Today's Deals 1/21

Today's Gold Box at Amazon is with "Save Over 50% on Select Sony Memory and Storage Products" and the first Lightning Deal of the Day is a neat looking holder that lets you use your tablet, whether a Kindle Fire, iPad or other 7-10" Android device) in the kitchen, while keeping it off the counter.

For those that picked up yesterday's free Android App, iMediaShare, I played around with it on the original Kindle fire and it looks like it has potential, but is mainly geared towards streaming content (which does not work well here, most of the time) and has a big hole in it's support for "video" as it doesn't support streamed or downloaded Amazon Videos, that I can tell. It's too bad, as it easily found our TV and started trying to stream (I played with Youtube videos, but could only get sound, due to lack of speed on our system) and would have been perfect to view downloaded content from the Kindle Fire that doesn't have an HDMI output port.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is A Drowned Maiden's Hair ($1.99), by Laura Amy Schlitz.

Book Description
Maud Flynn is known at the orphanage for her impertinence. So when the charming Miss Hyacinth chooses her to take home, the girl is pleased but baffled, until she learns of her new role: helping to stage elaborate séances for bereaved patrons. As Maud is drawn deeper into the deception, playing the "secret child," she is torn between her need to please and her growing conscience. It takes a shocking betrayal to make clear just how heartless her so-called guardians are. Filled with fascinating details of turn-of-the-century spiritualism and page-turning suspense, this novel from Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz features a feisty heroine whom readers will not soon forget.

Grade Level: 5 and up

Today's Kindle Daily Deal celebrate MLK Day with Carolyn Maull McKinstry's While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement ($1.99). Co-written with Denise George, many of you will have it in your libraries already, as it was free last September in most of the ebookstores.

Book Description
On September 15, 1963, a Klan-planted bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Fourteen-year-old Carolyn Maull was just a few feet away when the bomb exploded, killing four of her friends in the girl’s rest room she had just exited. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history . . . and the turning point in a young girl’s life.

While the World Watched is a poignant and gripping eyewitness account of life in the Jim Crow South—from the bombings, riots and assassinations to the historic marches and triumphs that characterized the Civil Rights movement.

A uniquely moving exploration of how racial relations have evolved over the past 5 decades, While the World Watched is an incredible testament to how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Numbers Never Lie ($0.99), by Shelley K. Wall.

Book Description
Sophie Henderson, manager of a software-development team, starts what appears to be a routine project at work. She ends up hiding from her staff, her friends, and the person who is trying to stop her from delving further into discrepancies in the accounting system.

Trevan Prater (AKA Trevor Adams) has been assigned to delve into an embezzlement scheme at a large government contractor. As an FBI investigator, he’s used to working such cases. A chance encounter lands him front and center with Sophie, one of the lead suspects. Now he’s not only investigating her, but also pretending to be the consultant from whom she needs help.

The more his team digs into the data she gives him, the guiltier she appears. Unfortunately, the longer he’s with her, the more attracted he becomes.

Sensuality Level: Behind Closed Doors

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Finnikin of the Rock ($1.99), the first novel in Melina Marchetta's young adult Lumatere Chronicles series. This was a Nook Daily Find last June, but I don't believe it was price matched on Kindle (I ended up buying it from B&N).

Book Description
Finnikin was only a child during the five days of the unspeakable, when the royal family of Lumatere were brutally murdered, and an imposter seized the throne. Now a curse binds all who remain inside Lumatere’s walls, and those who escaped roam the surrounding lands as exiles, persecuted and despairing, dying by the thousands in fever camps. In a narrative crackling with the tension of an imminent storm, Finnikin, now on the cusp on manhood, is compelled to join forces with an arrogant and enigmatic young novice named Evanjalin, who claims that her dark dreams will lead the exiles to a surviving royal child and a way to pierce the cursed barrier and regain the land of Lumatere. But Evanjalin’s unpredictable behavior suggests that she is not what she seems—and the startling truth will test Finnikin’s faith not only in her, but in all he knows to be true about himself and his destin

Bride Flight ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), by Marieke Van Der Pol and Colleen Higgins (Translator), is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $8.90).

Book Description
It is 1953, and the last great transcontinental air race from London to Christchurch is about to begin, but even before the KLM plane has left the runway, it has already become famous as the 'bride flight'. Of its sixty emigrating passengers, many are brides-to-be flying out to join their fiancés on the other side of the world. Among them are Ada, Marjorie and Esther, each of them with their own reasons for wanting to leave behind the hardships of post-war life at home, and their own pasts. During the trip they meet Frank, a charismatic bachelor, who will come to have a dramatic influence on their lives, and who exerts a continued hold over each of the women as they follow their very different paths in New Zealand. It is only when they meet again, years later, at Frank's funeral, that the three women - now 'brides in black' - get to hear each other's stories for the first time and realize just how closely their lives have been bound together by what happened on the bride flight.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), edited by Clayborne Carson, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
First-person account of the extraordinary life of America's greatest civil rights leader. It begins with his boyhood as the son of a preacher, his education as a minister, his ascendancy as a leader of civil rights, & his complex relationships with leading political & social figures of the day.

