Almost Free Single + Audiobook from Stephen King (K)

The companion audiobook for Guns ($0.99), a Kindle Single by Stephen King (liberal and gun owner), is free with purchase or if your borrow the title using your Prime Lending choice for the month (personally, I'd save it for something usually more expensive, as the audiobook is 69 cents by itself or you can get book+audiobook for 99 cents).

Book Description
In a pulls-no-punches essay intended to provoke rational discussion, Stephen King sets down his thoughts about gun violence in America. Anger and grief in the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School are palpable in this urgent piece of writing, but no less remarkable are King’s keen thoughtfulness and composure as he explores the contours of the gun-control issue and constructs his argument for what can and should be done.

King's earnings from the sale of this essay will go the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

STEPHEN KING is the author of 11/22/63, Under the Dome, Carrie, The Shining and many other bestselling works.

Of course, with such a controversial subject, there are a variety of books that take a contrary view. Guns at Stephen King's Head: A Satire ($0.99), by Sammy Sneeze, takes King's title and uses it as a launchpoint/impetus of the imagined world after massive gun control has been enacted (some seem content to just attack King personally, rather than contribute to the debate). Most reviews are "average", with a few either in the love it/hate it camp.

Book Description
America has been disarmed.

Thanks in large part to Stephen King's popular essays on gun control, the country has finally banned semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. And everyone is finally safe.

But safety can be as fleeting as liberty, as King learns when the monsters, in an ironic twist, come after him.

Guns at Stephen King's Head is a piece of satire. One that, like the essays it satirizes, is intended to stir debate on an issue that affects everyone.

Today's Deals 2/21

Thru February 28, members at Audible can take advantage of the Buy One Get One Free Sale, doubling the values of your credits. There will be a different selection every day, so be sure to stop buy and see what is new. Today's selection includes William R. Forstchen's One Second After, which I consider one of the best written books in it's genre (that I've read, anyway).


Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Elmo Loves You ($0.99), by Sarah Albee. 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.

Book Description
Everyone loves something?

It's true! Elmo explains how each person has something special they care about. For example, babies love noise and kids love toys; Bert loves pigeons and pigeons love to coo, and so on. At several points the lively rhyming text breaks for a moment to remind young readers that "Elmo loves you!" This is a natural for Valentine's Day and a sweet, reassuring poem about love that kids will enjoy year round.

Elmo loves lots of things, but what does Elmo love most of all? YOU!

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Cider House Rules ($1.99), by John Irving.

Book Description
First published in 1985 by William Morrow, The Cider House Rules is John Irving's sixth novel. Set in rural Maine in the first half of the twentieth century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch—saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist. It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is A Midwife Crisis ($0.99), by Lisa Cooke.

Book Description
Due to her family’s meddling, an Appalachian midwife finds herself with three eager fiancés, but it’s the new doctor in town who makes her pulse race.

Katie Napier’s zany family has decided she needs a husband. And when Katie’s family puts their mind to something, it’s as good as done. In fact, they’re so good, they’ve arranged three fiancés for her in less than a week. What’s a midwife to do?

Dr. John Keffer is used to helping people. It’s why he came back to the Appalachian Mountains—to build a new practice and leave behind the painful memories of the big city. But usually his help is of a medical nature, not advising the most captivating woman he’s ever met which man to wed. A difficult task, especially once he decides he wants to keep her for himself.

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Make Room! Make Room! ($1.99), by Harry Harrison. The companion audiobook on this one is also $1.99, so it might be worth buying a second copy, just to get access to it (looks like I bought this one elsewhere, mid-last year).

Book Description
Movie lovers might recognize Make Room! Make Room! as the basis for the 1973 film Soylent Green, which starred Charlton Heston. While Soylent Green has become a cult classic, fans of the novel have taken issue with its interpretation of what Harrison was really trying to say. Concerned about audiences losing interest, the creators of the film made cannibalism and not overpopulation (as it is in the book) the thematic focus of the story. As a result, fans of the movie and critics alike may want to visit the story in its original unbowdlerized form.

