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Monday, June 17, 2013

UK Kindle Daily Deal 6/17

Made of Stone (£0.99 UK), the fifth Mangel novel by Charlie Williams [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
There’s bad stuff out there. Folks reckon things like vampires don't exist, but they does—Jock from the burger van told me. Plus I found an actual one of ’em, sleeping at the time in the back of a hearse I nicked that first morning. That's how me and Jock got to setting out freeing the world of ’em, using his bag o’ wooden stakes and special bottles of whisky. Course, I knowed that vampires didn’t exist, not when I stopped and done some thinking. And I knowed Jock had mental wossnames, what with his son falling off that roof and him reckoning them immigrants pushed him. It’s just that I didn't get much time for thinking, not with the coppers on our arse. Jock were off... and me with him.

The Kindle Romance Deal of the day for those in the UK is four Summer Romance Reads from Mills & Boon for £0.99 each (~80% off).

Champagne Summer (Main/UK), by India Grey
Tamsin and the Argentinean Tamsin’s ready to spend her summer relaxing and topping up her tan. Until Alejandro – the man who nearly destroyed her reputation – comes back into her life. Now his world of champagne and scandal awaits her once again…and Tamsin’s determined to make up for lost time. Sarah and the Italian Sarah’s summers are about spending time with her little girl. She never has a chance to think about herself. Then film director Lorenzo turns her life upside down. Thrust into a world of glitz, glamour and gossip pages, Sarah’s about to have the most exciting summer of her life. Enter the glittering celebrity world with two unforgettable summer stories
Summer Nights (Main/UK), by Susan Mallery (US edition $6.15)
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Susan Mallery returns to Fool’s Gold with a new story that proves that wild hearts cannot be tamed...and shouldn't need to! Shane Stryker is done with passion. He’s back in Fool's Gold to settle down with the quiet ranching life he's always wanted. The rugged rancher has been burned too many times by the kind of women who dance on bars. This time, he's searching for a sensible candidate to become Mrs. Stryker. The town librarian should fit the bill, but Shane has only seen her on the one night that Annabelle Weiss let her fiery hair down and have fun. Shane may be certain she’s too dangerous to be in the running for his life partner, but Annabelle knows that theirs could be a love that ends happily-ever-after, with a wild ride into the sunset.....
Summer With Love (Main/UK), by Sarah Morgan
Summer changes everything...… Love has never been easy to navigate for the Westerling triplets. Practical Katy’s on the verge of marrying a man she knows isn’t The One, free-spirited Libby refuses to be tied down and paparazzi-magnet Alex might just be in over his head. But could this summer, with sun-soaked escapes to Seville, Greece and Cornwall help them finally find the map to romance?
Summer Kisses (Main/UK), by Sarah Morgan
This summer the sun has gone to everyone’s heads… Flora and Jenna should be working busy shifts but something more fun has come up! Two new arrivals have blown into Glenmore and life at the hospital could get tricky. So it's time to set some rules. Flora’s summer is simple: Avoid kissing Connor MacNeil. (He may be gorgeous, back in town and single…but he snogged everyone except you at school, remember!) Jenna’s summer ‘Why I shouldn’t fall in love with Dr Ryan McKinley’ list is a little more complex… ? I’ve been divorced less than a year ? I’m ordinary and he is a sex god ? I have my daughter to think of ? He might break my heart… It’­s so difficult to be good with temptation on the doorstep. But rules are rules. Summer is sunshine. And, just maybe, a wish is a kiss that might just come true!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Bargain Books for Dads (and those who know one!)

The Playbook for Dads: Parenting Your Kids In the Game of Life ($2.99 Kindle), by Jim Kelly, Ted Kluck and Dan Marino[Hachette]
Book Description
On the football field NFL great Jim Kelly was a strong-armed passer, leading his team to victory after victory. In THE PLAYBOOK FOR DADS he passes principles instead of footballs, still using his talent to lead men, but now he leads them to greatness as fathers, in his view the world's most important job.

