Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Past Came Hunting ($1.99), by Donnell Bell. Long time readers will have picked this up when it was free last year, but this is a good price on it, if you missed that sale.

Book Description
Fifteen years ago a young Colorado Springs police officer arrested a teen runaway accused of aiding a convenience store robbery and attempted murder. She was innocent, but still served prison time briefly. Her testimony sent the real thief to jail for much longer. Now she’s a young widow raising a son, and the man she put in prison is free and seeking revenge. She moves to a home in a new neighborhood—then learns that her next-door neighbor is the by-the-book officer who arrested her. Now he’s a Colorado Springs P.D. Lieutenant. Like it or not, he may be the only one who can protect her and her son from the past he helped create. Donnell Ann Bell is the recipient of numerous awards for her fiction writing and the co-owner of Crimescenewriters, a Yahoo group for mystery/suspense writers, which is 2,000 members strong. Donnell was raised in New Mexico’s Land of Enchantment and today calls Colorado home.

Findings ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), by Kathleen Jamie, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).

Book Description
Between the laundry and the fetching kids from school, that’s how birds enter my life. I listen. During a lull in the traffic: oyster-catchers; in the school-playground, sparrows.

It’s surprising what you can find by simply stepping out to look. Award-winning poet Kathleen Jamie has an eye and an ease with the nature and landscapes of Scotland as well as an incisive sense of our domestic realities. In Findings she draws together these themes to describe travels like no other contemporary writer.

Whether she is following the call of a peregrine in the hills above her home in Fife, sailing into a dark winter solstice on the Orkney islands, or pacing around the carcass of a whale on a rain-swept Hebridean beach, she creates a subtle and modern narrative, peculiarly alive to her connections and surroundings.

Blindness ($8.10 $2.99Kindle, B&N), by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, is the Nook Daily Find. Update: Now price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature

The e-book includes a sample chapter from the late author's final work, CAIN.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Winnie's War ($1.99), by Jenny Moss.

Book Description
Life in Winnie's sleepy town of Coward Creek, Texas, is just fine for her. Although her troubled mother's distant behavior has always worried Winnie, she's plenty busy caring for her younger sisters, going to school, playing chess with Mr. Levy, and avoiding her testy grandmother. Plus, her sweetheart Nolan is always there to make her smile when she's feeling low. But when the Spanish Influenza claims its first victim, lives are suddenly at stake, and Winnie has never felt so helpless. She must find a way to save the people she loves most, even if doing so means putting her own life at risk.

Winnie's take-charge attitude will empower and inspire readers, as Jenny Moss's lyrical writing beautifully captures the big-time worries of a small-town girl.

Grade Level: 5 and up

Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is No Mark upon Her ($1.99), the fourteenth (and latest) novel in the Duncan Kincaid / Gemma James series by Deborah Crombie. I've slowly been collecting this author's ebooks, to replace the paper copies on my shelves, but I didn't have this one at all; there are five more in the series under the $5 mark (three of which I'm missing; there goes my gift balance!), in addition to the pre-order for her latest novel, The Sound of Broken Glass, which appears to be the start of a new series.

Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie makes her mark with this absorbing, finely hued tale of suspense—a deeply atmospheric and twisting mystery full of deadly secrets, salacious lies, and unexpected betrayals involving the mysterious drowning of a Met detective—an accomplished rower—on the Thames.

When a K9 search-and-rescue team discovers a woman's body tangled up with debris in the river, Scotland Yard superintendent Duncan Kincaid finds himself heading an investigation fraught with complications. The victim, Rebecca Meredith, was a talented but difficult woman with many admirers—and just as many enemies. An Olympic contender on the verge of a controversial comeback, she was also a high-ranking detective with the Met—a fact that raises a host of political and ethical issues in an already sensitive case.

To further complicate the situation, a separate investigation, led by Detective Inspector Gemma James, Kincaid's wife, soon reveals a disturbing—and possibly related—series of crimes, widening the field of suspects. But when someone tries to kill the search-and-rescue team member who found Rebecca's body, the case becomes even more complex and dangerous, involving powerful interests with tentacles that reach deep into the heart of the Met itself.

