When I stopped into Starbucks on Valentine's Day, they were giving out cards for free copies of Quick & Easy Recipes 1-2-3 ($3.99 iBooks), by Rozanne Gold, an iBooks exclusive series sponsored by the site Cookstr.com, a "by-chef" recipe site (which, strangely enough, doesn't actually seem to have any of her recipes on their site). I grabbed a couple of extra copies for family, but seem to have one left over - so, one lucky commenter on this post will get the code (scanned photo, via email). You'll need an iThing of some type (one compatible with iBooks) and likely will need to use a US based iTunes account to get the code to work, so keep that in mind before leaving a comment. If you don't win, you can still get a 5-recipe sample of the book, Taste Test 1-2-3, for free from iTunes.I also have a spare code for Dora’s Skywriting ABC’s, a preschool learning game by Nickelodeon. If you'd like that one, leave a comment, as well. There were still plenty of codes for this one in several stores I checked over the last few days, so you might find it at your local Starbucks, too (the recipe book disappeared fast, though).
The Borrowers ($1.59 Kindle; $1.99 B&N), by Mary Norton and illustrators Beth Krush and Joe Krush, is the first of five titles for the series available as ebooks (and the others are $4.49 on Kindle). Although some people confuse Andre Norton (Alice Mary Norton) with this author, they are, in fact, entirely distinct women (both now deceased).Book Description
Pod, Homily, and Arrietty Clock's huge adventures have been thrilling children young and old for fifty years--and their appeal is as strong as ever in these handsome new paperback packages. While the original beloved interior illustrations by Beth and Joe Krush have been retained, Marla Frazee's striking cover illustrations capture these little people with a larger-than-life appeal.
There are several good deals on Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen series right now, the best of which is a mislabeled omnibus, the Apple Turnover Murder Bundle, which contains four novels for $5.24 (Kindle; $10.91 B&N). Ignore the title shown on the page (which, unfortunately, will also show on your Kindle), as this contains Lemon Meringue Pie Murder (#4), Cherry Cheesecake Murder (#8), Key Lime Pie Murder (#9), Apple Turnover Murder (#14) and, most likely, an excerpt of Devil's Food Cake Murder (I don't see it in the TOC, but it was in the bundle description at one time). You can fill in most of the missing titles for $3-$4, including another bundle Christmas Bundle: Sugar Cookie Murder, Candy Cane Murder, Plum Pudding Murder, & Gingerbread Cookie Murder, of four titles for $9.99; Devil's Food Cake Murder is now down to $5.59 and the next in the series, Cinnamon Roll Murder, can now be pre-ordered for delivery at the end of the month. I see there is also now a cookbook, Joanne Fluke's Lake Eden Cookbook, which includes such intriguing recipes as Norwegian Pizza and Kiss My Grits Cookies, along with all the recipes in the first 10 books.Book Description
Apple Turnover Murder
Early summer brings plenty of work for baker Hannah Swensen, even before Mayor Bascomb's wife drops by The Cookie Jar to place an order for her charity event...for eleven-hundred cookies! And Hannah almost flips when her business partner, Lisa, suggests setting up an apple turnover stand. But she places her faith in Lisa and agrees to be a magician's assistant in the fundraiser's talent show...
The only snag is the show's host, college professor Bradford Ramsey. Hannah and her sister, Michelle, each had unfortunate romances with Ramsey, and when the cad comes sniffing around between acts, Hannah tells him off. But when the curtain doesn't go up, she discovers Ramsey backstage--dead, with a turnover in his hand. Now Hannah must find a killer who's flakier than puff pastry--and far more dangerous...
Includes Over Ten Cookie and Dessert Recipes From The Cookie Jar, Including Chocolate Sugar Cookies and Breakfast in a Muffin!
Key Lime Pie Murder
It promises to be a busy week for Hannah Swensen. Not only is she whipping up treats for the chamber of commerce booth at the Tri-County fair, she's also judging the baking contest; acting as a magician's assistant for her business partner's husband; trying to coax Moishe, her previously rapacious feline, to end his hunger strike, and performing her own private carnival act by juggling the demands of her mother and sisters.
With so much on her plate, it's no wonder Hannah finds herself on the midway only moments before the fair closes for the night. After hearing a suspicious thump, she goes snooping–only to discover Willa Sunquist, a student teacher and fellow bake contest judge, dead alongside an upended key lime pie. But who would want to kill Willa and why?
