Today's Deals

There is a new coupon code at Kobo today, good for 30% off Bell Bridge books: bellbridge30 (exp 7/16; one per customer). Don't forget to play the Trivia Teaser game daily at Kobo for discount coupons and a chance at a Vox ereader/tablet.

Today's free app is a matching game, for those that are looking for a bit of brain exercise. If you are more interested in brain candy, the Angry Birds creators have a new one for us: Amazing Alex, which also comes in a Premium and Kindle Fire edition, which also let you create your own levels. For those who prefer to get them from Google, they also have a similar set of choices (but the Amazon editions work on most other tablets, while the Google apps are a bit harder to move to the Kindle Fire, sometimes), although their HD edition doesn't run on my Asus tablet (but will on my phone, where it is a complete waste).

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Rosemary's Baby ($1.99), by Ira Levin. This is one of the review copies that Open Road has been kind enough to let me have (although I'm pretty sure my purchases have surpassed the freebies, by far).

Book Description
The classic novel of spellbinding suspense, where evil wears the most innocent face of all

Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor husband Guy move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and mostly elderly residents. Neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet soon come nosing around to welcome the Woodhouses to the building, and despite Rosemary’s reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises that she keeps hearing her husband takes a special shine to them.

Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Rosemary becomes pregnant, and the Castavets start taking a special interest in her welfare. As the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castevets’ circle is not what it seems…

At the Sign of the Sugared Plum ($1.53 / £0.99 UK), the first title in the YA series by Mary Hooper, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK. It's $5.39 in the US edition, but some of you probably grabbed in in February, when it was the US Kindle Deal of the Day.. Those in the US can also get a good deal on the next in the series, Petals in the Ashes, currently marked down to $3.99, and on the standalone novel Fallen Grace, currently $1.24 (also on sale for Canada). And for those north of the border, you also get a deal on The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose, on sale for $3.67. Sure seems like Bloomsbury's prices are all over the place in various countries!

And everyone should be able to pick up a free one I turned up looking at the author's catalog: Nelson's Home Comforts Thirteenth Edition, written by an entirely different Mary Hooper in the late 1800's. For those who hate advertising in their books, skip this one, as it was sponsored by Nelson Specialties, purveyors of a number of "processed" foods, such as extracts (vanilla, meat), licorice lozenges, gelatin, etc, although I think one can make a number of the recipes without their particular wares. This was a huge bestseller of the times, with this particular edition having a print run of 500,000 copies.

Book Description
‘You be going to live in the city, Hannah?' Farmer Price asked, pushing his battered hat up over his forehead. ‘Wouldn''t think you'd want to go there . . . Times like this, I would have thought your sister would try and keep you away.' Hannah is oblivious to Farmer Price's dark words, excited as she is about her first ever trip to London to help her sister in her shop ‘The Sugared Plum', making sweetmeats for the gentry. Hannah does not however get the reception she expected from her sister Sarah. Instead of giving Hannah a hearty welcome, Sarah is horrified that Hannah did not get her message to stay away - the Plague is taking hold of London.

Based on much research, Mary Hooper tellingly conveys how the atmosphere in London changes from a disbelief that the Plague is anything serious, to the full-blown horror of the death carts and being locked up - in effect to die - if your house is suspected of infection.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), by Sam Kean, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
The Periodic Table is one of man's crowning scientific achievements. But it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.

We learn that Marie Curie used to provoke jealousy in colleagues' wives when she'd invite them into closets to see her glow-in-the-dark experiments. And that Lewis and Clark swallowed mercury capsules across the country and their campsites are still detectable by the poison in the ground. Why did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? And why did tellurium lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?

From the Big Bang to the end of time, it's all in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON.

The Problem Child ($5.21 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), the third in the Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley, is the Nook Daily Find for Families, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
In book three of the series, Sabrina and Daphne Grimm tackle their most important mystery: Who kidnapped their parents more than a year ago? Sabrina enters the hideout of the Scarlet Hand, the sinister group of Everafters who are keeping her parents prisoner. She has a chance to rescue her mom and dad but is foiled by the most famous fairy-tale character in the world. With the help of her little sister (who might be tougher than Sabrina realizes) and a long-lost relative, Sabrina finds a powerful weapon for fighting her enemies, and discovers that magic has a high price.

Free Book - The Paris Lawyer (DF)

The Paris Lawyer ($7.99 Kindle), by Sylvie Granotier and Anne Trager (Translator), is free from the publisher (via Smashwords) as a Bastille Day celebration, in return for signing up for their newsletter.

Book Description
Winner of the Grand Prix Sang d’Encre crime fiction award in 2011, for the first time in English.

