Today's Deals

It looks like Amazon is giving away a $1 MP3 credit with the purchase of any CD (limit one per customer). That's a pretty good albums on albums such as John Mayer's Born and Raised, which is cheaper than the MP3 version, or you can pre-order The Dark Knight Rises: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack ($10, ships tomorrow and has three tracks not on the MP3 version). You'll have to wait a bit to get the credit (it's added to your account automatically after the CD ships), but you might want to go ahead and get today's MP3 Album deal anyway, since it's Doo-Wops & Hooligans by Bruno Mars for only 99 cents! Then, when you get the credit, you can use it on something like Queen's Greatest Hits ($2.99).

Don't forget to play the Trivia Teaser game daily at Kobo for discount coupons and a chance at a Vox ereader/tablet (ends July 20).

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is the New York Times bestselling novel Damage ($1.99), by Josephine Hart.

Book Description
Damage is the gripping story of a man’s desperate obsession and scandalous love affair. He is a man who appears to have everything: wealth, a beautiful wife and children, and a prestigious political career in Parliament. But his life lacks passion, and his aching emptiness drives him to an all-consuming, and ultimately catastrophic, relationship with his son’s fiancée.

Chilling and brilliant, Damage is a masterpiece—a daring look at the dangers of obsession and the depth of its shattering consequences.

The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is MC Beaton's Regency romance The Six Sisters series for £0.99 ($1.54) apiece. These were originally published under the author's own name, Marion Chesney, rather than the more widely recognized pseudonym used on today's editions. For those in the US, you can get any in the series for $5.69 or borrow them from the Kindle Lending Library.

Minerva (Main/UK)

When the Reverend Charles Armitage, an impecunious country vicar in Regency England, announces that raven-haired Minerva, the eldest of his six daughters, is to have her coming-out in London, the news is not well received by the rest of the family. Mrs. Armitage has one of her Spasms and has to be brought round by burning a quantity of feathers under her nose. Annabelle, the nearest in age to Minerva, is clearly jealous, the boys are all surly, and the other girls just start off crying.

Minerva is despatched to Town under the wing of the disreputable old Lady Godolphin. Her task - to find a rich husband and thereby restore the ailing family fortunes.

The Taming of Annabelle (Main/UK)

From the moment honey-tressed young Annabelle met her sister Minerva's intended, Lord Sylvester, she developed a secret passion for him that obsessed her. Now she was determined to take him away from Minerva - no matter what!

Deirdre and Desire (Main/UK)

Red-haired, jade-eyed Deirdre is determined to marry for Love - nothing else will do. So the fact her father's candidate for her hand, Lord Harry Desire, is well bred and good looking, interests her not a jot!

Daphne (Main/UK)

Black-haired, exquisite Daphne is certain she can avoid the turmoil of true love by demanding nothing more of a husband than to be an elegant companion. But when Mr Simon Garfield agitates Daphne's calm outward manner, the results are dramatic and delightful!

Diana the Huntress (Main/UK)

How can plain Frederica withstand a Season's scrutiny after the five beauties before her have married so magnificently? Yet she had not counted on the Duke of Pembury; whether dressed in her finery or disguised as a chambermaid, that magnificent gentleman wanted her just the same!

Frederica in Fashion (Main/UK)

With her lustrous black hair and enormous dark eyes, Diana is shy of men yet dreams of the freedom they must enjoy. And what of the gypsy, who prophesised a dark stranger, and warned of a fair one? Surprising twists and turns await Diana on the path of true love.

Just Run It! ($10.39 Kindle, $2.99 B&N), by Dick Cross, is the Nook Daily Find.

