve Martin has written a novella that is unexpectedly perceptive about relationships and life. Martin is profoundly wise when it comes to the inner workings of the human heart.

Mirabelle is the "shopgirl" of the title, a young woman, beautiful in a wallflowerish kind of way, who works behind the glove counter at Neiman Marcus "selling things that nobody buys anymore..."

Slightly lost, slightly off-kilter, very shy, Mirabelle charms because of all that she is not: not glamorous, not aggressive, not self-aggrandizing. Still there is something about her that is irresistible.

Mirabelle captures the attention of Ray Porter, a wealthy businessman almost twice her age. As they tentatively embark on a relationship, they both struggle to decipher the language of love -- with consequences that are both comic and heartbreaking. Filled with the kind of witty, discerning observations that have brought Steve Martin critical success, Shopgirl is a work of disarming tenderness.

New Kindle Games and Apps

There are a number of new games out on Kindle, including several just for the Halloween season that were released today. I'll try to catch us up on all the ones that I haven't mentioned previously. If you have the newest Kindle (no keyboard, no touch), you may run into some games that don't work (don't worry, Amazon seems pretty good at preventing you from purchasing one that isn't compatible), while others have been getting updates to ensure that they do work (such as the free Dots and Boxes, updated Oct 3).

Futoshiki Halloween Edition ($0.99) is a logic puzzle by Braintonik Games

Book Description
Futoshiki Halloween Edition takes an eerie twist as witches and zombies take over in a graveyard game board.

The rules of Futoshiki remain deceptively simple but the game is challenging and addictive. Each row and column must be filled with unique numbers. However, Futoshiki has a twist. It adds greater-than or less-than signs between some cells. You must honor these signs in order to solve and complete the puzzles.

This collection of 120 spooky puzzles is grouped into four different sets ranging from easy to expert. The graveyard grids are 5x5 in easy, medium, and hard modes. Expert mode holds thirty 7x7 puzzles. The game features annotations to help you keep track of possible solutions, and a hint function to help you keep playing if you get stuck.

Get Futoshiki Halloween Edition and have a scream!

Ultimate Halloween Quiz ($0.99), by HandyX

Book Description
Do you know Mary Shelley from Marilyn Manson, or Freddy from Jason?

Bring fear to your bones and take the horror challenge. Featuring hundreds of spine chilling questions, this funny, scary, and educational quiz will test your knowledge of all things dark and evil. Questions topics include horror movies, Halloween facts, scary novels, gruesome history, magical creatures, myths and legends. Halloween will never be the same!

Answer sets of questions in rounds of 10, or in a continuous stream. If you think you know it all then crank up the tension with the question countdown timer for an even greater challenge. In the 'Timer Play' contestants in the hot seat are under increased pressure to correctly answer questions before the time runs out!

Do you have the courage to answer them all?

Blossom Halloween Edition ($1.99) is a puzzle game by Braintonik Games

Book Description
Planting takes an eerie twist in Blossom Halloween Edition, where you are challenged to create a network of pipes that feed your Jack-O-Lanterns with potion from the witch's pot.

The goal of the game is to build an irrigation system that delivers a spooky brew to pumpkins by manipulating the game tiles with pipes on them. Just select the pipe tiles and rotate them until the potion flows through them and reaches the pumpkins to make them grow.

When a pipe is connected to the witch's cauldron it will fill up with potion. Make sure the brew flows in all the pipes to keep your pumpkins menacing. You'll have to rotate the tiles with pipes, pumpkins, and that all-important cauldron to make each part of the grid connect together and fill up every tile. All the pumpkins need to be connected to the cauldron and every pipe must be used to finish the puzzle. Are you facing a drought? The Hint system is there to help you figure out the next best move.

Halloween may be just around the corner, but with Blossom Halloween Edition's 120 puzzles, waiting has never been such a guilty pleasure!

Mahjong Solitaire Halloween Edition ($3.99), by Mobigloo

Book Description
It's time to celebrate Halloween with this special edition of the popular matching game Mahjong Solitaire on Kindle.

