Blog Tour Stop and Giveaway - Big Sky Mountain

This post is a stop on the Blog Tour for Big Sky Mountain, by Linda Lael Miller, the sequel to Big Sky Country, which I featured a couple of months ago and which is currently #7 on the Western Romance Bestseller list at Amazon. Big Sky Mountain is on the Hot New Releases list itself and climbing in the charts.

Book Description
With his rugged good looks, vast wealth and family name, hell-raiser Hutch Carmody is still the golden boy of Parable, Montana. But he's done some growing up—making peace with his illegitimate half brother and inheriting half of Whisper Creek Ranch, which should have been all his. These days, Hutch knows there are some things money can't buy: like the heart of loving, ladylike divorcée Kendra Shepherd.

Kendra's quiet mansion reminds her of what she wants most—a devoted husband and the pitter-patter of little feet. She can't get Hutch Carmody out of her mind. But a rough-and-tumble cowboy like Hutch, coming home for family dinner? Seems crazy! Then again, crazier dreams have become reality under the vast Montana sky.

I've been reading the review copy provided by BookTrib and it's a refreshing change from some of the titles I received for review: well written, edited and proofed (then again, this is published as part of Harlequin's main line, so I didn't expect anything less from them or this author). From the synopsis, you know what will happen in the end (it is a romance, after all), so the journey from the surprising opening to that final stop is what makes it worth reading.

As with the first book, the action takes place in a small Montanan town; the characters you came to know in the first book continue in this one (although you can read Big Sky Mountain standalone, if you are going to read the series, I do suggest you start with Big Sky Country). There will be a third title about the first of the year and I am fairly certain I've already spotted the couple that will be involved in it.

Excerpt:

She’d been on the road for three days, and even after a good night’s sleep in Joslyn’s guest room and two showers, she felt rumpled and grungy.

She stood up. She’d get Madison and head for town, she decided, hurry to her own place, where she should have gone in the beginning.

Not that she planned to live there very long.

The mega-mansion was too big for her and Madison, too full of memories.

“Kendra,” Joslyn ordered kindly, “sit down.”

Opal could be heard poking around in the pantry, still talking to herself.

Slade came down the back stairway, looking like himself in worn jeans, a faded flannel shirt and boots.

Passing Joslyn, he paused and leaned down to plant a kiss on top of her head. Kendra sank slowly back into her own chair.

“Don’t start without me,” Slade said, spreading one big hand on Joslyn’s baby-bulge and grinning down into her upturned face.

Be sure to check out the Blog Tour webpage for a chance to win a Cowboy necklace. We can't let them have all the fun, though, so if you leave your name below, I'll draw tomorrow and a lucky winner will receive a paperback copy of the book (limited to US and Canadian addresses). All I need is the email address and Booktrib will get into contact with you to arrange delivery.

Note: A review copy of the book was provided by BookTrib as a part of the Tour promotion.

Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is seven books from legendary mystery writer Lawrence Block for $1.99 apiece. Published by Open Road, these ebooks feature an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from his personal collection, and new afterwords written by the author. Although not technically part of the Daily Deal, you'll also find another 18 of his books marked under $5 from the same publisher.

The Girl with the Long Green Heart

One long con could be John Hayden’s ticket to financial freedom—or to the slammer

John Hayden’s a confidence man gone square. He’s done some hard time and he’s not looking back. That is until an old acquaintance presents a long con he can’t resist. The beautiful broad who’s working the inside of this job is just a perk as John and his fellow cons work a deal that could mean the greatest long con of all: financial freedom. Will the perfect setup set John up for life, or will he end up behind bars?

A Diet of Treacle

A vintage tale of lust and drugs in old Greenwich Village—roaring back after fifty years out of print

Sick of living respectably with her grandmother, Anita Carbone hops a downtown train. She finds Greenwich Village—the Village of Kerouac and Dylan, but also of Joe and Shank, two small-time dope peddlers more than happy to welcome a square into their midst. But after a few weeks in Joe’s bed, she finds that with sex, drugs, and grime come danger, and that it’s harder to get back uptown than it was to come down.