Make Room! Make Room! is set in the year 1999 and the world has become a grim and terribly overpopulated place, bleak and foreboding. This sets the premise for Harrison's novel, and fans of his earlier more comic works may be surprised at the seriousness of this novel. Although Harrison's fears did not become a reality for the inhabitants of New York or the rest of the United States, the novel remains nonetheless a gripping, thought-provoking work about privacy, deprivation, and desperation.

A teeming New York City and a detective's pursuit of a killer and nefarious racketeer comprise this novel. While the novel contains elements of classic detective fiction--the hard-boiled protagonist, the seductive mistress, the portraits of corruption and perfidy--Harrison's true concern is less the story itself and more the opportunity the story offers to give the reader a glance at a dismal and broken world. The state of overpopulation has altered life in innumerable ways, and Harrison is keenly interested in documenting the catastrophic effects of this burden on all human relationships.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harry Harrison has published over forty novels in the course of his writing career, including the West of Eden trilogy, the popular Stainless Steel Rat series, Make Room! Make Room!, and the graphic novel Death World. His novels have been translated into over twenty-five languages. In 1973, Harrison was honored with the Nebula Award for science fiction and fantasy. He lives in Ireland.

Quarantine (£0.99 UK), by Jim Crace, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.99).

Book Description
Under an endless and unforgiving sky, four travellers enter the Judean desert in search of redemption. Instead, amidst the barren rocks, they are met by a dangerous man, Musa, and fall under his dark influence. But there is a fervent, solitary figure also sharing their landscape, denying the temptations of his neighbours, and, ultimately, the needs of his own body. So begin forty days and nights in one of the most inhospitable terrains on earth.

Jim Crace's novel is the brilliantly imagined story of Christ's forty days in the wilderness, a tale of three men, two women, and a curious wanderer whose peculiar fate is transformed into legend. Dazzling, gritty, and utterly compelling, Quarantine is a work at once timeless and timely - a parable for the ages.

Making It Work at Work: A Guide to Career Development and Fulfillment ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Alan Lurie, Kevin Elko, Edward Muzio, Deborah Fisher, Erv Thomas, Gregory Shea, and Robert Gunther, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. This was free last August, so you probably have it in your libraries.

Book Description
Master Powerful Ways to Find Purpose, Fulfillment, and Greatness at Work!

Four great books show you how to find purpose, fulfillment, and greatness at work--no matter where you work or how fast your workplace is changing! Imagine the leaders of one of New York’s top real-estate firms coming together every Monday morning to hear…the moral and spiritual thoughts of a Rabbi. Wouldn’t you like to hear the paths Alan Lurie traced for his listeners, how he helped them bring together their spiritual and business lives, the sacred and the profane? Five Minutes on Mondays compiles these talks for the first time, sharing Lurie’s deep and profound inspiration on the challenges we all face--at work and in life. Lurie draws on millennia of philosophy, theology, and science to help us answer our deepest questions, comfort our deepest yearnings, and become better people: more connected to each other and to the Greater Purpose. Next, in Touchdown! Achieving Your Greatness on the Playing Field of Business (and Life), Dr. Kevin Elko shows how to build your success one brick at a time…so when it happens, it happens huge. America’s #1 performance consultant, Elko shares all he’s learned working with legendary athletes such as Emmitt Smith, championship coaches like Nick Saban, and thousands of the world’s top businesspeople. If you’re good, he’ll make you great. If you’re great, he’ll make you the best! Next, Four Secrets to Liking Your Work offers the first practical, start-to-finish program for transforming your work life: all the tools, tricks, ideas, examples, and proven research you need to make your work life more fulfilling and joyful, wherever you work--starting right now. Finally, in Your Job Survival Guide: A Manual for Thriving in Change, Gregory Shea, Ph.D., and Robert Gunther help you thrive amidst the challenges of your permanent “whitewater world” of change at work. Drawing on extensive research, they show how to protect your career, improve your resilience, and rediscover play and adventure as you “ride the workplace rapids.”

