Kindle Daily Deals 6/2

I see a neat gift idea over at AmazonLocal today: a Custom Stainless Steel Water Bottle. You can upload the photo or image of your choice and make sure your bottle never gets mixed up with all the others at the gym or office; it's also a pretty decent price ($11) and would make a great Father's Day gift with a picture of the kids (one he might use, instead of the ties hanging in the back of the closet).

Amazon's Android Free App of the Day is the SAS Survival Guide! This is the full text of the classic book, plus you can download 16 videos of survival tips. In addition to photo galleries of edible, medicinal and poisonous plants, you can also use the app as a Morse Code signalling device and as a Sun Compass. I'm definitely loading this one on my phone (and on my Kindle Fire, to read on a bigger screen).

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Discretion ($1.99), by former federal sex-crimes prosecutor and critically acclaimed author Allison Leotta [Simon and Schuster], with the companion audiobook for $4.49.

Book Description
A new thriller exploring the intersection of sex and power in Washington, D.C.’s most secretive worlds

When a beautiful young woman plummets to her death from the balcony of the U.S. Capitol, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anna Curtis is summoned to the scene. The evidence points to a sexual assault and murder. The victim is one of the city’s highest-paid escorts. And the balcony belongs to Washington, D.C.’s sole representative to Congress, the most powerful figure in city politics.

The Congressman proclaims his innocence, but he’s in the middle of a tough primary fight, and the scandal could cost him the election. For Anna, the high-profile case is an opportunity. But as the political stakes rise, she realizes that a single mistake could end her career.

At the same time, her budding romance with Jack Bailey, the chief homicide prosecutor, is at a crossroads. Determined to gain respect in the office, Anna wants to keep their relationship under wraps. But the mounting pressure and media attention that come with the office’s most important case will inevitably expose their relationship—if it doesn’t destroy it first.

The investigation leads Anna to Discretion, a high-end escort service that caters to D.C.’s elite. But with each break in the case, the mystery deepens. And the further Anna ventures into D.C.’s red-light underworld, the larger the target on her own back.

From the secret social clubs where Washington’s most powerful men escape from public view to the asphalt “track” where the city’s most vulnerable women work the streets, Discretion is a gripping exploration of sex, power, and the secrets we all keep.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Tumbleweeds ($1.99), a coming of age novel by Leila Meacham [Hachette].

Book Description
Recently orphaned, eleven-year-old Cathy Benson feels she has been dropped into a cultural and intellectual wasteland when she is forced to move from her academically privileged life in California to the small town of Kersey in the Texas Panhandle where the sport of football reigns supreme. She is quickly taken under the unlikely wings of up-and-coming gridiron stars and classmates John Caldwell and Trey Don Hall, orphans like herself, with whom she forms a friendship and eventual love triangle that will determine the course of the rest of their lives. Taking the three friends through their growing up years until their high school graduations when several tragic events uproot and break them apart, the novel expands to follow their careers and futures until they reunite in Kersey at forty years of age. Told with all of Meacham's signature drama, unforgettable characters, and plot twists, readers will be turning the pages, desperate to learn how it all plays out.

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is A Hunger Like No Other ($1.99), by Kresley Cole [Simon and Schuster]. This is the first novel in the Immortals After Dark series, one of the best werewolf/vampire romances I've read; since I started this series on paper, then switched to the ereaders sometime later, I'll be replacing my paper copy with this edition, today.

Book Description
Acclaimed author Kresley Cole introduces a sizzling new series with this tale of a fierce werewolf and a bewitching vampire -- unlikely soul mates whose passion will test the boundaries of life and death.

A mythic warrior who'll stop at nothing to possess her . . .

After enduring years of torture from the vampire horde, Lachlain MacRieve, leader of the Lykae Clan, is enraged to find the predestined mate he's waited millennia for is a vampire. Or partly one. This Emmaline is a small, ethereal half Valkyrie/half vampire, who somehow begins to soothe the fury burning within him.

