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Saturday, September 1, 2012

Bargin Book Roundup

Using Agate Surreys great looking free cookbook as my inspiration today, I've picked all food and drink related bargains for tonight's post. It's not all cookbooks, although I've picked out several of them (quite a few from the same publisher, Agate), though, as I considered the title and cover image, along with the subject matter, in deciding which ones made the cut.

I bought Nancie McDermott's Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes, From Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan ($2.99) last year and it's on sale again, just in time to find a few recipes to try out for the holidays.
Book Description
Ask any pie lover—the words "southern" and "pie" go together like ripe fruit and flaky pastry. And behind all the mouthwatering, light-as-a-cloud meringue peaks and the sticky dark butterscotch fillings lies a rich and delicious history. In Southern Pies, some of the South's most famous bakers share recipes for 70 pies. Perfect for bakers of all skill levels, these pies are made with simple, easy-to-find, and gloriously few ingredients. Featuring such classics as Sweet Tea Pie and New Orleans Creole Coconut Pie, this tasty homage will fill everyone at the table with Southern hospitality.

The Latte Rebellion ($1.99), by Sarah Jamila Stevenson
Book Description
Hoping to raise money for a post-graduation trip to London, Asha Jamison and her best friend Carey decide to sell T-shirts promoting the Latte Rebellion, a club that raises awareness of mixed-race students.

But seemingly overnight, their "cause" goes viral and the T-shirts become a nationwide social movement. As new chapters spring up from coast to coast, Asha realizes that her simple marketing plan has taken on a life of its own—and it's starting to ruin hers. Asha's once-stellar grades begin to slip, threatening her Ivy League dreams, while her friendship with Carey hangs by a thread. And when the peaceful underground movement spins out of control, Asha's school launches a disciplinary hearing. Facing expulsion, Asha must decide how much she's willing to risk for something she truly believes in.

Age Level: 12 and up

The Quiche of Death ($2.99) is the first title M C Beaton's long running and extremely popular Agatha Raisin mystery series.
Book Description
Putting all her eggs in one basket, Agatha Raisin gives up her successful PR firm, sells her London flat, and samples a taste of early retirement in the quiet village of Carsely. Bored, lonely and used to getting her way, she enters a local baking contest: Surely a blue ribbon for the best quiche will make her the toast of the town. But her recipe for social advancement sours when Judge Cummings-Browne not only snubs her entry—but falls over dead! After her quiche’s secret ingredient turns out to be poison, she must reveal the unsavory truth…

Agatha has never baked a thing in her life! In fact, she bought her entry ready-made from an upper crust London quicherie. Grating on the nerves of several Carsely residents, she is soon receiving sinister notes. Has her cheating and meddling landed her in hot water, or are the threats related to the suspicious death? It may mean the difference between egg on her face and a coroner’s tag on her toe…

Rule of Three ($1.99), the second title in Megan McDonald's The Sisters Club series, looks like a good choice for the younger set. And, although there is no food on the cover, The Sisters Club, the first in the series, is also on sale for $1.99.
Book Description
Alex has always been the Actor with-a-capital-A in the Reel family, and middle-sister Stevie has always been content behind the scenes. But when the school play turns out to be a musical, Stevie decides that she’s tired of being the Sensible One. Maybe, for once, she’d like to be in the spotlight! Soon the dueling divas—with little sister Joey egging them on—are in a fierce competition to see who has what it takes to play the Princess. Has Stevie broken the rules by going for what she wants, or will it be Alex who hands down the biggest betrayal of all?

Grade Level: 3 and up

The Greenhouse ($1.99), by Audur Ava Olafsdottir and Brian FitzGibbon (Translator).
Book Description
Young Lobbi was preparing to leave his childhood home, his autistic brother, his octogenarian father, and the familiar landscape of mossy lava fields for an unknown future. Soon before his departure, he received an awful phone call: his mother was in a car accident. She used her dying words to offer calm advice to her son, urging him to continue their shared work in the greenhouse tending to the rare Rosa candida. Prior to his mother’s death, in that very same greenhouse, Lobbi made love to Anna, a friend of a friend, and just as he readies his departure he learns that in their brief night together they conceived a child. He is still reeling from this chain of events when he arrives at his new job, reinstating the rare eight-petaled rose in the majestic forgotten garden of an ancient European monastery. In focusing his energy cultivating the rarest rose, he also learns to cultivate love, with the help of a film buff monk and his newborn daughter, Flora Sol.

Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: A True Story of Bad Breaks and Small Miracles ($2.99), by Heather Lende
Book Description
The Alaskan landscape—so vast, dramatic, and unbelievable—may be the reason the people in Haines, Alaska (population 2,400), so often discuss the meaning of life. Heather Lende thinks it helps make life mean more. Since her bestselling first book, If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, a near-fatal bicycle accident has given Lende a few more reasons to consider matters both spiritual and temporal. Her idea of spirituality is rooted in community, and here she explores faith and forgiveness, loss and devotion—as well as raising totem poles, canning salmon, and other distinctly Alaskan adventures. Lende’s irrepressible spirit, her wry humor, and her commitment to living a life on the edge of the world resonate on every page. Like her own mother’s last wish—take good care of the garden and dogs—Lende’s writing, so honest and unadorned, deepens our understanding of what links all humanity.

Of Blood and Honey ($1.99), by Stina Leicht
Book Description
Liam never knew who his father was. The town of Derry had always assumed that he was the bastard of a protestant — his mother never spoke of him, and Liam assumed he was dead. But when the war between the fallen and the fey began to heat up, Liam and his family are pulled into a conflict that they didn’t know existed. A centuries old conflict between supernatural forces seems to mirror the political divisions in 1970’s era Ireland, and Liam is thrown headlong into both conflicts! Only the direct intervention of Liam’s real father, and a secret catholic order dedicated to fighting “The Fallen” can save Liam... from the mundane and supernatural forces around him, and from the darkness that lurks within him.

Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper ($2.99), by C. Marina Marchese
Book Description
In 1999, Marina Marchese fell in love with bees during a tour of a neighbor's honeybee hives. She quit her job, acquired her own bees, built her own hives, harvested honey, earned a certificate in apitherapy, studied wine tasting in order to transfer those skills to honey tasting, and eventually opened her own honey business. Today, Red Bee® Honey sells artisanal honey and honey-related products to shops and restaurants all over the country.

More than an inspiring story of one woman's transformative relationship with honeybees (some of nature's most fascinating creatures), Honeybee is also bursting with information about all aspects of bees, beekeeping, and honey—including life inside the hive; the role of the queen, workers, and drones; pollination and its importance to sustaining all life; the culinary pleasures of honey; hiving and keeping honeybees; the ancient practice of apitherapy, or healing with honey, pollen, and bee venom; and much more.

Recipes for food and personal care products appear throughout. Also included is an excellent, one-of-a-kind appendix that lists 75 different honey varietals, with information on provenance, tasting notes, and food-and-wine pairings.

The Healing Powers of Honey ($3.99), by Cal Orey
Book Description
Did you know?...
  • Known as Mother Nature's "nectar of the gods," honey was praised for its healing powers as far back as 5,000 years ago by Egyptians.
  • Eating honey can help lower the risk of heart disease, cancer , diabetes--even help reduce body fat and unwanted weight!--and increase longevity.
  • Pure, raw, unprocessed honey is a healthier sweetener than table sugar and high fructose corn syrup. It's chock-full of antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins--and only has 21 calories per teaspoon.
  • Super "bee foods" (including nutrient-rich bee pollen, propolis, and royal jelly) are used and touted for their healing powers by beekeepers and medical experts in the present-day.
  • Honey can relieve a variety of ailments, including allergies, coughs, fatigue, pain, and stress, as well as boost libido.
  • The honey bee pollinates about one-third of the food we consume (including nutritious fruits and nuts).

Drawing on the latest honey buzz and interviews with medical doctors, beekeepers, and researchers, this charming and enlightening book (sweetened with stories about honey bees and humans) reveals 30 healing honey varieties paired with cinnamon and teas, tells you how to incorporate honey into Mediterranean-style, heart-healthy recipes like Honey Custard French Toast, Honey-Glazed Game Hen, and Filo Pear and Honey Tarts, and provides more than 50 home cures that combat digestive woes to skin woes. You'll also enjoy Cleopatra's milk-and-honey beauty treatments and eco-friendly beeswax household uses--all made with the amazing honey bee's gifts!

Put 'em Up!: A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook, from Drying and Freezing to Canning and Pickling ($2.99), by Sherri Brooks Vinton
Book Description
PRESERVING IS BACK, AND IT’S BETTER THAN EVER. Flavors are brighter, batch sizes are more flexible, and modern methods make the process safer and easier. Eating locally is on everybody's mind, and nothing is more local than Heirloom Salsa made from vine-fresh tomatoes or a quick batch of Ice-Box Berry Jam saved from the seasons last berries. Even beginners who never made peach jam or dill pickles in their grandmothers kitchens are eager to pick up preserving skills as a way to save money, extend the local harvest, and control the quality of preserved ingredients.

