Update - Flip from Random House Australia

As I reported earlier, Random House in Australia is giving away the EPUB version of book Flip ($9.59 Kindle), by Peter Sheahan, in return for signing up for one of their newsletters. Unfortunately, when they first set up the web page, the links they sent out for download the book didn't work. Once they fixed that (not for a week and after their next newsletter came out announcing the book), the links only generated error messages (various ones, usually that someone else had used the license).

Today it seems they have corrected the problem, as I managed to get the book to download, although it still took a couple of tries, either because my Sony Reader software tried to do the download the first time or because the old .acsm files were still being tried by Adobe Digital Editions. In any case, if you received the links in email before and were unsuccessful, go ahead and try again. You don't need to re-register, but I'm including that link below, for those that didn't do so earlier.

Click HERE to sign up for the free book (EPUB, not Kindle compatible).

Music to Read By

There are a couple of new classical samplers free at Amazon, which can be loaded into the \music directory and played as background music when reading or just for listening at other times - we got the Logitech Squeezebox Internet Radio as a joint gift to each other this past for Christmas and love it. Not only will it play internet stations, but it will connect to (free) software on your PC and play any MP3's you have stored there (by artist, genre or iTunes playlists). Best of all, it uses WiFi, so to move it to a new room only requires picking it up and plugging it back in.

Analekta: Classical Gems is from Groupe Analekta Inc. and focuses on the c.1770-1830 period. Composers included are Beethoven, Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, Rachmaninov, Morricone and Peter Heidrich.

I Love the 80s, Vol. 1 would be a fantastic bargain, even if it were not not free: five hours and good performances and great composers.

• Performers: Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Halasz, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Imrich Szabo, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Gustav Mahler, Stephen Gunzenhauser, Anton Bruckner, Alexander Porfir'yevich Borodin, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Antonin Dvorak, Johannes Brahms, Antoni Wit, Georg Tintner, Camille Saint-Saens, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop
• Composers: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Gustav Mahler, Johannes Brahms, Camille Saint-Saens, Antonin Dvorak, Alexander Porfir'yevich Borodin, Anton Bruckner
• Conductors: Antoni Wit, Michael Halasz, Marin Alsop, Georg Tintner, Stephen Gunzenhauser

Help Victims of the Haiti Earthquake

Amazon has organized a program for giving to the relief effort for the victims of the Haiti earthquake, the Mercy Corps. The links here will take you directly to the Amazon web page to make your donation, so you will be sure that any donations wind up in the proper hands. It's sad to say, but the scam sites are already being set up and scam emails are sure to be flooding our mailboxes soon, as they have with every disaster over the last few years. I would suggest you be wary of any donation efforts on individual web sites and stick with either the larger retailers who have set up donation campaigns for their customers or donate directly to the relief organizations, such as the Red Cross (just be careful to make sure you are on the correct websites and that a smaller organization really is involved; many are, but are government funded or collect in local churches, so may not have web donation efforts).

I've added a link to the Mercy Corps donation page at the top of the menu on the left side of the page and will leave it up as long as Amazon is accepting donations. Thank you for making a donation in this time of great need.

Free Book (EPUB) - And Another Thing . . .

And Another Thing . . . ($9.99 Kindle), by Eoin Colfer, is free at Kobo today, in secure EPUB format or as a web-only read. This is a fairly new release (Nov 09) and, as the cover states, part six of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy.

Book Description
An Englishman's continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea . . . Arthur Dent's accidental association with that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, has not been entirely without incident. Arthur has traveled the length, breadth, and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forward and backward through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released, and colorfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And of course Arthur Dent has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Arthur has finally made it home to Earth, but that does not mean he has escaped his fate. Arthur's chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa have evaporated rapidly, along with all the world's oceans. For no sooner has he touched down on the planet Earth than he finds out that it is about to be blown up . . . again.