With an emphasis on preparation, hard work and perseverance, Kelly tackles such essential issues as respect, character, accountability and spiritual discipline. From commitment and courage to honesty and humility, Kelly's lessons-learned on and off the field- guide men striving to be the fathers God designed them to be ­- so their children can grow to be everything they are meant to be. Conversational and refreshingly honest, Jim challenges fathers to work hard, pray for their children often, love their wives and implement these principles. Both practical and inspirational this is Jim Kelly coaching every dad how to be the star quarterback for the home team-his family.

Six Lessons for Six Sons: An Extraordinary Father, A Simple Formula for Success ($2.99 Kindle), by Joe Massengale and David Clow [Random House]
Book Description
Joe Massengale rose above his hardscrabble roots to become a successful Beverly Hills businessman, creating a tree service from scratch and building it into an enduring and profitable enterprise. Through years of hard work, Joe achieved the prosperous life he sought but never forgot the life lessons he learned along the way, especially those his father Hugh taught him. He made sure to impart those lessons to his six sons, each of whom became a success in his own right.

What his sons learned from Joe—what it means to be a man, a father, a son, a productive member of society, a person of integrity—is brought to life in Six Lessons for Six Sons. Joe tells his story in vignettes interwoven with observations from his sons, who talk about how they’ve put these simple yet resonant values into practice. Notable contributors—including Guy Bluford, the first African-American in space; Academy Award–winning actress Anjelica Huston; and Olympic Gold Medal–winning decathlete Rafer Johnson—offer perspectives on how the messages at the core of Joe’s story have enriched their own lives and, most important, how they can enrich yours.

Six Lessons for Six Sons is a proven blueprint for personal accomplishment and fulfillment, a stirring story of one family’s journey through a century of American change, and an inspiration for anyone who wants to become a positive role model for others.

Manifest Destiny ($0.99 Kindle), by Brian Garfield [Open Road] (this one is definitely going on the TBR list)
Book Description
A rollicking adventure starring a young Theodore Roosevelt

In 1884, Teddy Roosevelt’s political career is dead in the water. A New York state assemblyman with eyes on national office, he finds his ambitions thwarted just months after his wife and infant daughter pass away. Frustrated by politics, he retires to the American West to ride, ranch, and hunt buffalo in the Dakota Badlands. Nobody tells him that the buffalo are gone.

He arrives in Dakota a greenhorn, awkward in the saddle and unused to Western clothes. But his aristocratic charm, natural intelligence, and love of nature impress the hardened frontiersmen, forming a bond that lasts the rest of their lives. When a wealthy French marquis threatens the pristine country he has fallen in love with, Roosevelt joins with the Dakotans to defend it. Before the presidency, before San Juan Hill, it was in Dakota that Theodore Roosevelt became a man.

To Serve Them All My Days ($2.99 Kindle), by R. Delderfield [Sourcebooks Landmark]
Book Description
To Serve Them All My Days is the moving saga of David Powlett-Jones, who returns from World War I injured and shell-shocked. He is hired to teach history at Bamfylde School, where he rejects the formal curriculum and teaches the causes and consequences of the Great War.

Eventually David earns the respect of his students and many of his fellow teachers, against the backdrop of a country struggling to redefine itself. As David falls in love and finds himself on track to possibly take on the headmaster role, he must search to find the strength to hold true to his beliefs as the specter of another great war looms.

To Serve Them All My Days is a brilliant picture of England between the World Wars, as the country comes to terms with the horrors of the Great War and the new forces reshaping the British government and society.

Subject of a Landmark BBC Miniseries; Includes Bonus Reading Group Guide

Cut Short ($2.57 Kindle; $3.49 companion audiobook), the first Geraldine Steel thriller by Leigh Russell [Oldcastle Books]; with starred reviews, this one is going to the TBR list, as well.
Book Description
In the tradition of Ruth Rendell, Lynda La Plante, Frances Fyfield, and Barbara Vine, a gripping psychological thriller introduces Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel, a woman whose past is threatening to collide with her future

D.I. Geraldine Steel relocates to the quiet town of Woolsmarsh, expecting it to be a place where nothing much happens, and she can battle her demons privately—she quickly discovers she is wrong. By day, the park is a place where children play, friends sit and gossip, and people walk their dogs or take a short cut to avoid the streets. But in the shadows a predator prowls, hunting for victims. When a woman sees the killer and comes forward as a witness, she quickly becomes the object of his murderous obsession. D.I. Geraldine Steel is locked into a race against time, needing to find the killer before he strikes again, as public pressure mounts with the growing death toll.