Audible Wishes Granted Sale Extended

Audible has extended their $6.95 Wishes Granted Sale for another day (now ends January 20, at midnight, ET), so you have several hours left to shop and see if any of the items on your wishlist have been marked down to bargain prices. I found one from my wishlist on the sale, as well as one where the Kindle edition + companion audiobook offered a better price, instead ($1.99 plus $3.49 for the Kindle edition < $6.95!).

Since the audiobooks included are the 120+ most wished for at Audible, there is a pretty nice selection, but you do have to browse all the pages, as there are no categories. One bestseller I found is Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health, by William Davis MD. Like all of Audible's sales, you must have some type of subscription, even if it is the annual $10 level that doesn't include credits. If you don't have a membership, you can either get 2 free audiobooks in a 30 day trial OR go for the $100 discount on an electronics item (including the Kindle family) with a one-year commitment.

Today's Deals 1/20

Amazon's Android Appstore free App today is iMediaShare, which is usually $5. It lets you watch the video from your Kindle Fire or other Android device on your HDTV, without using wires.

Today's Kindle Teen Daily Deal is If I Stay ($2.99), by Gayle Forman (Penguin).

Book Description
A critically acclaimed novel that will change the way you look at life, love, and family.

In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ­year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, Mia's story will stay with you for a long, long time.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Wilderness ($1.99), by Lance Weller.

Book Description
Thirty years after the Civil War's Battle of the Wilderness left him maimed, Abel Truman has found his way to the edge of the continent, the rugged, majestic coast of Washington State, where he lives alone in a driftwood shack with his beloved dog. Wilderness is the story of Abel, now an old and ailing man, and his heroic final journey over the snowbound Olympic Mountains. It's a quest he has little hope of completing but still must undertake to settle matters of the heart that predate even the horrors of the war.

As Abel makes his way into the foothills, the violence he endures at the hands of two thugs who are after his dog is crosscut with his memories of the horrors of the war, the friends he lost, and the savagery he took part in and witnessed. And yet, darkness is cut by light, especially in the people who have touched his life-from Jane Dao-Ming Poole, the daughter of murdered Chinese immigrants, to Hypatia, an escaped slave who nursed him back to life, and finally to the unbearable memory of the wife and child he lost as a young man. Haunted by tragedy, loss, and unspeakable brutality, Abel has somehow managed to hold on to his humanity, finding way stations of kindness along his tortured and ultimately redemptive path.

In its contrasts of light and dark, wild and tame, brutal and tender, and its attempts to reconcile a horrific war with the great evil it ended, Wilderness tells not only the moving tale of an unforgettable character, but a story about who we are as human beings, a people, and a nation. Lance Weller's immensely impressive debut immediately places him among our most talented writers.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Strangers in the Night ($0.99), by Inés Saint.

Book Description
Jake Kelly is Chicago's conservative mayoral candidate. Heir to a dubiously obtained real estate fortune, he's had a hard time convincing people a generous, caring heart lies beneath his cold demeanor. Recent polls have him lagging behind his more family oriented Democratic opponent and his main problem seems to be Chicago's large Hispanic constituency.

Keila Diaz is a warm, sassy, left-leaning violinist of Hispanic descent. She's struggling to make a career out of her passion for playing the violin in the city she loves.

Keila needs more work and Jake needs a consultant. When a friend brings them together to come up with a music program for the city's public school system as part of Jake's plans for education reform, sparks ignite and combust. Jake ignores he'd already met Keila once before and Keila follows his lead.

When photos of the two of them dancing close at a festival mysteriously show up in local media, things get complicated. Voters love the idea of Jake and Keila together, but they have it all wrong... or do they?

Sensuality Level: Tender Sensuality

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Midworld ($1.99), by Alan Dean Foster. This is another of Open Road's reprint editions that I'd snap up if it weren't already on my elibrary shelves.

Book Description

The peaceful inhabitants of the jungle planet Midworld must fight for their survival in this classic adventure novel from Alan Dean Foster

From the rich imagination of science fiction great Alan Dean Foster comes the story of Midworld, a Humanx Commonwealth planet that’s equally fragile and hostile. Covered by a lush rainforest, Midworld is home to a primitive society that lives in harmony with the natural world. But the arrival of an exploitative human company, whose workers know nothing of Midworld’s delicate ecosystem, sparks a conflict. Should Midworld’s villagers aid the humans or stand against them? The hero of Foster’s addictive page-turner, Born, decides to lead two humans across the perilous jungle. His choice propels Midworld toward annihilation—and leads him headlong into a battle for survival.