The step-by-step instructions in Put ‘em Up will have the most timid beginners filling their pantries and freezers with the preserved goodness of summer in no time. An extensive Techniques section includes complete how-to for every kind of preserving: refrigerating and freezing, air- and oven-drying, cold- and hot-pack canning, and pickling. And with recipe yields as small as a few pints or as large as several gallons, readers can easily choose recipes that work for the amount of produce and time at hand.

Real food advocate Sherri Brooks Vinton offers recipes with exciting flavor combinations to please contemporary palates and put preserved fruits and vegetables on dinner-party menus everywhere. Pickled Asparagus and Wasabi Beans are delicious additions to holiday relish trays; Sweet Pepper Marmalade perks up cool-weather roasts; and Berry Bourbon is an unexpected base for a warming cocktail.

The best versions of tried-and-true favorites are all here too. Bushels of fresh-picked apples are easily turned into applesauce, dried fruit rings, jelly, butter, or even brandy. Falling-off-the-vine tomatoes can be frozen whole, oven dried, canned, or made into a tangy marinara. Options for pickling cucumbers range from Bread and Butter Chips and Dill Spears to Asian Ice-Box Pickles. Something delicious for every pantry!

How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Food, Shelter and Self-Preservation Anywhere ($2.99), by Bradford Angier
Book Description
HOW TO STAY ALIVE IN THE WOODS is a practical, readable-and potentially indispensable-manual for anyone venturing into the great outdoors.

Broken down into four essential sections, Sustenance, Warmth, Orientation and Safety, this enlightening guide reveals how to catch game without a gun, what plants to eat (full-color illustrations of these make identification simple), how to build a warm shelter, make clothing, protect yourself and signal for help. Detailed illustrations and expanded instructions, newly commissioned for this deluxe edition, offer crucial information at a glance, making How to Stay Alive in the Woods truly a lifesaver.

Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great-Tasting Beer ($2.99), by Dave Miller
Book Description
In this comprehensive guide to homebrewing, Miller clearly explains the best techniques for every step of the entire brewing process. Clear enough for the novice but thorough enough to earn a home in the libraries of brewmasters, this is the essential volume on brewing great-tasting beer at home.

Thirst ($2.99), by Andrei Gelasimov and Marian Schwartz (Translator)
Book Description
Masterfully translated from the original Russian by award-winning translator Marian Schwartz, Thirst tells the story of 20-year-old Chechen War veteran Kostya. Maimed beyond recognition by a tank explosion, he spends weeks on end locked inside his apartment, his sole companions the vodka bottles spilling from the refrigerator. But soon Kostya’s comfortable if dysfunctional cocoon is torn open when he receives a visit from his army buddies who are mobilized to locate a missing comrade. Through this search for his missing friend, Kostya is able to find himself.

How's Your Drink?: Cocktails, Culture, and the Art of Drinking Well ($0.99), by Eric Felten
Book Description
Based on the popular feature in the Saturday Wall Street Journal, How's Your Drink illuminates the culture of the cocktail. John F. Kennedy played nuclear brinksmanship with a gin and tonic in his hand. Teddy Roosevelt took the witness stand to testify that six mint juleps over the course of his presidency did not make him a drunk. Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler both did their part to promote the gimlet. Eric Felten tells all of these stories and many more, and also offers exhaustively researched cocktail recipes.

Taste: A Life in Wine ($4.24), by Anthony Terlato
Book Description
Anthony Terlato's story is not simply the usual CEO narrative of achieving business success, nor i it the typical winemaker's tale of pursuing perfection in a glass. Straddling both of those stories, Terlato uses broad strokes to show how one individual had an enormous impact on Americans' wine-drinking habits. Wine journalist Linda Murphy described Terlato in the San Francisco Chronicle as "one of the most accomplished wine personalities on the planet," and readers of this account of a 50-year love affair with wine see this affable, intelligent man at his finest.

Wahoo Rhapsody ($1.99), an Atticus Fish novel by Shaun Morey
Book Description
Take one sea-loving captain, a drug-smuggling first mate, and a novice deckhand with a secret, and you have the motley crew of the Wahoo Rhapsody, a ramshackle fishing charter plying the Pacific’s waters off the coast of Cabo San Lucas. Captain Winston Weber makes an honest, if lean, living running fishing charters between Mexico and California, with no inkling of the fact that his first mate, Weevil Ott, is smuggling marijuana inside the yellowfin tuna stacked in the boat’s hold. But when Weevil decides to skim a small fortune for himself, goons under orders from the mysterious drug lord known only as “La Cucaracha” descend upon the Wahoo Rhapsody. What ensues is a madcap romp that will catapult readers from Cabo San Lucas to Tucson and San Diego, as Winston, Weevil, and an expat American lawyer by the name of Atticus Fish try to outrun La Cucaracha’s bloody reach. Fans of Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard will relish this rollicking satirical adventure from award-winning writer Shaun Morey.

Skinny Seafood: Over 100 delectable low-fat recipes for preparing nature's underwater bounty ($0.99), by Barbara Grunes
Book Description
Seafood eating is healthy eating. But preparing exciting and delicious fish and shellfish can be a challenge. Skinny Seafood meets the challenge with 100 new recipes that are as inventive as they are easy to make. Banish bland, ho-hum fish forever, and start enjoying the bounty of the sea for great taste as well as good health.

Skinny Seafood's recipes make it easy to prepare seafood. Most dishes require little cooking time, and fish is surprisingly economical when purchased fresh. All of the recipes employ simple preparation techniques to control fat, calories, and cholesterol. Likewise, the scores of creative sauces and accompaniments rely on herbs, spices, an fresh natural ingredients for flavor rather than fat-laden oils and butter.

Fish was never like this: Trout with Mango and Blueberry Sauce, Salsa Red Snapper, Sole and Shrimp with Tequila and more

Skinny Grilling: Over 100 inventive low-fat recipes for meats, fish, poultry, vegetables & desserts ($0.99), by Barbara Grunes
Book Description
The barbecue grill is an American icon. In suburbia it's a backyard fixture. In cities it appears on tiny balconies. At picnics and beach parties it's indispensable. Yet the food we usually grill has a fatty sameness that does justice neither to the cook's skill or the diners' good health.

Barbara Grunes, author of over 50 cookbooks and maven of grill cookery, puts an end to routine, fat-laden barbecues once and for all with Skinny Grilling's 100 exciting new recipes. This unique collection establishes grill cooking as a versatile culinary technique in its own right, no longer limited to chicken, ribs, and hamburgers.

Now home cooks can grill--easily and without fuss--delicious roasts, succulent seafood, smoked turkeys, bubbling pizzas, and dozens more main dishes. But that's just the beginning. Over the same coals, readers can quickly turn out juicy vegetables, creative salads, unforgettable smoked meats, oriental stir-fries in the wok--even fabulous desserts! Also included is a wonderful red-white-and-blue 5-course 4th of July feast.

Families and friends love the festivity and fun of cookouts, and Skinny Grilling will provide an inventive recipe collection to vastly extend any cook's grilling repertory. Even better, the food prepared from this book will be low in fat, high in flavor, and anything but routine.

Skinny Pizza: Over 100 healthy recipes for America's favorite food ($0.99), by Barbara Grunes
Book Description
Pizza is America's national fun food. And now--thanks to Barbara Grunes' innovative recipes--pizza qualifies as America's national good-health food, too. These 100-plus recipes trim away the excess fat, cholesterol, and calories that usually come with pizza, so families can enjoy all the great tastes without sacrificing good nutrition.

Starting with easy-to-make (and store) recipes for basic crusts and sauces, Skinny Pizzas shows you how easy it is to top pizzas with fresh, low-fat, high-fiber vegetables, dairy products, fruits, poultry, meat, and fish--everything from zucchini and pears to smoked salmon. From hearty one-dish meals to pizza snacks, appetizers, party dishes, and even desserts--all slimmed down for today's healthful lifestyle--home cooks can feel good about serving pizza any time and for any occasion.
  • Tomato-based pizzas: Shrimp, mushroom, chicken, spinach, tuna, peppers, artichoke, eggplant, and more.
  • Non-tomato-based pizzas: Teriyaki, salmon, bok choy, goat's cheese, clam, turkey, stir-fry, zucchini, and more.
  • Pizza on the grill: Fajita, vegetarian, Thai-flavored, salsa, olive, ratatouille, mango, barbecue, and more.
  • Specialty pizzas: Creole, Szechwan, smoked turkey, scallop, focaccia, crab cake, nacho, English muffin, and more.
  • Dessert pizzas: Apple, mint brownie, cheesecake, strawberry yogurt, rum-raisin, and more.
All recipes include diabetic exchanges and nutritional specifics on fat, cholesterol, sodium, calories, and percent of calories from fat. Recipes conform to the American Heart Association guidelines regarding the percent daily intake of calories from fat.

Speedy Suppers Cookbook: Simple meals for a family-on-the-go, all in about 30 minutes or less! ($2.99), by Gooseberry Patch
Book Description
Simple meals for busy families! Speedy Suppers cookbook features delicious dishes that are ready in 30 minutes or less like baked ziti supreme, quick-as-lightning enchiladas and easy, breezy caramel brownies. 224 pages.

