Today's Deals 3/30

Today only, get Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 by the Eagles for $1.99 (MP3).

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Charm! ($1.99), by Kendall Hart [Hyperion].

Book Description
Avery Wilkins is in her prime. She's 30 years old, living in Manhattan, beautiful, smart, and the head of her own cosmetics company, Flair. But her enviable exterior hides deep heartache and painful secrets. Determined to launch a successful perfume, and hopeful that her relationship with handsome and supportive Marcus is getting serious, Avery is chasing her dreams--and running from her traumatic past.

Just when things seem to be on an even keel, Avery is hit with a succession of shocking setbacks, surprises, and betrayals: A drug-addicted colleague who threatens the future of Flair, one boyfriend who is incapable of fidelity, another who may have committed a terrible crime, a long-lost sister who isn't quite who she seems, and most disturbing of all, the sudden appearance of a woman claiming to be Avery's birth mother.

Avery is forced to question the loyalty of friends, lovers, and colleagues, and even her own beliefs about where she came from and who she is. Through it all, she draws on her ambition, grit, and cunning to outsmart her enemies, keep her company afloat, and protect herself from emotional meltdown. But when her archenemy resorts to kidnapping, has Avery finally met her match

Dramatic, sexy, and fun, Charm! is a wickedly entertaining roman a clef by All My Children favorite Kendall Hart. Brimming with scandal, romance, backstabbing, and unpredictable twists, it is every bit as shocking and captivating as the character who wrote it.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is save on six popular novels by best-selling Twilight author Stephenie Meyer for $2.99 or less [Hachette]; all are also are Whispersync for Voice-ready.

• The Host: A Novel ($1.99 Kindle; companion audiobook $3.95)
• Twilight: The Twilight Saga, Book 1 ($2.99 Kindle; companion audiobook $10.99)
• New Moon: The Twilight Saga, Book 2 ($2.99 Kindle; companion audiobook $10.99)
• Eclipse: The Twilight Saga, Book 3 ($2.99 Kindle; companion audiobook $10.99)
• Breaking Dawn: The Twilight Saga, Book 4 ($2.99 Kindle; companion audiobook $10.99)
• The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella (The Twilight Saga) ($1.99 Kindle; companion audiobook $10.99)

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Player Piano ($1.99), by Kurt Vonnegut [RosettaBooks].

Book Description
Player Piano (1952), Vonnegut’s first novel, embeds and foreshadows themes which are to be parsed and dramatized by academians for centuries to come. His future society--a marginal extrapolation, Vonnegut wrote, of the situation he observed as an employee of General Electric in which machines were replacing people increasingly and without any regard for their fate--is mechanistic and cruel, indifferent to human consequence, almost in a state of merriment as human wreckage accumulates. Paul Proteus, the novel’s protagonist, is an engineer at Ilium Works and first observes with horror and then struggles to reverse the displacement of human labor by machines.

Ilium Works and Paul’s struggles are a deliberately cartoon version of labor’s historic and escalating struggle to give dignity and purpose to workers. The novel embodies all of Vonenegut’s concerns and what he takes to be the great dilemma of the technologically overpowered century: the spiritual needs of the population in no way serve the economies of technology and post-technology. Vonnegut overlies this grotesque comedy over tragedy, disguising his novel in the trappings of goofiness.

Not published--at Vonnegut’s insistence--as science fiction, the novel was nonetheless recognized and praised by the science fiction community which understood it far better than a more general readership, a dilemma which Vonnegut resentfully faced throughout his career. Bernard Wolfe’s dystopian Limbo and Player Pianowere published in the same year to roughly similar receptions; two “outsiders” had apotheosized technophobia as forcefully as any writer within the field. Throughout his career, Vonnegut was forced to struggle with his ambivalence about science fiction and his own equivocal relationship with its readers.

The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is three titles for up to £1.19 each (>70% off).