In Mahjong Solitaire, you match pairs of identical tiles in order to remove them from the board. Only free tiles can be matched. Tiles are considered free if they do not have other tiles to either the left or right of them, or on top of them. The objective of the game is to clear all the tiles from the board. The game ends when all tiles have been removed or when there are no more free tiles left to match.

Mahjong Solitaire tracks the number of pairs of free tiles available to be matched for you. In addition, the game allows for unlimited undos, and contains a Hint feature that will give you suggestions for your next move, as well a Shuffle feature that will rearrange the tiles when you get stuck.

The Mahjong Solitaire Halloween Edition gives you 13 different game board layouts to choose from and two special Halloween tile sets. This game is so fun it's scary!

Poker of the Dead ($1.99) is a Hold'em Poker solitaire game by Gameblend Studios

Book Description
Zombies are trying to break down your door! Play "heads up" poker against them to stay alive. Fortunately, zombies aren't normal poker opponents. They have no brains, never fold, and will always call your bet. Play the odds to fend them off and earn new high scores. To win, survive all seven days (10 hands per day). At the start of a hand, you and the zombie are dealt 2 cards each. Next follows 3 betting rounds, over which 5 shared cards are dealt. At each stage, you can call, raise, fold, or go all-in (if available). The best 5-card hand wins the pot. Win 3 hands to activate the "all-in" shotgun, and use it to double your money and blast a zombie. Each new day increases the stakes with higher ante and bet amounts. If you run out of money, the game is over. Poker of the Dead features a full tutorial, detailed game statistics and 12 special challenges to complete.

Can you survive the horde of poker playing zombies? Try Poker of the Dead today!

Mystery Castle: Dawn of Illusion ($1.99), by Runestone Games Limited, is a puzzle-maze game.

Book Description
Mystery Castle: Dawn of Illusion is a puzzle adventure featuring Monty the wizard as he attempts to save the inhabitants of the castle from an evil creature of the night.

You play Monty on his quest as he outwits fiendish puzzles on his journey deeper and deeper into the mysterious castle, to the inevitable showdown with a monster too scary to name. You must tread carefully on cracked and crumbling floors, while using teleporting staircases and magical keys to enter new areas. You may even need to push boxes into dangerous crags to make new paths and use bombs to get through walls to complete your quest. If you find the Eye of Truth, you can explore places that were once hidden as you try to uncover the identity of the creature assaulting the castle.

Mystery Castle: Dawn of Illusion is well suited for people who like puzzles and brain teasers, and contains 24 levels of excitement and adventure. Can you solve all the mystery puzzles in the castle? Monte is counting on you!

Ultimate Physics Quiz ($1.99), by HandyX

Book Description
Fun with Physics? Yes, believe it with Ultimate Physics Quiz!

Learning and practicing science is always more fun when it's part of a game. This application uses game play to challenge both kids and adults alike. Questions range from basic ones, such as "What does a microphone convert?" to advanced questions, such as "When two simple harmonic waves interfere, vector addition of which characteristics takes place?" Different game play modes can be used to test your speed and understanding. For example, you can play under the pressure of a timer, or see how far you can get with continuous multiple choice questions.

Explore physics concepts by answering questions in Measurement and Units, Heat and Light, Properties of Matter, Space, Universe and Stars, Motion, Work, Power and Energy, Electricity & Magnetism Forces, Light and Sound Waves, Electricity and Nuclear Physics, and Atomic Physics.

So if you are learning physics at school, or if you just want to test your knowledge, put yourself in motion and have an Ultimate Physics Quiz moment!

The Little Stick that Could ($1.99) is an interactive book for kids by Mobilehead

Book Description
The Little Stick that Could is an interactive book in which the reader embarks on an adventure in which their choices help shape the story and ultimately the outcome.