Good Eating's Best of the Best: Great Recipes of the Past Decade from the Chicago Tribune Test Kitchen ($0.99), edited by Carol Mighton Haddix
Book Description
In this, it's first new cookbook in more than a decade, the Chicago Tribune offers 50 of the very best recipes from the pages of the paper’s weekly Good Eating section. The Tribune remains one of the few newspapers in this country with its own working test kitchen, which ensures that the recipes are accurate and reliable. Each year, staff members choose their favorites. Now, the best of those winning recipes are compiled in a book that reflects how we having been cooking--and eating--over the last decade.

The book features recipes from across the wide range of common kitchen offerings: starters, meat and poultry dishes, seafood, pasta, rice, side dishes, salads, baked goods, and desserts. In addition, a section on menu planning offers readers ideas for entertaining.

Good Eating's Seasonal Salads: Fresh and Creative Recipes for Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall ($3.99 pre-order), by the Chicago Tribune Staff
Book Description
Good Eating’s Seasonal Salads is a collection of 90 delicious recipes from the Chicago Tribune’s Good Eating section that are perfect as exciting side dishes or full, healthy meals. Making use of fresh in-season ingredients, this eclectic assortment of salads features flavorful options for every month of the year. Salads range in style and substance, from practical and quick to creative and gourmet, light and simple to hearty and robust, and from classic stand-bys to unique innovations.

Each recipe provides a series of healthy eating tips and is grouped into categories based on its main ingredients, including greens, vegetables, potatoes, eggs, poultry, meat, seafood, rice, grains, beans, pasta, fruit, and dressings. Especially useful is the book’s broad selection of winter salads, including delicious whole-grain salads and tips on seasonal produce. Each section is introduced by an entertaining narrative passage informing readers on topics such as the rise in popularity of Romaine lettuce and kale or the history behind the Caesar and Cobb salads. Good Eating’s Seasonal Salads also offers the culinary creations of several experienced cooks who provide their own perspectives and voice to the recipes.

Salads are versatile and healthful options for snacks or meals, lunch or dinner, summer or winter, and they let home cooks save money by creatively using leftovers in refreshing ways. Good Eating’s Seasonal Salads is ideal for novice and expert home cooks alike who are looking to prepare healthy, inexpensive, and appetizing salads using the freshest year-round ingredients.

Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef ($1.99), by the Chicago Tribune Staff
Book Description
Grant Achatz's career as a chef has been built around beating the odds—from his humble Midwestern beginnings and rise to stardom in Chicago; his iconoclastic vision of the American dining experience; and his life-threatening battle with cancer that temporarily stripped him of his ability to taste. In all these situations, Achatz defiantly and definitively surmounted innumerable obstacles to become—and remain—one of the world's most recognizable and respected chefs.

Grant Achatz: The Remarkable Rise of America's Most Celebrated Young Chef, a collection of articles taken from the Chicago Tribune, is an up-close examination of Achatz's personal history and international impact in the culinary world. Included are rare interviews on Achatz's humble beginnings as a young chef and modest lifestyle, stories from his stint as executive chef of Evanston, Illinois's four-star restaurant Trio, long-unseen restaurant reviews, as well as features on his innovative restaurants Aviary and Next, which play with Achatz's trademark concept of molecular gastronomy and the importance of presentation and memory in fine dining.

In the middle of all this success, Achatz was diagnosed with stage-four squamous cell carcinoma, a rare cancer afflicting the tongue that completely eliminated Achatz's sense of taste. Told he would die if he did not have his tongue surgically removed, Achatz tenaciously clung to the belief he would be able to regain the sense most vital to his extraordinary talent. While undergoing experimental treatment to regain his sense of taste, Achatz continued to manage Alinea and even improved it despite his professionally debilitating condition. Miraculously, Achatz made a full recovery and regained his ability to taste while going on to open one of the culinary world's most discussed and praised new restaurants: Next.

Grant Achatz tells the story of the man at the forefront of modern culinary trends and the world's top-rated restaurants, as seen through both his own eyes and the journalists who have been covering his fights against the odds from the beginning.

The Italian Slow Cooker ($2.99), by Michele Scicolone, is one that I bought last year.
Book Description
Finally a book that combines the fresh, exuberant flavors of great Italian food with the ease and comfort of a slow cooker. Michele Scicolone, a best-selling author and an authority on Italian cooking, shows how good ingredients and simple techniques can lift the usual “crockpot” fare into the dimension of fine food. Pasta with Meat and Mushroom Ragu, Osso Buco with Red Wine, Chicken with Peppers and Mushrooms: These are dishes that even the most discriminating cook can proudly serve to company, yet all are so carefree that anyone with just five or ten minutes of prep time can make them on a weekday and return to perfection.

Simmered in the slow cooker, soups, stews, beans, grains, pasta sauces, and fish are as healthy as they are delicious. Polenta and risotto, “stir-crazy” dishes that ordinarily need careful timing, are effortless. Meat loaves come out perfectly moist, tough cuts of meat turn succulent, and cheesecakes emerge flawless.

The Everything Soup, Stew, and Chili Cookbook ($1.99), by Belinda Hulin, is another one I bought last year.
Book Description
Creamy New England clam chowder. Hearty beef stew. Fresh vegetarian chili. Soups, stews, and chilies are comforting meals the whole family enjoys; and to top it off, they’re inexpensive to create! This cookbook includes information and cooking tips, as well as 300 mouthwatering recipes, including:
  • Smoked Duck and Squash Soup
  • Ginger Beef Soup with Dumplings
  • Creamy Asparagus Soup
  • Sirloin and Black Bean Chili
  • Mixed Bean Vegetarian Chili
  • Warm Apple-Cranberry Stew
  • Blackberry Stew with Sweet Biscuits
Whether you are in the mood for a chilled fruit soup on a warm summer day or a comforting meat-and-potato stew on a cold winter night, this book has everything! No matter what the season or occasion, you will find a choice that hits the spot.

Eat, Sleep, Ride: How I Braved Bears, Badlands, and Big Breakfasts in My Quest to Cycle the Tour Divide ($9.99), by Paul Howard, isn't discounted, but looks to be a good read. I've downloaded a sample and will probably stick it on my wishlist, to keep an eye on and consider as a holiday gift.
Book Description
For Paul Howard, who has ridden the entire Tour de France route during the race itself—setting off at 4 am each day to avoid being caught by the pros—riding a small mountain-bike race should hold no fear. Still, this isn’t just any mountain-bike race. This is the Tour Divide.

Running from Banff in Canada to the Mexican border, the Tour Divide is more than 2,700 miles—500 miles longer than the Tour de France. Its route along the Continental Divide goes through the heart of the Rocky Mountains and involves more than 200,000 feet of ascent—the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest seven times.

The other problem is that Howard has never owned a mountain bike—and how will training on the South Downs in southern England prepare him for sleeping rough in the Rockies? Entertaining and engaging, Eat, Sleep, Ride will appeal to avid and aspiring cyclers, as well as fans of adventure/travel narrative with a humorous twist.

Kindle and eBook News

The Kindle Fire is now sold out and not coming back, along with the Kindle Touch. Both have been removed from the Kindle Family menu pulldown (although they do still show on the banner when you click on Buy a Kindle) menubar). So, those rumors from China of a new tablet, are, it seems completely true ... or, at least some of them are. There should be new eInk and tablet Kindle editions at the end of this week, which is when the big announcement/press conference is scheduled for.

On the Agency publishing front, the lawsuits have been settled in 49 states (sorry Minnesotans) and some type of compensation will be offered to every person who purchased one or more titles from an Agency publisher during the last two and a half years. You can read the press release from the Connecticut Attorney General for some of the details, but it appears that each store will handle things differently: some will send you a check, others send out an email asking if you prefer that or a store credit. Don't expect anything just yet, the settlement has to be approved, but once it is, watch your email as you should start getting contacts within 30 days. I'd also be very careful to make sure that any email you get about this is legit - seems like a good opportunity for the scammers/phishers out there to try to get your passwords with a fake email about the settlement.

The big news in the settlement, though, is that all Agency publishing arrangements that Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have with retailers – such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble – will be terminated and pricing of books will go back to the retailers. Two publisher, Penguin and MacMillan, haven't opted in to the settlement and cases against them and Apple are still pending.

On the Amazon publishing front, it appears that Amazon has purchased Dorchester Publishing (although the press release isn't on the Amazon page, yet). Not only will they be paying Dorchester's authors in the future, they will be making good on the unpaid royalties from the past few years, so you don't to boycott them anymore (or feel bad if you didn't in the past). Dorchester joins Avalon Books and Marshall Cavendish US Children’s Books (both recent Amazon purchases), along with the Amazon founded imprints, which may mean that they will be Amazon exclusive publishers (if only because other retailers decline to carry their titles, as B&N has been known to do).

Today's Deals

Amazon has reloaded their 100 Kindle books for $3.99 or less sale.