Book Description
The growth engine of the global economy is no longer through mega-production and huge conglomerates, but rather through the proliferation of smaller enterprises. These smaller businesses often struggle. In America alone, tens of thousands of businesses crop up each year. Unfortunately, few will succeed, though not due to a lack of ingenuity, initiative, or even capital. Why, then? Because so few of the would-be drivers of the new economy know how to convert their dreams, their ideas, their courage, and their initiatives into successful enterprises. According to Dick Cross, author of Just Run It!: Running an Exceptional Business Is Easier Than You Think, most business owners lack not just the fundamentals, the nuts and bolts of operating a business effectively day in and day out, but the bigger picture of how to achieve business success. This shortcoming is pervasive: it handicaps most new businesses from the start and it prevents the lion's share of existing ones from ever becoming significant.

After taking dozens of mainstream companies from underperforming to high performance, Cross observed a pattern, out of which he devised a formula for success. Using his Just Run It! framework, he is now teaching small and medium-sized enterprises how to understand their mainstream businesses on "the back of an envelope" and to achieve the next level of success. The book showcases a Vision-Strategy-Execution exercise to help business owners crystallize their primary business advantage and then focus efforts to maximize performance around it. Financial reporting, management and leadership, teamwork, communicationsall skills needed to run a "one business" business are covered in detail. In closing, Cross makes the case that for "those who can't adjust their thinking to new realities, the decline in America's global standing as an industrial power is a death knell. For those who can, it's the reveille of opportunity."

Moon Mater ($2.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), a Cars Toons title by Disney Book Group, is the Nook Daily Find for Families and requires a NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet or NOOK Kids for iPad; the Kindle edition runs on the Kindle Fire, Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle for iPad and Kindle for Android.

Book Description
Mater is the first tow truck on the moon! When an auto-naut gets stranded on his lunar mission, it's up to Mater to venture into space and tow him back to Earth (with a little help from his friend Lightning McQueen, of course).

In this NOOK Kids Read to Me book, children can choose to hear the story read aloud, tap to enlarge text and pinch & stretch to zoom in on pictures.

Bargain Book Roundup, Part II

For those who enjoy a little classical while they read, be sure to check out these compilations:

• Big Mahler Box ($0.99)
• Big Summer Box ($0.99)
• The Beethoven Piano Sonatas ($1.99)
• 100 Rachmaninoff Piano Favorites ($1.99)
• Big Gustav Leonhardt Box The Bach Guild Recordings 1952-1955 ($2.79)

And now, the rest of the bargain book roundup:

Flowertown ($4.99), by S.G. Redling

Book Description
When Feno Chemical spilled an experimental pesticide in rural Iowa, scores of people died. Those who survived contamination were herded into a US Army medically maintained quarantine and cut off from the world. Dosed with powerful drugs to combat the poison, their bodies give off a sickly sweet smell and the containment zone becomes known simply as Flowertown.

Seven years later, the infrastructure is crumbling, supplies are dwindling, and nobody is getting clean. Ellie Cauley doesn’t care anymore. Despite her paranoid best friend's insistence that conspiracies abound, she focuses on three things: staying high, hooking up with the Army sergeant she's not supposed to be fraternizing with and, most importantly, trying to ignore her ever-simmering rage. But when a series of deadly events rocks the compound, Ellie suspects her friend is right—something dangerous is going down in Flowertown and all signs point to a twisted plan of greed and abuse. She and the other residents of Flowertown have been betrayed by someone with a deadly agenda and their plan is just getting started. Time is running out. With nobody to trust and nowhere to go, Ellie decides to fight with the last weapon she has—her rage.

Flowertown is a high-intensity conspiracy thriller that brings the worst-case scenario vividly to life and will keep readers riveted until the final haunting page.

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War ($4.99), by Karl Marlantes

Book Description
Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.

Written by a highly decorated Marine veteran over the course of thirty years, Matterhorn is a spellbinding and unforgettable novel that brings to life an entire world—both its horrors and its thrills—and seems destined to become a classic of combat literature.