In this story, Stick's girlfriend Sally has been captured by a Dragon! Help guide Stick through his adventures to rescue Sally by solving riddles and fighting your way to save the damsel in distress. There are multiple endings, different moral choices, and plenty of battles of swords and wits to keep young readers engaged for many readings. You can join the fun by reading with your child, and by exploring the riddles and choices Stick faces together.

Get The Little Stick that Could and embark on a memorable adventure with your child.

Anywhere Spreadsheet ($3.99), by Nickel Buddy, is the lone Kindle App in today's lineup.

Book Description
Anywhere Spreadsheet allows you to create, edit, and save spreadsheets on your Kindle.

Use and modify the included templates, or create your own to track your budget, log your running miles, maintain a price list, track your gas mileage, do unit conversions...the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

With Anywhere Spreadsheet you can insert and delete rows and columns, change row height and column width, set background shades and borders, format data as numbers, dates, currency or normal text. You can format your text by making it bold or italic and by changing its alignment, font shade and font size. You can even create charts and import and export data in CSV files to your PC.

To make it easy to be productive right away, Anywhere Spreadsheet comes with the following templates: Sale Price Calculator, Temperature Converter, Length Converter, Percent Calculator, Tip Calculator, Body Mass Index Calculator, Thank-you note list, Weight Tracker, Running Log, Road Trip Log, Gas Mileage Log and even a Chore List!

Track and calculate important data everywhere you go with Anywhere Spreadsheet.

Today's Deals and Bargain Books

Update: B&N has priced matched Amazon on Kitchen Confidential.

Last night's UK Kindle books are now free for US Kindlers and from B&N, an EPUB format was added to one Kindle freebie, while a long-term EPUB only freebie is now on Kindle and one free last month has returned. Oddly enough, all of today's updates are on Christian published titles.

• Diagnosis Death (Kindle/nook)
• Walking on Broken Glass (Kindle/nook)
• I Surrender All (Kindle/EPUB/nook)
• Imaginary Jesus (Kindle/EPUB/nook)
• The Faith of Ashish (Kindle/nook)

Kitchen Confidential ($9.49 $1.99 Kindle; $3.18 B&N; $3.49 Kobo - coupon eligible), by Anthony Bourdain, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day. I bought this in paper a while back, then replaced it with the ebook earlier this year, or I'd snap it up today.

Book Description
Kitchen Confidential reveals what Bourdain calls "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine."

Last summer, The New Yorker published Chef Bourdain's shocking, "Don't Eat Before Reading This." Bourdain spared no one's appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain's first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable. Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.

13 1/2 ($4.99 Kindle, B&N; $18.69 Kobo), by Nevada Barr, is today's Nook Daily Find, with the price matched at Amazon, as well. Doesn't look like you'll be getting this one as a library book anytime soon, either, unless you listen as an audiobook (I checked three libraries).

Book Description
With 13 ½, Nevada Barr, New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning Anna Pigeon novels, has written a taut and terrifying psychological thriller. It carries the reader from the horrifying 1970s murder spree of a child— dubbed “Butcher Boy” by a shocked public—in Rochester, Minnesota, to Polly, the abused daughter of Mississippi “trailer trash,” to post-Katrina New Orleans.

In Jackson Square in the French Quarter a tarot card reader told Polly Deschamps she would be a success. Thirty years later, Polly is a respected professor of literature with good friends and her own home—a safe life for her and her two daughters.

Butcher Boy, released on his seventeenth birthday, shook the snow from his boots and headed south.
New Orleans, a Mecca for runaways then and now, offers sanctuary but never forgiveness.

When Polly falls in love with Marshall Marchand, a restoration architect who is helping to rebuild her adopted city, shadows of the past rise out of the poisoned ground of New Orleans as thick and deadly as the toxic waters of the flood.

Like history, some crimes are doomed to repeat themselves. Evil stays the same, only the victims’ names change. As two broken pasts collide in an uncertain present, Polly is determined that her children’s names will never be on that list.

The Dummy Line ($7.99 US; £0.99 UK), by Bobby Cole, is the first of two titles, recently highlighted in the Kindle Post, that are a much better deal for those in the UK. They can't blame another publisher, though, as this one is from AmazonEncore.

