Nook Daily Find 4/15

The Giant, O'Brien ($3.79 Kindle, $3.99 B&N), by Hilary Mantel [Macmillan], is the Nook Daily Find, better than price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year; A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year

London, 1782: center of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and the desperately poor. In the midst of it all is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature, a man of song and story who trusts in myths, fairies, miracles, and little people. He has come from Ireland to exhibit his size for money. O'Brien's opposite is a man of science, the famed anatomist John Hunter, who lusts after the Giant's corpse as a medical curiosity, a boon to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

In her acclaimed novel, Hilary Mantel tells of the fated convergence of Ireland and England. As belief wrestles knowledge and science wrestles song, so The Giant, O'Brien calls to us from a fork in the road as a tale of time, and a timeless tale.

UK Kindle Daily Deal 4/15

A Tragedy (£0.99 UK), by Shalom Auslander (a New York Times Notable Book 2012), is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.99).

Book Description
Solomon Kugel wishes for nothing more than to be nowhere, to be in a place with no past, no history, no wars, no genocides.

The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: no one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ever happened there, which is why Solomon Kugel, like other urbanites fleeing their pasts and histories, decided to move his wife and young son there.

To begin again. To start anew. But it isn’t quite working out that way for Kugel…

His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won’t stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. To complicate matters further, some lunatic is burning down farmhouses just like the one Kugel bought, and when, one night, he discovers history—a living, breathing, thought-to-be-dead specimen of history—hiding upstairs in his attic, bad quickly becomes worse.

Hope: A Tragedy is a hilarious and haunting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts that haunt our every present.

Free Audiobook - When the Death-Bat Flies (DF)

The download edition of Strange Detective Mysteries Audiobook - When the Death-Bat Flies, by Norvell W. Page and the 20th in the Will Murray's Pulp Classics series, read by Michael C. Gwynne, is free direct from RadioArchives.com. There is no Kindle edition available for this one, although there are a number of Page's titles starting to show up, including The Spider Omnibus #1; the only available volume that includes the stories in this audiobook is the paperback When the Death-Bat Flies: The Detective Stories of Norvell Page.

Book Description
In the Fall of 1937, Popular Publications launched a new type of detective magazine, one that combined the Weird Menace-style stories that had made Terror Tales and Horror Stories so hot with readers of hardboiled detective-action tales.They called it Strange Detective Mysteries.

In his first-issue editorial, Managing Editor Rogers Terrill set the stage:

“Remember the time you read that one perfect knockout, detective story—bizarre, mysterious, thrill-packed, different? It still remains the detective story for you. You’ve wondered why you never found another. You searched bookstores, library shelves, newsstands—but you just couldn’t find that brand!

“Beginning with this issue—we give you Strange Detective Mysteries—not only one bizarre, thrilling eerie-laden mystery story such as you’ve searched for, but a whole magazine full of them!

“Because you have sought for this highest type of detective story, without finding it, you can understand at what cost we bring you this magazine. Months of planning and effort have gone into its making. The best known and most able detective-story writers have been called upon—for their best. Only the smallest proportion of a flood of manuscripts has been chosen.

“Crime-detection, adventure, baffling mystery—all this you will find in Strange Detective Mysteries. In addition, you will find that quality which appears in a detective story only once in a blue moon—the bizarre!”

Terrill used the word bizarre no less than five times in his editorial, italicizing it twice. He was serious! Strange Detective Mysteries was beyond weird.

For his lead novel, Terrill served up When the Death-Bat Flies, by the writer he called “America’s No. 1 Master of the Extraordinary Mystery Tale”—The Spider’s Norvell W. Page. Starring master magician Aubrei Dunne, it was a wild excursion into a criminal cult dedicated to murder and mayhem.

In Madame Murder—and the Corpse Brigade, Paul Ernst offered an even more bizarre hero—Seekay, the man with no face!

The detective protagonist of Wayne Rogers’ The Headman’s Hat-Box witnesses a murder committed by—himself!

In George Armin Shaftel’s The Miracle Murder Case, a prison break is engineered by an unknown mastermind who terrorizes society with a strange super-weapon!

Terror Tales favorite Arthur Leo Zagat’s Patients for Dr. Death revisits the realm of Jack the Ripper—but with an uncanny twist.

Finally, Norbert Davis’ Idiot’s Coffin Keepsake takes us to a weird mansion and the grisly mystery of the missing hand.

Read by Michael C. Gwynne, Roy Worley and Roger Price, this RadioArchives.com audiobook brings to vibrant life one of the most exciting first issues of any pulp mystery magazine ever published!

Get the free ebook from RadioArchives.com; use coupon code AUDIOBOOK during checkout (make sure your total is zero after applying; you should not need to enter any CC info).

Diesel Daily Deal - For Just Cause (E)

For Just Cause ($4.99 $3.82 Kindle), a Harlequin Super Romance by Kara Lennox [Harlequin], is today's Deal of the "Day" at Diesel E-Books, where it's discounted to $1.00 (8 copies left).

Book Description

Guilt. Innocence. Psychologist and body-language expert Claudia Ellison can sense them both, which is why she's so good at her job. Unfortunately, even the innocent are convicted and this time Claudia's partially to blame. To help free a wrongfully imprisoned woman, she teams up with Project Justice investigator Billy Cantu, the one man she can't read.

They must track down the truth before someone gets hurt. And to do that, they need to trust each other. Only, the ex-undercover cop has secrets he wants to keep, and to Claudia, not knowing everything is not an option. But some things aren't meant to be shared. Because once they are revealed, they can never be taken back.

Get the book from Diesel; be sure to check the sales price, as the Deal of the Day often sells out.

Nook Daily Find 4/14

The Post-Birthday World ($9.78 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Lionel Shriver [HarperCollins], is the Nook Daily Find.

Book Description
American children's book illustrator Irina McGovern enjoys a secure, settled life in London with her smart, loyal, disciplined partner, Lawrence—until the night she finds herself inexplicably drawn to kissing another man, a passionate, extravagant, top-ranked snooker player. Two competing alternate futures hinge on this single kiss, as Irina's decision—to surrender to temptation or to preserve her seemingly safe partnership with Lawrence—will have momentous consequences for her career, her friendships and familial relationships, and the texture of her daily life.