The Immortalists ($4.99), by Kyle Mills

Book Description
Dr. Richard Draman is trying desperately to discover a cure for a disease that causes children to age at a wildly accelerated rate—a rare genetic condition that is killing his own daughter. When the husband of a colleague quietly gives him a copy of the classified work she was doing before her mysterious suicide, Draman finally sees a glimmer of hope. The conclusions are stunning, with the potential to not only turn the field of biology on its head, but reshape the world. Soon, though, he finds himself on the run, relentlessly pursued by a seemingly omnipotent group of men who will do whatever it takes to silence him.

Magic Tree House #1: Dinosaurs Before Dark ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Mary Pope Osborne and Sal Murdocca (Illustrator)

Book Description
Jack and Annie's very first fantasy adventure in the bestselling middle-grade series—the Magic Tree House!

Where did the tree house come from?

Before Jack and Annie can find out, the mysterious tree house whisks them to the prehistoric past. Now they have to figure out how to get home. Can they do it before dark . . . or will they become a dinosaur's dinner?

Grade Level: K and up

Blues Highway Blues ($4.99), by Eyre Price

Book Description
Music mogul Daniel Erickson’s life has come to a perilous crossroads. Literally. He has a ruthless pair of killers on his tail and is chasing a million dollars that he owes a Russian mobster.

Standing along the same Mississippi highway where legend claims that bluesman Robert Johnson traded his immortal soul for matchless command of the guitar, Daniel finds himself on a path that parallels the evolution of American music from the Mississippi Delta to New Orleans and on to Memphis, Nashville, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, the Jersey Shore, New York, and Seattle.

At every stop, Daniel’s tour gets more dangerous with the hit men closing in, an FBI agent obsessed with his capture, and a rogue motorcycle gang hunting him down. Blues Highway Blues, Eyre Price’s debut novel, is a compelling and unique combination: part edge-of-your-seat road trip across America and part examination of the music that comprises its soundtrack.

The Janus Affair ($0.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), the second title in the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series by Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine. Hopefully you grabbed the first in the series, Phoenix Rising, back when it was on sale for the same price.

Book Description
Evildoers beware! Retribution is at hand, thanks to Britain's best-kept secret agents!!

Certainly no strangers to peculiar occurrences, agents Wellington Books and Eliza Braun are nonetheless stunned to observe a fellow passenger aboard Britain's latest hypersteam train suddenly vanish in a dazzling bolt of lightning. They soon discover this is not the only such disappearance . . . with each case going inexplicably unexamined by the Crown.

The fate of England is once again in the hands of an ingenious archivist paired with a beautiful, fearless lady of adventure. And though their foe be fiendishly clever, so then is Mr. Books . . . and Miss Braun still has a number of useful and unusual devices hidden beneath her petticoats.

Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life ($3.99), by Natalie Goldberg

Book Description
An inspirational, practical, and often lighthearted guide on how to find time to write, how to discover your personal style, and how to make sentences come alive

Natalie Goldberg, author of the bestselling Writing Down the Bones, shares her invaluable insight into writing as a source of creative power, and the daily ins and outs of the writer’s task. Topics include balancing mundane responsibilities with a commitment to writing; knowing when to take risks as a writer and a human being; coming to terms with success, failure, and loss; and learning self-acceptance—both in life and art.

Thought-provoking and practical, Wild Mind provides an abundance of suggestions for keeping the writing life vital and active, and includes more than thirty provocative “try this” exercises as jump-starters to get your pen moving.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Natalie Goldberg, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips ($3.79), by James Hilton

Book Description
Hilton’s inspiring short novel about a beloved teacher’s remarkable role in his students’ lives, through decades of triumph and tragedy in Britain

For three generations, through war and peace, prosperity and misfortune, Arthur Chipping’s students at the Brookfield School have called him Mr. Chips. Beginning in his unpolished first years as a new teacher, through the end of the nineteenth century and well into radical changes of the twentieth, Mr. Chips has shaped the lives of the young men in his class. And when Britain is threatened by the outbreak of the First World War, it is Mr. Chips who must lead the school that has already counted on him for so much.

