Free Book (noDRM) - Beneath the Neon Moon

Beneath the Neon Moon ($0.99 Kindle), by Theda Black and Sonja Triebel (illustrator), is today's free holiday gift at AllRomance. This LGBT (m/m) romance has high customer ratings and runs about a 3 on the heat index at ARe.

Book Description
Zach's alone, he's lost his job and the rent's coming due. He thinks he knows all about bad luck, but he's about to find out what it really means.

In high school, Mal was the golden boy. Then he lost his way. Now he's back on track, working his way through college and looking toward the future.

They've never met, but one summer night everything changes. They find themselves in desperate trouble, trapped and bound together in darkness.

The moon is riding high and bright in the sky when Zach notices Mal's changing, growing volatile and wild. Suddenly Zach's got bigger things to worry about than being kidnapped―he's trapped with a man who's going wolf with the full moon.

Get the free ebook from from AllRomance. It's DRM-free, so you can download the Mobi edition for your Kindle. If you want more than one format, just repurchase, as downloading locks in a format.

Free Book (noDRM) - A Rare Gift

A Rare Gift ($2.51 Kindle), by Jaci Burton, is free direct from Carina Press. It's a DRM-free EPUB that you can convert via Calibre for Kindle.

Book Description
With a disastrous marriage behind him, Wyatt Kent has no interest in getting involved with any woman, let alone his ex-wife's younger sister. But when Calliope Andrews hires him to build an addition onto her day care center, Wyatt can't help but notice she's a desirable woman, as warm and funny as his ex was cold and aloof.

Calliope fell hard for Wyatt the first time he walked through the door of her family's home, and can't believe her sister let him get away. He's still the star of all her fantasies, and she's determined to prove to him she's nothing like his manipulative ex. Wyatt may be all business, but Calliope sees the way he looks at her when he's supposed to be working...

It's not long before Wyatt and Calliope are keeping each other warm on cold December nights. But it's going to take a Christmas miracle for Wyatt to put his trust in love a second time.

Get the free ebook from from Carina Press.

Today's Deals

If you managed to get Joseph Delaney's The Last Apprentice series ordered for free this past June, be sure to check your Kindle library if you've swapped Kindles since then. the pre-order would have been delivered yesterday to the Kindle used for the order, but if you have a new device (due to a new order or a replacement/swap), you might not know that all but one of these was finally released yesterday! That still leaves four titles to pick up, if you are wanting to complete the series (all currently $9.99):

• Rage of the Fallen
• The Spook's Bestiary: The Guide to Creatures of the Dark
• Spook's: I Am Grimalkin
• Grimalkin, the Witch Assassin (pre-order)

For those who purchase EPUBs from Kobo, be sure to check out their Play the Puzzle contest. You put together a simple jigsaw and get either a (unique) one-time use coupon (10% to 35% off one book) or could win a Kobo Touch reader. You can play each day, thru Christmas.

Additional formats on free books:

• Long Time Coming (Kindle/nook/EPUB)
• Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise (Kindle/nook/EPUB)
• A Simple Amish Christmas (Kindle/nook/EPUB)
• Preparing CEOs For Success (Kindle/nook)

Be sure to check out today's free Android App, Wordoku!

Book Description
Love word games? Discover a new obsession with Wordoku, the addicting Sudoku/Crossword crossover game. You'll get hooked in a minute, but play for hours and hours. This full version includes thousands of unique puzzles and words for unending puzzle fun.

Want a new twist on the classic Sudoku puzzle? Light up new regions of your brain by playing with letters instead of numbers. Whether you're a Sudoku expert or novice, you'll pick up Wordoku's rules in a second.

Each unique Wordoku puzzle consists of nine letters that must appear only once in each 3x3 grid, once on each row, and once on each column of the puzzle. A hidden word is located on one of the nine horizontal lines. Find the hidden word and you're done! Or keep going, complete the entire puzzle, and satisfy your inner Type-A.

Once you've got your Wordoku-legs, up the ante and adjust the difficulty level. Choose from three settings, and see if you're up to the challenge.

Play on your ride to work, during a boring lecture, or anytime you need to kill time. The Wordoku app is up to the challenge, with over 3000 puzzles. Pick up the Wordoku app, and you'll never be bored again.

An American Tragedy ($1.99), by Theodore Dreiser, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day. This book was adapted to film under the title A Place in the Sun.