Additional formats on free books (including Kindle US):

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is the AmazonEncore edition of True Crime ($1.99), a Nathan Heller novel by Max Allan Collins. Looks like a good one to add to my collection of his novels.
Book Description
1934 Chicago dazzles with fast action and calculating, cold-blooded meanness as private detective Nate Heller combs Chicago’s North Side looking for John Dillinger. But things take a turn for the strange when self-aggrandizing G-Man Melvin Purvis shoots down a Dillinger double in front of the Biograph Theater. Full of muscle and oozing Chicago’s tough-guy persona to the hilt, Max Allan Collins’ Nate Heller is the ultimate private investigator—in the ultimate P.I. town. Heller’s undercover search for a farmer’s-daughter-turned-gun-moll has him on the dusty Depression backroads of middle America, in the company of Ma Barker and her boys, Baby Face Nelson, Alvin Karpis, and a very-much-still-alive Dillinger—whose outlandish plan to kidnap J. Edgar Hoover in downtown Chicago is one Heller tries to foil. Including appearances by fan dancer Sally Rand, boxer Barney Ross, and Heller's “godfather,” Frank Nitti, True Crime is a relentless classic.

About the Author
Max Allan Collins is the author of the Shamus Award-winning Nathan Heller historical thrillers; his other books include the New York Times bestseller Saving Private Ryan and the bestselling CSI series. His comics writing ranges from the graphic novel Road to Perdition, source of the Tom Hanks film, to long runs as scripter of the “Dick Tracy” comic strip and his own innovative “Ms. Tree.” Collins is also a screenwriter and a leading Indie filmmaker. He lives in Iowa with his wife, writer Barbara Collins, and their son, Nathan.

Out of It ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), by Selma Dabbagh, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.59).
Book Description
Gaza is being bombed. Rashid - an unemployed twenty-seven year old who has stayed up smoking grass watching it happen - wakes to hear that he's got the escape route he's been waiting for: a scholarship to London. His twin sister, Iman - frustrated by the atrocities and inaction around her - has also been up all night, in a meeting that offers her nothing but more disappointment. Grabbing recklessly at an opportunity to make a difference, she finds herself being followed by an unknown fighter.

Meanwhile Sabri, the oldest brother of this disparate family, works on a history of Palestine from his wheelchair as their mother pickles vegetables and feuds with the neighbours.

Written with extraordinary humanity and humour, and moving between Gaza, London and the Gulf, Out of It is a tale that redefines Palestine and its people. It follows the lives of Rashid and Iman as they try to forge paths for themselves in the midst of occupation, religious fundamentalism and the divisions between Palestinian factions. It tells of family secrets, unlikely love stories and unburied tragedies as it captures the frustrations and energies of the modern Arab world.

The Worst-Case Scenario Almanac: Politics ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by David Borgenicht, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
Leave it to the experts of the best-selling Worst-Case Scenario series to ferret out the most scandalous, dangerous, incompetent, and downright awful people to ever seek power. The most lavish palaces, the bloodiest coups, the stupidest declarations. . . . Plus all the lists, charts, maps, and profiles that have made the Worst-Case Scenario Almanacs such a success. Which country had more governments in the past 175 years Italy or Bolivia? What ever happened to all those people who ran for vice president of the United States of America and lost? Illustrated, step-by-step scenarios describe how to respond when confronted with misfortune or challenge, including how to give a concession speech, kiss a drooling baby, escape a sex scandal, and evade the truth.

The Little Mermaid - Classics Illustrated Junior #525 ($1.99 B&N), by Hans Christian Andersen, is the Nook Daily Find for Families (requires NOOK Tablet or NOOK Color with software version 1.4.3). This comic appears to be out of print (again; original publication was in the 1950's and it was reprinted last in 2009) and no Kindle edition is to be found.
Book Description
A little sea princess, longing to be human, trades her mermaid's tail for legs, hoping to win the love of a prince and earn an immortal soul for herself. On the Little Mermaid's fifteenth birthday she visits the world above the sea for the first time and falls in love with a prince whom she rescues from a storm. Capturing the magic of Hans Christian Andersen's original tale, Classics Illustrated reveals the spectacle of the worlds below and above the sea. Beautifully illustrated, this classic tale will capture children's interest and spark their imagination inspiring a lifelong love of literature and reading.

Classics Illustrated Junior is an iconic comic series featuring vibrant, full-color adaptations of literary classics; featuring fairy tales, folk tales and myths.

These digital graphic novels are presented in a comic book format with robust color illustrations that introduce literature to readers of all ages.

"Parents will find pleasure in recapturing wonderful memories while joining their children in these enchanting stories of make-believe and the wealth of thrills they hold."

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is all three novels of Jessica Day George's Dragon Slippers trilogy, for young readers Grade Level: 5 and up, for $1.99 apiece.

Dragon Slippers
Poor Creel. She can't believe her aunt wants to sacrifice her to the local dragon. It's a ploy to lure a heroic knight so that he will fight the dragon, marry Creel out of chivalrous obligation, and lift the entire family out of poverty. Creel isn't worried. After all, nobody has seen a dragon in centuries.

But when the beast actually appears, Creel not only bargains with him for her life, she also ends up with a rare bit of treasure from his hoard, not gold or jewels, but a pair of simple blue slippers-or so she thinks. It's not until later that Creel learns a shocking truth: She possesses not just any pair of shoes, but ones that could be used to save her kingdom, which is on the verge of war, or destroy it.

Jessica Day George makes a memorable debut in this enchanting tale of dragons, betrayals, and the power of friendship.
Dragon Flight
With the Dragon Wars over, Creel finds herself bored with life as a seamstress. Then word comes that a bordering country has been breeding dragons in preparation for an invasion. Never one to miss out on the action, Creel throws herself headlong into an adventure that will reunite her with Shardas, the king of the dragons, pit her against a vicious new dragon, and perhaps rekindle a friendship with Prince Luka. Funny, heart-felt, and action packed, new readers and returning fans alike will dive headlong into this exhilarating follow up to Dragon Slippers.
Dragon Spear
With peace established between the humans and the dragons, young couple Creel and Luka are planning their wedding. But then the dragon queen, Velika, is kidnapped by a band of rogue dragons in need of a ruler. When Creel and Luka rush to help, they discover that Luka's father has plans to take back the Far Islands from the dragons. Creel's happily ever after just might be postponed . . . again.

Friday, August 31, 2012

End of Month Reminder

Just a reminder that it's the last night for the current 100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or less sale; in addition, for those that have Amazon Prime, it's the last night to rent a book this month, if you haven't done so already. I keep a list of those I might want to rent (in a wishlist) and will have to check it tonight myself, since I haven't used up my rental, either.

Today's Deals

As I suspected, yesterday's late release from The Charles River Editors was in preparation for making this month's freebies into repeats - current count is now over 100 free titles.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Boarding House ($1.99), by Sharon Sala (Bell Bridge Books). Searching in the Kindle store, quite a number of her suspense novels are on sale under $10 (the ones from Harper are more expensive). When I checked my library, I found 15 of her novels (one of them a YA fantasy), but not this one.
Book Description
Ellie Wayne doesn't just live. She survives.

New York Times bestselling author Sharon Sala brings emotional intensity to an unforgettable story of survival, empowerment and raw courage.

Ellie Wayne has grown up in frightening circumstances, damaged by a sexually abusive father and mentally fragile mother. Scarred and still threatened by a father she hates and fears, Ellie believes her future holds nothing more than danger, shame and secrets . . . until the unspeakable happens, and Ellie is forced to choose. She can claim her life or continue to hide in the shadows.

One amazing man might be the miracle worker who can help Ellie see that she has the power to move on with her life, to hope for something more. If she can trust him.

Readers will cheer for this amazing woman as she struggles to leave victimhood behind.

About the Author
Sharon Sala is a long time member of Romance Writers of America writing as Sharon Sala and Dinah McCall. She writes romantic suspense, Young Adult, and Women's Fiction. First published in 1991, she's a seven-time RITA finalist, winner of the Janet Dailey Award, four-time winner of the Career Achievement award from RT Magazine, five time winner of the National Reader's Choice Award and five time winner of the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence as well as the Bookseller Best Award. Her books are New York Times, USA Today, Publisher's Weekly mass market best-sellers. Writing changed her life, her world, and her fate.

Habits of the House ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), the first title in the Love & Inheritance series by Fay Weldon, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $12.99).
Book Description
Fay Weldon’s new novel takes us inside the lives of an aristocratic household in the last three months of the nineteenth century. It’s a time of riot and confusion, social upheaval, war abroad and shortage of money. Tea gowns are still laced with diamonds; there are still nine courses at dinner, but bankruptcy looms for the Dilbernes. Whilst the Earl, gambler and man about town, must seek a new post in government; his wife Lady Isobel’s solution is to marry off their son Arthur to a wealthy heiress, and without delay. But how? It’s the end of the season, and choices are few. There’s Minnie O’Brien from Chigaco - rich enough, but daughter of a stockyard baron, and with a vulgar mother and dubious past. Hardly suitable ...! Fay Weldon tells this tale of restraint and desire, manners and morals with wit and sympathy - if no small measure of mischief - as young Minnie and Arthur, thrown together by their parents, strive to determine their own destiny.