Now Hannah needs to crank up the heat, hoping that Willa's killer will get rattled and make a mistake. If that happens she intends to be there, even if it means getting on a carnival ride that could very well be her last. . .
Cherry Cheesecake Murder
Hannah Swensen and her bakery, The Cookie Jar, bask in the glow of Hollywood glamour when Main Street becomes a movie set. And although tensions simmer as the cameras roll, no one expects the action to turn deadly. . .until it's too late. . .
There's no such thing as privacy in Lake Eden, but Hannah never thought things would go this far. Everyone has been telling her what to do ever since she got not one but two marriage proposals. Movie mania soon shoves Hannah's marriage dilemma into the background and even gives her cat a shot at stardom. The Cookie Jar serves as snack central with Main Street rented out for the week. She stirs lots of fresh gossip, whipping up treats for cast and crew, including demanding director Dean Lawrence's favorite--cherry cheesecake.
Everything's on schedule until Dean demonstrates a suicide scene with a prop gun that turns out to be all too real. As filming continues, Hannah sifts through the clues, hoping against hope that the person responsible for Dean's death is half-baked enough to have made a mistake. When it happens, Hannah intends be there--ready to rewrite a killer's lethal script with the kind of quirky ending that can only happen in Lake Eden. . .
Includes Ten Original Dessert Recipes For You To Try.
Lemon Meringue Pie Murder
Hannah Swensen thought she'd finally discovered the recipe for a perfect life. But her sometime beau Norman Rhodes tosses a surprise ingredient into the mix when he phones to tell her he's just bought a house from local drugstore clerk Rhonda Scharf--which he plans to tear down in order to build the dream home he and Hannah designed. It seems the plan has been cooking for quite some time, and Hannah's shocked. Especially since her ring finger is still very much bare. . .
The good news is that the soon-to-be-torn-down house is full of antiques--and Norman has given Hannah and her mother first dibs. They uncover some gorgeous old furniture, a patchwork quilt. . .and Rhonda Scharf's dead body. A little more sleuthing turns up the half-eaten remains of a very special dinner for two--and one of The Cookie Jar's famous lemon meringue pies. Now it's up to Hannah to turn up the heat--and get busy tracking down clues. Starting in her very own kitchen. . .
Includes nine original cookie and dessert recipes for you to try!
So, what about the bundle whose name is displayed on the one above? It does actually exists and you can get the Debbie Mazzuca Bundle: Lord of the Isles, Warrior of the Isles & King of the Isles for $9.39 (still a good price per novel, even if not quite as good a deal as the ones above), which saves you a few dollars vs. buying them individually. This one is also somewhat mis-marked, with the wrong author shown (and not even a correctly spelled name, at that).Lord of The Isles
After traveling to Scotland on business, the bed of a highland laird is the last place Ali Graham expected to wake up. But there's no mistaking the irresistibly masculine Scottish Highlander whose chamber she's accidentally infiltrated--or the severe wound he's suffered in battle. As a doctor, Ali knows how to heal his injury, how to nurse his body back to health. What she doesn't know is how to heal his heart. . .
A proud warrior and the leader of a powerful clan, Rory MacLeod is ready to fight to the death to protect his homeland. After all, ever since tragedy robbed him of his wife, he has had nothing to lose. Yet the mysterious woman sent to tend his wounds is beginning to reawaken something inside him--something that he'd rather stay buried. But when true passion is mixed with Scottish magic, even the most fearsome warrior could begin to fall. . .
Warrior of the Isles
Bound By Duty
In a time of raids and ransoms, Aidan MacLeod is responsible for a formidable Scottish keep and all the people within. Yet the fearless Highland laird never forgets his charge to shield his young half-brother from the grave consequences of his tragic birth.
Linked By Fate
But an alluring stranger known only as Syrena could undo all of Aidan's defenses. For Syrena has vowed to bring Aidan's brother to a realm far from the Scotland of their understanding. To succeed, she is at Aidan's mercy.
Divided By Desire
Ignoring his attraction to the beautiful Syrena is pointless. But if Aidan lets himself trust the enchanting woman who has so quickly captured his heart, he'll be forced to risk everything he has sworn to protect. . .
King of The Isles
She'll find him a bride if it's the last thing she does.