Lawrence Block is the master of the thriller, and this early novel is a wild tour of a vanished scene: an authentic trip that burns with the slow intensity of a roach’s last drag.

Killing Castro

When you’ve already got blood on your hands, what’s a little more?

Turner needs to start a new life and that means he needs cash . . . fast. So the twenty thousand he’s offered for a job sounds pretty good, even if it means killing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. And he’s not alone. There are four other men—killers, idealists, mercenaries—all with the same target. Can they band together to overthrow Castro and get Turner his chance at a new life?

Lucky at Cards

A good card mechanic is hard to find and even harder to change

His dentist’s poker game is the last place that card shark Bill Maynard expects to find another hustler. But that’s just what Mrs. Murray Rogers, the scheming wife with her eye on her husband’s fortune, is. The only problem is her husband’s still alive, and she’ll have to enlist the help of Bill in order to get what she wants. They’ve got a plan, but will Bill stick with it, or will the square life lull him into breaking his lucky streak?

Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man

One man’s letter-writing addiction will have some very funny consequences

Laurence Clarke is having a bad day. His boss realized that his editorial position was made redundant months ago, his wife’s discovered that she’s got more in common with his best friend Steve, and his ex-wife and her father are on his case for the alimony he owes. What’s a guy to do? How about write them all letters telling them just what he thinks and letting them know that life hasn’t got Laurence down—it’s got him running away on a lurid and highly erotic adventure with a bevy of naughty young things.

Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print

Writing lessons from the crown prince of suspense

For more than five decades, Lawrence Block has written novels. He has produced hard-boiled detective stories, taut suspense thrillers, literature, and erotica, and has succeeded in all these genres because he knows how to grab a reader with an opening line, and how to tighten that grip until the final sentence.

In Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print, Block offers neither tricks nor formulas, but straight-forward advice based on the experience that comes with producing more than one hundred books. He explains how to refine an idea, how to study one’s chosen genre, and how to use the novel’s expansive form to find one’s particular voice. And he tells it all in the easy, immediate style that has made his own work so successful.

The Liar's Bible: A Handbook for Fiction Writers

Four-time Edgar Award–winning author Lawrence Block’s definitive essay collection on the art of writing fiction

For ten years, crime novelist Lawrence Block funneled his wealth of writing expertise into a monthly column for Writer’s Digest. Collected here for the first time are those pieces illuminating the tricks of the authorial trade, from creating vibrant characters and generating seamless plots, to conquering writer’s block and experimenting with self-publishing.

Filled with wit and insight, The Liar’s Bible is a must-read for experts, amateurs, and anyone interested in learning to craft great fiction from one of the field’s modern masters.

Reservation Road ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by John Burnham Schwartz , is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $11.99).

Book Description
Reservation Road tells the story of two ordinary families facing an extraordinary crisis - a book that reads like a thriller but opens up a world rich with psychological nuance and emotional wisdom

At the close of a beautiful summer day near the quiet Connecticut town where they live, the Learner family - Ethan and Grace, their children, Josh and Emma - stop at a gas station on their way home from a concert. Josh Learner, lost in a ten-year-old's private world, is standing at the edge of the road when a car comes racing around the bend. He is hit and instantly killed. The car speeds away. From this moment forward, Reservation Road becomes a harrowing countdown to the confrontation between two very different men. The hit-and-run driver is a small-town lawyer named Dwight Arno, a man in desperate need of a second chance. Dwight is also the father of a ten-year-old boy, who was asleep in the car the night Josh Learner was killed. In a gripping narrative woven from the voices of Ethan, Dwight, and Grace, Reservation Road tells the story of two ordinary families facing an extraordinary crisis--a book that reads like a thriller but opens up a world rich with psychological nuance and emotional wisdom. Reservation Road explores the terrain of grief even as it astonishes with unexpected redemption: powerful and wrenching and impossible to put down.