Coming Home ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Karen Kingsbury, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
Coming Home is a novel about tremendous victory and unprecedented loss, a story of faith and a forever kind of love, love that will stay with you long after the last page. This stand-alone novel will serve as either a grand introduction or a beautiful conclusion in the saga of the Baxter Family.The Baxters make plans to come together for a summer lakeside reunion, a celebration like they haven’t had in years. But before the big day, the unthinkable happens. As the Baxter Family rallies together, memories come to light in the grief-stricken hours of waiting and praying, memories that bring healing and hope during a time when otherwise darkness might have the final word.In a season that changes all of them, the brilliance of family love overshadows even the valley of heartache as the Baxters draw closer to God and each other. Along the way, secrets are revealed and the truth about the Baxter Family history is finally made known. Ultimately, in this portrait of family love, the Baxters cling to each other and to God’s promise of forever.

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda ($9.84 Kindle pre-order, $1.99 B&N), by Tom Angleberger, is the Nook Daily Find for Families. This is a PagePerfect NOOK Book, so it requires NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet or NOOK Study, while the Kindle edition works on the Kindle Fire, Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle for iPad or Kindle for Android apps.
Book Description
In this funny, uncannily wise portrait of the dynamics of a sixth-grade class and of the greatness that sometimes comes in unlikely packages, Dwight, a loser, talks to his classmates via an origami finger puppet of Yoda. If that weren’t strange enough, the puppet is uncannily wise and prescient. Origami Yoda predicts the date of a pop quiz, guesses who stole the classroom Shakespeare bust, and saves a classmate from popularity-crushing embarrassment with some well-timed advice. Dwight’s classmate Tommy wonders how Yoda can be so smart when Dwight himself is so clueless. With contributions from his puzzled classmates, he assembles the case file that forms this novel.

Grade Level: 3 and up

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance ($1.99), by Keith Graves.
Book Description
Frank was a monster who wanted to dance. So he put on his hat, and his shoes made in France... and opened a jar and put ants in his pants! So begins this monstrously funny, deliciously disgusting, horrifyingly hilarious story of a monster who follows his dream. Keith Graves' wacky illustrations and laugh-out-loud text will tickle the funny bone and leave readers clamoring for an encore.

Grade Level: P and up

In Winter's Shadow ($10.09 Kindle, $3.99 B&N), by Gillian Bradshaw, is the Nook Weekend Deal; it's not yet price matched on Kindle, but that may change over the weekend (especially if the lower price gets reported enough).
Book Description
Vows broken. . .
Friendships betrayed. . .
The fate of heroes finally revealed. . .

As powerful enemies attack the throne from inside the kingdom, Arthur, his queen, and his greatest warrior Gwalchmai will be put to the ultimate test. Never faltering in her loyalty to the king, Gwynhwyfar has stood at Arthur's side through rebellion and war. But one desperate decision could cost her all they've built. With the kingdom crumbling around them, following the Queen's heart could be the greatest threat of all. ..

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Today's Deals

Be sure to check out the Free Android App and Music today - Angry Birds (ad-free) and a very good broadway musical selection (link fixed).

New coupon codes at Kobo: aug2530ij for 25% off on Bestsellers and aug2930ty for 30% off select "Amazing" titles (both exp Sep 3) and the big one: use Romance50 to get 50% off of Romance Bestsellers (exp Sep 9).

A reader spotted Beguilement, by multiple Hugo Award-winning author Lois McMaster Bujold, currently marked down to $0.99! I'd be grabbing it at this price, if it weren't one I picked up from Fictionwise (before the Agency agreements went into place). Originally conceived as a two-volume series, The Sharing Knife saga ended up spanning four volumes.
Book Description
Troubled young Fawn Bluefield seeks a life beyond her family’s farm. But en route to the city, she encounters a patrol of Lakewalkers, nomadic soldier–sorcerers from the northern woodlands. Feared necromancers armed with mysterious knives made of human bone, they wage a secret, ongoing war against the scourge of the "malices," immortal entities that draw the life out of their victims, enslaving human and animal alike.

It is Dag—a Lakewalker patroller weighed down by past sorrows and onerous present responsibilities—who must come to Fawn’s aid when she is taken captive by a malice. They prevail at a devastating cost—unexpectedly binding their fates as they embark upon a remarkable journey into danger and delight, prejudice and partnership . . . and perhaps even love.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Soldier's Wife ($1.99), by Margaret Leroy.
Book Description
A novel full of grand passion and intensity, The Soldier’s Wife asks “What would you do for your family” “What should you do for a stranger” and “What would you do for love”

As World War II draws closer and closer to Guernsey, Vivienne de la Mare knows that there will be sacrifices to be made. Not just for herself, but for her two young daughters and for her mother-in-law, for whom she cares while her husband is away fighting. What she does not expect is that she will fall in love with one of the enigmatic German soldiers who take up residence in the house next door to her home. As their relationship intensifies, so do the pressures on Vivienne. Food and resources grow scant, and the restrictions placed upon the residents of the island grow with each passing week. Though Vivienne knows the perils of her love affair with Gunther, she believes that she can keep their relationship—and her family—safe. But when she becomes aware of the full brutality of the Occupation, she must decide if she is willing to risk her personal happiness for the life of a stranger.

A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), by Christopher Aslan Alexander, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.90).
Book Description
Chris Alexander originally travelled to Khiva, a remote walled city in Uzbekistan on the route of the ancient Silk Road, to write a guidebook. But he stayed, mesmerized by a world of silk and forgotten 15th-century carpet designs – discovering indigo blue, madder red, pomegranate gold and the subtle shades of life in a desert oasis. Alexander’s entrancing travelogue sees him stripped naked at a former Soviet youth camp, crawling through silkworm droppings, tackling a carpet-thieving mayor, distinguishing natural dyes from sacks of opium in Northern Afghanistan, bluffing his way through My Heart Will Go On for Uzbek TV and seeking sanctuary as an anti-Western riot consumed the Kabul carpet bazaar. The result is an unforgettable true story of a journey to the heart of the unknown.

Heroes and Monsters: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be Human ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Josh James Riebock, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
Every one of us is both a hero and a monster, and the world we inhabit is both beautiful and twisted. We are shaken by changes, losses, gains, insights, desires, mistakes, and transitions. And just when we've gotten settled back down, things get shaken up again. This is the life we've been given. So how do we make sense of life's unexpected nature, find a way to embrace the tension, and live with a sense of peace despite pain?

In this stunningly honest, compelling, and ultimately hopeful book, Josh James Riebock explores issues of trust, obedience, intimacy, dreams, grief, purpose, and the unexpected stops along the journey that form us into the people we are. In a creative way, he shows readers that pain and beauty are so inextricably linked that to lose the former costs us the latter.

Those grappling with life's inconsistencies and trials will especially find a welcome resonance between their lives and Heroes and Monsters. Riebock both validates their experiences and challenges them to live beyond them in this ever-changing life.

The Brimstone Key ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), the first title in the Grey Griffins: The Clockwork Chronicle series by Derek Benz and Jon S. Lewis, is the Nook Daily Find for Families, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
A brand new adventure starring The Grey Griffins!

Max---the leader
Natalia---the brains
Ernie---the changeling
Harley---the muscle

A year ago, Max, Natalia, Ernie, and Harley were just regular kinds from Avalon, Minnesota, but that was before they learned that evil faeries, werewolves, and other unthinkable monsters existed just beyond our world. Now they are the Grey Griffins: monster hunters, celebrated heroes, and allies to the legendary Templar Knights--but even heroes have to go to school.

This year, they're attending Iron Bridge Academy, a school where students learn to fight against the forces of evil. Here, the Griffins find themselves in a whole new adventure when The Clockwork King, a Templar foe from the past, returns with a deadly plan.

Grade Level: 3 and up

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is A Certain Slant of Light ($1.99), a YA novel by Laura Whitcomb.
Book Description
Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.

Though I could not feel paper between my fingers, smell ink, or taste the tip of a pencil, I could see and hear the world with all the clarity of the Living. They, on the other hand, did not see me as a shadow or a floating vapor. To the Quick, I was empty air.

Or so I thought.

In the class of the high school English teacher she has been haunting, Helen feels them: For the first time in 130 years, human eyes are looking at her. They belong to a boy, a boy who has not seemed remarkable until now. And Helen–terrified, but intrigued–is drawn to him. The fact that he is in a body and she is not presents this unlikely couple with their first challenge. But as the lovers struggle to find a way to be together, they begin to discover the secrets of their former lives and of the young people they come to possess.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Today's Deals

On B&N's Facebook page, you can now vote for this weekend's $3.99 deal: Pearl in the Sand by Tessa Afshar vs. In Winter's Shadow by Gillian Bradshaw. It was an easy vote for me this week, since Afshar's book was free last May.

Audible has another sale, with all books in eight Top Series On Sale for $7.95 apiece. I'm tempted by Piers Anthony's Adept series (which I haven't read in many years).