Book Description
Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) is nothing less than what it purports to be -- the harrowing story of a weak-willed young man who destroys himself, a villain who is also victim of the values of a deceptive, materialistic society. Dreiser patterned the story of Clyde Griffiths on a real-life murder that took place in 1906, a charming young social climber who killed his pregnant young girlfriend in order to romance a rich girl who had begun to notice him. A powerful murder story, An American Tragedy is much more than that. For Dreiser pours his own dark yearnings into the character of Clyde Griffiths, while grimly charting the young man's pitiful rise and fall as he pursues empty ambitions to wealth, power and satisfaction. The Indiana-born novelist Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) has never been a dashing or romantic figure in American literature, and he has no Pulitzer or Nobel Prize to signal his importance. His big, rugged novels were shocking in their day -- unapologetic in their sexual candor, antagonistic to the norms of conventional morality and organized religion, often banned or suppressed -- and challenging still to readers. Yet the brooding force of his writing casts a deep shadow across modern American letters. At his best, in An American Tragedy, Dreiser examines the flip side of The American Dream in a gathering storm of a story that develops with a power echoing Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment. Inspired by the novels of Balzac and the ideas of Spenser and Freud, Dreiser became one of America's greatest naturalist writers, and An American Tragedy retains its rocky intensity and its devastating view of American longing almost a century later.

The First Assassin ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by John J. Miller, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $7.99, but is in the Kindle Lending Library).

Book Description
Winter 1861: the United States teeters on the brink of civil war. In Washington, D.C., Colonel Charles P. Rook is tapped to organize the district’s security and to protect president-elect Abraham Lincoln from the death threats pouring in to the White House. He surrounds the president with bodyguards and fills the city’s rooftops with sharpshooters, diligently investigating the conspiracies being fomented with increasing intensity by Southern secessionists. Yet amidst the chaos and confusion, a foreigner slips unnoticed into the teeming city. Hired by a wealthy Southern planter to eliminate President Lincoln and destroy the Union once and for all, the assassin catches Rook’s attention by cutting down anyone who gets in his way. As the bodies begin to pile up, Rook realizes he is caught in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a cold-blooded killer who will stop at nothing to complete his mission. Rook’s only hope is Portia, a runaway slave who holds the key to the assassin’s identity—if she can stay alive long enough to deliver it. Packed with dynamic characters, rich period detail, and a chillingly sinister villain, The First Assassin is a riveting thriller for fans of historical fiction.

Jesus Calling Devotional Bible, NKJV ($7.98 Kindle, B&N), edited by Sarah Young, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. That might seem a little high, but this is a 1700 page (in print) devotional, with over 260 scenarios and hundreds of highlighted passages. List price is $40.

Book Description
The Jesus Calling Devotional Bible puts readers in touch with God and His answers for their life situations. Missionary Sarah Young had been journaling her prayers for years when she began "listening" for what Jesus was saying to her within the words of Scripture. In this Bible, 260 scenarios pose life struggles to which Sarah Young gives answers from her Savior-words that Jesus has lovingly laid on her heart-words that have comforted and inspired Sarah and many others around the world.

Free Book (noDRM) - Taken by the Cowboy

Taken by the Cowboy ($4.79 Kindle), a time travel romance by Julianne MacLean, is free over at AllRomance.

Book Description
HERO AND PROTECTOR
Former bounty hunter, expert gunslinger, and the toughest sheriff Dodge City has ever known, Truman Wade is a real man from the tip of his black Stetson right down to his spurs and leather boots. He’s never met his match in a gunfight, but he’s never met a gorgeous, gutsy woman from the twenty-first century either…

TORN BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
Newly single after a rocky breakup with her self-absorbed fiancé, newspaper columnist Jessica Delaney crashes her car in a lightning storm and soon finds herself dodging bullets in the Wild West. Before the night is out, she’s tossed in jail for a murder she didn’t commit, and if things don’t seem complicated enough, the impossibly handsome sheriff in charge of her arrest has danger written all over him - and a sexy swagger to die for. Jessica knows she needs to get home, but when Sheriff Wade’s enticing touch sets her passions on fire, she begins to wonder if fate has other plans for her, and soon she must choose between the life she longs for in the future… and the greatest love she’s ever known.

Get the free ebook from AllRomance. It's DRM-free, so you can download the Mobi edition for your Kindle. If you want more than one format, just repurchase, as downloading locks in a format.