As a child, Catherine Monsigny was the only witness to a heinous crime. Now, she is an ambitious rookie attorney in sophisticated modern-day Paris. On the side, she does pro bono work and hits the jackpot: a major felony case that could boost her career. A black woman is accused of poisoning her rich farmer husband in a peaceful village in central France, where the beautiful, rolling hills hold dark secrets. While preparing the case, Catherine’s own past comes back with a vengeance. This fast- paced story follows Catherine’s determined search for the truth in both her case and her own life. Who can she believe? And can you ever escape from your past? The story twists and turns, combining subtle psychological insight with a detailed sense of place.

Get the free book from Le French Book by clicking the flag icon on the upper right section of the page, signing up for the and confirming the subscription - that will then get you a Smashwords coupon and a link to the book.

Free Drinks at Starbucks Today!

I just stopped by Starbucks and they are giving away Tall Refreshers in Very Berry Hibiscus and Cool Lime from noon to 3PM here (and probably near you). I also found free codes for an iBooks cookbook there - the Tasting Table Cookbook (mine is downloading as I type). So, stop by and tell me what you think of them - they have "green coffee extract" but taste nothing like coffee!

For those that can't get a free code or stop by, you can leave a comment too - I'll draw a few names for the extra codes I picked up for it and a TV episode of Cat in the Hat. Let me know which you'd prefer (or music - I think I have a couple of those left from last week.

Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Welcome to the Monkey House ($1.99), by Kurt Vonnegut. I grabbed this last year when it was on sale (and at twice this price).

Book Description
This short-story collection Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) incorporates almost completely Vonnegut's 1961 "Canary in a Cathouse," which appeared within a few months of Slaughterhouse-Five and capitalized upon that breakthrough novel and the enormous attention it suddenly brought.

Drawn from both specialized science fiction magazines and the big-circulation general magazines (Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, etc.) which Vonnegut had been one of the few science writers to sell, the collection includes some of his most accomplished work. The title story may be his most famous--a diabolical government asserts control through compulsory technology removing orgasm from sex--but Vonnegut's bitterness and wit, not in his earlier work as poisonous or unshielded as it later became, is well demonstrated.

Two early stories from Galaxy science fiction magazine and one from Fantasy & Science Fiction (the famous "Harrison Bergeron") show Vonnegut's careful command of a genre about which he was always ambivalent, stories like "More Stately Mansions" or "The Foster Portfolio" the confines and formula of a popular fiction of which he was always suspicious. Vonnegut's affection for humanity and bewilderment as its corruption are manifest in these early works.

Several of these stories (those which appeared in Collier's) were commissioned by Vonnegut’s Cornell classmate and great supporter Knox Burger, also born in 1922.

The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places ($1.53 / £0.99 UK) and Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination ($1.53 / £0.99 UK). US editions are $12.99 and $13.99; really out of sight, though, is his treatise Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature, which is $60 and published by Oxford University Press, USA (it isn't much less less for those in the UK, at just under $53).

The Wild Places

The Wild Places is both an intellectual and a physical journey, and Macfarlane travels in time as well as space. Guided by monks, questers, scientists, philosophers, poets and artists, both living and dead, he explores our changing ideas of the wild. From the cliffs of Cape Wrath, to the holloways of Dorset, the storm-beaches of Norfolk, the saltmarshes and estuaries of Essex, and the moors of Rannoch and the Pennines, his journeys become the conductors of people and cultures, past and present, who have had intense relationships with these places.Certain birds, animals, trees and objects - snow-hares, falcons, beeches, crows, suns, white stones - recur, and as it progresses this densely patterned book begins to bind tighter and tighter. At once a wonder voyage, an adventure story, an exercise in visionary cartography, and a work of natural history, it is written in a style and a form as unusual as the places with which it is concerned. It also tells the story of a friendship, and of a loss. It mixes history, memory and landscape in a strange and beautiful evocation of wildness and its vital importance.

Mountains of the Mind

Why do so many feel compelled to risk their lives climbing mountains? During the climbing season, one person a day dies in the Alps, and more people die climbing in this season in Scotland than they do on the roads. "Mountains of the Mind" pursues a fascinating investigation into our emotional and imaginative responses to mountains, and how these have changed over the last few centuries. It is rich with literary and historical references, and punctuated by beautifully written descriptions of the author's own climbing experiences. There are chapters on glaciers, geology, the pursuit of fear, the desire to explore the unknown, and the desire to get to the summit, and the book ends with a gripping account of Mallory's attempt on Everest. "Mountains of the Mind" is a beautifully written synthesis of climbing memoir and cultural history.

Charred & Scruffed ($14.71 paperback, $3.99 B&N), by Adam Perry Lang, is the Nook Daily Find, no Kindle edition. This PagePerfect NOOK Book requires a NOOK Color or NOOK Tablet with software version 1.4. or the NOOK Study app (I have it on my desktop in addition to the nook app).