That's My Girl: How a Father's Love Protects and Empowers His Daughter ($1.99 Kindle), by Rick Johnson [Revell]
Book Description
A father impacts every aspect of his daughter's life--for her entire life. Fathers model for their daughters how women should be treated, how men should act, and how a man shows healthy love and affection toward a woman. And, perhaps most importantly, he sets the standard for how his daughter feels she deserves to be treated by men. It's plain to see that this is a big responsibility and one that is not always easy to carry out.

In That's My Girl, parenting expert Rick Johnson shows men how to develop the close relationships with their daughters that they both crave. Rick's plainspoken common sense, wisdom, and humor meets dads right where they are with stories and advice that will change their relationships with their daughters for life.

Any man who wants to be the best dad possible to his daughter, as well as mothers and adult daughters seeking to understand the men in their lives, will love this hope-filled book.

Scorched ($3.79 Kindle), the sixth (and latest) in the Tracers suspense/thriller series by Laura Griffin [Pocket Books/Simon and Schuster]
Book Description
Kelsey Quinn set out to trace a murder victim. Now she may become one.

The dead don’t speak, but Kelsey knows their secrets. As a forensic anthropologist at the Delphi Center crime lab, Kelsey makes it her mission to identify bodies using no more than shards of bone, and her find at a remote Philippines dig hints at a sinister story. When Kelsey’s search for answers puts her at the scene of her ex-fiancĂ©’s murder, only one man can help her. The same man who broke her heart just months before, and who is also a prime suspect. Faced with an ultimatum— Kelsey or his job—Gage Brewer did the only thing a Navy SEAL could . . . but that doesn’t mean he stopped wanting Kelsey. Now Kelsey is running for her life and Gage is her last line of defense. As the threats escalate, Kelsey realizes this conspiracy goes deeper and higher than they could have guessed. With the clock ticking down on a madman’s plot, the slightest misstep will have unthinkable consequences. . . .

Evan Angler's Swipe series isn't so much for dad as it is for their tween and teen sons and daughters [Thomas Nelson]. Two of the three novels are on sale and all have bargain audiobooks.

Swipe ($7.69 Kindle; $3.49 companion audiobook)
Everyone gets the Mark. It gives all the benefits of citizenship. Yet if getting the Mark is such a good thing, then why does it feel so wrong?

Set in a future North America that is struggling to recover after famine and global war, Swipe follows the lives of three kids caught in the middle of a conflict they didn’t even know existed. United under a charismatic leader, every citizen of the American Union is required to get the Mark on their 13th birthday in order to gain the benefits of citizenship.

The Mark is a tattoo that must be swiped by special scanners for everything from employment to transportation to shopping. It’s almost Logan Langly’s 13th birthday and he knows he should be excited about getting the Mark, but he hasn’t been able to shake the feeling he’s being watched. Not since his sister went to get her Mark five years ago . . . and never came back.

When Logan and his friends discover the truth behind the Mark, will they ever be able to go back to being normal teenagers? Find out in the first book of this exciting series that is Left Behind meets Matched for middle-grade readers.
Sneak ($1.99 Kindle; $3.49 companion audiobook)
In a future United States under the power of a charismatic leader, everyone gets the Mark at age thirteen. The Mark lets citizen shop, go to school, and even get medical care—but without it, you are on your own. Few refuse to get the Mark. Those who do . . . disappear.

Logan Langly went in to get his Mark, but he backed out at the last minute. Now he’s on the run from government agents who will stop at nothing to capture him. But Logan is on a mission to find and save his sister, Lily, who disappeared five years ago on her thirteenth birthday, the day she was supposed to receive her Mark.

Logan and his friends, a group of dissenters called the Dust, discover a vast network of the Unmarked, who help them travel safely to the capital city where Lily is imprisoned. Along the way, the Dust receives some startling information from the Markless community, opening their eyes to the message of Christianity and warning that humanity is now entering the End of Days.