Surrounded by enemies with friendly faces, pressured to find answers quickly while protecting the Yard at all costs, his career and reputation on the line, Kincaid must race to catch the killer before more innocent lives are lost—including his own.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), by Sue Townsend, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US Kindle edition, although there are two Audible editions).

Book Description
The 30th anniversary edition of the bestselling novel of the 1980s: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4 by comic genius Sue Townsend. Featuring a new introduction by comedian and actor David Walliams as well as over sixty pages of extra material about Adrian Mole, his friends and family.

Friday January 2nd.

I felt rotten today. It's my mother's fault for singing 'My Way' at two o'clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children's home.

Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents' marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', Adrian's painfully honest diary is still hilarious and compelling reading thirty years after it first appeared.

Death in Breslau ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), the first title in the Inspector Eberhard Mock series by Marek Krajewski and Danusia Stok (Translator), is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Introducing one of the most stylish and moody historic detective series ever: The Inspector Eberhard Mock Quartet

Occupied Breslau, 1933: Two young women are found murdered on a train, scorpions writhing on their bodies, an indecipherable note in an apparently oriental language nearby ...Police Inspector Eberhard Mock's weekly assignation with two ladies of the night is interrupted as he is called to investigate.

But uncovering the truth is no straightforward matter in Breslau. The city is in the grip of the Gestapo, and has become a place where spies are everywhere, corrupt ministers torture confessions from Jewish merchants, and Freemasons guard their secrets with blackmail and violence.

And as Mock and his young assistant Herbert Anwaldt plunge into the city's squalid underbelly the case takes on a dark twist of the occult when the mysterious note seems to indicate a ritual killing with roots in the Crusades ...

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Chalk ($1.99), by Bill Thomson.

Book Description
A rainy day. Three kids in a park. A dinosaur spring rider. A bag of chalk. The kids begin to draw. . . and then . . . magic! The children draw the sun, butterflies, and a dinosaur that amazingly come to life. Children will never feel the same about the playground after they experience this astounding wordless picture book and the power of the imagination. Bill Thomson embraced traditional painting techniques and meticulously painted each illustration by hand, using acrylic paint and colored pencils.

Grade Level: 1st and up

Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 ($2.99), by David M. Kennedy (Oxford University Press, USA).

Book Description
Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This book tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities.

The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and countryside alike. Freedom From Fear explores how the nation agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best they could.

Both comprehensive and colorful, this account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War, reveals a period that formed the crucible in which modern America was formed.

The Oxford History of the United States
The Atlantic Monthly has praised The Oxford History of the United States as "the most distinguished series in American historical scholarship," a series that "synthesizes a generation's worth of historical inquiry and knowledge into one literally state-of-the-art book. Who touches these books touches a profession."

Conceived under the general editorship of one of the leading American historians of our time, C. Vann Woodward, The Oxford History of the United States blends social, political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military history into coherent and vividly written narrative.

The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is The Best Daily Deals of the Last Year; six of the year's deals are repeating at £0.99 each (75% off).

To celebrate one year of Kindle Daily Deals, we're repeating six of the most popular deals from the last year, just in case you missed them first time round. Crime, Thrillers and MysteryA Dark Redemption: A Dark Redemption by Stav Sherez, Historical Fiction: The Misremembered Man by Christina McKenna, Literary Fiction: The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life by William Nicholson Non-fiction: The 15 Minute Rule by Caroline Buchanan, Best Customer Review Score: Paw Tracks in the Moonlight by Denis O'Connor and Richard Morris, Literary Award Winner: The Secret River by Kate Grenville.

A Dark Redemption (Main/UK), by Stav Sherez

A Dark Redemption introduces DI Jack Carrigan and DS Geneva Miller as they investigate the brutal rape and murder of a young Ugandan student. Plunged into an underworld of illegal immigrant communities, they discover that the murdered girl's studies at a London College may have threatened to reveal things that some people will go to any lengths to keep secret... Unflinching, inventive and intelligent, A Dark Redemption explores a sinister case that will force DI Carrigan to face up to his past and DS Miller to confront what path she wants her future to follow.

The Misremembered Man (Main/UK), by Christina McKenna ($3.00 US Edition)

The Misremembered Man is a beautifully rendered portrait of life in rural Ireland which charms and delights with its authentic characters and gentle humor. This vivid portrayal of the universal search for love brings with it a darker tale, heartbreaking in its poignancy.