A vampire captured by her wildest fantasy . . .

Sheltered Emmaline Troy finally sets out to uncover the truth about her deceased parents -- until a powerful Lykae claims her as his mate and forces her back to his ancestral Scottish castle. There, her fear of the Lykae -- and their notorious dark desires -- ebbs as he begins a slow, wicked seduction to sate her own dark cravings.

An all-consuming desire . . .

Yet when an ancient evil from her past resurfaces, will their desire deepen into a love that can bring a proud warrior to his knees and turn a gentle beauty into the fighter she was born to be?

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Judy Moody, M.D. ($0.99), by Megan McDonald and Peter H. Reynolds (Illustrator), with the companion audiobook for $1.99.

Book Description
She took her own temperature. With the fancy thermometer that beeped. It was not normal. It was not 98.6. Judy's temperature was 188.8! Judy's temperature was 00.0! Judy's temperature was beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. She, Judy Moody, had the temperature of an outer-space alien!

Judy Moody has a mood for every occasion, and now, she is in a medical mood! It's no secret that Judy wants to be like Elizabeth Blackwell, first woman doctor, when she grows up. So when Class 3T starts to study the Amazing Human Body, Judy can hardly wait to begin her better-than-best-ever third-grade projects: show-and-tell with something way rarer than a scab, a real-live ooey-gooey operation, and a cloning experiment that may create double trouble for Judy and her friends!

Judy's latest adventures are sure to tickle your humerus (AKA funny bone) and put you in a very Judy Moody mood!

Age Range: 7 and up

Nook Daily Find 6/2

The Real Housewives Tell It Like It Is ($8.49 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by The Creators of The Real House [Chronicle Books], is the Nook Daily Find.

Book Description
Bravo's The Real Housewives franchise has taken the country by storm with over 13 million fans and record-breaking new seasons. The Real Housewives Tell It Like It Is captures the best, most outlandish quotes from the ladies of the O.C., New York, Atlanta, New Jersey, D.C., Beverly Hills, and Miami in one deluxe volume so fans can refer to their unique brand of wisdom again and again. Organized by topic and brimming with color photographs, The Real Housewives Tell It Like It Is is a must-have for fans everywhere!

UK Kindle Daily Deal 6/2

Bolero (£0.99 UK), by Joanie McDonell [Thomas & Mercer], is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $4.99; companion audiobook $1.99).

Book Description
Bolero is one of those rare thrillers you truly can’t put down. Introducing noir detective, Nick Sayler, it is a nonstop ride to an unexpected twist ending.

Despite his bronze star with its prized V for valor, Nick Sayler was once a thief, junkie, and prime suspect in a murder case. Now he’s a mostly changed man, a private investigator with a long list of rich clients and a good life. But even after ten years there’s not enough whiskey in the world to wash away acid-etched memories of Julia Carteret, the beautiful woman who took a bullet meant for him.

He never expected a second chance to make things right until he got a midnight call from a distraught young doctor and a plea from a fragile dancer with no money, no memory, nothing in her pocket except Sayler’s card, and the number 44 carved across her back. With bewitching violet eyes she looks so much like Julia, Sayler thinks keeping her safe could put him back on the road to redemption. But not long after he takes her home to his Hudson River barge, he learns that she has a past as dark as his own, and soon he’s protecting her from a patient sociopath with seemingly preternatural power to be in two places at once.

Sayler needs his wingman Meriwether, the brilliant savant, and his restless backup, Tommy Fallon NYPD homicide, whose dicey investigative methods keep them under the radar, which is the only place to be when Sayler taunts danger. As he nears old secrets linking the dancer to a strange group: a voluptuous redhead, a concert pianist, a skateboarder, and a Polish nanny, he starts to learn why the murderer’s sex-stoked obsession can’t end until the girl is dead. When the killer who never sleeps gets the best of an exhausted Sayler on an isolated island off the coast of Connecticut, in Manhattan’s meatpacking district, and on the streets of Harlem, smart money might bet both ways, except for one sure thing: in spite of his bad leg and worse habits, no matter what the cost, Nick Sayler will not let another woman die.