Yesterday's News ($5.09 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Kajsa Ingemarsson, is the Nook Daily Find.

Book Description
Agnes has most things in life: a family who is always there for her, a good job at a fancy restaurant, a boyfriend who loves her, and a best friend whom she knows inside out. Or does she? All of a sudden things begin to crumble, one by one, and soon nothing is as it was. Her boyfriend Tobias leaves her for a big busted singer, and she is fired by Gérard, the sexist and abusive owner of the restaurant where she works. She gambles everything she has on the success of a newly opened restaurant, but the road to the glowing review which will open the door to fame and fortune has, to say the least, unexpected twists and turns.

In Yesterday’s News Kajsa Ingemarsson’s comic talent comes into its own. Juicy and satisfying, Yesterday’s News is a story about daring and winning and about faith in yourself, a feelgood novel sure to please any romance lover looking for the perfect summer read.

Yesterday’s News is one of the greatest bestsellers of all time in Sweden with more than 800,000 copies sold – 1 in every 4 Swedish woman has already read it!

Misty to the Rescue ($3.03 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), the first title in the Mermaid S.O.S. series by Gillian Shields, is the Nook Daily Find for Families.

Book Description
Meet Misty and the Mermaid Sisters of the Sea!

Misty and her friends are on a very important mission: they must find the six Magic Crystals that give life and strength the Merfolk, and bring them back to Coral Kingdom. But a wicked mermaid named Mantora would like nothing better than to keep the Sisters of the Sea from completing their task. This time she's sent a powerful storm that's blown the mermaids off-course. Can Misty help her friends get back on track?

Age Level: 5 and up

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Shoes For Me! ($1.99), by Sue Fliess and Mike Laughead (Illustrator), the second book in the Kindle store that the two have collaborated on.

Book Description
Feet got bigger, heel to toe. Time for new shoes. Off we go! Hippo needs new shoes. Maybe she’ll choose shoes with glitter and jewels or shoes that roll on wheels or shoes with bows. There are so many choices! Will Hippo find the perfect pair? Endearing graphite-and-ink illustrations by Mike Laughead show that choosing a new pair of shoes has never been more fun!

Grade Level: Pre K and up

Today's Deals

Audible is having what they call a Beachcomber Sale: 5 new audiobooks for $6.95 apiece each day, but with clues to their identity only, forcing you to track them down. For those that don't have the patience (or time) for that, each day they'll post the previous day's books, complete with the links to listen and buy. Like many of their sales, it is limited to those with a "membership" - the cheapest of which is $10/year; you can't sign up for this directly, but will be offered this membership when you cancel a trial (or regular) subscription.

New coupons at Kobo: 56b6c435, good for 35% off, 56b6c230, for 30% off; both expire Aug 23.

On B&N's Facebook page, you can now vote for this weekend's $3.99 deal: Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child vs The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer (the winner should be price matched at Amazon). Since I already have the former, I'm voting for the latter and, so far, it's winning by a decent margin.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Mafia Summer ($1.99), by E. Duke Vincent.

Book Description
One a Sicilian Hell's Kitchen gang leader, the other a sickly but brilliant Orthodox Jewish boy who lives next door, Vinny Vesta and Sidney Butcher meet on a fire escape during the blistering New York City summer of 1950. Their friendship develops over the course of a summer that will change Vinny's fortunes forever, at a cost he could never have imagined. Based on a true story, Mafia Summer brilliantly captures a pivotal moment in Mafia history and in the lives of the teenagers caught up by the Mob.

Heaven's Shadow ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Michael Cassutt and David S Goyer, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.99).

Book Description
Heaven's Shadow begins with the discovery of an object of unknown origin headed toward Earth. Speculation as to what it might be runs high, and leads to an international competition to be the first to land on it, to claim both the prestige and whatever other benefits there might be. Thus, two rival teams of astronauts begin a thrilling and dangerous race – but what they find when they reach their goal will turn out to be unlike anything they could have imagined . . .