The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (Main/UK), by William Nicholson

Laura is content enough with her marriage, her two children and her part-time job - until an ex-lover whom she had thought was ‘the one' gets in touch out of the blue. Suddenly passion and excitement are rekindled, and she realises how stagnant her life has become. But how much happiness has she a right to expect, and what of the pain she might cause to achieve it? Unknown to Laura, many others in her Sussex village are living with their own unresolved inner dramas. None of them guesses at her crisis. Yet every decision they take has an impact on those around them. The hidden longings of a large cast of characters interweave in a gripping plot that reveals ordinary life at its richest: comic and tragic, poignant and cruel, surprising and moving.

The 15 Minute Rule (Main/UK), by Caroline Buchanan

The Fifteen Minute Rule sets out to help us tackle those things that we are always putting off: starting an exercise regime, looking for a new job, doing our tax returns or learning a new skill. Or perhaps doing something to improve the quality of life, by learning to fight depression or confront an annoying habit. Perhaps it's simply clearing the huge pile of clutter from your desk. Whatever it is, all you need is fifteen minutes and before you know it, some weeks later, you have accomplished a task you couldn't bring yourself to start.

The hardest thing to overcome when you're trying to start something daunting and new is to actually start. That mountain of paperwork in front of you that looks like it will take hours to go through and hours of mind-numbing sorting is hard to contemplate for most - but fifteen minutes isn't. Fifteen minutes is manageable and can bring minor and major results, each one providing satisfaction and a boost in self-esteem.

This book is for those people who need instant gratification and also those long-term players who recognise the benefits of consistency and dedication.

Paw Tracks in the Moonlight (Main/UK), by Denis O'Connor and Richard Morris

When Denis O'Connor rescues a three-week-old kitten from certain death during a snowstorm, little does he know how this tiny creature will change his life forever. Against all odds the kitten - who he names Toby Jug - survives and forms an unusually strong bond with his rescuer. Set against the rural splendour of Northumberland, Paw Tracks in the Moonlight charmingly chronicles the adventures of one man and his Maine Coone cat.

From an invasion of bees at Owl Cottage to the case of the disappearing tomatoes, life with Toby Jug - who believes himself to be human - is never dull. Nevertheless, it is only when Denis and Toby Jug embark on a summer camping trip on horseback in the Cheviot Hills that a new world opens up for them both.

The Secret River (Main/UK), by Kate Grenville ($1.99 US Edition)

London, 1807. William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly. His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. The Thornhills arrive in this harsh and alien land that they cannot understand and which feels like a death sentence. But among the convicts there is a rumour that freedom can be bought, that 'unclaimed' land up the Hawkesbury offers an opportunity to start afresh, far away from the township of Sydney. When William takes a hundred acres for himself he is shocked to find Aboriginal people already living on the river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them. Soon Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life.

Pretty Little Secrets (Pretty Little Liars Series) ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Sara Shepard, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. Be careful searching on your Kindle, though, as you may only find a $10.99 priced edition, which has the buy button disabled (many of HarperCollins titles are duplicated, with one edition disabled, right now, apparently due to Amazon's getting ready to remove or disable the Agency priced titles.

Book Description
Rewind to junior year in Rosewood, Pennsylvania, to a winter break no one has ever heard about. . . .

Fat snowflakes fall onto manicured lawns, quilted stockings hang over marble fireplaces, and everyone is at peace, especially Hanna, Emily, Aria, and Spencer. Now that Alison’s murderer is in jail and A is dead, they can finally relax. Little do they know there’s a new A in town. . . .

Rule number one of being an effective stalker: Get to know your prey. So I watch these liars day and night, keeping an eye on the trouble they get into, the messes they make, and the secrets they keep. Hanna’s desperate for a very personal session with her gym trainer. Emily is number one on Santa’s naughty list. Aria’s old flame from Iceland is about to land her in hot water. And Spencer’s resorting to some backhanded tactics to get what she wants.

What happens on holiday break stays on holiday break—right? But guess what. I saw. And now I’m telling.

