Free Book - Just Use This Mind (K)

Just Use This Mind: Follow the Universal Truth to Oneness of Mind, Body and Spirit, by Master Miao Tsan and Jay Gao (Translator), is free in the Kindle store, courtesy of Bright Sky Press (best known, perhaps, for their books on gardening in TX and various other books by and for Texans).

Book Description
Zen training brings us back home to a place of deeper meaning. In this eternal home, mind and matter are one. Here is a spiritual home that isn’t about temples or traditions. It’s a place in your own pure mind where you become the master of your own thoughts. When you learn to follow the path of Zen with diligence and right understanding, you can break though old patterns in your life and become enlightened—at peace in your body, your mind, and your spirit. Once you have a clear understanding of the Zen path, all you have to do is begin following it. As you devote yourself to your practice, you’ll feel old burdens—old negative attachments—fall away. And when you awaken to the Way, you’ll understand that nothing surpasses the mind. The mind is all existence; it is the entire universe. Nothing happens outside the mind, and outside of what happens there is no mind.

About the Author
Master Jian Liao, the abbot of Vairocana Zen Monastery in Garden Grove, California, has conducted hundreds of meditation courses as well as several Zen-Seven and Zen-Three retreats in the United States, Mexico, and Taiwan. He lectures extensively and has given meditation courses and interviews at the University of Texas, the Texas Medical Center, Purdue University, and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. He has a large, devoted following in both Asia and the West. In Just Use This Mind, he shares the essence of the collected wisdom of Zen masters reaching back to the original Buddha. Once you embark on the path he puts forth here, you have found the way to live the life of joy you were born to experience, no matter what your circumstances currently are.

Today's Deals

Today is the last day for the 20% off coupons (on sidebar) for KoboBooks; for those shopping at Fictionwise, you can still use coupon code 020312 for 30% off all but Samhain titles.

Prisoners in the Palace: How Princess Victoria became Queen with the Help of Her Maid, a Reporter, and a Scoundrel ($1.99), by Michaela MacColl, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day.

Book Description
YA (12 and up) debut novel set in Victorian England and based on newfound knowledge of the childhood and adolescence of Queen Victoria.

London, 1838. Sixteen-year-old Liza's dreams of her society debut are dashed when her parents are killed in an accident. Penniless, she accepts the position of lady's maid to young Princess Victoria and steps unwittingly into the gossipy intrigue of the servant's world below-stairs as well as the trickery above. Is it possible that her changing circumstances may offer Liza the chance to determine her own fate, find true love, and secure the throne for her future queen?

Meticulously based on newly discovered information, this riveting novel is as rich in historical detail as Catherine, Called Birdy, and as sizzling with intrigue as The Luxe.

Let Us Build Us a City: Eleven Lost Towns ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), by Donald Harington, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $7.99, but is KLL Lending eligible).

Book Description
This work brilliantly fuses travel narrative with history and cultural studies—yet reads like a novel. It’s also a love story that is in no way fictional. A fan letter to the author from a woman named Kim starts a correspondence which details research she’s conducting in one-horse towns throughout Arkansas.

In the years of rural decline many of these towns dwindled to church, post office, general store, gas station, and a few rundown houses—but every house has a porch, every porch a rocker, and every rocker an old man or woman with a story.

Kim and Don agree to collaborate on a book—this one—creating a unique and enchanting work about towns that will never again be their old selves and towns that never fulfilled the brave dreams of their founders. And at the end of the adventure the author and Kim meet, having learned something of expectation and hope—and love. With photos and maps.

Gossip Girl ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), the first in the popular YA series by Cecily von Ziegesar, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Welcome to New York City's Upper East Side, where my friends and I live, go to school, play, and sleep--sometimes with each other.

S is back from boarding school, and if we aren't careful, she's going to win over our teachers, wear that dress we couldn't fit into, steal our boyfriends' hearts, and basically ruin our lives in a major way. I'll be watching closely...