What they have landed on is no asteroid but a spacecraft from a civilization that has travelled tens of thousands of years to reach earth. While the team try to work out what it is they are needed for, more sinister occurrences cause them to wonder if their involvement with this alien race will ead to anything but harm for humanity.

The Innocents ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Francesca Segal, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, twenty-eight-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish suburb of London. He has been dating Rachel Gilbert since they were both sixteen and now, to the relief and happiness of the entire Gilbert family, they are finally to marry. To Adam, Rachel embodies the highest values of Temple Fortune; she is innocent, conventional, and entirely secure in her community—a place in which everyone still knows the whereabouts of their nursery school classmates. Marrying Rachel will cement Adam’s role in a warm, inclusive family he loves.

But as the vast machinery of the wedding gathers momentum, Adam feels the first faint touches of claustrophobia, and when Rachel’s younger cousin Ellie Schneider moves home from New York, she unsettles Adam more than he’d care to admit. Ellie—beautiful, vulnerable, and fiercely independent—offers a liberation that he hadn’t known existed: a freedom from the loving interference and frustrating parochialism of North West London. Adam finds himself questioning everything, suddenly torn between security and exhilaration, tradition and independence. What might he be missing by staying close to home?

Francesca Segal was born in London and studied at Oxford and Harvard University before becoming a journalist and critic. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, and The Observer, among other publications. For three years she wrote the Debut Fiction column in The Observer and was, until recently, a features writer at Tatler. She lives in London.

A Smart Girl's Guide to Starting Middle School ($8.15 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Julie Williams Montalbano and Sara Hunt, is the Nook Daily Find for Families (requires NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet or NOOK Study).

Book Description
Middle school is all about change. This book, filled with tips and quizzes, will help girls feel more confident as they anticipate and adjust to the changes of middle school. Includes insights and information on what to expect, plus advice from other smart girls who’ve already made the grade in middle school.

Grade Level: 4 and up

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Boo: The Life of the World's Cutest Dog ($1.99), by J.H. Lee and Gretchen LeMaistre (Photographer).

Book Description
Everyone loves Boo! His signature fluffy head and teddy bear like persona are irresistibly adorable. With nearly a million Facebook fans, and adding more each day, Boo is poised to become an international superstar. This charming book features exclusive new photographs of Boo doing all his favorite things: lounging around, playing with friends, exploring the whole wide world, and making those famous puppy-dog eyes. To know Boo is to love him, and this book is for anyone who loves the cutest dog ever.

Free Audiobook + eBook - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Get a free MP3 download of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ($19.95 Audible), by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Simon Prebble (Narrator), along with a DRM-free PDF ebook over at Tantor Media.

Book Description
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close - the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. When "The Final Problem" was first published, the struggle between Holmes and his arch nemesis, seemingly to the death, left many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but it also led to his immortality as a literary figure. The stories that precede it included two narratives from Holmes himself - on a mutiny at sea and a treasure hunt in a Sussex country house - as well as a meeting with his brilliant brother, Mycroft.

Included in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are "Silver Blaze", "The Yellow Face", "The Stock-Broker's Clerk", "The Gloria Scott", "The Musgrave Ritual", "The Reigate Puzzle", "The Crooked Man", "The Resident Patient", "The Greek Interpreter", "The Naval Treaty", and "The Final Problem".

Get the free audiobook/ebook combo from Tantor Media. Once you've completed your purchase and have it in your library, you can download individual segments of the audiobook or grab the complete ZIP download, which also contains the PDF ebook, at any time.

Today's Deals

If you weren't able to get a Kindle w/ Special Offers for $47 from Amazon due to having the wrong credit card, check your local Walmart. They are advertising a $49 effective price, in-store only. You pay $79 and get a $30 gift card, which can be used for any other purchases (valid immediately). This does work out to be a bit more, since you'll also have taxes to pay and must shop at Walmart to get any use out of the gift card (hopefully it also works on gas purchases, for those that otherwise avoid the megastores). The sale ends Aug 25, 2012, or when they run out.