And Another Thing . . . is the rather unexpected, but very welcome, sixth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone's favorite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer, and at least one very large slab of cheese.

Click HERE to get the book free from Kobo.

Impact pre-order $8.87

Yet another delayed ebook release has been discounted. This time, it's Douglas Preston's Impact, which will be released on Kindle on May 4, 2010. The hardcover ($14.97) has already been released, so this one is showing a four month delay.

Book Description
Wyman Ford is tapped for a secret expedition to Cambodia... to locate the source of strangely beautiful gemstones that do not appear to be of this world.A brilliant meteor lights up the Maine coast... and two young women borrow a boat and set out for a distant island to find the impact crater.A scientist at the National Propulsion Facility discovers an inexplicable source of gamma rays in the outer Solar System. He is found decapitated, the data missing.High resolution NASA images reveal an unnatural feature hidden in the depths of a crater on Mars... and it appears to have been activated.Sixty hours and counting.

The Swan Thieves pre-order price drop

The Swan Thieves, by Elizabeth Kostova, is $8.79 as a pre-order and will go back up to $9.99 on the April 12th when it is officially released. Too bad that this is another where the ebook version is being delayed by three months after the hardback. I think publishers will find this strategy backfires and will require more cuts in the ebook price (closer to paperback prices, not the $10 "bestseller and new release" prices they have been getting), as their book loses momentum and visibility after three months.

Book Description
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, devoted to his profession and the painting hobby he loves, has a solitary but ordered life. When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed. Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.

Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. THE SWAN THIEVES is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.

Dragon Keeper pre-order $7.99

Robin Hobb's latest novel, Dragon Keeper, is currently available to pre-order on Kindle for $7.99. This is the first book her The Rain Wild Chronicle series and was first published in the UK last year. The Kindle and Hardcover edition ($17.81) are being released simultaneously in the US. Many of you probably picked up her earlier book, Assassin's Apprentice, when it was free early last year.

Book Description
Enter the spellbinding world of dragons . . . and those who tend them One of the most gifted fantasy authors writing today, New York Times bestselling author Robin Hobb has dazzled readers with brilliantly imaginative, emotionally resonant, and compulsively readable tales set in far-flung realms not unlike our own. In this enthralling new novel, she returns to the territory of her beloved Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies with a story of dragons and humans, return and rebirth, and the search for meaning, belonging, and home. For years, the Trader cities valiantly battled their enemies, the Chalcedeans. But they could not have staved off invasion without the powerful dragon Tintaglia. In return, the Traders promised to help her serpents migrate up the Rain Wild River after a long exile at sea-to find a safe haven and, Tintaglia hopes, to restore her species. But too much time has passed, and the newly hatched dragons are damaged and weak, and many die. The few who survive cannot use their wings; earthbound, they are powerless to hunt and vulnerable to human predators willing to kill them for the fabled healing powers of dragon flesh. But Tintaglia has vanished and the Traders are weary of the labor and expense of tending useless dragons. The Trader leadership fears that if it stops providing for the young dragons, the hungry and neglected creatures will rampage-or die along the river's acidic muddy banks. To avert catastrophe, the dragons decree a move even farther up the treacherous river to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragons' uncertain ancestral memories. To ensure their safe passage, the Traders recruit a disparate group of young people to care for the damaged creatures and escort them to their new home. Among them is Thymara, an unschooled forest girl of sixteen, and Alise, a wealthy Trader's wife trapped in a loveless marriage, who attaches herself to the expedition as a dragon expert. The two women share a deep kinship with the dragons: Thymara can instinctively communicate with them, and Alise, captivated by their beauty and majesty, has devoted her life to studying them. Embarking on an arduous journey that holds no promise of return, the band of humans and dragons must make their way along the toxic and inhospitable Rain Wild River-an extraordinary odyssey that will teach them lessons about themselves and one another, as they experience hardships, betrayals, and joys beyond their wildest dreams.