Made into two remarkable films and other retellings on stage and television, Goodbye, Mr. Chips has endured as a revelation of the difference one good teacher can make in countless lives.

Big Mouth & Ugly Girl ($1.99), by Joyce Carol Oates

Book Description
Big Mouth

No I did not. I did not, I did not. I did not say those things, and I did not plan those things. Won't It anyone believe me?

Ugly Girl

All right, Ugly Girl made a mistake. I'd told my mom what I'd heard in the cafeteria, and she'd told Dad. Evidently. I'd thought for sure they would want me to speak up for the truth.

Grade Level: 8 and up

Box Nine: Quinsigamond Series ($1.99), by Jack O'Connell

Book Description
A narcotics detective wages war against a deadly new stimulant

The drug is called Lingo, and it’s the most powerful narcotic Lenore has ever seen. This cheaply manufactured pill races straight for the brain’s language center, supercharging it so that even a dimwitted person can speak and read at 1,500 words per minute. It induces giddiness, confidence, and sexual euphoria—with a side effect of murderous rage. The drug has come to Quinsigamond, a fading industrial center in the heart of Massachusetts, and it’s going to tear this town apart.

Lenore believes she can stop that from happening. A narcotics detective with a few addictions of her own—amphetamines and heavy metal, to name a couple—she loves nothing more than her gun, until she meets Dr. Frederick Woo, the linguist assisting her on the case. Together they can stop the drug—if it doesn’t take hold of them first.

Anathem ($3.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Neal Stephenson

Book Description
Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable -- yet strangely inverted -- world.

Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside "saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside -- the Extramuros -- for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.

Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent's gates -- at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious "extras" in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "collected." But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.

Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros -- a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose -- as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world -- as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.

The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids ($0.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Madeline Levine, PhD

Book Description
Madeline Levine has been a practicing psychologist for twenty-five years, but it was only recently that she began to observe a new breed of unhappy teenager. When a bright, personable fifteen-year-old girl, from a loving and financially comfortable family, came into her office with the word empty carved into her left forearm, Levine was startled. This girl and her message seemed to embody a disturbing pattern Levine had been observing. Her teenage patients were bright, socially skilled, and loved by their affluent parents. But behind a veneer of achievement and charm, many of these teens suffered severe emotional problems. What was going on?

Conversations with educators and clinicians across the country as well as meticulous research confirmed Levine's suspicions that something was terribly amiss. Numerous studies show that privileged adolescents are experiencing epidemic rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse -- rates that are higher than those of any other socioeconomic group of young people in this country. The various elements of a perfect storm -- materialism, pressure to achieve, perfectionism, disconnection -- are combining to create a crisis in America's culture of affluence. This culture is as unmanageable for parents -- mothers in particular -- as it is for their children. While many privileged kids project confidence and know how to make a good impression, alarming numbers lack the basic foundation of psychological development: an authentic sense of self. Even parents often miss the signs of significant emotional problems in their "star" children.

In this controversial look at privileged families, Levine offers thoughtful, practical advice as she explodes one child-rearing myth after another. With empathy and candor, she identifies parenting practices that are toxic to healthy self-development and that have contributed to epidemic levels of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse in the most unlikely place -- the affluent family.

Bargain Book Roundup, Part I

Amazon has a Grisly Reads for Summer sale going on, with "mysteries and thrillers from Amazon Publishing for $4.99 or less on Kindle and up to 60% off in print." I've included a few of them below, mixed in with a few lighter reads, romance, paranormal fantasy and even a kid's book or two. Most of the bargains are in the Kindle store, but a few are either matched at other stores or are for non-Kindlers, as noted below.

If you are a Christian Fiction fan, be sure to check out Abingdon Press' sale, with just over 100 titles under $4. I'm amazed at how many of them I've picked up free over the last few years; for those that missed one or two in a series, it's a great time to fill in your lists.