And it very well might be. Evangeline may be powerfully persuasive in her way, but convincing the notoriously wild Highland king Lachlan MacLeod to strengthen his alliances with a strategic marriage seems to be asking the impossible. Stubborn and proud, Lachlan seems determined to go against her will, even if it means endangering the people he's sworn to protect and the enchanted isle that has already seen so much discord.
Yet the battle-scarred Highlander cannot ignore his sultry advisor for long. When his mentor is kidnapped, forcing him to ride into combat alongside the beautiful Evangeline, he must choose between her safety and his own independence. It's a choice he makes in an instant. . .but once wed to the woman he could not resist, he'll soon find that his heart is in even greater danger than his kingdom. . .
Patron Saint of Liars ($2.99), by Ann PatchettBook Description
Since her first publication in 1992, celebrated novelist Ann Patchett has crafted a number of elegant novels, garnering accolades and awards along the way. Now comes a beautiful reissue of the best-selling debut novel that launched her remarkable career.
St. Elizabeth's, a home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky, usually harbors its residents for only a little while. Not so Rose Clinton, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed, and stays. She plans to give up her child, thinking she cannot be the mother it needs. But when Cecilia is born, Rose makes a place for herself and her daughter amid St. Elizabeth's extended family of nuns and an ever-changing collection of pregnant teenage girls. Rose's past won't be kept away, though, even by St. Elizabeth's; she cannot remain untouched by what she has left behind, even as she cannot change who she has become in the leaving.
Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America ($3.03), by Jack RakoveBook Description
In the early 1770s, the men who invented America were living quiet, provincial lives in the rustic backwaters of the New World, devoted primarily to family, craft, and the private pursuit of wealth and happiness. None set out to become "revolutionary" by ambition, but when events in Boston escalated, they found themselves thrust into a crisis that moved, in a matter of months, from protest to war.
In this remarkable book, the historian Jack Rakove shows how the private lives of these men were suddenly transformed into public careers--how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a pioneering cultural diplomat, Madison a sophisticated constitutional thinker, and Hamilton a brilliant policymaker. Rakove shakes off accepted notions of these men as godlike visionaries, focusing instead on the evolution of their ideas and the crystallizing of their purpose. In Revolutionaries, we see the founders before they were fully formed leaders, as individuals whose lives were radically altered by the explosive events of the mid-1770s. They were ordinary men who became extraordinary--a transformation that finally has the literary treatment it deserves.
Spanning the two crucial decades of the country's birth, from 1773 to 1792, Revolutionaries uses little-known stories of these famous (and not so famous) men to capture--in a way no single biography ever could--the intensely creative period of the republic's founding. From the Boston Tea Party to the First Continental Congress, from Trenton to Valley Forge, from the ratification of the Constitution to the disputes that led to our two-party system, Rakove explores the competing views of politics, war, diplomacy, and society that shaped our nation.
Thoughtful, clear-minded, and persuasive, Revolutionaries is a majestic blend of narrative and intellectual history, one of those rare books that makes us think afresh about how the country came to be, and why the idea of America endures.
The Founding Fathers Reconsidered ($1.99), by R. B. Bernstein, is an Oxford University Press publication.Book Description
Here is a vividly written and compact overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and clergy known as the "Founding Fathers"--who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic "philosopher-kings" as American or world history has ever seen.
In The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, R. B. Bernstein reveals Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the other founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human beings--people much like us--who nevertheless achieved political greatness. They emerge here as men who sought to transcend their intellectual world even as they were bound by its limits, men who strove to lead the new nation even as they had to defer to the great body of the people and learn with them the possibilities and limitations of politics. Bernstein deftly traces the dynamic forces that molded these men and their contemporaries as British colonists in North America and as intellectual citizens of the Atlantic civilization's Age of Enlightenment. He analyzes the American Revolution, the framing and adoption of state and federal constitutions, and the key concepts and problems--among them independence, federalism, equality, slavery, and the separation of church and state--that both shaped and circumscribed the founders' achievements as the United States sought its place in the world.
The Alcoholic Republic : An American Tradition ($1.99), by W.J. Rorabaugh, is an interesting looking title that is also from Oxford University Press.Book Description
... a well thought out and intriguing social history of America's great alcoholic binge that occurred between 1790 and 1830, ... 'a key formative period' in our history.... A pioneering work that illuminates a part of our heritage that can no longer be neglected in future studies of America's social fabric.