In a price match to Kobo, Adrenaline, the first title in Jeff Abbott's Sam Capra series and one of Amazon's Best Books of the Month, July 2011, is currently marked down to $2.99. The price has already gone back up at Kobo, so this discount won't last long.
Book Description
"If you knew this was our final day together, what would you say to me?"
"Anything but good-bye. I can't ever say good-bye to you."

ADRENALINE

Sam Capra is living the life of his dreams.

He's a brilliant young CIA agent, stationed in London. His wife Lucy is seven months pregnant with their first child. They have a wonderful home, and are deeply in love.

They have everything they could hope for...until they lose it all in one horrifying moment.

On a bright, sunny day, Sam receives a call from Lucy while he's at work. She tells him to leave the building immediately. He does...just before it explodes, killing everyone inside. Lucy vanishes, and Sam wakes up in a prison cell. As the lone survivor of the attack, he is branded by the CIA as a murderer and a traitor.

Escaping from the agency, Sam launches into a desperate hunt to save his kidnapped wife and child, and to reveal the unknown enemy who has set him up and stolen his family. But the destruction of Sam's life was only step on in an extraordinary plot-and now Sam must become a new kind of hero.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Innocent Monster ($1.99), the sixth in the Moe Prager series by Reed Farrel Coleman.
Book Description
Seven years have passed since the brutal murder that tore Moe Prager’s family apart and it's been six years since Moe’s brushed the dust off his PI license. But when his estranged daughter Sarah comes to him with a request he cannot refuse, Moe takes a deep breath and plunges back into the icy, opaque waters of secrets and lies. Sashi Bluntstone, an eleven-year-old art prodigy and daughter of Sarah’s dearest childhood friend, has been abducted. Three weeks into the investigation, the cops have gotten nowhere and the parents have gotten desperate. Desperation, the door through which Moe Prager always enters, swings wide open. Just as in Sashi’s paintings, there’s much more to the case than one can see at a glance.

With the help of an ex-football star, Moe stumbles around the fringes of the New York art scene, trying to get a handle on where the art stops and the commerce begins. Much to Moe’s surprise and disgust, he discovers that Sashi is, on the one hand, revered as a cash cow and, on the other, reviled as a fraud and a joke. Suspects abound beyond the usual predators and pedophiles, for it is those closest to Sashi in life who have the most to gain from her death. Cruel ironies lurk around every corner, beneath every painting, and behind every door. Almost nothing is what it seems.

Beware the innocent monster, for it need not hide itself and it lives closely among us: sometimes as close as the mirror.

Reed Farrel Coleman's mysteries starring Moe Prager have won or been nominated for many of the crime fiction world's biggest awards, including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Barry, and the Anthony. The Moe Prager mysteries were named as part of Maureen Corrigan's Best Books of 2009.

Greyhound ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), by Steffan Piper, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $3.99/KLL Eligible).
Book Description
Ushered out from his Stockton, California home by his emotionally detached mother and her latest boyfriend, twelve-year-old Sebastien Ranes must fend for himself and travel two thousand miles across the country. He is on his way to live with his grandmother and sister in Pennsylvania. Along the way, he will learn that sometimes caring, guidance and understanding can come from some unlikely people.

Marcus, a fellow bus passenger, is a man who has been neglected more by society than his family. As a young black ex-con, he is not the epitome of the person most would pick as a chaperone for their child's cross country trip. Yet rather than be held apart by their differences, Marcus and Sebastien are drawn together by the things that make us all alike.

Along the way, he acts as both guide and protector, as Virgil was to Dante and Jim to Huck Finn. Imparting his own style of wisdom, he shows Sebastien that, despite the darker parts of the human condition, people can and do care for one another. This is a modern day journey not just from one house to another. This is a journey taken by a young boy into manhood, and by the reader into his world. Like every trip, there are many stops along the way. But this journey differs in the way young Sebastien arrives at his destination. Greyhound is the story of this journey.

The Edge of Desire ($7.99 $1.99 Kindle, B&N), the eighth title in the Bastion Club series by Stephanie Laurens, is the Nook Daily Find. This is yet another Agency priced book that is supposed to be the same price everywhere, but it's only been dropped at B&N so far. Update: Now price matched on Kindle!
Book Description
In The Edge of Desire, they proved their bravery fighting for His Majesty's Secret Service and were rewarded with brides of great beauty and breeding. But one member of the Bastion Club has remained a bachelor . . . until now.

"Christian, I need your help. There is no one else I can turn to . . . L."

When Christian Allardyce, 6th Marquess of Dearne, reads those words, his world turns upside down. Lady Letitia Randall is a woman like no other, and the day he left her behind to fight for king and country was the most difficult of his life. He never forgot the feel of her lips against his, but never expects to see her again. Yet now she seeks his help, and Christian knows he will not resist her plea.

Letitia believes that Christian abandoned her when she needed him most, and she hates to call on his aid. But to clear her brother's name, she has sworn to use every weapon at her command, even if it means seducing her ex-lover. Yet all the while, Christian is waging a war of his own—a campaign of pure pleasure and sweet revenge that will take them both beyond The Edge of Desire.

The House of Power ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), the first title in Patrick Carman's Atherton series, is the Nook Daily Find for Families, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
Edgar, a gifted climber, secretly scales the treacherous walls separating the three worlds of Atherton: the humble grove that is his home...a mysterious highland realm of untold beauty and sinister secrets ...and a vast wasteland below, where a monstrous danger lurks that could destroy them all.

While searching the forbidden cliffs for a treasure lost in his faded memory, Edgar discovers the first of many startling revelations to come: the three realms are beginning to collapse, turning his entire world inside out. Atherton is not what it seems, but something far more dangerous, with a history locked inside the mind of a madman and a future beyond Edgar's wildest imagining.

Grade Level: 3 and up

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Hiccupotamus ($1.99), by Aaron Zenz.
Book Description
There was a hippopotamus
who hiccupped quite-a-lotamus.
And every time he got'emus . . .
he'd fall upon his bottomus!

Calamity ensues when an elephant, a centipede, and a rhinoceros try finding a cure for hippo's colossal case of hiccups. Zenz's creativity shines through with his use of colored pencil in this off-the-wall read-aloud. HIC! HIC! HIC!

Grade Level: Pre K and up

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Today's Deals

Rumors of what new Kindle models are coming are continuing to build and we now have a good guess on an announcement date: Amazon has called a press conference for Sept 6! Both models of the Kindle Touch are now out of stock with no estimated delivery date and are no doubt going to be replaced by new models soon (you can still get a Certified Refurbished Kindle Touch 3G). There is no issue with the Kindle Fire stock, so any new tablet that gets announced will probably be the anticipated larger size to compete with the iPad (I hope it also has a camera; that and and SD card are really needed on any tablet released these days, unless the intent is to capture the bottom end of the market, such as the low-end tablets you can find at Big Lots).

Over at O'Reilly, you can get 50% off books on using Regular Expressions, using coupon code WKRGEX. - Deal expires September 4, 2012.

All the picks are up for Audibles $6.95 Beachcomber Sale and prices are good thru Aug 31. The sale is limited to those with some type of "membership", not just an account. If you don't have a membership, you can sign up for a free trial, use the credit and cancel - you should be offered the opportunity to sign up for the $10/year light membership at that point. You don't get any credits with that membership, but do get access to all of their sales. If you buy more than one audiobook a year during their sales, you'll come out ahead vs. paying non-member prices.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Spitfire ($1.99), by Annette Sandoval (publisher: Thomas & Mercer).
Book Description
Twenty-eight-year-old Tomi Reyes is a documentary filmmaker who moonlights as a receptionist to pay the bills. It’s a pretty easy gig—until she receives an unexpected promotion, and her somewhat interesting life goes totally insane.

For starters, her new boss, Scott Martin, morphs from nice guy into creepy dictator in the space of, like, five seconds. Then Justin Thyme, Tomi’s occasional boyfriend, is found murdered and stuffed inside his refrigerator. Before Tomi can get over the shock, her friend Whim meets the same gruesome fate. Tomi has a sneaking suspicion that new-boss-Scott has a hand in all of this, but the evidence to both of the murders is pointing to her! She is wondering how she'll look in an orange jumper, when her childhood pal is assigned to the case. Nicholas “Nickels” Turino, is now an FBI agent, and a hot one at that. When the killer starts stalking Tomi—going as far as turning her fridge into her waiting tomb—the not-so-swift hand of justice drives Tomi to act. She sets out to unmask the killer herself or die trying. Seriously underdressed for such a cold-blooded death, Tomi is determined to live.

With its larger-than-life heroine and delightfully sarcastic tone, Spitfire offers readers a refreshing alternative to the ho-hum crime novels crowding today’s bookshelves.

Foal's Bread ($2.04 / £1.29 UK), by Australian author Gillian Mears, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).
Book Description
The long-awaited new novel from the award-winning author of The Grass Sister tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and the high-jumping horse circuit prior to the Second World War. A love story of impossible beauty and sadness, it is also a chronicle of dreams 'turned inside out', and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard.

The sound of horses' hooves turns hollow on the farms west of Wirri. If a man can still ride, if he hasn't totally lost the use of his legs, if he hasn't died to the part of his heart that understands such things, then he should go for a gallop. At the very least he should stand at the road by the river imagining that he's pushing a horse up the steep hill that leads to the house on the farm once known as One Tree.

