New Release News: Jon Land

Jon Land's Blaine McCracken returns in Pandora's Temple ($9.99 Kindle), just released this week. This is the tenth novel in the series, so if you are reading in order, you may have a ways to go before you are ready for this one. The publisher, Open Road, has the first four in the series marked down to $2.99, though, so you can get a great start at a pretty low price.

• The Omega Command
• The Alpha Deception
• The Gamma Option
• The Omicron Legion

Prices vary after the first four, with #7 at $5.99 (MacMillan), three at $7.99 and the last two over $10.

Book Description
What if Pandora’s Box were real? Blaine McCracken finds himself facing this very question—and the greatest threat to mankind—in his long-awaited return to the page

Rogue special-operations agent McCracken has never been shy about answering the call, and this time it comes in the aftermath of a deepwater oil rig disaster that claims the life of a onetime member of his commando unit. The remnants of the rig and its missing crew lead him to the inescapable conclusion that one of the most mysterious and deadly forces in the universe is to blame: dark matter, both a limitless source of potential energy and an unimaginably destructive weapon.

Joining forces again with his trusty sidekick Johnny Wareagle, McCracken races to stop two deadly enemies who want the dark matter at all costs. A powerful energy magnate and the leader of a Japanese doomsday cult both seek the ultimate prize for their own nefarious reasons, and McCracken and Wareagle’s mission to defeat them takes the duo on a nonstop journey across the world and thousands of years into the past where the truth lies in the ancient Pandora’s Temple, built to safeguard the world’s most powerful weapon.

McCracken’s only hope to save the world is to find the mythical temple. Along the way, he and Wareagle find themselves up against Mexican drug gangs, killer robots, an army of professional assassins, and a legendary sea monster. The hero of nine previous bestselling thrillers, McCracken is used to the odds being stacked against him, but this time the stakes have never been higher.

You can also pick up two of his Caitlin Strong series on sale for $4.99 apiece, right now, from publisher Tor/MacMillan.

• Strong Enough to Die #1 (there are two editions of this one on sale; I've linked the one I picked up last year on sale; but you might want to check your library to see if you have the other edition)
• Strong Justice #2

Note: The publisher has furnished an electronic copy of Pandora's Temple for me to review. I might actually get around to doing that, someday.... In the meantime, I picked up the other titles on my own nickle.

Bargain Book: The 4-Hour Chef (K)

The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life by Timothy Ferriss was released on Kindle today and there is a special price of $4.99 currently. This is a dollar below the pre-order price many of us (including me) grabbed months ago, so if you missed that deal, don't dally in placing your order. I assume the price will go back up to the $10 or so range I have been seeing on it recently, possibly as early as midnight tonight.

If you did pre-order the book, you were charged the higher price ($5.99). However, you should see a promotional credit on your account in the next 48 hours to reflect the lower price on delivery date.

Book Description
WHAT IF YOU COULD BECOME WORLD-CLASS IN ANYTHING IN 6 MONTHS OR LESS?

The 4-Hour Chef isn’t just a cookbook. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure guide to the world of rapid learning.

#1 New York Times bestselling author (and lifelong non-cook) Tim Ferriss takes you from Manhattan to Okinawa, and from Silicon Valley to Calcutta, unearthing the secrets of the world’s fastest learners and greatest chefs. Ferriss uses cooking to explain “meta-learning,” a step-by-step process that can be used to master anything, whether searing steak or shooting 3-pointers in basketball. That is the real “recipe” of The 4-Hour Chef.

You'll train inside the kitchen for everything outside the kitchen. Featuring tips and tricks from chess prodigies, world-renowned chefs, pro athletes, master sommeliers, super models, and everyone in between, this “cookbook for people who don’t buy cookbooks” is a guide to mastering cooking and life.

The 4-Hour Chef is a five-stop journey through the art and science of learning:

1. META-LEARNING. Before you learn to cook, you must learn to learn. META charts the path to doubling your learning potential.

