I've moved!

I've moved!

Thanks for stopping by, but it appears you are using a (very) old address for my blog. I've moved to a Wordpress site and you'll need to update your bookmarks for Books on the Knob

I've moved!

Custom Search

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Bargain Book Roundup

The Way of Shadows ($2.99), the first title in The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks, is on sale again, is you missed it when it was the Kindle Deal of the Day.
Book Description
For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art-and he is the city's most accomplished artist.

For Azoth, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he's grown up in the slums, and learned to judge people quickly - and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint.

But to be accepted, Azoth must turn his back on his old life and embrace a new identity and name. As Kylar Stern, he must learn to navigate the assassins' world of dangerous politics and strange magics - and cultivate a flair for death.

If you liked the free Prevention Healthy Favorites: Chicken Recipes: 48 Easy and Delicious Meals!, by The Editors of Prevention Magazine, then you may want to check out their Slow Cooker Recipes, Dessert Recipes and Snack & Appetizer Recipes mini-cookbooks. Each contains 48 recipes and have recently been lowered from $3.99 to 99 cents each. I can see using any one (or all) of them during the upcoming holiday season.
Book Description
Like good cooks everywhere, the editors of Prevention magazine love nothing more than sharing their favorite healthy and delicious dishes. That's the whole idea behind the Prevention Healthy Favorites series of essential cookbooks, each one gathering 48 of the best Prevention-tested recipes that make it easy to enjoy wonderful homemade food fast.

Slow cooking is one of the Prevention editors' favorite ways to prepare true comfort food - which for us means food that is as easy to make as it is to eat. It's all about effortless: Just put together simple ingredients in the morning, and come home to a wholesome meal and delicious-smelling house at night! What could be better?

With this Prevention-tested collection, you can't go wrong: We chose our recipes carefully, each is designed to nourish both body and spirit. Within these pages you'll find a great variety of flavors and ingredients, from Mexico's gentle heat (Pork Chile Verde) to the delightful Moroccan Chicken with Olives. You'll even find some lovely surprises, including Shrimp Arrabiata, which tastes so good you won't believe it's so healthy; and even rich and satisfying brownies that couldn't be any easier to make, yet fit into a healthy, enjoyable diet.

The Day the Falls Stood Still ($4.61), by Cathy Marie Buchanan
Book Description
Steeped in the intriguing history of Niagara Falls, this epic love story is as rich, spellbinding, and majestic as the falls themselves.

1915. The dawn of the hydroelectric power era in Niagara Falls. Seventeen-year-old Bess Heath has led a sheltered existence as the youngest daughter of the director of the Niagara Power Company. After graduation day at her boarding school, she is impatient to return to her picturesque family home near Niagara Falls. But when she arrives, nothing is as she had left it. Her father has lost his job at the power company, her mother is reduced to taking in sewing from the society ladies she once entertained, and Isabel, her vivacious older sister, is a shadow of her former self. She has shut herself in her bedroom, barely eating--and harboring a secret.

The night of her return, Bess meets Tom Cole by chance on a trolley platform. She finds herself inexplicably drawn to him--against her family's strong objections. He is not from their world. Rough-hewn and fearless, he lives off what the river provides and has an uncanny ability to predict the whims of the falls. His daring river rescues render him a local hero and cast him as a threat to the power companies that seek to harness the power of the falls for themselves. As their lives become more fully entwined, Bess is forced to make a painful choice between what she wants and what is best for her family and her future.

Set against the tumultuous backdrop of Niagara Falls, at a time when daredevils shot the river rapids in barrels and great industrial fortunes were made and lost as quickly as lives disappeared, The Day the Falls Stood Still is an intoxicating debut novel.

Who Goes There? ($0.99), by John W. Campbell
Book Description
A remote scientific research expedition at the North Pole is invaded by a monstrous alien, reawakened after lying frozen for centuries after a crash-landing. The alien is intelligent, cunning and a shape-changer who can assume the form and personality of anything it destroys and soon it is among the men of the expedition, killing and replacing them, using its shape-changing ability to lull the scientists one by one into inattention and destruction. The transformed alien can seemingly pass every effort at detection and the expedition seems doomed...

WHO GOES THERE?, according to the science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz (1920-1997), had an autobiographical impetus: Campbell's mother and aunt were identical twins and enjoyed the "game" of substituting for one another in his care as an infant and young child, confusing him again and again with false identity. It was this uncertainty, this susceptibility to masquerade and his terror at the game which, Moskowitz said, Campbell funneled into this last and greatest of his magazine pieces. (A short novel, THE MOON IS HELL, was published only in book form in the early 1950's.) Carefully and rigorously extrapolated in its portrait of the menaced expedition, the novelette is regarded as perhaps the greatest horror story to emerge form the field of science fiction. It was the basis for one of the great early science fiction films and its excellent remake decades later.