Storm & Conquest: The Battle for the Indian Ocean, 1808-10 ($1.60 / £0.99 UK), by Stephen Taylor, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).

Book Description
The Indian Ocean, 1809. At stake: Britain's commercial lifeline to India and naval supremacy. In one fatal season, the natural order of maritime power since Trafalgar was destroyed. Storm and Conquest brings together the terrifying ordeal of men, women and children caught at sea in hurricanes, and those who survived to drive the French from the Eastern seas. All shared a need to prove themselves - to make a career, or a fortune, or a marriage - in places which could be at once magnificent and terrifying.

Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Jane O'Connor, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Nancy Clancy is growing up and ready for a whole new adventure . . . in her chapter book debut!

Nancy and her best friend, Bree, have everything they need to solve a mystery, from their totally professional trench coats to their top-secret code.

But when crime strikes in their classroom, will these super sleuths be able to crack the case?

Find out in the glamorous start to an all-new chapter book series featuring everyone’s favorite fancy girl!

Grade Level: 2 and up

Today's Deals 1/19

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is 25 Top-Rated Romance Novels, $1.99 or Less. Too many for me to post, but if you are a romance fan, be sure to scan thru the list to see if there are titles you don't yet have. And the full range of the genre is covered, from historical romance, to romantic suspense and there is at least one urban fantasy hidden in the list, as well.


Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Rose Garden ($1.99), by Susanna Kearsley, with the companion audiobook only $3.49.

Book Description
Eva Ward returns to the only place she truly belongs, the old house on the Cornish coast, seeking happiness in memories of childhood summers. There she finds mysterious voices and hidden pathways that sweep her not only into the past, but also into the arms of a man who is not of her time.

But Eva must confront her own ghosts, as well as those of long ago. As she begins to question her place in the present, she comes to realize that she too must decide where she really belongs.

From Susanna Kearsley, author of the New York Times bestseller The Winter Sea and a voice acclaimed by fans of Gabaldon, du Maurier, and Niffenegger alike, The Rose Garden is a haunting exploration of love, family, the true meaning of home, and the ties that bind us together.

Diamond Star Halo ($1.60 / £0.99 UK), by Tiffany Murray, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $8.90).

Book Description
Growing up in a rural recording studio, Halo Llewellyn is rarely star-struck, but when one of the visiting singers gives birth to Fred, she knows right away that he's special.As the golden child grows into the gilded man, she remains dazzled by his ambition and his talent.Up on stage, being screamed at by hundreds of teenage girls, Fred will always turn his spotlight on Halo in the crowd. But that's the problem with falling in love with your charismatic almost-brother - it can never be a secret. In the end, the whole world has to know.

Texas Pride ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), the sixth novel in Leigh Greenwood's Night Riders series, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
A PRINCE AMONG MEN
Carla Reece had never met anyone more infuriating in her life. The blond giant who swaggered up to her door had no right to take over half her ranch - no matter how stupid her brother had been gambling it away in a high-stakes poker game. Her new foreman claimed to be some foreign royalty who promised to leave in a year. Still, a year was way too long to spend with a man who made her madder than a wet hen and weak in the knees all at the same time.

A HELLION AMONG WOMEN
Ivan may have charmed everyone in town into thinking he was the perfect gentleman, but Carla knew better. There had to be a chink in his armor-a red-hot passion under that calm, cool gaze. But once she finds it, she may be in for more than she ever bargained for...

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Dragon Princess ($1.99), by E. D Baker.

Book Description
With E. D. Baker's trademark humor, wacky animal and human characters, and almost all-new cast, this is the story of Emma's daughter, Millie, who is trying to survive being a magical princess who happens to keep turning into a dragon. When she cannot stop her own magic any other way, she and three friends (one vampire, one troll and her cousin, a young wizard prince) set off for the Frozen North and the Blue Witch. Together the motley group battles fearsome bears, saves imprisoned dragons, and find their way home in style, with Millie having gained control of her dragon magic.

Grade Level: 5 and up

Today's Deals 1/18

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Pago Pago Tango ($4.99), by John Enright, with the companion audiobook for $1.99.

Book Description
Detective Sergeant Apelu Soifua spent seven years in the San Francisco Police Department, where the job was just a job and solving crimes required cool detachment. But back home on American Samoa, life is personal—especially for a cop. Because on a small island where no one is a stranger and secrets are widely known but never discussed, solving crimes requires a certain…finesse.