Open Road also has a number of titles on sale, including the omnibus All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics by James Herriot for $7.99; most of the others are under $4.

The Bad Beginning ($0.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), the first title in A Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Brett Helquist and Michael Kupperman, is the title those of us that lucked into most of the series free (back in April '10) have been waiting for (assuming you didn't grab this one already, since we got the next five books in the series from that major pricing snafu).

Book Description
Imagine tales so terrible that as many as fifty million innocents have been ruined by them – tales so indelibly horrid that the New York Times bestseller list has been unable to rid itself of them for seven years. Now imagine if this scourge suddenly became available in a shameful new edition so sensational, so irresistible, so riddled with lurid new pictures that even a common urchin would wish for it. Who among us would be safe?

Begin at the beginning – even if it is a bad one – with the first in A Series of Unfortunate Events, now even more disposable in paperback[sic]!

Grade Level: 5 and up

Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter ($0.99 Kindle, B&N), by A. E. Moorat, should appeal to those who enjoyed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Also at Amazon (and only there), his Henry VIII: Wolfman, is marked down to $4.97.

Book Description
There were many staff at Kensington Palace, fulfilling many roles; a man who was employed to catch rats, another whose job it was to sweep the chimneys. That there was someone expected to hunt demons did not shock the new Queen; that it was to be her was something of a surprise.

London, 1838. Queen Victoria is crowned; she receives the orb, the scepter, and an arsenal of bloodstained weaponry. If Britain is about to become the greatest power of the age, there’s the small matter of the undead to take care of first. Demons stalk the crown, and political ambitions have unleashed ravening hordes of zombies even within the nobility itself.

But rather than dreams of demon hunting, Queen Victoria’s thoughts are occupied by Prince Albert. Can she dedicate her life to saving her country when her heart belongs elsewhere?With lashings of glistening entrails, decapitations, zombies, and foul demons, this masterly new portrait will give a fresh understanding of a remarkable woman, a legendary monarch, and quite possibly the best demon hunter the world has ever seen.

In another incarnation as a more serious (though still satirical) author, A. E. MOORAT has won critical acclaim and been shortlisted for awards. Here, however, he was chained in the dungeon, fed tea and ghost stories, and kept busy writing the adventures of Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter.

A Sweethaven Summer ($0.99 Kindle, B&N), by Courtney Walsh

Book Description
Campbell Carter’s mother, Suzanne, has just lost her battle with cancer, and Campbell is surprised to learn that Suzanne recently reached out to her childhood friends from a place called Sweethaven, Michigan. Campbell journeys to the town to find answers to her questions about her mother’s history. Suzanne’s three friends—Lila, Jane, and Meghan—torn apart by long-buried secrets and heartbreak, haven't spoken in years, but each has pieces of a scrapbook they made during their summers at this idyllic lakeside town. Just after Suzanne’s death they all receive letters that lead them back to Sweethaven. There, they discover that Suzanne had made many plans before her death to restore their broken friendship. When they meet Suzanne’s daughter, they begin to remember what was so special about their long Sweethaven summers. The scrapbook helps them heal and restore the friendships that have been broken for far too long. As secrets are revealed one by one, old wounds are mended and lives are changed—just as Suzanne intended.

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book ($2.24), by Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield and Nancy Stevens

Book Description
With little skill, surprisingly few ingredients, and even the most unsophisticated of ice-cream makers, you can make the scrumptious ice creams that have made Ben & Jerry's an American legend.

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book tells fans the story behind the company and the two men who built it-from their first meeting in 7th-grade gym class (they were already the two widest kids on the field) to their "graduation" from a $5.00 ice-cream-making correspondence course to their first ice-cream shop in a renovated gas station.

But the best part comes next. Dastardly Mash, featuring nuts, raisins, and hunks of chocolate. The celebrated Heath Bar Crunch. New York Super Fudge Chunk. Oreo Mint. In addition to Ben & Jerry's 11 greatest hits, here are recipes for ice creams made with fresh fruit, with chocolate, with candies and cookies, and recipes for sorbets, sundaes, and baked goods.