Mrs Robinson's Disgrace (Main/ £1.19 UK), by Kate Summerscale (US edition $7.99)

On a mild winter's evening in 1850, Isabella Robinson set out for a party. Her carriage bumped across the wide cobbled streets of Edinburgh's Georgian New Town and drew up at 8 Royal Circus, a grand sandstone terrace lit by gas lamps.The guests were gathered in the high, airy drawing rooms on the first floor, the ladies in glinting silk and satin pulled tight over boned corsets; the gentlemen in tailcoats, waistcoats and neckties. When Mrs Robinson joined the throng she was at once enchanted by a Mr Edward Lane, a handsome medical student ten years her junior. He was 'fascinating', she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man's charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, which she was to find hard to shake...

The White Tiger (Main/ £0.99 UK), by Aravind Adiga (US edition $9.99), winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008

Balram Halwai is the White Tiger - the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor for him to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centres, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one way he can become part of this glamorous new India - by murdering his master.

The White Tiger presents a raw and unromanticised India, both thrilling and shocking - from the desperate, almost lawless villages along the Ganges, to the booming Wild South of Bangalore and its technology and outsourcing centres. The first-person confession of a murderer, The White Tiger is as compelling for its subject matter as for the voice of its narrator - amoral, cynical, unrepentant, yet deeply endearing.

The Distant Hours (Main/ £0.99 UK), by Kate Morton (US edition $9.61)

Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives with the return address of Millderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks an old secret. Evacuated from London as a thirteen year old girl, Edie’s mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe, and taken to live at Millderhurst Castle with the Blythe family. Fifty years later, Edie too is drawn to Millderhurst and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now, the three still live together, the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonment by her fiancé in 1941 plunged her into madness. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Millderhurst Castle, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it . . .

Soul's Gate ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by James L. Rubart, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
What if you could travel inside another person’s soul? To battle for them. To be part of Jesus healing their deepest wounds. To help set them free to step boldly into their divinely designed future.

Thirty years ago that’s exactly what Reece Roth did. Until tragedy shattered his life and ripped away his future.

Now God has drawn Reece out of the shadows to fulfill a prophecy spoken over him three decades ago. A prophecy about four warriors with the potential to change the world . . . if Reece will face his deepest regret and teach them what he has learned.

They gather at a secluded and mysterious ranch deep in the mountains of Colorado, where they will learn to see the spiritual world around them with stunning clarity—and how to step into the supernatural.

Their training is only the beginning. The four have a destiny to pursue a freedom even Reece doesn’t fully fathom. But they have an enemy hell-bent on destroying them and he’ll stop at nothing to keep them from their quest for true freedom and the coming battle of souls.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Wings: A Fairy Tale ($1.99), by E. D. Baker [Bloomsbury USA Childrens].

Book Description
Tamisin has always been a little weird. Her freckles actually look more like sparkles and occasionally, she likes to dance under the full moon. Then one day, wings sprout from her back, and Tamisin learns that her parents adopted her from fairyland. Inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream, this fairy tale will delight fans of The Tales of the Frog Princess and new readers alike.

Grades: 6-9

R.I.P BeWrite Books

BeWrite Books, a small publisher, is shuttering its doors at the end of the month. Their store is open until then, for those who've been holding off on a purchase. Hopefully the authors will find new homes (although they are most likely to end up publishing on their own via Amazon and other stores). BeWrite was a supporter of Read an EBook Week and has contributed several books to my library over the years. They'll be missed.

Here's the announcement from their homepage:

SO LONG – AND THANKS FOR ALL THE WISH
BeWrite Books was born with the new millennium at midnight on December 31/January 1, 2000. It dies on March 31, 2013 when this website will be taken down.

It was all about a wish: A wish shared by us, our authors and our readers.

We worked incredibly hard with a dedicated and passionate professional in-house team and some of the most gifted writers imaginable. We were ahead of the game for so long, surviving on tireless labour, wits, cooperation, friendship, love of the art ... and hope. But recent market forces beyond our control force us to call a halt and – sadly and most reluctantly – wind down to a spring closure.

More than 250 wonderful new works in many genres, created by BB authors over the course of that thirteen-year period, were honed to perfection by a painstaking professional team with nothing more in mind than to expose the greatest books in their best form to the widest possible readership in print and – from the very start – digital editions.

