Nook Daily Find 5/10

The Sensualist: An Illustrated Novel ($9.39 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Barbara Hodgson [Chronicle Books], is the Nook Daily Find for today.

Book Description
This potent mystery draws readers into a tangle of lost loves, vengeance, and murder. Set in the dark world of a European winter, and illuminated with Barbara Hodgson's haunting illustrations, The Sensualist is a visual and literary exploration of the limitations of looking and the boundless power of seeing.

UK Kindle Daily Deal 5/10

The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is three books in the Phryne Fisher Mystery series by Kerry Greenwood for £0.99 each (~75% off).

Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates (Main/UK, US edition free, titled Cocaine Blues; companion audiobook $2.99)

Bored socialite Phryne Fisher leaves the tedium of the London season for adventure in Australia!

Tea-dances in West End hotels, weekends in the country with guns and dogs... Phryne Fisher - she of the grey-green eyes and diamante garters - is rapidly tiring of the boredom of chit-chatting with retired colonels and foxtrotting with weak-chinned wonders. Instead, Phryne decides it might be amusing to try her hand at being a lady detective - on the other side of the world!

As soon as she books into the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne, Phryne is embroiled in mystery: poisoned wives, drug smuggling rings and corrupt cops... not to mention erotic encounters with beautiful Russian ballet star Sasha de Lisse; England's green and pleasant land just can't compete with these new, exotic pleasures!

Flying Too High (Main/UK, US edition $2.99)

Whether foiling kidnappers' plans, walking the wings of a Tiger Moth or simply deciding what to wear for dinner, Phryne handles everything with her usual panache and flair!

Here, the 1920's most glamorous detective flies even higher, handling an abduction and a murder with style and ease... all before it's time to adjourn to the Queenscliff Hotel for breakfast. Whether she's flying planes, clearing a friend of homicide charges or saving a child from kidnapping, she handles everything with the same dash and elan with which she drives her red Hispano-Suiza.

Murder on the Ballarat Train (Main/UK, US edition $2.99, companion audiobook $2.99)

When Phryne Fisher arranges to go to Ballarat for a week, she eschews the excitement of her Hispano-Suiza for the sedate safety of the train. But as the passengers sleep, they are all overcome by chloroform poisoning.

In the morning Phryne is left to piece together all the clues: a young girl suffering from amnesia, the body of an old woman missing her emerald rings and rumours of white slavery and black magic... the last thing Phryne was expecting of this train journey was that she will have to use her trusty Beretta .32 to save lives!

Microsoft to buy Nook Media (and Axe Nook Tablets)?

Engadget is reporting that Microsoft has made an offer to buy Nook Media, which is set up to handle the Nook e-reader, tablet and college bookstore business arm of Barnes & Noble and that if the sale goes thru, the academic arm will be shut down and Nook tablets will dropped sometime next year, leaving them to concentrate on the app running on third-party tablets (such as Windows 8 devices and MS Surface, perhaps?).

Those investing in eInk readers don't appear to need to worry, though, "as the leaked documents state that Nook Media's e-reader division won't be killed off". Of course, even if B&N stops creating new tablets, that doesn't really have any bearing on you using a tablet you've bought recently or even later this year; tablet generations are running at only about a year, so by mid-2014, an entirely new generation of devices will no doubt be released by multiple vendors.

What this might mean for the Nook ebookstore is a little more unclear. I suspect nothing much (especially in the short term) and that it will run as-is (perhaps without offers to get you into the store with BOGOF deals), just with Microsoft at the helm. Even if they eventually kill off the proprietary DRM, their past track record on the LIT format suggests that the licensing servers will run for many years, even after they stop selling any books.

Diesel Daily Deal - The Rake (E)

The Rake ($5.99 $4.61 Kindle), by Georgina Devon [Harlequin Historical], is today's Deal of the "Day" at Diesel E-Books, where it's discounted to $1.20 (7 copies left).

Book Description

The Rake Has Found A Bride…

When Juliet Smythe-Clyde is forced to spend several nights in the devastatingly handsome Duke of Brabourne's house—unchaperoned—her reputation is in tatters. And despite his cynical nature, Brabourne can't help but feel sorry for her. So when all his strategies to restore her in society fail, he offers for her hand in marriage. But when the exasperating, flame-haired young woman agrees to be his wife to save her honor, will the notorious rake be reformed as he finds himself falling for his bride?

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

Nook Simple Touch under $20

Update: If you buy $30 on a single purchase (two readers, perhaps?), you also get a $10 gift certificate to use on a future purchase at RadioShack.

This is an in-store deal only and only at selected Radio Shacks. No doubt they are closing out on these, but if you have been wanting an eInk reader for your Nook Books, perhaps one that you won't be as upset if the kids break, this is a heck of a deal. You can search from the online product page for the Nook Simple Touch and see if a store near you has these in stock. One trick, I found, was to increase the search distance to 50 miles, as the default 5 miles often won't even find a store in the same zip code. In our city, it appears that only one store location has these in stock and I suspect more and more will sell out as the sale progresses this week.

Pair this with a cover from Barnes & Noble, all but one of which are selling for $15 or less online and in-store right now (that high dollar one is also under $20), and you can have a perfect Mother's Day Gift for less than the cost of dinner out for two.