You know you love me,
gossip girl

A different sort of list of free books today.... The books below are all listed on the Amazon Limited Time Offers list, which implies that it is Amazon, in conjunction with the "publisher" (often the author, from what it looks like, or a micro-press), who has made the books free. This isn't the same method used for the KDP free books (the usual route used by indie/backlist authors and small presses). I'm not sure if any are especially worth reading and the last ones on the list are from a strange "franchise" home bookstore concept company, In10city Pte Ltd in Singapore, with an author of "33.3 IM Readio”, which they describe as "the first ever radio on print."

1. Never Yours, by Connie Smith
2. The Gang That Shot Up Hollywood: Chronicles of a Chronicle Writer: Vol. 1, by John Stanley
3. Teach Anyone to Read: A No-Nonsense Guide, by Lillie Pope
4. The Obesity Cure: Weight Control, Metabolic Health, Revitalized Youth With Power Amino Acids, by George Scheele
5. Do You See What I See?, by James Sallie
6. The Road Trip: Sidecar Adventures With God, by Jo Lynn Crozier
7. Smokers or Non-smokers: Who owns the World?, by 33.3 IM READIO
8. Arranged Marriage, by 33.3 IM READIO
9. Troubled Parenting, by 33.3 IM READIO
10. Wisdom & Withering, by 33.3 IM READIO

9 Free Books for Australians (K)

HarperCollins has made another nine books free for Australian Kindle customers only, through several of their imprints. These are likely to be pricing errors, so could go up at any time.

Here's the list of newly free titles:

1. Florence and Giles and The Turn of the Screw, by John Harding
2. Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege, by Bernard Cornwell (pre-order)
3. It's All Their Fault, by Neil Boorman
4. Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, by Tracy Quan
5. Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, by Tracy Quan
6. Harper Perennial Forbidden Classics - Venus in India, by Charles Devereaux
7. Harper Perennial Forbidden Classics - Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
8. Harper Perennial Forbidden Classics - Venus in Furs, by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
9. The Snake in 2013: Your Chinese Horoscope, by Neil Somerville (pre-order)

Free Book - Candy Cookbook (K/N/E/I)

Update: 2/7/12 Now free from Barnes & Noble, iTunes and Sony.

Candy Cookbook, by Gooseberry Patch, is free in the Kindle store.

Book Description
Get a taste of Gooseberry Patch in this collection of over 20 favorite candy recipes! In Gooseberry Patch Candy we've gathered some of our best-loved candy recipes like Chocolate Fantasy fudge, Nutty Maple Candy, Hard Tack and Grandma Weiser's English Toffee. We've even included Lollipops and Popcorn Balls so you can treat the kids. Quick & easy temperature chart for delicious results every time! Also, ideas for sweetly wrapping up candy gifts, too!

Get the free ebook from Barnes & Noble.
Get the free ebook from iTunes.
Get the free ebook from Sony.

Free Book - It Takes a Genome (K/N)

Update: 2/11/12 Now free from Barnes & Noble.

It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life is Making Us Sick, by Greg Gibson, is a repeat freebie in the Kindle store.

Book Description
Human beings have astonishing genetic vulnerabilities. More than half of us will die from complex diseases that trace directly to those vulnerabilities, and the modern world we’ve created places us at unprecedented risk from them. In It Takes a Genome, Greg Gibson posits a revolutionary new hypothesis: Our genome is out of equilibrium, both with itself and its environment. Simply put, our genes aren’t coping well with modern culture. Our bodies were never designed to subsist on fat and sugary foods; our immune systems weren’t designed for today’s clean, bland environments; our minds weren’t designed to process hard-edged, artificial electronic inputs from dawn ‘til midnight. And that’s why so many of us suffer from chronic diseases that barely touched our ancestors.

Gibson begins by revealing the stunningly complex ways in which multiple genes cooperate and interact to shape our bodies and influence our behaviors. Then, drawing on the very latest science, he explains the genetic “mismatches” that increasingly lead to cancer, diabetes, inflammatory and infectious diseases, AIDS, depression, and senility. He concludes with a look at the probable genetic variations in human psychology, sharing the evidence that traits like introversion and agreeableness ...

Get the free ebook from Barnes & Noble.