Book Description
New ways to grill from the master

With Charred & Scruffed, bestselling cookbook author and acclaimed chef Adam Perry Lang employs his extensive culinary background to refine and concentrate the flavors and textures of barbecue and reimagine its possibilities.

Adam's new techniques, from roughing up meat and vegetables ("scruffing") to cooking directly on hot coals ("clinching") to constantly turning and moving the meat while cooking ("hot potato"), produce crust formation and layers of flavor, while his board dressings and finishing salts build upon delicious meat juices, and his "fork finishers" - like cranberry, hatch chile, and mango "spackles" - provide an intensely flavorful, concentrated end note.

Meanwhile, side dishes such as Creamed Spinach with Steeped and Smoked Garlic Confit, Scruffed Carbonara Potatoes, and Charred Radicchio with Sweet-and-Sticky Balsamic and Bacon, far from afterthoughts, provide exciting contrast and synergy with the "mains."

A Monster Calls ($9.34 Kindle, $2.99 B&N), by Patrick Ness and Jim Kay (Illustrator), is the Nook Daily Find for Families.

Book Description
At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting— he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd— whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself— Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.

Grade Level: 7 and up

Free Audiobooks - Funny Business & The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

There are two new free audiobook from Sync today. First, I've linked in the info from the ebook or audiobook version of each title (Amazon has the best reviews), followed by the link to get your copies free, with directions to ensure you get the complete download.

The first free audiobook is Guys Read: Funny Business ($5.99 Kindle; $16.95 Audible), by Jon Scieszka (editor), narrated by Michael Boatman, Kate DiCamillo, John Keating, Jon Scieszka, Bronson Pinchot.

Book Description
It’s here: Volume One of the official Guys Read Library. Jon Scieszka’s Guys Read initiative was founded on a simple premise: that young guys enjoy reading most when they have reading they can enjoy. And out of this comes a series that aims to give them just that. Ten books, arranged by theme, featuring the best of the best where writing for kids is concerned. Each book is a collection of original short stories, but these aren’t your typical anthologies—each book is edgy, inventive, visual, and one-of-a-kind, featuring a different theme for guys to get excited about.

Funny Business is based around the theme of—what else?—humor, and if you’re familiar with Jon and Guys Read, you already know what you’re in store for: ten hilarious stories from some of the funniest writers around. Before you’re through, you’ll meet a teenage mummy; a kid desperate to take a dip in the world’s largest pool of chocolate milk; a homicidal turkey; parents who hand over their son’s room to a biker; the only kid in his middle school who hasn’t turned into a vampire, wizard, or superhero; and more. And the contributor list includes bestselling author, award winners, and fresh new talent alike: Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo (writing with Jon Scieszka), Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Adam Rex, and David Yoo.

Guys Read is all about turning young readers into lifelong ones—and with this book, and each subsequent installment in the series, we aim to leave no guy unturned.

The unabridged edition of The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County ($14.95 Audible), by Mark Twain, narrated by Norman Dietz, is the second selection for this week. There are several Kindle editions, ranging from 95 cents and up, which feature one or more of the included stories, for those that like to read along with the audio. I did find a free version of at least the main story over on Feedbooks (although I haven't checked the formatting).

Book Description
Originally published in 1865, "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" began Mark Twain's remarkable career, and immediately demonstrated his masterful storytelling and brilliant sense of humor. This delightful tale introduces Jim Smiley, a man who loved to gamble, whether on horse races, dogfights, catfights, or even how long it took bugs to cross the Mexican border. When a gullible stranger came to town, Smiley boasted that his pet frog, Dan'l Webster, could outjump any frog in the county. Smiley, figuring it would be easy money, eagerly made a bet with the stranger, who had a secret plan to stop Dan'l in his tracks. This wickedly funny collection also includes several of Twain's other great short stories, including "A True Story," "Extracts from Adam's Diary," and "The Private History of a Campaign that Failed."

Click HERE to get the free downloads (you'll need to enter your name and an email address. You'll end up clicking about three pages (for each book), before the audiobook actually downloads. Don't stop so long as you still see a button that talks about your Sync download (or until you see the Overdrive software open up; there is a link at Sync, if you don't already have Overdrive installed).

Once in Overdrive, you'll need to tell it where to save the files (just click OK to use the default location, since Overdrive will keep track of them for you), then again to actually start the download (by default, all parts of the book are downloaded; I would suggest not changing this in the last dialog box, just click on OK to get the download started). Make sure your audiobook is fully downloaded before the end of the week, as once the promo period is over, you won't be able to get them free.

You can't get any titles that have been missed, but once they are loaded into Overdrive (which you will need to install, if you are not already using it for library books), they are yours to keep (there is no expiration date). Two new titles each Thursday!