Book Description
Avid hunter Jake Crosby is thrilled that his nine-year-old daughter Katy shares his love of the outdoors. His wife, Morgan, on the other hand, does not, which means Jake and Katy enjoy an abundance of hunting, fishing, and camping trips together. So when they head off into the Alabama woods for a spring turkey hunt, Jake expects nothing out of the ordinary. But even his worst nightmares could not prepare him for what befalls them that evening, when a band of drug dealers attempts to break into their remote camp. Desperate to protect his daughter and himself, Jake makes a gut-wrenching decision. His quick thinking enables him and Katy to escape…but brings the gang of vengeful criminals hot on their trail. Gambling on his knowledge of the land and hunting skills, he leads their bloodthirsty pursuers on a perilous cat-and-mouse game deep within the Noxubee River swamp. Jake knows they all won’t come out alive—but he will do whatever is necessary to make sure Katy does. Taut and engrossing, The Dummy Line explores what happens when an ordinary man is pushed to extraordinary lengths to protect the one he loves most and those for whom he feels responsible.

The Greenhouse ($7.99 US; £1.99 UK), by Audur Ava Olafsdottir and Brian FitzGibbon (Translator), is the second titles that is a better deal for those in the UK. This time around, the publisher is AmazonCrossing.

Book Description
For Lobbi, the tragic passing of his mother proves to be a profound catalyst. Their shared love of tending rare roses in her greenhouse inspires him to leave his studies behind and travel to a remote village monastery to restore its once fabulous gardens. While transforming the garden under the watchful eye of a cinephile monk, he is surprised by a visit from Anna, a friend of a friend with whom he shared a fateful moment in his mother’s greenhouse, and the daughter they together conceived that night. In caring for both the garden and the little girl, Lobbi slowly begins to assume the varied and complex roles of a man: fatherhood with a deep relationship with his child, cooking, nurturing, and remaining also a son, brother, lover, and…a gardener. A story about the heartfelt search for beauty in life, The Greenhouse is a touching reminder of our ability to turn the small things in everyday life into the extraordinary.

Living with the Mind of Christ: A Lenten Study for Adults ($4.40 US, $0.55 Canada), by James A. Harnish, is greatly discounted for those north of the border.

Book Description
This is the 11th year for a thematic Lenten study offering. This study will include 7 sessions, one for each Sunday in Lent, including Easter Sunday. Each session features a scripture reference, a personal reading and questions for personal reflection or group discussion; suggestions for ways to deepen the Lenten journey or a focus for the coming week may also be included.

This particular study is based on Philippians 2:1-11 (“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”). The goal is to discover what it might look like for us, in very practical ways, to live with the mind of Christ.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? ($2.51), by George Carlin (most definitely NOT a Christian published title).

Book Description
On the heels of George Carlin's #1 New York Times bestseller Napalm & Silly Putty comes When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? -- infused with Carlin's trademark irreverent humor and biting cultural observations.

Here we go again . . . George Carlin's hilarious When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? offers his cutting-edge opinions and observational humor on everything from evasive euphemistic language to politicians to the media to dead people. Nothing and no one is safe!

Despite the current climate of political correctness, Carlin is not afraid to take on controversial topics.

Everyday Angels ($0.99), by Jenny Smedley

Book Description
Do I have an angel? Does my angel care about me? How can I contact my angel? Can my angel appear to help and guide me? These are just a few of the questions that Jenny Smedley, world renowned angel expert, regularly receives in letters from her readers, prompting her to write this book. It saddened Jenny to think that some people still don't think they deserve an angel. Packed with tales of angel encounters, both dramatic and everyday, and also with new tips on how to connect with your angels and even get evidence of their presence, this book should convince everyone who reads it that every single person (and even our four-legged friends!) really does have a guardian angel.