Our job now is to find effective and prestigious new publishers for BB-published titles and to assist those BB authors who choose to take the self-publishing route. We’re working flat-out on that and are succeeding in keeping works alive. But it’s dispiriting and often heart-breaking to now count our every loss as a success.

We thank our authors and our team for their commitment.

We thank our loyal readers for their support.
Titles in our bookstore will become increasingly unavailable through BeWrite Books and its many third-party retail outlets over the wind-down period but can still be discovered and bought with a quick internet search of title or author. Others will remain available in our store and elsewhere until the end of March.

Infinitum nihil ... so it goes.

Luck and best wishes to all.

Neil Marr, Tony Szmuk, Hugh McCracken and Sam Smith

Housekeeping and more on GoodReads Acquisition

First, for those who are getting updates by email, I've changed the publication time to every four hours. This may result in two-three emails a day, but I was seeing price changes by the afternoon and those on email were missing out on notices. Also, any late posts (like this one) were being held until the next day. If you don't like getting multiple emails a day, you'll find a (very tiny print) link at the bottom of the email that says "preferences". Click there and you can set how often you want to receive emails.

I've also been playing with Squidoo, to see if I could still post a notice of free Kindle books there. I don't know if it will last, but I have a "lens" (page) up there for you to try out (and a couple of books to get, of course).

Over on LibraryThing, read their take on the Amazon/Goodreads acquisition (quick take: it's a good thing ... for LibraryThing!).

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Bargain Baking Roundup

Chocolate Cakes: 50 Great Cakes for Every Occasion ($3.99 Kindle), by Elinor Klivans and Ann Stratton [Chronicle Books]

Book Description
There are enough people out there obsessed with chocolate cake to warrant an official holiday: National Chocolate Cake Day, January 27th. Beloved baker Elinor Klivans, author of the best-selling Cupcakes! and Cupcake Kit, has dedicated her new cookbook to the stuff of chocoholic fantasy: chocolate cake. There's something for bakers of every skill level in the 50 recipes included here, from fast chocolate fixes like the Hot Chocolate Pudding Cake to more elaborate recipes like the Mocha Whipped Cream Truffle Cake. This book is certain to be celebrated by chocolate lovers everywhere. And how will they do that? With cake, of course!

Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor ($2.51 Kindle), by Anne Byrn [Workman Publishing]

Book Description
The Cake Mix Doctor goes chocolate! Anne Byrn brings her proven prescription for doctoring cake mix to an ingredient that inspires love bordering on obsession.

It's a marriage made in baker's heaven-150 all-new, all-easy recipes for cakes, starring the ingredient that surpasses all other flavors, including vanilla, by a 3-to-1 margin, and that Americans consume to the tune of 2.8 billion pounds a year. Starting with versatile supermarket cake mixes and adding just the right extras-including melted semisweet chocolate bars, chocolate chips, or cocoa powder, plus fresh eggs or a bit of buttermilk, dried coconut, mashed bananas, or instant coffee powder-a baker at any level of experience can turn out dark, rich, moist, delicious chocolate layer cakes, time and again. Not to mention sheet cakes, pound cakes, cupcakes and muffins, cheesecakes, cookies, brownies, and bars. Rounding out the book are 38 all-new homemade frostings and fillings, and a full-color insert showing every cake in the book.

Southern Cakes: Sweet and Irresistible Recipes for Everyday Celebrations ($2.99 Kindle), by Nancie McDermott and Becky Luigart-Stayner (Photographer) [Chronicle Books]

Book Description
Taste the chocolatey goodness of Mississippi Mud or marvel at the extravagant elegance of the Lady Baltimore and there will be no doubt that Southerners know how to bake a cake. Here are 65 recipes for some of the most delicious ever. Jam cakes and jelly rolls; humble pear bread and peanut cake; whole chapters on both chocolate and coconut cakes, each moist and delicious forkful represents the spirit of the South. A Baking 101 section offers the cake basics, some finishing touches (that means frosting and lots of it!), and the how-to's of storing each lovely concoction so that the last slice tastes as fresh and delightful as the first.