Only Time Will Tell ($3.61 Main / £2.51 UK), the first title in The Clifton Chronicles by Jeffrey Archer, is on sale for UK customers only in both the Kindle store and at KoboBooks, where you can combine that sale with coupon code TimeWillTell (exp Jul 18) for an additional 50% off! Limit one coupon code per customer, but it can be given as a gift. The US edition on this one is $9.99 and the second in the series, The Sins of the Father, is now available.

Book Description
From the internationally bestselling author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes Only Time Will Tell, the first in an ambitious new series that tells the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph.

The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war.” A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle, who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he’s left school. But then an unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys’ school, and his life will never be the same again.

As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question, was he even his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole life on the docks, or the firstborn son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line?

This introductory novel in Archer’s ambitious series The Clifton Chronicles includes a cast of colorful characters and takes us from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford or join the navy and go to war with Hitler’s Germany. From the docks of working-class England to the bustling streets of 1940 New York City, Only Time Will Tell takes readers on a journey through to future volumes, which will bring to life one hundred years of recent history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined.

Great Impressionist and Post/Impressionist Paintings: The Musée d'Orsay ($0.99 iTunes), by Charles Stuckey, is on sale at iTunes this week, as a Bastille Day promotion (exp July 23). Only available in the iBookstore, it features scalable reproductions of nearly 200 paintings by 26 artists including such favorites as Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh; over three hours of original audio information about the artists and their paintings; and more than 500 hyperlinks to some of the best sites on the Internet to learn more about the artists and their work.

Book Description
Welcome to this exciting enhanced ebook, Great Impressionist and Post/Impressionist Paintings: The Musée d'Orsay. We hope that this e/book will give you the pleasure not just of the art of the Impressionists, but also lead you to discover on your own more about the artists’ lives, their work, and their world.

Vanishing and Other Stories ($1.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Deborah Willis

Book Description
A French teacher who collects fiances; a fortune-teller who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter; an aging cowboy seduced by a city girl . . . these are some of the unforgettable people who live in these pages.

In Vanishing and Other Stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents, and children. With wisdom and dexterity, moments of dark humor, and a remark- able economy of words, Deborah Willis captures an incredible array of characters that linger in the imagination and prove that nothing is ever truly forgotten.

The Humbling ($1.42) is Philip Roth's thirtieth book.

Book Description
Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, he has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, "are melted into air, into thin air." When he goes onstage he feels like a lunatic and looks like an idiot. His confidence in his powers has drained away; he imagines people laughing at him; he can no longer pretend to be someone else. "Something fundamental has vanished." His wife has gone, his audience has left him, his agent can’t persuade him to make a comeback.

Into this shattering account of inexplicable and terrifying self-evacuation bursts a counterplot of unusual erotic desire, a consolation for a bereft life so risky and aberrant that it points not toward comfort and gratification but to a yet darker and more shocking end. In this long day’s journey into night, told with Roth’s inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, all the ways that we convince ourselves of our solidity, all our life’s performances—talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation—are stripped off.

The Hangman's Daughter ($3.99), by Oliver Pötzsch and Lee Chadeayne (Translator)

Book Description
Germany, 1660: When a dying boy is pulled from the river with a mark crudely tattooed on his shoulder, hangman Jakob Kuisl is called upon to investigate whether witchcraft is at play. So begins The Hangman's Daughter--the chillingly detailed, fast-paced historical thriller from German television screenwriter, Oliver Pötzsch--a descendent of the Kuisls, a famous Bavarian executioner clan.

Vaccine Nation ($2.99), by David Lender

Book Description
Dani North is a filmmaker who just won at the Tribeca Film Festival for her documentary, The Drugging of Our Children, a film critical of the pharmaceutical industry. When she is handed "whistleblower" evidence about the U.S. vaccination program, she has to keep herself alive long enough to expose it before a megalomaniacal pharmaceutical company CEO can have her killed.