Love Your Body ($1.99), by Louise Hay

Book Description
In this wonderful little book, bestselling author Louise L. Hay brings you 54 affirmation treatments designed to help you create a beautiful, healthy, happy body. If you are challenged by a particular part of your body, use the corresponding affirmations daily until you realize positive results.

How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf ($3.99), by Molly Harper

Book Description
Even in Grundy, Alaska, it’s unusual to find a naked guy with a bear trap clamped to his ankle on your porch. But when said guy turns into a wolf, recent southern transplant Mo Wenstein has no difficulty identifying the problem. Her surly neighbor Cooper Graham—who has been openly critical of Mo’s ability to adapt to life in Alaska—has trouble of his own. Werewolf trouble.

For Cooper, an Alpha in self-imposed exile from his dysfunctional pack, it’s love at first sniff when it comes to Mo. But Cooper has an even more pressing concern on his mind. Several people around Grundy have been the victims of wolf attacks, and since Cooper has no memory of what he gets up to while in werewolf form, he’s worried that he might be the violent canine in question.

If a wolf cries wolf, it makes sense to listen, yet Mo is convinced that Cooper is not the culprit. Except if he’s not responsible, then who is? And when a werewolf falls head over haunches in love with you, what are you supposed to do anyway? The rules of dating just got a whole lot more complicated. . . .

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and It's All Small Stuff: SIMPLE WAYS TO KEEP THE LITTLE THINGS FROM TAKING OVER YOUR LIFE ($2.99), by Richard Carlson

Book Description
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and It's All Small Stuff is an audiobook that tells you how to keep from letting the little things in life drive you crazy. In thoughtful and insightful language, author Richard Carlson reveals ways to calm down in the midst of your incredibly hurried, stress-filled life.

You can learn to put things into perspective by making the small daily changes Dr. Carlson suggests, including advice such as "Choose your battles wisely"; "Remind yourself that when you die, your 'in' box won't be empty"; and "Make peace with imperfection".

The World According to Mr. Rogers ($2.), by Fred Rogers

Book Description
Since his death in February 2003, the outpouring of affection for Fred Rogers has been overwhelming. He was familiar to millions as the host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and adored by children and adults alike. But most people don’t know that Fred Rogers was also an ordained minister who made it his life’s mission to work with families and inspire people every day. In fact, all proceeds from the sales of this book will go to the Fred Rogers’ Fund, which continues Fred Rogers’ work around the country to promote the healthy emotional, social, and intellectual development of children.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MISTER ROGERS is a collection that testifies to Fred Rogers’ deep intelligence about human nature – no matter the age of the person. His writings are featured in sections on Love, Friendship, Respect, Individuality, Honesty, Education and Reassurance. In his speeches, transcripts and interviews, Fred Rogers exposed his true self in order to help us understand that there is much more that unites us than divides us.

Making Toast ($1.99), by Roger Rosenblatt

Book Description
When his daughter, Amy—a gifted doctor, mother, and wife—collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies. Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny—Boppo and Mimi to the kids—quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, playdates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though reeling from Amy's death they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tender-hearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvels at the strength of his son-in-law, a surgeon, and the tenacity and skill of his wife, a former kindergarten teacher, Roger attends each day to "the one household duty I have mastered"—preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking.

With the wit, heart, precision, and depth of understanding that has characterized his work, Roger Rosenblatt peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create both a tribute to his late daughter and a testament to familial love. The day Amy died, Harris told Ginny and Roger, "It's impossible." Roger's story tells how a family makes the possible of the impossible.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter ($2.99), by Tom Franklin

Book Description
Tom Franklin's extraordinary talent has been hailed by the leading lights of contemporary literature—Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Lee Smith, and Dennis Lehane. Reviewers have called his fiction "ingenious" (USA Today) and "compulsively readable" (Memphis Commercial Appeal). His narrative power and flair for character-ization have been compared to the likes of Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor, Elmore Leonard, and Cormac McCarthy.

Now the Edgar Award-winning author returns with his most accomplished and resonant novel so far—an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.

