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Friday, April 5, 2013

Diesel Daily Deal - Unconquered (E)

Unconquered ($6.99 $5.38 Kindle), a novel by Hannah Howell [Zebra/Kensington Books], is today's Deal of the "Day" at Diesel E-Books, where it's discounted to $1.00 (4 copies left).

Book Description
Left a bequest by a woman with rare psychic powers, Eada of Pevensey suddenly finds herself in possession of a box containing a mysterious document. . .and something even more extraordinary: the gift of second sight. Now she can actually "see" her chilling fate: a Norman invader with sea-dark eyes riding across the fields to claim her lands. . .and her love.
A reluctant soldier for William the Conquerer, Drogo de Toulon seizes the Pevensey lands as a right of conquest. . .and meets a woman who defies him at every turn--and arouses uncontrollable desire. Yet now, as war rages across a divided England, the two lovers must find the bond that joins body and soul. . .as they chart a course through battle and betrayal that could break their hearts--or seal their passion for all time. . .
Get the book from Diesel; be sure to check the sales price, as the Deal of the Day often sells out.

Free Nook App - Donuts

Donuts: Dunk n' Roll ($0.99 Amazon), by Beansprites, is this week's Free Friday App from Barnes & Noble.
App Description
Donuts: Dunk n' Roll is an exciting physics game where it's your job to tilt your device to collect all the candy!

Intricate mazes await, cute enemies inspired from a cartoonish candy-land, and puzzles that will blow your mind! Easy to play, tilt controls, gorgeous, cartoonish graphics, and oustanding characters, and gameplay make this a must have gem for your collection!

Easy for kids to get into, and Adults will get a kick out of this one too! Tilt, Swerve, Dunk, n' Roll your way through over 50 unique levels and puzzles! The fun never ends with Donuts: Dunk n' Roll!

Ages 4+
Get the free App from Barnes & Noble.

Today's Deals 4/5

Today's Gold Box at Amazon is with "Borderlands 2" game and Season Pass codes (alone or a bundle of the two at an extra $5 discount), for roughly 70% off list; one lightning deal coming up that looks interesting is the Cuisinart bread maker, scheduled for 11AM ET.

Amazon's Android Free App of the Day is StatsPac (usually $10), a graphing calculator which looks like it does more than my first TI calculator (from back in the days when getting a calculator was very expensive).

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Deadly Recall ($1.99), by Donnell Ann Bell [Bell Bridge Books].
Book Description
A terrifying memory is locked deep inside her. A killer wants to keep it that way.

As a nine-year-old child, Eden Moran witnessed the murder of her beloved teacher, Sister Beatrice. Her mind blocked the horrifying memory, and now, seventeen years later, Eden still can't recall what she saw that fateful day at Albuquerque's St. Patrick's Church. The nun's remains have been unearthed at a local construction site, and Albuquerque police detective, Kevin Dancer, starts pressuring Eden to search the shadows of her terror for clues.

Eden insists she didn't see the killer that day. She can't even remember knowing Sister Beatrice. Regardless, Detective Dancer refuses to give up on her. He's not only hell-bent on solving the crime, he's falling in love with her. If her memories resurface, she'll be in danger, and he wants to protect her. The killer seems determined that she'll take the memory to an early grave.

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.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Risky Shot ($0.99), the second book in the Bluegrass series, by Kathleen Brooks.
Book Description
Danielle De Luca, an ex-beauty queen who is not at all what she seems, leaves the streets of New York after tracking the criminals out to destroy her. She travels to Keeneston, Kentucky to make her final stand by the side of her best friend, McKenna Mason. While in Keeneston, Danielle meets the quiet and mysterious Mohtadi Ali Rahman, a modern day Prince. Can Mo protect Dani from the group of powerful men in New York? Or will Dani save the Prince from his rigid, loveless destiny?

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is The Shrinking Man ($1.99), a RosettaBooks into Film series title by Richard Matheson, with the companion audiobook for $3.49.
Book Description
In Matheson’s legendary tale, family man Scott Carey finds himself shrinking, slowly, day-by-day, inch-by-inch. While on vacation, he gets exposed to a radioactive cloud, the cause of this bizarre event. Scott once had an everyday existence as a husband and father, but now his shrinking shows no end in sight. He becomes a national spectacle, something worthy of newspaper headlines. As Carey shrinks smaller and smaller, his family become more and more unreachable giants, and the family cat becomes a predatory menace. In this world of disproportion, which grows more and more perilous with each passing day, Scott struggles to survive. He is pushed to the very limits of fear and existence.