When the Dust finally arrives in the capital, it seems that all their careful planning is useless against a government that will do anything to bend its citizens to its will. Can the gentle words Logan has found in a tattered, banned Bible really stand against the most powerful military the world has ever known? Can Logan even sacrifice his own freedom, choosing to act through faith alone?
Storm ($1.99 Kindle; $3.49 companion audiobook)
In a future United States under the power of a charismatic leader, everyone gets the Mark at age thirteen. The Mark lets citizen shop, go to school, and even get medical care—without it, you are on your own. Few refuse to get the Mark. Those who do . . . disappear.

Logan Langly went in to get his Mark, but he backed out at the last minute. Ever since, he’s been on the run from government agents and on a quest to find his sister Lily, who disappeared when she went to get her Mark five years earlier. His journey leads him to befriend the Dust, a vast network of Markless individuals who dissent against the iron-grip rule of the government. Along the way to the capital to find Lily, the Dust receive some startling information from the Markless community, opening their eyes to the message of Christianity and warning that humanity is now entering the End of Days.

In Storm, Logan and his friends are the leaders of the Markless revolution. But while some Markless are fighting Chancellor Cylis’ army, the Dust is busy trying to find a cure for a horrible epidemic sweeping through the Marked. And it's difficult for them to know who to trust, especially when they aren't sure if Logan's sister Lily, one of the commanders in Cylis' army, is on their side or not. And all across the nation—and the world—the weather has become less stable and a storm is brewing that bigger than any of them could have ever imagined.

Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood ($2.99 Kindle; $3.99 companion audiobook), by Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton & Company]
Book Description
The New York Times bestseller: “Hilarious. No mushy tribute to the joys of fatherhood, Lewis’ book addresses the good, the bad, and the merely baffling about having kids.”—Boston Globe

When Michael Lewis became a father, he decided to keep a written record of what actually happened immediately after the birth of each of his three children. This book is that record. But it is also something else: maybe the funniest, most unsparing account of ordinary daily household life ever recorded, from the point of view of the man inside. The remarkable thing about this story isn’t that Lewis is so unusual. It’s that he is so typical. The only wonder is that his wife has allowed him to publish it.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex ($2.99 Kindle; $3.99 companion audiobook), by Mary Roach [W. W. Norton & Company]
Book Description
The best-selling author of Stiff turns her outrageous curiosity and insight on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex.

The study of sexual physiology—what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better—has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers, pig farms, sex-toy R&D labs, and Alfred Kinsey’s attic. Mary Roach, “the funniest science writer in the country” (Burkhard Bilger of The New Yorker), devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Why doesn’t Viagra help women—or, for that matter, pandas? In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm, two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scientific phenomena on earth, can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell ($2.99 Kindle), by Tucker Max [Citadel]
Book Description
The Book That Inspired The Movie

Tucker Max drinks to excess at inappropriate times, disregards social norms, indulges every whim, takes no responsibility for his actions, rebels against any authority, mocks idiots and posers, sleeps with more women than is safe or reasonable and generally just acts like an asshole. "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" contains everything the modern-day bounder that is Tucker Max has written since he started sharing his depraved reality with an audience of millions.

A Confederacy of Dunces ($2.99 Kindle; $3.99 companion audiobook), the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by John Kennedy Toole [Grove Press]
Book Description
The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged as well. Ignatius ignores them as he heaves his vast bulk through the city's fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him. Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his new-found employment to further his mission and now he has a pirate costume and a hot-dog cart to do it with.

I'll close out with one for Dads to read with their kids. Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore ($1.99 Kindle), by William Joyce (Author, Illustrator) and Joe Bluhm (Illustrator) [Atheneum Books for Young Readers]. This book features Kindle Text Pop-Up for reading text over vivid, full-color images when using Kindle Fire/HD or select Kindle Reading Apps (Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle for iPad or Kindle for Android, Kindle for Windows 8); unlike some other Text Popup books, this one won't work on any of the eInk Kindles.
Book Description
The book that inspired the Academy Award–winning short film, from New York Times bestselling author and beloved visionary William Joyce. Includes audio!

Morris Lessmore loved words.