Southern Biscuits ($1.99 Kindle, $2.99 Kobo - seems to be different edition, possibly for non-US market, but available in the US), by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart

Book Description
Southern Biscuits features recipes and baking secrets for every biscuit imaginable, including hassle-free easy biscuits to embellished biscuits laced with silky goat butter, crunchy pecans, or tangy pimento cheese. The traditional biscuits in this book encompass a number of types, from beaten biscuits of the Old South and England, to Angel Biscuits—a yeast biscuit sturdy enough to split and fill but light enough to melt in your mouth. Filled with beautiful photography, including dozens of how-to photos showing how to mix, stir, fold, roll, and knead, Southern Biscuits is the definitive biscuit baking book.

Bargain Book Roundup

Today only, Mills & Boon is having a 75 for 75 Pence Sale. From what I can see, you can add as many of the ebooks in the sale into your cart as you want, before checking out (a credit card is required and you may be charged a currency conversion fee, which should not be a lot, but you'll want to verify with your card before committing).

Beautiful Disaster ($3.79 Kindle, $3.95 companion audiobook), the New York Times bestseller by Jamie McGuire [Simon and Schuster], is on sale at Amazon only, in anticipation of the release of the next in the series, Walking Disaster (April 2).

Book Description
The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand.

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby wants—and needs—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

Betsy-Tacy Treasury ($2.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Maud Hart Lovelace [HarperCollins], would be a good sale if it were one book, but this is a 4-novel volume, running over 700 pages in print.

Book Description
The first four books in the beloved Betsy-Tacy series are ready to delight a new generation ofreaders—and to bring a grownup generation of readers back to the engrossingstories of their youth. Following the childhoods of Betsy Ray and her friendsin the late 1800s and early 1900s, this handsome anthology collects theoriginal Betsy-Tacy as well as Betsy, Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, and Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown. Forewords by Judy Blume,Esther Hautzig, and Johanna Hurwitz, andillustrations by Lois Lenski, will make readers ofall ages feel at home in the imaginative life of young Betsy Ray as she awakensto the challenges and triumphs of her home in quaint Mankato, Minnesota.

Instant Attraction ($2.99 Kindle, $3.50 B&N), the first novel in The Wilders series by Jill Shalvis [Kensington]

Book Description
The first in a sensational new series, Jill Shalvis introduces Cameron, Stone, and T.J. Wilder--three bad-boy heroes who effortlessly mix breathtaking adventure and scorching sex appeal. . .

Get Wild. . .And Then Get Wilder. . .

Accountant Katie Kramer is a quintessential good girl--working hard, recycling diligently, all the while trying to ignore the feeling that she doesn't fit in anywhere. That's all she wants. Well, that--and amazing sex, and the kind of daredevil escapade she can look back on when she's crunching numbers in a dusty cubicle. Which explains why she just took a job in Wishful, California, working for Wilder Adventures and Expeditions. Waking up to find a magnificently built stranger towering over her bed--that part defies explanation. . .

The Treasure of Montsegur ($2.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Sophy Burnham [HarperCollins]

Book Description
The year is 1209: A baby girl, dressed in a white silk dress strewn with pearls, is found in a meadow outside the smoking city of Béziers, where 20,000 people have just been massacred. Adopted by Lady Esclarmonde, the fiery Jeanne is educated in the ways of the Cathars -- the "pure ones," pacifist, vegetarian, chaste followers of Christ. But war is raging, and the Inquisition is charged with exterminating the Church of Love. It is a time of terror, with neighbor pitted against neighbor, and religious passions running high; a time of suspicion, burnings, and systematic genocide. Against this turbulent background, Jeanne of Béziers finds herself embroiled in the resistance, fighting for freedom alongside William, the man whom she loves -- and who is married to her best friend.

Trapped with William and more than 200 Cathars at the fortress of Montségur, Jeanne is asked to sacrifice her convictions for the security of the Cathar legacy. As the only person who can save the legendary Cathar treasure, Jeanne is propelled on a journey through the dark days of the Inquisition, eventually to a place where she discovers the true treasure of Montségur and her own destiny in keeping it alive.

This stunning novel of the Cathars, populated with real historical figures and accurate in its historical details, tells Jeanne's story of sexual passion, intrigue, mystery, and the search for love and God. This extraordinary woman will linger with you long after the novel's haunting conclusion.