Set in hardscrabble farming country and around the country show high-jumping circuit that prevailed in rural New South Wales prior to the Second World War, Foal's Bread tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and their fortunes as dictated by the vicissitudes of the land.

It is a love story of impossible beauty and sadness, a chronicle of dreams 'turned inside out', and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard. Written in luminous prose and with an aching affinity for the landscape the book describes, Foal's Bread is the work of a born writer at the height of her considerable powers. It is a stunning work of remarkable originality and power, one that confirms Gillian Mears' reputation as one of our most exciting and acclaimed writers.

The Rose Garden ($4.90 Kindle, B&N), by Susanna Kearsley, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
Eva Ward returns to the only place she truly belongs, the old house on the Cornish coast, seeking happiness in memories of childhood summers. There she finds mysterious voices and hidden pathways that sweep her not only into the past, but also into the arms of a man who is not of her time.

But Eva must confront her own ghosts, as well as those of long ago. As she begins to question her place in the present, she comes to realize that she too must decide where she really belongs.

From Susanna Kearsley, author of the New York Times bestseller The Winter Sea and a voice acclaimed by fans of Gabaldon, du Maurier, and Niffenegger alike, The Rose Garden is a haunting exploration of love, family, the true meaning of home, and the ties that bind us together.

11 Birthdays ($5.24 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Wendy Mass, is the Nook Daily Find for Families.
Book Description
This hilarious novel from award-winning author Wendy Mass is now available in paperback!

It's Amanda's 11th birthday and she is super excited---after all, 11 is so different from 10. But from the start, everything goes wrong. The worst part of it all is that she and her best friend, Leo, with whom she's shared every birthday, are on the outs and this will be the first birthday they haven't shared together. When Amanda turns in for the night, glad to have her birthday behind her, she wakes up happy for a new day. Or is it? Her birthday seems to be repeating iself. What is going on?! And how can she fix it? Only time, friendship, and a little luck will tell. . .

Grade Level: 4 and up

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is My Monster Burrufu ($1.99), by Alberto Corral and Alessandra Sorrentino (Illustrator).
Book Description
Seven-year-old Olivia has just moved to a new house—the same house where a lonely monster named Burrufu lives hidden in a secret attic. One night, unable to resist the smell of delicious cookies, Burrufu sneaks out and is discovered by Olivia. The two soon learn that you can find friendship in the most unexpected places.
'My Monster Burrufu' is a story of fear overcome, a curse, and a most unusual monster who learns from a little girl how to trust his heart.

Age Level: 9 and up

Monday, August 27, 2012

Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Brimstone Wedding ($1.99), by Ruth Rendell, published by Open Road.
Book Description
An elderly nursing home patient tells stories of her past that seem to mirror her caregiver’s life to a disturbing degree—and that’s before the stories take a deadly turn

Stuck in a loveless marriage and mired in a troubled affair, Genevieve Warner doesn’t have a friend in the world—until she meets Stella, a patient at the nursing home where she works as a caregiver. Whip smart and deeply familiar, Stella confides in Genevieve the story of her life, a story that builds toward a horrifying confession. As Genevieve’s own life slips helplessly down the same path, she desperately tries to turn away from a fate that seems inevitable.

Sensitive and heartbreaking, The Brimstone Wedding is a mysterious tale of mistakes repeated.

Luke and Jon ($1.57 / £0.99 UK), by Robert Williams, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $8.19).
Book Description
Luke's mum is dead. He finds himself in a small, scruffy northern hill town, with a near silent father, who he fears might be trying to drink himself to death. Then he meets Jon. Jon is massively strange. He wears 1950s clothes, has a side-parting and a twitch. The kids at school call him 'Slackjaw'. When Luke discovers his secret, Jon changes his life in more ways than he can imagine. Luke and Jon is a coming of age novel about family, bereavement and how lives can change forever in a single second. Written with great power, warmth and humour, it signals a hugely engaging and original new voice. Compelling and emotionally acute, it is a unique debut.

Summer of Secrets ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Charlotte Hubbard, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
Welcome to Willow Ridge, Missouri! In this cozy Amish town along the banks of the river, the Old Ways are celebrated at the Sweet Seasons Bakery Café, and love is a gift God gives with grace. . .

Summer Of Secrets

Summer has come to Willow Ridge, but Rachel Lantz is looking forward to a whole new season in her life--marriage to strapping carpenter Micah Brenneman, her childhood sweetheart. When a strange Englischer arrives in the café claiming to be the long-lost sister of Rachel and her twin Rhoda, Rachel feels the sturdy foundation of her future crumbling--including Micah's steadfast love. As the days heat up and tempers flare, Rachel and Micah will learn that even when God's plan isn't clear, it will always lead them back to each other. . .

Otto Goes to School ($6.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Todd Parr, is the Nook Daily Find for Families (requires NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet or NOOK Kids for iPad); this is agency published, so it should be price matched on Kindle (I've reported it) and might make it by afternoon.
Book Description
After a breakfast of juice, cereal, and a banana split, Otto goes to school for the first time, where he makes new friends and learns how to wag his tail without knocking things over.

After a breakfast of juice, cereal, and a banana split, Otto goes to school for the first time, where he makes new friends and learns how to wag his tail without knocking things over.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Westing Game ($2.99), by Ellen Raskin.
Book Description
For twenty-five years, Ellen Raskin's Newbery Medal-winning The Westing Game has been an enduring favorite and is now being reissued....

This highly inventive mystery involves sixteen people who are invited to the reading of Samuel W. Westing's will. They could become millionaires, depending on how they play the tricky and dangerous Westing game, which involves blizzards, burglaries, and bombings. Ellen Raskin has entangled a remarkable cast of characters in a puzzle-knotted, word-twisting plot filled with humor, intrigue, and suspense.

Grade Level: 3 and up

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Today's Deals

Fictionwise has a 50% off code this weekend: 082512 (excludes Samhain, as usual).

Waterstones is running a Top Crime eBooks sale, with selected titles reduced to £1.99 for a limited period. Sales may be limited to those in the UK.

Take 25% OFF your next eBook purchase at Sony with code: (exp Aug 27). It does seem to be limited to selected titles (click the "see all" link for your country, though, and you get most of the store listed) and you must redeem the code before making the purchase.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Keeper of Lost Causes ($2.99), the first title in the Department Q series by Jussi Adler-Olsen.
Book Description
Carl Mørck used to be one of Copenhagen’s best homicide detectives. Then a hail of bullets destroyed the lives of two fellow cops, and Carl—who didn’t draw his weapon—blames himself. So a promotion is the last thing he expects. But Department Q is a department of one, and Carl’s got only a stack of Copenhagen’s coldest cases for company. His colleagues snicker, but Carl may have the last laugh, because one file keeps nagging at him: a liberal politician vanished five years earlier and is presumed dead. But she isn’t dead … yet.

Darkly humorous, propulsive, and atmospheric, The Keeper of Lost Causes introduces American readers to the mega-bestselling series fast becoming an international sensation.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is 10 Young Adult Novels for $1.99 apiece. Two I already have, one I am definitely getting and a couple of others are intriguing enough that I'll take a look at the samples. What about you?

Tree Shepherd's Daughter (Faire Folk, Book 1), by Gillian Summers
When her mother dies, fifteen-year-old Keelie Heartwood is forced to leave her beloved California to live with her nomadic father at a renaissance festival in Colorado. After arriving, Keelie finds men in tights and women in trailer trash-tight bodices roaming half-drunk, calling each other lady and lord even after closing time! Playacting the Dark Ages is an L.A. girl’s worst nightmare.

Keelie has a plan to ditch this medieval geekland ASAP, but while she plots, strange things start happening—eerie, yet familiar. When Keelie starts seeing fairies and communicating with trees, she uncovers a secret that links her to a community of elves. As Keelie tries to come to grips with her elfin roots, disaster strikes, and Keelie’s identity isn’t the only thing that’s threatened.

One part human determination and one part elfin magic, Keelie Heartwood is a witty new heroine in a world where fantasy and reality mix with extraordinary results.
Poser, by Sue Wyshynski
Tallulah Jones makes a huge splash at her new school when she scores a coveted invitation to go surfing with the popular It Girl.

The only problem? Tallulah can't surf--not at all!

But hey, how hard can it be?

Did anyone mention near-death-experience?

And who knew a girl's nose was hard enough to break a surfboard in half?
Sometimes death is preferable to humiliation--especially when the in-crowd is calling you Poser...

The ever buoyant Tallulah carries on, determined to make amends. But with an archenemy clad in to-die-for designer heels--one who shares the hots for the same guy--only a miracle can save her.
Skyship Academy: The Pearl Wars, by Nick James
A devastated Earth's last hope is found in Pearls: small, mysterious orbs that fall from space and are capable of supplying enough energy to power entire cities. Battling to control the Pearls are the Skyship dwellers—political dissidents who live in massive ships in the Earth's stratosphere—and the corrupt Surface government.