As the story continues, Carey meets up with some circus performers and attempts to rebuild some semblance of a life. But since his shrinking never stops, all ideas of normal fade, and the threats never stop growing.

In 1958, The Shrinking Man won the Hugo award for that year’s best science fiction or fantasy dramatic presentation. It was also adapted into the film The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Home Fires (£1.29 UK), by Elizabeth Day, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).
Book Description
Max Weston, twenty-one and a newly commissioned lance corporal, leaves home for his first posting in central Africa. Fiercely patriotic and completely at home in the army, he is eager to make a difference. He never comes back. His parents Caroline and Andrew are devastated by the death of their only child. The overwhelming love Caroline has always felt for her son is now matched by the intensity of her loss, and as she is borne away on a private ocean of grief the moorings of their marriage begin to come loose. The silence is broken by the arrival of Andrew's mother, Elsa, who at the age of ninety-eight can no longer look after herself. Caroline has never felt good enough for this elegant, cuttingly courteous lady and has lived for years in fear of putting a foot wrong. Now, suddenly, Caroline has the upper hand. As Elsa lies, marooned and disorientated, in the spare room, the past unspools in her mind, throwing up fragments of her anxious childhood in 1920s Richmond - under the shadow of her father, a soldier who came back from the Great War a different man. A stunning, delicate portrait of a family bookended by war, Home Fires explores the legacy of loss, the strictures of class and the long road to redemption.

The Assassin ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), the third thriller in the Grafton and Carmellini series by Stephen Coonts, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
The headlines only reveal half the truth. Here’s the real story. . . .

Abu Qasim, the ruthless and cunning Al Qaeda leader who nearly succeeded in blowing up a meeting of the G-8 in Paris, has escaped from the grasp of the Americans and is plotting his next move. A small band of powerful men, highly placed leaders of industry and politics in the West, have decided they need to target and destroy the terrorist and his inner circle before he can strike again. When a prominent Russian dissident is poisoned in London, however, it’s clear that there’s a very dangerous leak within the ranks of the Westerners, and that Abu Qasim has turned the tables on his rivals---it is now he who is pursuing, and his aim is to kill.

Admiral Jake Grafton dispatches special agent Tommy Carmellini to infiltrate the plot. He tracks the gorgeous and seductive Marisa Petrou, a Frenchwoman who may be Qasim’s daughter and who has her own reasons for wanting him alive---or wishing him dead. Qasim, meanwhile, has a trick up his sleeve---one that he’s been planning for years.

Who is behind the methodical assassinations of the wealthy and powerful Western vigilante team? Will Abu Qasim slip the noose once again? In this pulse-pounding thriller, Tommy Carmellini must put a stop to a master of terror before he unleashes even more death.

Today's Kindle Teen Daily Deal is Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25 ($1.99), by New York Times best-selling author Richard Paul Evans [Simon Pulse/Mercury Ink].
Book Description

The start of an action-packed teen series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Richard Paul Evans.

To everyone at Meridian High School, fourteen-year-old Michael Vey is nothing special, just the kid who has Tourette’s syndrome. But in truth, Michael is extremely special—he has electric powers. Michael thinks he is unique until he discovers that a cheerleader named Taylor has the same mysterious powers. With the help of Michael’s friend, Ostin, the three of them set out to discover how Michael and Taylor ended up with their abilities, and their investigation soon brings them to the attention of a powerful group who wants to control the electric teens—and through them, the world.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Richard Paul Evans introduces a character whose risk-filled exploration marks the beginning of a riveting new series. With only his powers, his wits, and his friends to protect him, Michael will need all his strength to survive….

Michael Vey is the first title in Glenn Beck’s Mercury Ink publishing program.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Diesel Daily Deal - Imperial Scandal (E)

Imperial Scandal ($12.99 $9.39 Kindle), a historical romance novel by Teresa Grant [Kensington Books], is today's Deal of the "Day" at Diesel E-Books, where it's discounted to $2.60 (4 copies left).