Tantor Media is having a $6.99 sale, with 137 MP3 downloads available at that price.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive ($1.99), by Steve Earle, one of Amazon's Best Books of the Month, May 2011. If you listen to any country music, you know who he is and will be familiar with the ghost in the story; combined with the rave reviews, this will be a must read.

Book Description
Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just in the figurative sense, not just because he was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him.

In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is wracked by addiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, his morphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So he lives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south side of San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knife or gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc's services, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist that never heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe, for Hank's angry ghost—who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doing well.

A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of music history, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is also a marvelous novel in its own right, a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

Apples ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Richard Milward, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.62).

Book Description
Out of the bleakness of their Middlesbrough housing estate, fueled by cheap plonk, porn and dysfunctional families, Adam and Eve narrate this dazzling, tragicomic love story of adolescence in all its f[****]d-up glory.

As a distraction from sleazy male admirers, spiteful classmates and her mother's cancer, Eve's eyes are opened to a multicolour life of one-night stands, drug-fueled discos and cheap plonk. She barely has time to notice Adam. Adam, however, notices Eve. While contending with sexual frustration, a violent father and increasingly compulsive behaviour, is he too busy reading Razzle in the attic to make his move?

Narrated alternately by Adam and Eve, alongside a cast of delinquents, perverts and butterflies, "Apples" is an exploration of the difficulties of growing up and of getting 'f[****]d as quick as you can'.

A Short History of the World ($7.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Christopher Lascelles, is the Nook Daily Find.

Book Description
There is an increasing realisation that our knowledge of world history–and how it all fits together–is far from perfect. A Short History of the World aims to fill the big gaps in our historical knowledge with a book that is easy to read and assumes little prior knowledge of past events.

The book does not aim to come up with groundbreaking new theories on why things occurred, but rather gives a broad overview of the generally accepted version of events so that non-historians will feel less ignorant when discussing the past.

To help readers put events, places and empires into context, the book includes 32 maps specially commissioned to accompany the text. The result is a book that is reassuringly epic in scope but refreshingly short in length. An excellent place to start to bring your historical knowledge up to scratch!

The Paper Bag Princess ($1.89 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko (Illustrator), is the Nook Daily Find for Families, slightly better than price matched on Kindle. Note that the Nook edition requires a NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet or NOOK Kids for iPad, while the Kindle edition requires a Kindle Fire, Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle for iPad or Kindle for Android.

Book Description
In this bestselling modern classic, Princess Elizabeth is slated to marry Prince Ronald when a dragon attacks the castle and kidnaps Ronald. In resourceful and humorous fashion, Elizabeth finds the dragon, outsmarts him, and rescues Ronald—who is less than pleased at her un-princess-like appearance.

Grade Level: P and up. Kindle edition features Kindle Text Pop-Up on Kindle Fire and select Kindle Apps.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Amulet of Samarkand ($1.99), the first title in the Bartimaeus series by Jonathan Stroud. I've been reading this series and definitely recommend it, regardless of your age.

Book Description
Nathaniel is a magician's apprentice, taking his first lessons in the arts of magic. But when a devious hot-shot wizard named Simon Lovelace ruthlessly humiliates Nathaniel in front of his elders, Nathaniel decides to kick up his education a few notches and show Lovelace who's boss. With revenge on his mind, he summons the powerful djinni, Bartimaeus. But summoning Bartimaeus and controlling him are two different things entirely, and when Nathaniel sends the djinni out to steal Lovelace's greatest treasure, the Amulet of Samarkand, he finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of magical espionage, murder, and rebellion.

Grade Level: 5 and up

The Hunger Games ($1.99 Kindle, Google), by Suzanne Collins, is today's Flash Sale eBook on Google Play, price matched on Kindle, as is the rest of the Hunger Game series ($5.99) and the Underland Chronicles ($5.24). If you missed it when it was on sale earlier in the year, grab it now, as it has gone back up to $9+ in other stores.

Book Description
The astonishing bestseller...

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.