A bold and frequently illuminating attempt to investigate the relationship of a single social custom to the central features of our historical experience.... A book which always asks interesting questions and provides many provocative answers.
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town ($3.79), by Nick RedingBook Description
Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland is the story of the drug as it infiltrates the community of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), a once-thriving farming and railroad community. Tracing the connections between the lives touched by meth and the global forces that have set the stage for the epidemic, Methland offers a vital and unique perspective on a pressing contemporary tragedy.
Oelwein, Iowa is like thousand of other small towns across the county. It has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy and an out-migration of people. If this wasn’t enough to deal with, an incredibly cheap, long-lasting, and highly addictive drug has come to town, touching virtually everyone’s lives. Journalist Nick Reding reported this story over a period of four years, and he brings us into the heart of the town through an ensemble cast of intimately drawn characters, including: Clay Hallburg, the town doctor, who fights meth even as he struggles with his own alcoholism; Nathan Lein, the town prosecutor, whose case load is filled almost exclusively with meth-related crime, and Jeff Rohrick, who is still trying to kick a meth habit after four years.
Methland is a portrait of a community under siege, of the lives the drug has devastated, and of the heroes who continue to fight the war. It will appeal to readers of David Sheff’s bestselling Beautiful Boy, and serve as inspiration for those who believe in the power of everyday people to change their world for the better.
At 95 cents, the Oxford University Press edition of Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, 1789-1794, by William Blake with an introduction by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, may be worth taking a look. I couldn't tell from the sample if a scanned page is presented with each commentary page (although I did see one early scanned page), but you can assume that the pages are not tinted to match the original, as was done for the paper edition.Book Description
The text of each poem is given in letterpress on the page facing the color plate, and a brief commentary by Sir Geoffrey Keynes on each poem follows. It is printed on paper especially manufactured to match the tint of that used by Blake.
Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present ($2.16), by Hank Stuever, is one of those "discounted after the season" books, where the hardcover price is driving down the (non-Agency) ebook price, as well (at least, at Amazon; B&N seldom does this with their bargain books).Book Description
A heartfelt, hilarious look at the evolution of a half-trillion-dollar American holiday...
Hank Stuever turns his unerring eye for the idiosyncrasies of modern life to Frisco, Texas, a suburb at once all-American and completely itself, to tell the story of the nation’s most over-the-top celebration: Christmas. Stuever starts the narrative as so many start the Christmas season: standing in line with the people waiting to purchase flat-screen TVs on Black Friday. From there he follows three of Frisco's true holiday believers as they navigate through the Nativity and all its attendant crises. Tammie Parnell, an eternally optimistic suburban mom, is the proprietor of "Two Elves with a Twist," a company that decorates other people's big houses for Christmas. Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski own that house every town has: the one with the visible-from-space, jaw-dropping Christmas lights. And single mother Carol Cavazos just hopes that the life-affirming moments of Christmas might overcome the struggles of the rest of the year. Stuever's portraits of the happy, mega-churchy, shop-until-you-drop community in Tinsel are revealing and riotously funny, showing how our ancient rituals of celebration have survived—and succumbed to—the test of time.
The Driving Book: Everything New Drivers Need to Know but Don't Know to Ask ($4.61), by Karen Gravelle and Helen Flook (Illustrator), probably includes all the little things you used to learn back in Driver's Education (that is, back when schools actually taught it and students signed up for it, so they could get their license earlier) or from hanging out with your dad as he washed and waxed the family car every weekend (do people still do this?). If you are planning on letting your kids drive, get them this book; if you are just learning to drive yourself, you probably want the book as well, even if you are older than the young adult audience it is written for (especially if you grew up in a city without a car being a part of your daily existence and now need to drive to get to work and going shopping, after moving to a different city).Book Description
Even after taking Driver's Ed and passing that dreaded road test, there are so many things new drivers need to learn about the practical aspects of driving that will only come from experience.
Handing over the keys is a traumatic rite of passage for parents, and they will sleep better knowing that The Driving Book is in their teens' glove compartments. Covering virtually every scenario a new driver may face, from changing a tire to negotiating privileges with parents to handling a car in bad weather, Karen Gravelle helps teen drivers navigate through tricky new territory-on the road and at home.