Book Description
Amid the treachery of war and the whirl of revelry, no one is what they seem. . .
Nights filled with lavish balls. . .lush, bucolic afternoons. . .. Removed to glamorous Brussels in the wake of Napoleon's escape from Elba, Intelligence Agent Malcolm Rannoch and his wife, Suzanne, warily partake in the country's pleasures. But with the Congress of Vienna in chaos and the Duke of Wellington preparing for battle, the festivities are cut short when Malcolm is sent on a perilous mission that unravels a murderous world of espionage. . .

No one knows what the demure and respectable Lady Julia Ashton was doing at the château where Malcolm and a fellow British spy were ambushed. But now her enigmatic life has been ended by an equally mysterious death. And as the conflict with Napoleon marches toward Waterloo, and Brussels surrenders to bedlam, Suzanne and Malcolm will be plunged into the search for the truth--revealing an intricate labyrinth of sinister secrets and betrayal within which no one can be trusted. . .
Get the book from Diesel; be sure to check the sales price, as the Deal of the Day often sells out.

Today's Deals 4/4

Salt Water ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Charles Simmons, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle [Chronicle Books].
Book Description
In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned....

So begins this sweet, ominous new novel by Charles Simmons. Set against an idyllic landscape of water, sand, and sky, it recounts in exquisite detail the momentous events of a boy's 16th summer that reveal to him the dark facts of adult passion. On Bone Point, an island off the New England coast, the boy's long, lazy days of boating and swimming are sharpened by a growing awareness of his charismatic father's infidelities. Add to this the presence of a flirtatious middle-aged woman and her beautiful 20-year-old daughter, who have rented the guesthouse, and the tale is set in motion. This tautly constructed novel is both startling and haunting—an irresistible story of memory, desire, and suspense.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American Aviation ($1.99), by Thomas Kessner [Oxford University Press], with the companion audiobook $4.99.
Book Description
In late May 1927 an inexperienced and unassuming 25-year-old Air Mail pilot from rural Minnesota stunned the world by making the first non-stop transatlantic flight. A spectacular feat of individual daring and collective technological accomplishment, Charles Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris ushered in America's age of commercial aviation.

In The Flight of the Century, Thomas Kessner takes a fresh look at one of America's greatest moments, explaining how what was essentially a publicity stunt became a turning point in history. He vividly recreates the flight itself and the euphoric reaction to it on both sides of the Atlantic, and argues that Lindbergh's amazing feat occurred just when the world--still struggling with the disillusionment of WWI--desperately needed a hero to restore a sense of optimism and innocence. Kessner also shows how new forms of mass media made Lindbergh into the most famous international celebrity of his time, casting him in the role of a humble yet dashing American hero of rural origins and traditional values. Much has been made of Lindbergh's personal integrity and his refusal to cash in on his fame. But Kessner reveals that Lindbergh was closely allied with, and managed by, a group of powerful businessmen--Harry Guggenheim, Dwight Morrow, and Henry Breckenridge chief among them--who sought to exploit aviation for mass transport and massive profits. Their efforts paid off as commercial air traffic soared from 6,000 passengers in 1926 to 173,000 passengers in 1929. Kessner's book is the first to fully explore Lindbergh's central role in promoting the airline industry--the rise of which has influenced everything from where we live to how we wage war and do business.

The Flight of the Century sheds new light on one of America's fascinatingly enigmatic heroes and most transformative moments.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Everything but a Dog ($1.99), the sixth novel in the Everything But... series by Holly Jacobs [Montlake Romance]. The rest of the series is on sale for $2.99/title, for those that prefer to read in order and may not be caught up.
Book Description
Wannabe matchmaker Nana Vancy has donned her Cupid wings once again—this time for Dr. Della McGraw, the distant cousin of her pal Annabelle. Together with her partners in crime, Annabelle and Isabel, she concocts a clever plan to find Della her knight in shining armor. Their first stop? The local dog shelter.

When Jonah McIntosh rescues three old ladies and their narcoleptic dog, it’s just the topper for his lousy day. But things start looking up when he finds himself in the company of the lovely veterinarian Della. There’s just one teensy problem: he’s allergic to dogs.

But Nana’s convinced a happily ever after is in the cards. Can she work her magic once more—or is this one romance that’s doomed before it’s even begun?