Dead on the Delta ($3.99), by Stacey Jay, is currently on sale from Simon and Schuster. She's self-published the related (and later) novella, Valentine's Day of the Undead ($3.25)

Book Description
Once upon a time, fairies were the stuff of bedtime stories and sweet dreams. Then came the mutations, and the dre-ams became nightmares. Mosquito-size fairies now indulge their taste for human blood—and for most humans, a fairy bite means insanity or death. Luckily, Annabelle Lee isn’t most humans. The hard-drinking, smart-mouthed, bicycle-riding redhead is immune to fairy venom, and able to do the dirty work most humans can’t. Including helping law enforcement— and Cane Cooper, the bayou’s sexiest detective—collect evidence when a body is discovered outside the fairy-proof barricades of her Louisiana town.But Annabelle isn’t equipped to deal with the murder of a sixyear- old girl or a former lover-turned-FBI snob taking an interest in the case. Suddenly her already bumpy relationship with Cane turns even rockier, and even the most trust-worthy friends become suspects. Annabelle’s life is imploding: between relationship drama, a heartbreaking murder investigation, Breeze-crazed drug runners, and a few too many rum and Cokes, Annabelle is a woman on the run—from her past, toward her future, and into the arms of a darkness waiting just for her. . . .

Huntress ($2.99), by Nicole Hamlett, is also self-published. The first in what appears to be a planned series, it looks interesting (cool cover and nice synopsis).

Book Description
"Fate is an ugly bitch who will screw with your life every single chance she gets."

Grace Murphy, a newly single mother finds this out as she's trying to figure out how to lead a perfectly normal life. The big question becomes, what do you do when you find out that your mother is Diana, the Goddess of the Hunt and she expects you to take up the family business?

You can try hiding, but escaping when you have an ex-husband to deal with, a kid to raise and an unknown being who's trying to kill you is tricky at best.

Now the woman who couldn't put a bookshelf together without getting sweaty and perplexed must learn how to roar...without getting herself and everyone she loves killed.

Saving the world? Not a problem.

Getting home in time for chocolate chip pancakes might be a whole other matter, though...

Goddess With a Blade ($3.82), a full-length novel by Lauren Dane, is currently discounted by Carina Press.

Book Description
Rowan Summerwaite is no ordinary woman. Physical vessel to the Celtic Goddess Brigid and raised by the leader of the Vampire Nation, she's a supercharged hunter with the power to slay any vampire who violates the age-old treaty.

A recent string of murders has her at odds with Las Vegas's new Scion, the arrogant and powerful Clive Stewart. The killings have the mark of Vampire all over them, and Rowan warns Clive to keep his people in line—or she'll mete out her own brand of justice.

Though her dealings with Clive are adversarial to say the least, Rowan is intensely aware of her attraction to him. But she can't let it distract her from her duty—to find and battle the killer before more women die.

Kissed by Darkness ($2.99), a self-published novel by Shéa MacLeod, is either pretty good or she's bribed a number of people into leaving stellar reviews. There aren't as many reviews on the second in the Sunwalker Saga, Kissed by Fire, but they are all five-star.

Kissed by Darkness
Danger is always on the menu for Morgan Bailey, a sexy and street-smart bounty hunter, who prowls the dark underworld of Portland, Oregon hunting creatures of the night. Morgan’s never met a vampire she couldn’t dust or a demon she couldn't kill until she's hired to destroy a new kind of mystical threat: the Sunwalker.

A powerful immortal once believed myth, the Sunwalker carries with him an ancient secret which, if left unchecked, will destroy Morgan’s world. Pursued by a passionate Templar Knight and the target of the local vampire clans, an ancient power is awakened within her, unlike anything she’s ever known. Morgan must uncover the truth behind her mission and about herself, before the Darkness lurking inside swallows her whole.

Kissed by Fire
Vampire Hunter Morgan Bailey’s life is about to take a turn for the weird. As if Sunwalkers,a Templar Knight, and an ancient Atlantean artifact weren’t enough.