Jesse Fisher, a Skyship slacker, and Cassius Stevenson, a young Surface operative, cross paths when they both venture into forbidden territory in pursuit of Pearls. Their chance encounter triggers an unexpected reaction, endowing each boy with remarkable—and dangerous—abilities that their respective governments would stop at nothing to possess.

Enemies thrust together with a common goal, Jesse and Cassius make their way to the ruins of Seattle to uncover the truth about their new powers, the past they didn't know they shared, and a shocking secret about the Pearls.
The Jerk Magnet (Life at Kingston High), by Melody Carlson
When Chelsea Martin's future stepmother helps her transform from gawky and geeky into the hottest girl at her new school, Chelsea is pretty sure it's the best thing that ever happened to her. But her hot new look has a downside. She's attracting lots of guys who all have one thing in common: they're jerks. And stealing the attention of all the guys in school doesn't endear her to the girls either.

Chelsea finally finds a true friend in Janelle Parker, and a non-jerk, Nicholas, catches her eye. Janelle keeps telling her to be herself, but Nicholas is the only guy around who doesn't give her a second look. Can Chelsea and Janelle come up with a plan to get his attention? Or will Chelsea's new image ruin everything?

Teen favorite and bestselling author Melody Carlson helps girls uncover the real source of beauty in this true-to-life story of young love, friendship, and being yourself.
Torn, by Erica O'Rourke
Everyone has secrets.

Even best friends.

Swirling black descends like ravens, large enough to block the glow of the streetlights. A dull roar starts like a train on the ‘L', a far-away rumbling that grows louder as it pulls closer, until it's directly overhead and you feel it in your chest, except this doesn't pass you by. Verity, white-faced and eyes blazing, shouts through the din, "Run, Mo!"

Mo Fitzgerald knows about secrets. But when she witnesses her best friend's murder, she discovers Verity was hiding things she never could have guessed. To find the answers she needs and the vengeance she craves, Mo--quiet, ordinary, unmagical Mo--will have to enter a world of raw magic and shifting alliances. And she'll have to choose between two very different, equally dangerous guys--protective, duty-bound Colin and brash, mysterious Luc. One wants to save her, one wants to claim her. Which would you choose?
But I Love Him, by Amanda Grace
Sometimes at night, I wake up and stare at the heart for hours. I think of how I collected each piece from the beach, how I glued it all together into one big sculpture. I wonder if Connor realizes what it means, that he'll always have a piece of me no matter what happens. Each piece of glass is another piece of myself that I gave to him.

It's too bad I didn't keep any pieces for myself.

At the beginning of senior year, Ann was a smiling, straight-A student and track star with friends and a future. Then she met a haunted young man named Connor. Only she can heal his emotional scars; only he could make her feel so loved - and needed. Ann can't recall the pivotal moment it all changed, when she surrendered everything to be with him, but by graduation, her life has become a dangerous high wire act. Just one mistake could trigger Connor's rage, a senseless storm of cruel words and violence damaging everything - and everyone - in its path.

This evocative slideshow of flashbacks reveals a heartbreaking story of love gone terribly wrong.
Sprout, by Dale Peck
When Sprout and his father move from Long Island to Kansas after the death of his mother, he is sure he will find no friends, no love, no beauty. But friends find him, the strangeness of the landscape fascinates him, and when love shows up in an unexpected place, it proves impossible to hold. An incredible, literary story of a boy who knows he's gay, and the town that seems to have no place for him to hide.
Dirty Little Secrets, by C. J. Omololu
Everyone has a secret. But Lucy's is bigger and dirtier than most. It's one she's been hiding for years-that her mom's out-of-control hoarding has turned their lives into a world of garbage and shame. She's managed to keep her home life hidden from her best friend and her crush, knowing they'd be disgusted by the truth. So, when her mom dies suddenly in their home, Lucy hesitates to call 911 because revealing their way of life would make her future unbearable-and she begins her two-day plan to set her life right.

With details that are as fascinating as they are disturbing, C. J. Omololu weaves an hour-by-hour account of Lucy's desperate attempt at normalcy. Her fear and isolation are palpable as readers are pulled down a path from which there is no return, and the impact of hoarding on one teen's life will have readers completely hooked.
Leaving Paradise, by Simone Elkeles
Nothing has been the same since Caleb Becker left a party drunk, got behind the wheel, and hit Maggie Armstrong. Even after months of painful physical therapy, Maggie walks with a limp. Her social life is nil and a scholarship to study abroad—her chance to escape everyone and their pitying stares—has been canceled.

After a year in juvenile jail, Caleb’s free . . . if freedom means endless nagging from a transition coach and the prying eyes of the entire town. Coming home should feel good, but his family and ex-girlfriend seem like strangers.

Caleb and Maggie are outsiders, pigeon-holed as "criminal" and "freak." Then the truth emerges about what really happened the night of the accident and, once again, everything changes. It’s a bleak and tortuous journey for Caleb and Maggie, yet they end up finding comfort and strength from a surprising source: each other.
The Agency: A Spy in the House, by Y. S. Lee
Rescued from the gallows in 1850s London, young orphan (and thief) Mary Quinn is more than surprised to be offered a singular education, instruction in fine manners - and a most unusual vocation. Miss Scrimshaw's Academy for Girls is in fact a cover for an all-female investigative unit called The Agency, and at seventeen, Mary is about to put her training to the test. Assuming the guise of a lady's companion, she must work against time as she infiltrates a rich merchant's home in hopes of tracing his missing cargo ships. But it soon becomes clear that the Thorold household is full of dangerous deceptions, and there is no one to trust - or is there? Packed with action and suspense, banter and romance, and evoking the gritty backstreets of Victorian London, this breezy mystery debuts a daring young detective who lives by her wits while uncovering secrets - including those of her own past. First in a riveting detective trilogy!

The Big Questions: Philosophy ($1.72 / £1.09 UK), by Simon Blackburn, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $7.99).
Book Description
The Big Questions series confronts the fundamental problems of science and philosophy that have perplexed enquiring minds throughout history, and provides and explains the answers of our greatest thinkers.

In Big Questions: Philosophy, Simon Blackburn tackles 20 questions essential to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. Am I free? Is there such a thing as society? What is time? Why is there something and not nothing? What am I? Can we understand each other? What are my rights? Do we need God? What is beauty? Why be good? What do we really know? Can machines think? How can I deceive myself? What fills up space? Why do things keep on keeping on? Are we rational? Is truth relative? What is human nature? Is death to be feared? And what is the meaning of life?

The Penny ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Joyce Meyer and Deborah Bedford, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
Jenny Blake has a theory about life: big decisions often don't amount to much, but little decisions sometimes transform everything. Her theory proves true the summer of 1955, when 14-year-old Jenny makes the decision to pick up a penny imbedded in asphalt, and consequently ends up stopping a robbery, getting a job, and meeting a friend who changes her life forever.

Jenny and Miss Shaw form a friendship that dares both of them to confront secrets in their pasts--secrets that threaten to destroy them. Jenny helps Miss Shaw open up to the community around her, while Miss Shaw teaches Jenny to meet even life's most painful challenges with confidence and faith. This unexpected relationship transforms both characters in ways neither could have anticipated, and the ripple effect that begins in the summer of the penny goes on to bring new life to the people around them, showing how God works in the smallest details. Even in something as small as a penny.

The Inner Circle ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), by Brad Meltzer, is the Nook Weekend Deal, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
The best-kept secret of the U.S. Presidency is about to be revealed.

"There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories. I love those stories. And since I work in the National Archives, I find those stories for a living."

Beecher White, a young archivist, spends his days working with the most important documents of the U.S. government. He has always been the keeper of other people's stories, never a part of the story himself . . .

Until now.

When Clementine Kaye, Beecher's first childhood crush, shows up at the National Archives asking for his help tracking down her long-lost father, Beecher tries to impress her by showing her the secret vault where the President of the United States privately reviews classified documents. After they accidentally happen upon a priceless artifact-a two-hundred-year-old dictionary that once belonged to George Washington-hidden underneath a desk chair, Beecher and Clementine find themselves suddenly entangled in a web of deception, conspiracy, and murder.

Soon a man is dead and Beecher is on the run as he races to learn the truth behind this mysterious national treasure. His search will lead him to discover a coded and ingenious puzzle that conceals a disturbing secret from the founding of our nation. It is a secret, Beecher soon discovers, that some believe is worth killing for.

Gripping, fast-paced, and filled with the fascinating historical detail for which he is famous, THE INNER CIRCLE is a thrilling novel that once again proves Brad Meltzer as a brilliant author, writing at the height of his craft.

Curious George Home Run ($3.79 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by H. A. Rey, is the Nook Daily Find for Families (requires NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet or NOOK Kids for iPad).
Book Description
George is excited to go to his first baseball game to watch his friend Marco play. While Marco concentrates on hitting his first home run, George gets to play scorekeeper. But George doesn't know in which order he should hang the numbers. With help from Marco and the girl at the snack stand, George learns about number sequence and a handy trick for putting double digits in order. During the last inning, George agrees to be a pinch runner for an injured Marco. Will he be able to add another number to the scoreboard? Includes rules of the game and a score-keeping activity.