He loved stories.

He loved books.

But every story has its upsets.

Everything in Morris Lessmore’s life, including his own story, is scattered to the winds.

But the power of story will save the day.

Stunningly brought to life by William Joyce, one of the preeminent creators in children’s literature, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a modern masterpiece, showing that in today’s world of traditional books, eBooks, and apps, it’s story that we truly celebrate—and this story, no matter how you tell it, begs to be read—and listened to—again and again.

Age Level: 4 and up

Kindle Daily Deals 6/16

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Michael Connelly's "Lincoln Lawyer" (Mickey Haller) legal thrillers for $2.99 apiece [Hachette]. Besides making a great (and not quite late) Father's Day gift, if you start reading now, you'll be ready when The Gods of Guilt is released at the start of December.

Today Only, you can add the audiobook of each of these for $4.99 after purchasing the Kindle edition. Prime members can also stream The Lincoln Lawyer movie for free.

The Lincoln Lawyer (companion audiobook)
This #1 bestselling legal thriller from Michael Connelly is a stunning display of novelistic mastery - as human, as gripping, and as whiplash-surprising as any novel yet from the writer Publishers Weekly has called "today's Dostoevsky of crime literature."

Mickey Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers - they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence, it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice.

A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney's dream, what they call a franchise case. And as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career. Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller discovers that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal - this time to save his own life.
The Brass Verdict (companion audiobook)
Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, Haller is back in the courtroom. When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest case yet: the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover. But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that Vincent's killer may be coming for him next.

Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent's killer, he is not opposed to using Haller as bait. But as danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realize their only choice is to work together.

Bringing together Michael Connelly's two most popular characters, The Brass Verdict is sure to be his biggest book yet.
The Reversal (companion audiobook)
Longtime defense attorney Mickey Haller is recruited to change stripes and prosecute the high-profile retrial of a brutal child murder. After 24 years in prison, convicted killer Jason Jessup has been exonerated by new DNA evidence. Haller is convinced Jessup is guilty, and he takes the case on the condition that he gets to choose his investigator, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch.

Together, Bosch and Haller set off on a case fraught with political and personal danger. Opposing them is Jessup, now out on bail, a defense attorney who excels at manipulating the media, and a runaway eyewitness reluctant to testify after so many years.

With the odds and the evidence against them, Bosch and Haller must nail a sadistic killer once and for all. If Bosch is sure of anything, it is that Jason Jessup plans to kill again.
The Fifth Witness (companion audiobook)
Mickey Haller has fallen on tough times. He expands his business into foreclosure defense, only to see one of his clients accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take away her home.

Mickey puts his team into high gear to exonerate Lisa Trammel, even though the evidence and his own suspicions tell him his client is guilty. Soon after he learns that the victim had black market dealings of his own, Haller is assaulted, too--and he's certain he's on the right trail.

Despite the danger and uncertainty, Haller mounts the best defense of his career in a trial where the last surprise comes after the verdict is in. Connelly proves again why he "may very well be the best novelist working in the United States today" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is The Confession ($0.99), by Erin McCauley [Crimson Romance].
Book Description
A confession turns successful handbag designer Aimee Morrison’s world upside down and lands her on the doorstep of Emily Sinclair, the woman who could possibly be her birth mother. In a case of mistaken identity, Aimee impulsively accepts a job as Emily’s personal assistant. To complicate matters, Aimee falls in love with Marcus Lee, a sexy, moody, damaged man who is highly suspicious of her.

Marcus Lee has spent most of his life on the Sinclair estate, having lived there with his mother as a child, and returning after college to pursue his dream of becoming a writer and assume the role of estate caretaker. Growing up with the memory of his father’s betrayal, and his mother’s emotional isolation, he’s learned to trust no one. Watching woman after woman claim to be Emily’s long-lost daughter in an effort to be her sole heir, he also believes everyone has a hidden agenda. Upon meeting Aimee, he is surprised by his strong physical attraction to her, and even as he begins to fall in love, he knows she’s keeping secrets.

Tangled in her own deceptions, will Aimee lose everything she loves once the truth is revealed?