When a MI8 analyst is brutally murdered, Morgan is called to London to investigate. She stumbles across a conspiracy involving an extinct supernatural race. Dragons. But the dragons may not be as extinct as everyone thought.

The Darkness grows inside her. A new power rages out of control. She is stalked through the streets of London by the vampire who murdered her.

Morgan must hunt her own killer. She must uncover the truth. Or humanity will be plunged into a war it can never hope to win.

Shades of Gray ($0.99), by L.M. Pruitt, also appears to be a good start of a new series (Jude Magdalyn). I'd skip her short story prequel, Hole in the Wall, at Amazon; if you want to read it, grab it for free on Smashwords (it also contains the first 18 chapters of Shades of Gray, in case you want a longer sample.

Book Description
Jude Magdalyn Henries lives what many would call an unconventional life.

Orphaned at birth, raised by nuns, a teenage runaway living on the streets… she now earns a living at odd jobs, including one as a fake tarot card reader. Very little about Jude’s life appears normal, by any scale. When she accepts a gig to do a private reading, unconventional takes on an entirely new meaning.

Life as she knows it ends when she’s thrust into a world she never knew existed—one filled with magic, vampires, and her beloved New Orleans on the verge of an underground war. To make matters worse, she's got two men in her life vying for attention, Williams and Theo. Both call to a different part of her, but one scares her just a little bit. Can she step up to the challenges set before her and make the right choices for the greater, which may or not be the greater good?

Save $15 on Blu-ray players and digital media players (KSO)

This offer is only for those with a Kindle with Special Offers:

Save $15 on select Blu-ray players and digital media players at Amazon.com

Click on offer, then click on the link on the offer page to receive an email with the promotion code. Sign-up for this offer expires on October 15.

You'll get an email (right away), a link to the Special Offer page and a promotion code to enter at checkout. Once you have the promotional code, you have until November 15 to complete your purchase. Like previous offers, this one requires you to use the full checkout process in order to enter your promotional code. Also, like all Amazon sales that use promotional codes, if you have a gift card balance, you must use it for the payment (if there is not a sufficient balance, then you can pick which credit card or other payment to use).

Limit one offer per customer and per device.

If you don't have a Blu-Ray player to take advantage of the $10 off movie offer, now is your chance to get one at a discount. If you get one of the Panasonic 3D Blu-Ray players, you'll also get a free copy of Avatar 3D (which can only be obtained by buying a Panasonic 3D TV or Blu-Ray player, for now). Don't have a 3D TV? You have until tomorrow to use the $100 HDTV KSO offer! You also get a $5 Instant Video credit at Amazon when you register your player with Amazon (this enables the player to view Amazon Instant Videos).

Personally, I'm thinking of getting the Roku 2 XS, the upgraded model of our current ROKU box (the HD model also included in this offer doesn't do HDTV display). Not only will we then have yet another place to play Angry Birds (the new controller is like motion controlled, like a Wii controller), but we'll be able to test streaming video from Amazon Prime on two TV's when we get a month free with the Kindle Fire. If it works out well, we may kiss DishTV goodbye.

Save $10 on family movie night titles on DVD/Blu-ray (KSO)

This offer is only for those with a Kindle with Special Offers:

Save $10 on a purchase of $25 of select family movie night titles on DVD and Blu-ray

Click on offer, then click on the link on the offer page to receive an email with the promotion code. Sign-up for this offer expires on October 15.

You'll get an email (right away), a link to the Special Offer page and a promotion code to enter at checkout. Once you have the promotional code, you have until November 15 to complete your purchase. Like previous offers, this one requires you to use the full checkout process in order to enter your promotional code. Also, like all Amazon sales that use promotional codes, if you have a gift card balance, you must use it for the payment (if there is not a sufficient balance, then you can pick which credit card or other payment to use).

Limit one offer per customer and per device.

Hmmm... Might be the right time to fill in any missing Harry Potter titles or get the Blu-Ray edition of Planet Earth (if you don't already have it).