Today's Deals 2/20

Today's Gold Box at Amazon is 59% off "Ben-Hur (50th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition)" and Select Blu-ray Oscar®-winning Titles for $13.99 (scroll down the page).

Today's free MP3 is the Green Hill Music - Celtic Sampler 2013 .

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Matthew Quirk's The 500 ($1.99).

Book Description
A gripping thriller debut, set deep in the heart of the world's most powerful political arena

A year ago, fresh out of Harvard Law School, Mike Ford landed his dream job at the Davies Group, Washington's most powerful consulting firm. Now, he's staring down the barrel of a gun, pursued by two of the world's most dangerous men. To get out, he'll have to do all the things he thought he'd never do again: lie, cheat, steal-and this time, maybe even kill.

Mike grew up in a world of small-stakes con men, learning lessons at his father's knee. His hard-won success in college and law school was his ticket out. As the Davies Group's rising star, he rubs shoulders with "The 500," the elite men and women who really run Washington -- and the world. But peddling influence, he soon learns, is familiar work: even with a pedigree, a con is still a con.

Combining the best elements of political intrigue and heart-stopping action, THE 500 is an explosive debut, one that calls to mind classic thrillers like The Firm and Presumed Innocent. In Mike Ford, readers will discover a new hero who learns that the higher the climb, the harder -- and deadlier -- the fall.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is The Banishment: A Novel of Regency England - Being the First Volume of The Daughters of Mannerling ($1.99), by M.C. Beaton & Marion Chesney.

Book Description
Isabella Beverley is blessed with unparalleled beauty but, unfortunately, has been raised in the most snobbish and haughtiest of families. And when her father gambles away their fortune--including Mannerling, the exquisite family mansion--Isabella discovers there is very little sympathy for her plight. As the eldest, Isabella is chosen to court Mr. Judd, the roguish bachelor who won Mannerling. Surely no sacrifice is too great to regain Mannerling? But tempting her away from Mr. Judd is Lord Fitzpatrick, an Irish rake who fears Isabella can never love a man as she does her home--but is nonetheless determined to convince her to choose man over manse!

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Blade Song ($0.99), the first title in the Colbana Files series by J.C. Daniels (aka Shiloh Walker).

Book Description
Kit Colbana--half breed, assassin, thief, jack of all trades--has a new job: track down the missing ward of one of the local alpha shapeshifters. It should be a piece of cake.So why is she so nervous? It probably has something to do with the insanity that happens when you deal with shifters--especially sexy ones who come bearing promises of easy jobs and easier money.Or maybe it's all the other missing kids that Kit discovers while working the case, or the way her gut keeps screaming she's gotten in over her head. Or maybe it's because if she fails--she's dead.If she can stay just one step ahead, she should be okay. Maybe she'll even live long to collect her fee...

War Crimes for the Home (£0.99 UK), by Liz Jensen, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).

Book Description
`You know what they say about GIs and English girls' knickers,' ran the wartime joke, `One Yank and they're off.' When Gloria met Ron, he was an American pilot who thought nothing of getting hit by shrapnel in the cockpit. She was working in a munitions factory in Bristol during the Blitz, but still found time to grab what she wanted. Ciggies. Sex. American soldiers. But war has an effect on people. Gloria did all sorts of things she wouldn't normally do - evil things, some of them - because she might be dead tomorrow. Or someone might. Now, fifty years on, it's payback time. In her old folks' home, Gloria is forced to remember the real truth about her and Ron, and confront the secret at the heart of her dramatic home front story. In a gripping, vibrant evocation of wartime Britain, Liz Jensen explores the dark impulses of women whose war crimes are committed on the home front, in the name of sex, survival, greed, and love.

Crossing Oceans ($8.54 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Gina Holmes, is the Nook Daily Find. No price match yet on Kindle, but this was free in Nov '10, a a $1.99 special the next year, so it may already be in your libraries.