99 Cent Sale from Prologue Books

Prologue Books is having a 99 cent sale on their ebooks, with nearly 500 titles on sale. Genres include Science Fiction and Fantasy, Mystery/Thriller/Suspense and Literary Fiction. Those in the UK are included, too, at a price of £0.99.

There are way too many books in the sale to list here, so click the link and then pick the genre that interests you the most. You should be able to find at least a few titles that pique your interest.

Kindle Daily Deals 6/1

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Red Moon ($2.99), by Benjamin Percy [Grand Central Publishing/Hachette], with the companion audiobook for $4.99. An Amazon Best Book of the Month, May 2013.

Book Description
Award -winning author Benjamin Percy presents an explosive and deeply layered literary thriller set in the American West.

They live among us.

They are our neighbors, our mothers, our lovers.

They change.

When government agents kick down Claire Forrester's front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is.

Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero.

Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst, but he is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy.

So far, the threat has been controlled by laws and violence and drugs. But the night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognizable world will emerge...and the battle for humanity will begin.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is You Can't Plan Love ($0.99), by Synithia Williams [Crimson Romance].

Book Description
Knowing firsthand the heartbreak that comes when desire and emotion rule a relationship, Kenyatta Copeland assumes marrying Brad Johnson will lead to a safe and secure life. But as much as she believes she can plan her future, it’s hard to ignore the way her boss, Malcolm Patterson, ignites her passions with just one look.

After Malcolm learns of her engagement, he makes a play for her heart and reminds her that passion between a man and a woman has its perks… but also its costs. When Brad confirms his suspicion that there’s more than work between Kenyatta and Malcolm, he devises a sinister plan to keep Kenyatta by his side.

Torn between her promise to marry Brad and her irrepressible longing for Malcolm, Kenyatta must decide if she can live her life in a passionless marriage of convenience or once again trust her heart. Yet Brad does not intend to let her go easily, and by the time she realizes the depths of his treachery, it may be too late.

Sensuality Level: Sensual

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988) ($1.99), by Kurt Vonnegut [Dial Press/RosettaBooks].

Book Description
Bluebeard, published in 1987, is Vonnegut's meditation on art, artists, surrealism, and disaster. Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter, who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters), with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.

Vonnegut's intention here is not so much satirical (although the contemporary art scene would be easy enough to deconstruct), nor is it documentary (although Karabekian does carry elements of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko). Instead, Vonnegut is using art for the same purpose he used science fiction cliches in Slaughterhouse-Five; as a filter through which he can illuminate the savagery, cruelty, and the essentially comic misdirection of human existence.

Readers will recognize familiar Vonnegut character types and archetypes as they drift in and out through the background; meanwhile, Karabekian, betrayed and betrayer, sinks through a bottomless haze of recollection. Like most of Vonnegut's late works, this is both science fiction and cruel contemporary realism at once, using science fiction as metaphor for human damage as well as failure to perceive. Readers will find that Vonnegut's protagonists can never really clarify for us whether they are ultimately unwitting victims or simple barbarians, leaving it up to the reader to determine in which genre this book really fits, if any at all.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Truth About Horses, Friends & My Life As A Coward ($1.99), by Sarah P. Gibson.

Book Description
So you think you love horses? That’s what Sophie Groves thought too. But she found out that horses are a heap of trouble. Her trials began at five years old when her mom brought home Really (a.k.a. Really Mean), the nastiest pony in Maine. Two horses later, Sophie is still learning to deal with these crafty creatures, while trying to find friends who will like her for who she is—not for her horses. Filled with hilarious horse capers and the real truth about life as a weenie, this laugh-out-loud story shows why a horse isn’t always a girl’s best friend.

Age Range: 9 and up