Taking place between Unbelievable and Wicked, Pretty Little Secrets is a very special Pretty Little Liars tale revealing the liars’ never-before-seen misadventures over their junior-year winter break.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Potty ($1.99), by Leslie Patricelli.

Book Description
There comes a point in a toddler’s life when going in one’s diaper is only one possible option, and the question must be raised: Should I go in my potty? With pitch-perfect humor and pacing, Leslie Patricelli follows the inner dialogue (sure to have little ones shouting responses) and hilarious actions of everyone’s favorite Baby, winding up with an over-the-top look of surprise and delight that will have both parents and offspring laughing out loud. "I did it!"

Age Level: 1 and up

Kindle Fire Lightning Deal - $129

While they last, the current Lightning Deal at Amazon is for a Kindle Fire - 7" LCD Display, Wi-Fi, 8GB for only $129 - that's $30 off.

Note that this is NOT the new HD Kindle Fire, but the older generation hardware (essentially) with an updated interface.

Today's Deals

I'm usually all about ebooks and reducing the paper on the shelves, but today's Amazon Gold Box Deal has a number of collectible booksets, at up to 60% off, that would be nice gifts, for collectors or those who haven't joined the digital reading revolution. Several of these were just released today, so if you already had one of them on pre-order, you'll automatically get the GoldBox price. Limit two per customer and while supplies last.

This past weekend's Fictionwise coupon, 110912, good for 45% off, is still working (probably thru Wed). The discount combines with the new release discount, so it might be a good time to pick up the new issues from Dell Magazines (Fantasy/ SciFi/ Ellory Queen Mysteries; DRM-free, multiple formats).

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Lit ($1.99), by Mary Karr.

Book Description
The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood. Cherry, her account of her adolescence, "continued to set the literary standard for making the personal universal" (Entertainment Weekly). Now Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness—and to her astonishing resurrection.

Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott," with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, "Give me chastity, Lord—but not yet!" has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity.

Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up—as only Mary Karr can tell it.

Sipping from the Nile: My Exodus from Egypt ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), by Jean Naggar, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $5.99/KLL Eligible). The companion audiobook is $1.99 for those in the US (and appears to be $2.29 for those in the UK).

Book Description
Born into a prominent, sophisticated Jewish family who spend time in Europe and live in the Middle East, author Jean Naggar’s coming of age memoir tells the story of her protected youth in an exotic multicultural milieu. To Naggar her childhood seemed a magical time that would never come to an end. But in 1956, Egyptian President Nasser’s nationalizing of the Suez Canal set in motion events that would change her life forever.

An enchanted way of life suddenly ended by multinational hostilities, her close-knit extended family is soon scattered far and wide. Naggar’s own family moves to London where she finishes her schooling and is swept into adulthood and the challenge of new horizons in America. Speaking for a different wave of immigrants whose Sephardic origins highlight the American Jewish story through an unfamiliar lens, Naggar traces her personal journey through lost worlds and difficult transitions, exotic locales and strong family values. The story resonates for all in this poignant exploration of the innocence of childhood in a world breaking apart.

Angel of Darkness ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), by Cynthia Eden, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. Not a bad price and I don't see it in the libraries I belong to.

Book Description
He Fell For Her

Nicole St. James was a nice woman. An innocent, pretty, twentysomething schoolteacher with her life ahead of her. But as the angel of death, it's Keenan's job to take that life away. So when a vampire attacks Nicole, Keenan is not supposed to snap and take out the vampire instead. It cost him his wings--but she's worth it.

Except when Keenan catches up to his pretty schoolteacher, she's not so innocent anymore. Hot red lipstick, tight black shorts and long white fangs--she's ready to kick the asses of anyone who helped turn her into a damn bloodsucker. Unless that ass is unusually shapely and attached to a certain fallen angel. Even with all of heaven and half of hell after them, someone will have to teach Keenan about the fun kinds of sin. . .

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Elephant's Child ($0.99), by Rudyard Kipling and Tim Raglin (Illustrator).

Book Description

Rudyard Kipling’s story of how the elephant got its trunk has always delighted children with its playful use of language and sense of high adventure. Never has there been a more satisfying rendering of Kipling’s most beloved “Just So” story, which explains what the world was like “in the beginning of years when the world was new and all…”

Age Level: 3 and up