Sensuality Level: Sensual

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Into the Black: Odyssey One ($1.99), a thriller by Evan Currie [47North].
Book Description
Beyond the confines of our small world, far from the glow of our star, lies a galaxy and universe much larger and more varied than anyone on Earth can possibly imagine. For the new NAC spacecraft Odyssey and her crew, the unimaginable facets of this untouched world are about to become reality.

The Odyssey’s maiden voyage is an epic adventure destined to make history. Captain Eric Weston and his crew, pushing past the boundaries of security, encounter horrors, wonders, monsters, and people, all of which will test their resolve, challenge their abilities, and put in sharp relief what is necessary to be a hero.

A first-rate military science fiction epic that combines old-school space opera and modern storytelling, Into the Black: Odyssey One is a riveting, exhilarating adventure with vivid details, rich mythology, and relentless pacing that will leave you breathlessly awaiting book two.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Cool Dog, School Dog ($0.99), Deborah Heiligman [Two Lions].
Book Description

Tinka is a cool dog, a school dog, a breaking all the rules dog.A hall dog, a ball dog, a crash-into-the-wall dog.

Join Tinka, a dandy, sandy Golden Retriever, as she unexpectedly visits her owner at school and helps his class learn to read. Bright illustrations rendered in acrylic paint add to the excitement in this playful back-to-school story about a boy and his "loves-to-hear-a-book" dog.

The author and illustrator of Cool Dog, School Dog have donated this book to the Worldreader program

Age Level: 3 and up

Nook Daily Find 6/16

Manhood for Amateurs ($9.78 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Michael Chabon [HarperCollins], is the Nook Daily Find.
Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author— "an immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)—offers his first major work of nonfiction, an autobiographical narrative as inventive, beautiful, and powerful as his acclaimed, award-winning fiction.

A shy manifesto, an impractical handbook, the true story of a fabulist, an entire life in parts and pieces, Manhood for Amateurs is the first sustained work of personal writing from Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own lives: as a series of reflections, regrets, and reexaminations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past.

What does it mean to be a man today? Chabon invokes and interprets and struggles to reinvent for us, with characteristic warmth and lyric wit, the personal and family history that haunts him even as—simply because—it goes on being written every day. As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as the father of four young Americans, Chabon presents his memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, as a theme played—on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new key—by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor.

At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.

UK Kindle Daily Deal 6/16

Pharmakon (£0.99 UK), by Dirk Wittenborn [Bloomsbury], is the Kindle Deal of the Day for those in the UK (no US edition).
Book Description
It is 1950s America and madness is in the air. In a world where the ‘cures' for craziness include coma therapy, cyanide treatment and full-frontal lobotomies, Dr. William T. Friedrich, a young and ambitious psychology professor at Yale, stumbles upon a tropical plant that seems to possess the secret ingredient of happiness. In Casper Gedsic, a fiercely intelligent, socially inept, near-suicidal maths student, he seems to have found the perfect guinea pig. But when his experiments goes awry, Casper's thirst for revenge turns murderous and his actions have consequences that will haunt Friedrich and his family forever...

Dark Eden (£0.99 UK), the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2013 winning novel by Chris Beckett [Atlantic Books], is the Kindle Deal of the Day for for Science Fiction & Fantasy Fans in the UK (no US edition).
Book Description
A marooned outpost of humanity struggles to survive on a startlingly alien world: science fiction as it ought to be from British science fiction's great white hope.

You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of Angela and Tommy. You shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest's lantern trees, hunting woollybuck and harvesting tree candy. Beyond the forest lie the treeless mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it. The Oldest among you recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross between worlds. One day, the Oldest say, they will come back for you.

You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of two marooned explorers. You huddle, slowly starving, beneath the light and warmth of geothermal trees, confined to one barely habitable valley of a startlingly alien, sunless world. After 163 years and six generations of incestuous inbreeding, the Family is riddled with deformity and feeblemindedness. Your culture is a infantile stew of half-remembered fact and devolved ritual that stifles innovation and punishes independent thought.

You are John Redlantern. You will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. You will be the first to abandon hope, the first to abandon the old ways, the first to kill another, the first to venture in to the Dark, and the first to discover the truth about Eden.