Book Description
2011 Carol Award winner for Debut Author from ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers)

Jenny Lucas swore she’d never go home again. But being told you’re dying has a way of changing things. Years after she left, she and her five-year-old daughter, Isabella, must return to her sleepy North Carolina town to face the ghosts she left behind. They welcome her in the form of her oxygen tank–toting grandmother, her stoic and distant father, and David, Isabella’s dad . . . Who doesn’t yet know he has a daughter. As Jenny navigates the rough and unknown waters of her new reality, the unforgettable story that unfolds is a testament to the power of love and its ability to change everything—to heal old hurts, bring new beginnings . . . Even overcome the impossible. A stunning debut about love and loss from a talented new voice.

Today's Kindle Teen Daily Deal is The Stones of Mourning Creek ($1.99), by Diane Les Becquets.

Book Description
When fourteen-year-old Francie befriends Ruthie, a black girl, amidst the rampant prejudice in their small town in 1960s Alabama, she suffers from the gruesome harassment of her white peers. But Ruthie demonstrates the humanity and love that helps Francie uncover the truth behind her mother’s death and deal with her father’s neglect and alcoholism.

Books for a Buck

An extended trio of 99 cent books from HarperCollins that may not last long at this price. Links below are for Amazon, but those wanting EPUB should check at BooksonBoard, as well as Barnes & Noble or Kobo, for price matching (or even better, sometimes, at BoB).

Hit Man ($0.99), the first title in the Lawrence Block's John Keller Mysteries series. The companion audiobook is $2.99. The next three titles in the series are also on sale, at $3.99 apiece (50% off).

Book Description
Keller is your basic urban Lonely Guy.He makes a decent wage, lives in a nice apartment.Works the crossword puzzle. Watches a little TV. Until the phone rings and he packs a suitcase, gets on a plane, flies halfway across the country...and kills somebody. It's a living. But is it a life?

Keller's not sure. He goes to a shrink, but it doesn't work out the way he planned. He gets a dog, he gets a girlfriend. He gets along.

Final Appeal ($0.99), by Lisa Scottoline. Despite the title info shown at Amazon, this is a standalone title and not a part of the Rosato & Associates series.

Book Description
Grace Rossi is starting over after a divorce, and a part-time job with a federal appeals court sounds perfect. But she doesn't count on being assigned to an explosive death penalty appeal. Nor does she expect ardor in the court in the form of an affair with the chief judge. Then Grace finds herself investigating a murder, unearthing a secret bank account and following a trail of bribery and judicial corruption that's stumped even the FBI. In no time at all, Grace under fire takes on a whole new meaning.

Last up, the entire Sign of the Zodiac series by Vicki Pettersson is on sale for $0.99 per volume. I had the first four in the series, so quickly snapped up the two I need to complete it. Essentially, you get this entire Urban Fantasy series for less than the cost of a single paperback!.

The Scent of Shadows (check your libraries on this one, as a bonus edition was free in May 2010)

When she was sixteen, Joanna Archer was brutally assaulted and left to die in the Nevada desert.

By rights, she should be dead.

Now a photographer by day, she prowls a different Las Vegas after sunset—a grim, secret Sin City where Light battles Shadow—seeking answers to whom or what she really is . . . and revenge for the horrors she was forced to endure.

But the nightmare is just beginning—for the demons are hunting Joanna, and the powerful shadows want her for their own...

The Taste of Night

Equal parts Light and Shadow, Joanna Archer must fulfill a destiny she never wanted. Once a photographer and heiress to a casino fortune, she is now dedicated to the cause of good . . . but susceptible to the seductions of evil.

A deadly virus is descending on Las Vegas—a terrifying plague unleashed by the powerful overlord of Zodiac's dark side: Joanna's father. Chaos and panic grip Sin City as agents of Light fall prey to the terrifying epidemic. Death reigns supreme—and Joanna stands at dead center of an epic and terrible war long foretold, the last hope of a damned world.

But first she must somehow conquer the malevolence that grows all around her . . . and within.