Today's Deals

Barnes & Noble has finally enabled gifting of ebooks and nook apps on their website (they had this sort of working a couple of weeks ago, but you had to know the ISBN and go to a store and have the store clerk send the ebook gift ... way too complicated and prone to error, not to mention requiring driving to a store, which isn't always that easy for everyone). On all non-pre-order ebooks, there is now a small line with a gift box icon that reads Buy As Gift. In addition to pre-orders, you can't gift a free ebook (both restrictions are the same as at Amazon).

I tested this out on a low-cost (99 cent) book (in case I was stuck paying for it) and you are prompted to enter details for the recipient, but I didn't see any way to specify WHEN you want the ebook delivered, so if you want a Christmas surprise, you'll need to stay up late on Christmas Eve. You'll want to be very sure the recipient has a nookColor or nookTablet if you gift a nook App, but being able to send someone an app puts B&N one step ahead of Amazon (who should be able to add this fairly easily, since they already allow gifting of music and Kindle books). For convenience, though, sending a delayed delivery gift of an ebook via Amazon is definitely the way to go.

I just checked today's 10 cent Android apps and none of them have been marked down yet at Amazon (last night, all of the ones on both platforms were marked down, so I wonder if it is only in reaction to being reported by large numbers that they drop at Amazon)? Anyway, there are several interesting games, including DEER HUNTER 3D ($4.99 Amazon) on today's list, including a Swype replacement, a PDF reader, a toddler zoo game and several games for all ages in today's lineup (of eleven, not just 10). I'll report a few of them myself and check the list again later tonight to see if any dropped at Amazon, as I prefer to get them there, so they'll work on the Kindle Fire in addition to my phone and tablet.

Update: The apps have started dropping in price! DEER HUNTER 3D is now 10 cents (it wasn't 10 minutes ago), so you should be able to start comparing the list to the ones at Amazon (I have to run out the door in 5 minutes, so won't be able to create a list to click here until later tonight).

Update: These are the apps that are now 10 cents at Amazon:

• SwiftKey X, by TouchType Ltd.
• DEER HUNTER 3D, by Glu Mobile Inc.
• MX Moto, by Camel Games
• ZENONIA, by GAMEVIL, Inc
• Guns'n'Glory, by www.handy-games.com GmbH
• ezPDF Reader, by Unidocs Inc.
• Collapse!, by Real Networks Inc

The Grail Conspiracy ($0.99), the first title in the Cotten Stone series by Lynn Sholes and Joe Moore, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day.

Book Description
Winner of Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Award for Best Mystery

On assignment in the Middle East, television journalist Cotten Stone stumbles upon an archeological dig that uncovers the world's most-sought-after religious relic: the Holy Grail. With his last dying breath, Dr. Gabriel Archer gives it to Cotten, uttering "You are the only one" in a language she's heard from only one other person--her deceased twin sister.

What begins as a hot news story for the ambitious young reporter soon turns into a nightmare when the Holy Grail is stolen and strange "accidents" befall her dearest friends. Running for her life, she turns to John Tyler, a priest with firsthand knowledge of religious artifacts, for help. An anonymous source leads them to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, where an abominable experiment is underway that--unless destroyed--promises to unleash an ancient evil upon the Earth.

Ancestor Stones ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Aminatta Forna, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).

Book Description
Abie follows the arc of a letter from London back to Africa to a coffee plantation that now could be hers if she wants it. Standing among the ruined groves she strains to hear the sound of the past, but the layers of years are too many. Thus begins the gathering of her family's history through the tales of her aunts - four women born to four different wives of a wealthy plantation owner, her grandfather. Asana, Mariama, Hawa and Serah: theirs is the story of a nation, a family and four women's attempts to alter the course of her own destiny.

A Charlie Brown Christmas ($4.99 B&N), by Charles M. Schulz, is the Nook Daily Find; there doesn't seem to be an edition on Kindle and this is a "NOOK Kids Read and Play" edition at B&N, which means it only works NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet.

Book Description
When Charlie Brown sets out to find a Christmas tree to use for the holiday play, he takes a step toward discovering the true meaning of Christmas. His scraggly tree-with some assistance from Linus and his blue blanket-thrives with a little love and makes the message of the season shine through!

This NOOK Kids Read and Play book features narration, animation and interactivity. Kids can choose to hear the story read aloud and play activities on select pages of the book. Animations replay with a simple tap. Plus, kids can tap to enlarge text and pinch & stretch to zoom in on pictures.