Excerpts from Trojan Horse, The Gravy Train and Bull Street, David Lender's other thrillers, follow the text of Vaccine Nation.

Today's Deals

Don't forget to play the Trivia Teaser game daily at Kobo for discount coupons and a chance at a Vox ereader/tablet (ends July 20).

For those in the UK, there is a new coupon code at Kobo today, good for 30% off Mills & Boon: MBSave30UK (exp 7/16; one per customer).

Additional formats available and now free in the US Kindle store:

• The Constantine Codex (K/N/E)

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Matched ($2.99, B&N), the first title in the teen/YA series by Ally Condie. This is also today's Nook Daily Find.

Book Description
Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

Grade Level: 7 and up

Names My Sisters Call Me ($1.53 / £0.99 UK), by Megan Crane, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.99).

Book Description
Courtney's boyfriend has just gone down on one knee and asked her to be his wife. She couldn't be happier. And with her super-organised sister, Norah, to help her plan the wedding, what could possibly go wrong?

Nothing, until Courtney decides their other sister, Raine, should be invited. No one has seen or heard from Raine for six years - since she ruined Norah's own wedding and ran off with the love of Courtney's life.

Convinced they should all be able to move on after so much time, Courtney gets the sisters back together again only to find that family ghosts aren't easily vanquished - and neither are first loves. Reuniting her family is going to make Courtney reconsider every decision she's made for the last six years - right down to the man she's about to marry. It's going to be one long summer...

The Clique ($2.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), the first title in the series by Lisi Harrison, is the Nook Daily Find for Families. In addition to a different cover from the Kindle edition, the Nook edition appears to include a number of movie tie-in photos that are not indicated in the Kindle edition.

Book Description
Massie Block: With her glossy brunette bob and laser-whitened smile, Massie is the uncontested ruler of The Clique and the rest of the social scene at Octavian Country Day School, an exclusive private girls' school in Westchester County, New York. Massie knows you'd give anything to be just like her.

Dylan Marvil: Massie's second in command who divides her time between sucking up to Massie and sucking down Atkins Diet shakes.

Alicia Rivera: As sneaky as she is beautiful, Alicia floats easily under adult radar because she seems so "sweet." Would love to take Massie's throne one day. Just might.

Kristen Gregory: She's smart, hardworking, and will insult you to tears faster than you can say "my haircut isn't ugly!"

Enter Claire Lyons, the new girls from Florida in Keds and two-year-old Gap overalls, who is clearly not Clique material. Unfortunately for her, Claire's family is staying in the guesthouse on Massie's family's huge estate while they look for a new home. Claire's future looks worse than a bad Prada knockoff. But with a little luck and a lot of scheming, Claire might just come up smelling like Chanel No. 19. . . .
The Clique . . . the only thing harder than getting in is staying in.

Wealthy Massie is determined to exclude middle class Claire, the daughter of her father's old friend, from her seventh-grade clique at a very exclusive private school in Westchester, New York, but after Massie steals her only friend, Claire strikes back.

Grade Level: 7 and up

Fated ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), the first title in the Dark Protectors series by Rebecca Zanetti, is this weekend's bargain selection at Barnes & Noble, price matched on Kindle. You should already have a novella in the series, Tempted (Kindle, B&N), in your libraries, as it was free this past April.

Book Description
Marry Me

Cara Paulsen does not give up easily. A scientist and a single mother, she's used to fighting for what she wants, keeping a cool head, and doing whatever it takes to protect her daughter Janie. But "whatever it takes" has never before included a shotgun wedding to a dangerous-looking stranger with an attitude problem. . .

Or Else

Sure, the mysterious Talen says that he's there to protect Cara and Janie. He also says that he's a three-hundred-year-old vampire. Of course, the way he touches her, Cara might actually believe he's had that long to practice. . .

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.