The Touch of Twilight (companion audiobook $3.49)

On the surface she's a sexy, sophisticated socialite, at home among the beautiful people of the Las Vegas upper crust. But Joanna Archer inhabits another world: a place ordinary humans cannot see . . . a dangerous dimension where an eternal battle rages between the agents of Light and Shadow. And Joanna is both.

Stalked by an enigmatic doppelganger from a preternatural realm, Joanna can feel the Light failing—which is propelling her toward a terrifying confrontation with the ultimate master of evil, the dark lord of Shadow: her father.

Vegas is all about winning big . . . or losing everything. To save her friends, her future, her worlds, Joanna Archer must gamble it all by fully embracing the darkness inside her.

City of Souls

In Sin City, a little girl suffers from a strange and terrible malady. If she dies, the Light will die along with her.

Warrior, avenger, Joanna Archer has survived countless otherworldly terrors—and has found her rightful place among the agents battling the all-pervasive evil of Shadow . . . even as she struggles against the darkness within herself.

A war is raging for Las Vegas—a city without a heart—one that catapults Joanna into a new world hidden from mortal sight. In this lethally seductive alternate dimension the lines blur between good and evil, love and hate, and here lies the last hope for the Light. But Joanna's price of admission is a piece of her own soul—and the odds of her escaping are slim . . . to none.

Cheat the Grave

Las Vegas socialite and otherwordly avenger Joanna Archer gave up everything when she embraced mortality—abandoning her powers and altering her destiny to save a child . . . and a city. Now her former allies are her enemies—and her enemies have nothing to fear.

Yet still she is bound to a prophecy that condemns her to roam a nightmare landscape that ordinary humans cannot see and dare not enter. And a beast is on her trail—an insane killer blinded by bloodlust, who's determined to rip much more from Joanna than merely her now-fragile life. Survival is no longer an option in this dark realm where good and evil have blurred into confusing shades of gray—unless she can gather together an army of onetime foes and destroy everything she once believed in.

The Neon Graveyard

Once she was a soldier for the Light, the prophesied savior who would decide the outcome of the eternal conflict raging unseen in the dark corners of her glittering hometown. Now Joanna Archer is just another mortal—still born of an impossible union of Shadow and Light . . . still hunted by both—and carrying the unborn child of a lover held captive by a depraved demon goddess. Joining forces with a band of rogue Shadow agents, Joanna's ready to storm the stronghold of her demonic foe, risking everything to enter this ghastly, godforsaken realm where the price of admission is her eternal soul. Because in a world that has stripped her of her power, identity, and fortune, Joanna has nothing left to lose—except her baby, her future, and the epic war poised to consume the city.

A bonus for those reading thru to the end: Three free backlist/sidelist titles and a collection of essays from children's book author and PBS contributor Daniel Pinkwater.

• The Ghost of Squire House, by Joanne Pence
• Limbo Man, by Blair Bancroft
• The Serpent and the Grail (The Perilous Order of Camelot), by A. A. Attanasio
• Fish Whistle: Little Short Essays, by Daniel Pinkwater

Today's Deals 2/18

Today's Gold Box at Amazon is 70% off of Norton 360 Multi-Device software. This is what I use on my systems for anti-virus and other online protection. If you don't have anything or are due to renew, you might want to pick this up (you can hold it until you are ready to install and your year of protection starts when it is installed).

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Still with Me ($0.99), by Thierry Cohen and Summer Robinson (Translator), with the companion audiobook $1.99. This is an Amazon exclusive translation published by AmazonCrossing.

Book Description
Since its initial publication in France, Still with Me has been published in 15 countries. The book won France’s Grand Prix Jean d’Ormesson in 2007.

Jeremy takes his life on his twentieth birthday after childhood friend Victoria rejects his love.

On his twenty-first birthday, he wakes up.

Victoria is at his side, blissfully in love with him. While Jeremy can’t remember the previous year, he savors the miracle of waking up alongside the woman he loves.

The next time he wakes, another year has passed and he finds himself a spectator of his own life. Victoria now carries his child, but the man alongside her is a disturbingly different person—a cruel, egotistical, seemingly unknowable Jeremy. Is it amnesia? Insanity? Or has the God Jeremy defied with his selfish act now cursed him?