Save Me ($2.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Lisa Scottoline (going onto my TBR list)

Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Think Twice and Look Again comes an emotionally powerful novel about a split-second choice, agonizing consequences, and the need for justice

Rose McKenna volunteers as a lunch mom in her daughter Melly’s school in order to keep an eye on Amanda, a mean girl who’s been bullying her daughter. Her fears come true when the bullying begins, sending Melly to the bathroom in tears. Just as Rose is about to follow after her daughter, a massive explosion goes off in the kitchen, sending the room into chaos. Rose finds herself faced with the horrifying decision of whether or not to run to the bathroom to rescue her daughter or usher Amanda to safety. She believes she has accomplished both, only to discover that Amanda, for an unknown reason, ran back into the school once out of Rose's sight. In an instance, Rose goes from hero to villain as the small community blames Amanda’s injuries on her. In the days that follow, Rose's life starts to fall to pieces, Amanda’s mother decides to sue, her marriage is put to the test, and worse, when her daughter returns to school, the bullying only intensifies. Rose must take matters into her own hands and get down to the truth of what really happened that fateful day in order to save herself, her marriage and her family.

In the way that Look Again had readers questioning everything they thought they knew about family, Save Me will have readers wondering just how far they would go to save the ones they love. Lisa Scottoline is writing about real issues that resonate with real women, and the results are emotional, heartbreaking and honest.

Something Wicked This Way Comes ($4.36 Kindle, $6.99 B&N), by Ray Bradbury, is available to pre-order. Not enough of his novels are available as ebooks and the ones that are tend to be priced a lot closer to $10.

Book Description
The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. The shrill siren song of a calliope beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes. . .and the stuff of nightmare.

Few American novels written this century have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury's unparalleled literary classic SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin.The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. The shrill siren song of a calliope beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes. . .and the stuff of nightmare.

Few American novels written this century have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury's unparalleled literary classic SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin.

Law and Order ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Dorothy Uhnak [Open Road], which was adapted for the TV-movie starring Darren McGavin. None of her ebooks are in my local library and Open Road generally does a great job on editing/formatting, so I'm going to give this one a try.

Book Description
A tough Irish cop. A prostitute. A massive cover-up that stretches to the highest levels of law enforcement . . . and its fatal impact on three generations of a New York police family.

Harlem, just before midnight. A New York Police Department cop and his partner pull up in front of a tenement. A short while later, Sergeant Brian O’Malley is dead from a stab wound to the jugular, and a prostitute has fallen down an airshaft to oblivion.

A few years after his father is given a hero’s funeral, Brian Thomas O’Malley Jr. graduates from the police academy. As he rises quickly through the ranks of the NYPD, O’Malley discovers that some secrets are better left buried. Through the ensuing decades, as he raises a family of his own, O’Malley must cope with the fallout of a cover-up, until a fresh crime brings the plot full circle. Will the son have to pay for the sins of the father?

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dorothy Uhnak including rare images from the author’s estate.

Wild Heat ($2.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), by Bella Andre [Random House], a bestselling indie-author-gone-traditional (but only in print, in her latest contracts). The next two in the series, Hot as Sin and Never Too Hot, are on sale for $4.99 each ($3 under the paperback price).

Book Description
He's a hotshot firefighter addicted to risk.
She's the sultry beauty he never saw coming.

Maya Jackson doesn’t sleep with strangers. Until the night grief sent her to the nearest bar and into the arms of the most explosive lover she’s ever had. Six months later, the dedicated arson investigator is coming face-to-face with him again. Gorgeous, grinning Logan Cain. Her biggest mistake. Now her number one suspect in a string of deadly wildfires.

Risking his life on a daily basis is what gets Logan up in the morning. As the leader of the elite Tahoe Pines Hotshot Crew, he won’t back down from a blaze—or from beautiful, lethal Maya Jackson. She may have seduced him with her tears and her passion, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before Logan lets down his guard again. But when Maya’s life is threatened, his natural-born-hero instincts kick in, and Logan vows to protect the woman sworn to bring him down. And as desire reignites, nothing—not the killer fire nor the killer hot on their trail—can douse the flames.…