Here, Apelu must walk the line between two cultures: Samoan versus American, native versus new. And that gulf never yawns wider than when a white family’s home in Pago Pago is burglarized. And what appears to be a simple, open-and-shut case turns out to anything but. As the evidence piles up, Apelu follows a tangled trail between cultures, dead bodies, hidden codes, and a string of lies on his hunt for the ugly truth buried at the heart of paradise.

Set against the steamy backdrop of the Samoan jungle, this thoughtful whodunit introduces a memorable new gumshoe to the ranks of detective fiction.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Small Town Secrets ($0.99), by Molly Kate Gray.

Book Description
Miller’s Grove’s most eligible bachelor, Josh Owens, could have a different date every night of the week, so he doesn’t understand why he’s drawn to Tara since she’s obviously not interested in him. Tara Sullivan is angry that he’s stolen the coveted prime-time anchor position she’d been promised.

A stranger begins preying on the single young women in Miller’s Grove, and the story’s assigned to Tara. As the number of victims grows, Tara reluctantly accepts help from Josh. As he researches his top suspect in the assaults, he unearths events in the past that more than one resident of Miller’s Grove wants to keep hidden.

Together they discover a web of conspiracy and lies involving the most powerful family in town. Josh and Tara put their reputations at risk in the hope of exposing the truth and, perhaps, finally bringing Tara peace.

Sensuality Level: Sensual

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Blood Maidens ($1.99), the third novel in Barbara Hambly's James Asher vampire series. The first two in the series are published by Open Road (and already in my library, as this one will be soon), but this one and the latest, Magistrates of Hell, are published by Severn House.

Book Description
The new 'James Asher' vampire novel from the best-selling author - It's 1911. War is coming, and according to one of the vampires of St. Petersburg, the Kaiser is trying to recruit vampires. James Asher, Oxford don and formerly on His Majesty's Secret Service, is forced to team up again with his vampire partner Don Simon Ysidro for a journey to the subarctic Russian capital. Are they on the trail of a rogue vampire with a plan to achieve the power to walk in daylight? Asher wonders. Or is Ysidro's real agenda to seek the woman he once loved?

USS Alcatraz ($1.60 / £0.99 UK), by Philip Robinson, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $2.99).

Book Description
Author Philip Robinson blends reality with a dose of the outlandish in this fast-paced thriller:

Kraken Corporation is too big to fail…or control. Spreading its tentacles into every profit centre around the globe—oil, gold, diamonds—it takes what it wants and leaves behind a path of death and destruction.

When Emma Baine, heir to Kraken, publicly announces her intention to end the corporation’s history of profiteering, murder, and monopoly, a bomb explodes on the rostrum, killing her instantly. To her brother Carson, it’s the perfect punch line to Emma’s childish statement. He took out his sister, and now he’s going to take over the firm.

Using Kraken’s “private security force,” a mercenary army that rolls over every obstacle to profitability, and the USS Alcatraz, an old Russian nuclear sub retrofitted into a gargantuan underwater prison, Carson imprisons everyone he perceives as an enemy—while the highest figures in government turn a blind eye.

But there’s one obstacle Carson can’t grind under his heel: an ex-Marine named Vaughan. As Emma’s former lover and bodyguard, Vaughn is tough, smart…and very angry.

Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog ($3.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Ted Kerasote, is the Nook Daily Find, which I picked up last April (at Amazon's current sale price). It's likely to end up price matched on Kindle by the afternoon.

Book Description
Now including a wonderful new photo insert chronicling Merle’s life, this national bestseller explores the relationship between humans and dogs. How would dogs live if they were free? Would they stay with their human friends?

Merle and Ted found each other in the Utah desert— Merle was living wild and Ted was looking for a pup to keep him company. As their bond grew, Ted taught Merle how to live around wildlife, and Merle taught Ted about the benefits of letting a dog make his own decisions.

Using the latest in wolf research and exploring issues of animal consciousness and leadership and the origins of the human-dog relationship, Ted Kerasote takes us on the journey he and Merle shared. As much a love story as a story of independence and partnership, Merle’s Door is tender, funny, and ultimately illuminating.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Good News, Bad News ($1.99), by Jeff Mack.

Book Description
Good news, Rabbit and Mouse are going on a picnic. Bad news, it is starting to rain. Good news, Rabbit has an umbrella. Bad news, the stormy winds blow the umbrella (and Mouse!) into a tree.So begins this clever story about two friends with very different dispositions. Using just four words, Jeff Mack has created a text with remarkable flair that is both funny and touching, and pairs perfectly with his energetic, and hilarious, illustrations.Good news, this is a book kids will clamor to read again and again!

Grade Level: P and up

This book features Kindle Text Pop-Up for reading text over vivid, full-color images when using Kindle Fire/HD or select Kindle Reading Apps (Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle for iPad or Kindle for Android); unlike some other Text Popup books, this one won't work on any of the eInk Kindles.