Campbell had become the editor of ASTOUNDING five months before the early 1938 publication of the story. As editor of that magazine, he insisted upon rigorous scientific background, humanized characters and values and a standard of writing comparable to that in the leading consumer magazines of the time. In pursuit, Campbell found a generation of new writers - Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, A.E. Van Vogt, Henry Kuttner, Lester del Rey among them - who collectively (and individually!) produced an extraordinary body of work.

WHO GOES THERE? provided the basis of the 1951 cult horror film THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and was remade into John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), also regarded as a classic science fiction film, who's prequel THE THING launched in 2011. The copyright of the novelette was, typically of the time, owned by Street & Smith Publications to whose magazine Campbell had sold all of the rights. Hawks paid Street & Smith $900 for all film rights, $500 of that was paid over "voluntarily" by Street & Smith to Campbell. "Don't you feel cheated?" Isaac Asimov said he asked Campbell at the time of the film's successful release. "No," Campbell said. "If it's a good film and it will get more people to read science fiction and take it seriously, then it's all a very good thing."

Demon: A Memoir ($2.99), by Tosca Lee, is marked down from the near $10 price of last year (as is Havah).
Book Description
“One day . . . I realized that being angelic and fallen was very similar to being human and fallen—except for one major difference: the provision of a messiah. I immediately wondered what it must feel like to be unquestionably damned—and worse, to watch humans luxuriate in and take for granted the grace made available to them from a doting God. And I thought: Why wouldn’t a fallen angelic creation resent a human recipient of God’s grace? And why wouldn’t a demon want to prove that creature unworthy again and again as a result? Now I knew what it must feel like to be an angelic outsider looking in with jealous eyes and . . . through this new lens Demon: A Memoir was born.” —Tosca Lee

The Midwich Cuckoos ($0.99), by John Wyndham, is another film tie-in from RosettaBooks.
Book Description
Aliens land in an isolated British village and impregnate all of the women. Nine months later strange children with glowing eyes and intense intelligence "Midwich Cuckoos," emerge to undertake the conquest of the world. Filmed in the 1950's and again in the 1990's as VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED.

Shadow Walker ($3.99), by L.A. Banks
Book Description
Sarah Rivera has a lot going on in her life right now. It’s bad enough that she’s being shipped off to Temt Tchaas Academy—also known as Neteru Academy, a high school for future Guardians of the Light who have special powers—but she has to go there with her cocky twin brother and the rest of her compound brothers and sisters. To make matters worse, everyone has ridiculous expectations of her all because her parents are like supernatural rock stars for saving the planet sixteen years ago. But what nobody, not even her best girlfriend Tami seems to be getting is the fact that, she’s not special, doesn’t want to be a demon-hunting hero, and is even afraid of the dark!

So what that her mother was a warrior angel and her Dad used to be a Council level Vampire? Opposites attract. Go figure. As far as Sarah is concerned, all she got from the combination was a pair of fangs that lengthen at inappropriate times to embarrass her in front of her secret crush; whereas her brother, Alejandro, got the good looks and cool wings. However, what her parents’ status has created is drama in her life, by ensuring that the mean girls at school will make her life a living nightmare. Sarah knows her family’s renowned slayer reputation will also ensure that everyone at school will assume she had it easy and should be able to do everything her famous rebel parents can do, when she can’t. Not by a long shot.

Once at the hidden boarding school, things go from bad to worse as Sarah tries to fit in. Her nightmares increase and it isn’t just anxiety—her second sight is suddenly developing at a record pace. Layers of secrets are held by the building, held by her parents, and nothing is as it seems. There is something really bad going on at the school, worse than bad—deadly. Only, faculty and administrators don’t know where to begin to look for the cause as students start to disappear. Sarah must then make a choice to stand on the sidelines or to help use her gifts to save someone dear. But to do that means facing all of her greatest fears, along with a demon or two.

The Gifted Bundle ($8.39), by Nancy Holder, contains four books in a single volume.
Book Description
The ancient race of powerful magic users called The Gifted have lived side-by-side with normal "Ungifted" humans for centuries. Led by a Guardian, each Gifted "House" governs a territory. But when the House of Blood crosses over to the dark side, evil supernatural beings who had been held in check are loosed upon the world. As the war between the forces of good and evil escalates, the other Houses must contend with internal dissention and treachery before they can vanquish a monstrous demon who can bring destruction upon all mankind. Journey through the astonishing world of The Gifted in this gripping series by award-winning author Nancy Holder. Bundle includes Daughter of the Flames, Daughter of the Blood, Son of the Shadows and Swept Away.

At the Edge of the Sun ($3.99), by Anne Stuart
Book Description
A perfect blend of provocative beauty and fighting skills kept her safe in the most dangerous situations. But Maggie Bennett had no protection against her feelings for the handsome, mysterious Randall Carter. Torn by memories of past hurts, hopes for new love tossed her back into his arms and onto the bloody trail of a notorious terrorist. Maggie and Randall would be swept on a wild roller coaster ride of violence and betrayal…targets for an assassin’s bullet and a passion striking without warning from the dark depths of the heart.