This strange and beautiful novel tells the tale of a man lost between life and death, but connected by the love—as friend, lover, son, and father—given and taken over the course of a lifetime, a love that simply won’t let go.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Crooked Hearts ($1.99), by Patricia Gaffney [Open Road].

Book Description
Two con artists team up in 1880s California for the score of a lifetime—but end up fighting for their lives instead

In a stagecoach en route to San Francisco, Grace Rousselot is posing as a nun to drum up “donations” from fellow travelers. Across from her, Reuben Jones is faking blindness to prey on unsuspecting travelers. Both grifters are surprised to learn that they have competition, and even more surprised when their stagecoach is ambushed and robbed, leaving them both flat broke.

Not keen to discuss the robbery with the police, Reuben and Grace decide to work together to recoup some of their losses. Soon enough, what starts out as a practical partnership evolves into something more. And with the Chinese mafia hot on their heels, neither is sure just how far they can trust a man—or a woman—with a crooked heart.

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Wild Seed ($2.99), by Octavia E. Butler [Open Road].

Book Description
When two immortals meet in the long-ago past, the destiny of mankind is changed forever

For a thousand years, Doro has cultivated a small African village, carefully breeding its people in search of seemingly unattainable perfection. He survives through the centuries by stealing the bodies of others, a technique he has so thoroughly mastered that nothing on Earth can kill him. But when a gang of New World slavers destroys his village, ruining his grand experiment, Doro is forced to go west and begin anew.

He meets Anyanwu, a centuries-old woman whose means of immortality are as kind as his are cruel. She is a shapeshifter, capable of healing with a kiss, and she recognizes Doro as a tyrant. Though many humans have tried to kill them, these two demi-gods have never before met a rival. Now they begin a struggle that will last centuries and permanently alter the nature of humanity.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author’s estate.

Playing It Safe: Crazy Stories from the World of Britain's Health and Safety Regulations (£0.99 UK), by Alan Pearce, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $5.82).

Book Description
Journalist Alan Pearce collects hilarious (all true, unfortunately) examples of Health and Safety gone mad from UK newspapers and websites that will make you cringe while crying with laughter. Includes:

• The author who was banned from selling his book in case it caused paper cuts.
• The swings removed from a playground in case children were blinded by the sun while playing on them.
• An international cycle race banned after worries about urinating cyclists.
• The risk assessment needed before a local village hall could sell mince pies.

After Dark ($7.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), the first novel in the Harmony/Ghost Hunters series by Jayne Castle, is the Nook Daily Find; this isn't yet price matched on Kindle, but should drop soon, as it's from Penguin, an Agency publisher.

Book Description
Welcome to Harmony—where the rules are a little different.

Life is tough these days for Lydia Smith, licensed para-archaeologist. Seriously stressed-out from a nasty incident in an alien tomb, she is obliged to work part-time in Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors, a very low-budget museum. She has a plan to get her career back on track, but it isn’t going well. Stuff keeps happening.

Take the dead body that she discovered in one of the sarcophagus exhibits. Who needed that? Finding out that her new client, Emmett London, is one of the most dangerous men in the city isn’t helping matters either. And that’s just today’s list of setbacks. Here in the shadows of the Dead City of Old Cadence, things don’t really heat up until After Dark.

Includes a preview of Jayne Castle’s Rainshadow Novel DECEPTION COVE

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is How to Hug ($1.99), by Maryann MacDonald and Jana Christy (Illustrator), published by Amazon's new imprint, Amazon Children's Publishing.

Book Description
Hugs can be tricky! But you can learn how to hug. Never hug anyone too tight—ouch! And don’t hug too many people at once—uh-oh! You can be a leg hugger or a bear hugger or a surprise hugger. If you don’t want a hug, it’s okay to say so. But if you learn how to give a hug and do it just right, you might get one back...so be ready! Jana Christy’s digital illustrations provide a charming twist to something everyone loves to do.