2. THE DOMESTIC. DOM is where you learn the building blocks of cooking. These are the ABCs (techniques) that can take you from Dr, Seuss to Shakespeare.

3. THE WILD. Becoming a master student requires self-sufficiency in all things. WILD teaches you to hunt, forage, and survive.

4. THE SCIENTIST. SCI is the mad scientist and modernist painter wrapped into one. This is where you rediscover whimsy and wonder.

5. THE PROFESSIONAL. Swaraj, a term usually associated with Mahatma Gandhi, can be translated as “self-rule.” In PRO, we’ll look at how the best in the world become the best in the world, and how you can chart your own path far beyond this book.

Black Friday Week Daily Deals

For those who read at night and catch this before the day changes in Seattle, you can get a great deal on Melissa & Doug Toys, as Amazon has many of them at 50% off as a Gold Box Deal

In the (paper) book world, Amazon has some decent discounts on their Best Books of Year: Top 100 Picks for 2012 and Editors' Gift Picks, but a really good discount on children's books with 50 Books, Just $5 Each, all of which are published by one of Amazon's publishing companies. The top two have list prices of over $15, so there are some real savings (I know kids picture books can be crazy expensive). Be sure to click the Adult Books tab - 34 of the titles are for the big kids in the household.

If you are wondering how everyone knows when some of the great deals in music, video games, movies & tv, computer software and MP3 players & player accessories, then be sure to bookmark these Black Friday Deals Calendar links. For other categories, you do have to check the Black Friday Week page each day, but you can plan a bit better with the calendars, where they exist.

Win a Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 4G LTE and a $250 Gift Card

The Amazon Android Appstore is giving away 5 Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 4G LTE packages, each complete with a cover and a $250 gift card Ultimate HD Entertainment Giveaway. Follow the link to both Like the Amazon Appstore for Android page on Facebook, then enter the giveaway (two steps).

Blog News -- Comments Wanted

I've been working hard on some changes to the blog, in response to a few reader requests. I'm splitting the blog (and it's twitter/RSS feeds) into two (and eventually three) segments. The first split starts today - no more Erotica here on the main blog, so that the feeds and Kindle subscriptions are more family and work friendly. Instead, all Erotica and most LGBT fiction will appear in my new blog, Erotica Books on the Knob (I know! catchy title, right?). I'm currently thinking that I may duplicate the Romance books there (other than those from Christian publishers), but want your input: do you want zero duplication or the occasional duplicate in the Romance category?

I've flagged the new blog for Adult content, but all that means is that you have to click an extra box telling Google that you are aware of the content. I have the RSS feeds (including email subscriptions) and twitter feeds set up now and it looks like the Facebook page is now working, as well.

Speaking of Facebook, did you know that the more individual posts from a page that you "Like", the more likely the posts are to show up on your home page news feed? Facebook used to show you all the pages from Pages that you liked as a whole, but now limits who gets to see a page (when this hit, I saw my reach/audience drop from 1500+ per day to under 300, so I know a lot of you started missing posts on Facebook). So, if you miss seeing the posts on Facebook, be sure to head over to the Books on the Knob Facebook Page and "Like" a few posts.

For future plans, I am considering the same split for books from Christian publisher. These publishers have a lot of free books, with most of them repeats, and can be controversial for some readers. It is a bit of work to move, though, so I haven't started and would like your comments. Moving the posts would mean a leaner blog here (probably 8 or so posts every Monday would move, plus some others during the week) and those who specifically want Christian Fiction/Non-fiction and nothing else would have a new place to read. It would mean, though, that those who want both will need to subscribe to both sites (which is simple using Google Reader) and the same for those who get the Kindle subscription.

In the meantime, feel free to check out the new blog and let me know what you think. It's set up a lot like this one, but there may be a gadget or two on the right sidebar that isn't fully functional.