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Cold Magic ($1.99), the first title in Kate Elliott's steampunk adventure series, The Spiritwalker Trilogy [Hachette].
Book Description
The Wild Hunt is stirring - and the dragons are finally waking from their long sleep...

Cat Barahal was the only survivor of the flood that took her parents. Raised by her extended family, she and her cousin, Bee, are unaware of the dangers that threaten them both. Though they are in beginning of the Industrial Age, magic - and the power of the Cold Mages - still hold sway.

Now, betrayed by her family and forced to marry a powerful Cold Mage, Cat will be drawn into a labyrinth of politics. There she will learn the full ruthlessness of the rule of the Cold Mages. What do the Cold Mages want from her? And who will help Cat in her struggle against them?

The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is three Science Fiction & Fantasy reads for £0.99 each (>75% off).

Tooth and Claw (Main/UK), by Jo Walton (US edition $9.99)
A family of dragons gathers on the occasion of the death of their father, the elder Bon Agornin. As is custom, they must eat the body. But even as Bon's last remains are polished off, his sons and daughters must all jostle for a position in the new hierarchy. While the youngest son seeks greedy remuneration through the courts of law, the eldest son - a dragon of the cloth - agonises over his father's deathbed confession. While one daughter is caught between loyalty to her family by blood and her family by marriage, another daughter follows her heart - only to discover the great cost of true love...

Here is a Victorian story of political intrigue, family ties and political intrigue, set in a world of dragons - a world, quite literally, red in tooth and claw. Full of fiery wit, this is a novel unlike any other.
Stolen Away (Main/UK), by Alyxandra Harvey (US edition $7.99)
For seventeen years, Eloise Hart had no idea the world of Faery even existed. Now she has been abducted and trapped in the Rath of Lord Strahan, King of Faery. Strahan was only meant to rule for seven years, as Faery tradition dictates, and then give up his crown to another. But he won't comply, and now chaos threatens both worlds.The only one who can break his stranglehold on the Faery court is his wife, Eloise's aunt, Antonia. Using Eloise to lure Antonia, Strahan captures his wife, desperate to end the only threat to his reign. Together with her best friends Jo and Devin, Eloise must place her trust in Lucas, her handsome protector, and Strahan's mysterious son, Eldric, and forge alliances with other Fae in a dangerous attempt to free Antonia for ever.
Sanctum (Main/UK), by Sarah Fine (US edition $3.99; companion audiobook $1.99)
"My plan: Get into the city. Get Nadia. Find a way out. Simple."

A week ago, seventeen-year-old Lela Santos’s best friend, Nadia, killed herself. Today, thanks to a farewell ritual gone awry, Lela is standing in paradise, looking upon a vast gated city in the distance – hell. No one willingly walks through the Suicide Gates, into a place smothered in darkness and infested with depraved creatures. But Lela isn’t just anyone – she’s determined to save her best friend’s soul, even if it means sacrificing her eternal afterlife.
As Lela struggles to find Nadia, she’s captured by the Guards, enormous, not-quite-human creatures that patrol the dark city’s endless streets. Their all-too human leader, Malachi, is unlike them in every way except one: his deadly efficiency. When he meets Lela, Malachi forms his own plan: get her out of the city, even if it means she must leave Nadia behind. Malachi knows something Lela doesn’t – the dark city isn’t the worst place Lela could end up, and he will stop at nothing to keep her from that fate.

Sanctum is Sarah Fine’s first novel.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Stink and the Midnight Zombie Walk ($0.99), the seventh title in the Stink series by Megan McDonald and Peter H. Reynolds (Illustrator) [Candlewick].
Book Description

Reading is UNdead — and everyone has zombies on the brain — as Stink's school and a local bookstore cook up a frightfully fun Main Street event.

Guts! Brains! Eyeballs! There’s only one week before the new book in the Nightmare on Zombie Street series comes out. Of corpse Stink will be first in line at the Blue Frog Bookstore to buy his copy and join the town’s Midnight Zombie Walk! Until then, Stink and his friends keep busy making ketchup-stained zombie costumes, trying to raise money to buy the book, and racking up points for Virginia Dare School’s race to one million minutes of reading. But with all that talk about the undead, Zink — that is, Stink — starts to wonder: is he being hunted by zombies? He does have a very delicious — er, superb — brain, after all. Readers will just have to open ze book and zee! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

Age Range: 6 - 9 years