Thomas Perry has a trio of bargain titles in the Kindle store: Silence ($1.50), Strip ($2.99) and Dead Aim ($3.96 - Canadians only)Silence
Six years ago, Jack Till helped Wendy Harper disappear. But now her ex-boyfriend and former business partner, Eric Fuller, is being framed for her presumed murder in an effort to smoke her out, and Till must find her before tango-dancing assassins Paul and Sylvie Turner do.
The Turners are merely hired to do a job, though, and prefer to remain anonymous. When they find that a middleman has let the true employer know their identities, finishing the job is no longer enough. Their fee just went up.
Full of masterful plotting and unnerving psychological insight, Silence is a mesmerizing thrill ride.
Strip
An aging but formidable strip club owner, Claudiu “Manco” Kapak, has been robbed by a masked gunman as he placed his cash receipts in a bank’s night-deposit box. Enraged, he sends his half-dozen security men out to find a suspect who is spending lots of cash and is new enough to Los Angeles not to know he was robbing a gangster.
Their search leads them to Joe Carver, an innocent but hardly defenseless newcomer who evades capture and sets out to make Kapak wish he’d chosen someone else. Meanwhile, the real culprit, Jefferson Davis Falkins, and his new girlfriend Carrie seem to believe they’ve found a whole new profession: robbing Manco Kapak.
Lieutenant Nick Slosser, the police detective in charge of the puzzling and increasingly violent case, has his own troubles, including worries about how he’s going to afford to send the oldest child of each of his two bigamous marriages to college without making their mothers suspicious.
As this odd series of difficulties explodes into a triple killing, Carver finds himself in the middle of a brewing gang war over Kapak’s little empire, while Falkins and Carrie journey into territory more strange and violent than either had imagined.
Dead Aim
In this explosive new novel from the Edgar Award–winning author of The Butcher’s Boy, Blood Money, and other novels of “dazzling ingenuity” (The New York Times Book Review), Thomas Perry gives us a thriller even more startling than his most recent bestseller, Pursuit. In Dead Aim, an unsuspecting man tries to help a young woman on the edge, and finds himself drawn into a lethal struggle with a deadly adversary--and then another, and another, and another.
Robert Mallon has lived for ten quiet years in affluent Santa Barbara, California, when an encounter on a beach with a mysterious young woman shatters his peaceful, carefully constructed life. Despite Mallon’s desperate attempts, he loses her, and he becomes obsessed with discovering why. He hires detective Lydia Marks to uncover the secrets of this stranger’s life, and what they learn propels them into a terrifying underworld of sinister secrets and deadly hatreds. Set against Mallon is the master hunter Parish, a man with an expert understanding of evil, who preys on rich people’s desire for dominance and revenge.
Thomas Perry’s writing is “as sharp as a sushi knife,” said the Los Angeles Times about Blood Money, and the same can be said about this new novel by the author hailed as “one of America’s finest storytellers” (San Francisco Examiner). With Dead Aim, Thomas Perry gives us another brilliant novel of spine-tingling suspense.
Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews -- A History ($3.79), by James Carroll, is one of those books you don't want to have to read in paper, weighing in at 780 pages.Book Description
In a bold and moving book that is sure to spark heated debate, the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the profoundly troubling two-thousand-year course of the Church’s battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has provoked in his own life as a Catholic. More than a chronicle of religion, this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture.
The Church’s failure to protest the Holocaust — the infamous “silence” of Pius XII — is only part of the story: the death camps, Carroll shows, are the culmination of a long, entrenched tradition of anti-Judaism. From Gospel accounts of the death of Jesus on the cross, to Constantine’s transformation of the cross into a sword, to the rise of blood libels, scapegoating, and modern anti-Semitism, Carroll reconstructs the dramatic story of the Church’s conflict not only with Jews but with itself. Yet in tracing the arc of this narrative, he implicitly affirms that it did not necessarily have to be so. There were roads not taken, heroes forgotten; new roads can be taken yet. Demanding that the Church finally face this past in full, Carroll calls for a fundamental rethinking of the deepest questions of Christian faith. Only then can Christians, Jews, and all who carry the burden of this history begin to forge a new future.
Drawing on his well-known talents as a storyteller and memoirist, and weaving historical research through an intensely personal examination of conscience, Carroll has created a work of singular power and urgency. CONSTANTINE'S SWORD is a brave and affecting reckoning with difficult truths that will touch every reader.
I have to admit, I haven't played any RPG's lately (although I was a big D&D gamer, way back when, before video games). I'm tempted, though to pick up 