31 Free Books from Vook (Kindle)

There is a new batch of free ebooks from Vook today. All can be read on any Kindle device or app, but any Enhanced Audio/Video content requires an iThing.
Fitness/Health
History
Animated TextVooks [Kindle Editions with Audio/Video]
Video Game Guides
Repeats:

Today's Deals and Free Book Updates

The companion mini-book, Brand Like A Rock Star (EPUB/nook/noDRM), is now free on Kindle. Blood Country (Kindle/EPUB/nook) is now free at B&N. Also, O'Reilly has added four more free computer publications:
For those using EPUB, there are a couple of new coupon codes at Kobo: save20oct29 (20% off) and save30oct90 (30% off). Both are one-use and expire October 26. Kobo has also introduced their own new tablet reader, the Kobo Vox, which will be released in about a week. I have one on order, so should be able to give you a comparison between it, the nookColor and the Fire (which should release a couple of weeks later). Every book you purchase at Kobo between now and Oct 31 gives you a chance to win one of their new ereaders.

The Human Stain ($9.99 Kindle; $3.60 B&N), by Philip Roth, is the Nook Daily Find.
Book Description
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret. But it's not the secret of his affair, at seventy-one, with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a savagely wrecked past - a part-time farmhand and a janitor at the college where, until recently, he was the powerful dean of faculty. And it's not the secret of Coleman's alleged racism, which provoked the college witch-hunt that cost him his job and, to his mind, killed his wife. Nor is it the secret of misogyny, despite the best efforts of his ambitious young colleague, Professor Delphine Roux, to expose him as a fiend. Coleman's secret has been kept for fifty years: from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, had fabricated his identity and how that cannily controlled life came unraveled. Set in 1990s America, where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciation and rituals of purification, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth's eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives that are as tragically determined by the nation's fate as by the "human stain" that so ineradicably marks human nature. This harrowing, deeply compassionate, and completely absorbing novel is a magnificent successor to his Vietnam-era novel, American Pastoral, and his McCarthy-era novel, I MARRIED A COMMUNIST.

The Intruders: A Jake Grafton Novel ($1.99), by Stephen Coonts, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day.
Book Description
A war-weary Navy pilot confronts the deadly skies of the South Pacific, training Marine pilots and battling Soviets MiGs in the wake of the Vietnam War

Fighter pilot Jake Grafton is adrift following combat in Vietnam. With no place in the States to call home, Grafton sticks to what he knows best: taking on the world’s most treacherous skies from the cockpit of a Grumman A-6 Intruder.

Now, stationed in the South Pacific on the U.S.S. Columbia, Grafton must teach the Marines aboard the art of flying from an aircraft carrier—a mission that, thanks to the unruly Marine Captain Le Beau, is as joyless as it is dangerous. But when an unexpected enemy appears from above, Grafton and Le Beau must put aside their differences and work together to save the lives of all onboard.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Stephen Coonts, including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

Save $20 on Automotive Winter Products (KSO)

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

Save $20 on a $50 purchase of select automotive winter products

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 23.

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 23 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.

Don't be fooled by the title on this offer. There are a number of products that you can use any time of the year, such as battery chargers, socket extenders, windshield screens (I only use these in summer), emergency hammers/signals/kits, etc. There's a couple of plug-in inverter/USB chargers that would be handy for charging your electronics in older cars. There are even a few items for those that have no car at all, such as winter headgear that you can wear on a motorcycle or when snowmobiling/skiing.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Free Book (Kindle/EPUB/nook/iBooks) - Blood Country

Update: 10/26/11 Also free on iTunes.
Update: 10/23/11 Now free from Barnes & Noble.

Blood Country, by Mary Logue, is free in the Kindle store (US & UK) and from Sony.
Book Description
This first in a series launch introduces Claire Watkins, a deputy sheriff for the Pepin County Police Department. Claire, a former Minneapolis police detective, and her 10-year-old daughter Meg fled the Twin Cities after her husband, Steve, also a cop, was killed.

When Landers Anderson--an elderly neighbor who befriended Claire and Meg--dies of a heart attack after being sideswiped with a shovel, Claire determines to find the culprit. This involves delving into Landers's family history and investigating the machinations of a right-wing group, Homeowners of America, that is buying up property to build an environmentally unsound development.

At the same time, Meg fearfully admits to Claire that she saw the man who killed Steve. Claire contacts her former partner, Det. Bruce Jacobs, and prods him into accelerating the investigation into Steve's death.
Get the free ebook from Barnes & Noble.
Get the free ebook from iTunes.
Get the free ebook from Sony.