Win a Kindle - Author giving away one an hour!

Update Contest is over. Check the author's blog for winners.

Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, is giving away a Kindle an hour and a bunch of other prizes today, to launch the publication of his new book. He thought the Kindle version would not be available for a few weeks, but it is out now and is already the #1 bestselling book at Amazon (using their hourly ratings), for both print and the Kindle. All you have to do is buy the book, in print or Kindle and email him a copy of your receipt. He's also posted some excerpts of the book and is doing a streaming video interview/chat session today, on his blog, where you can also get more details on the contest. Those of you who buy the paperback version, of course, will have to wait a few days to start reading, but the rest of us can be reading it this afternoon and a few will be waiting for that new Kindle 2 in the mail instead.

Free Ebook: Carrot Cake Murders

Update 4:15PM Deal is over at Fictionwise (now $5.6/$4.55 after rebate).

Carrot Cake Murder ($4.76 at Amazon) by Joanne Fluke. This is the tenth in the series and not all are available in digital form.

This title is actually listed twice at Amazon for the Kindle, once at $6.99 and once at $4.76. However, for what is no doubt a limited time, you can now get this title free at Fictionwise. It is in Mobipocket format, but has DRM incompatible with the Kindle. The reader software for your PC is free and it should work with any of the non-Amazon Mobi readers for phones and a few other reader devices.

Synopsis

Between baking up a storm for The Cookie Jar and unraveling the mystery of her cat Moishe-s recent strange behavior, Hannah Swensen has a lot on her plate. But she-ll always make time for her business partner, Lisa, who-s in the midst of preparing for a big family reunion. Everyone is delighted when Lisa-s long-lost uncle makes a surprise appearance. No one has heard from Gus in twenty-five years. Uncle Gus is immediately the hit of the reunion. He-s almost as popular as Hannah-s scrumptious carrot cake, which is also Gus-s favorite dessert. But the next morning, as the whole family gathers for the group photo, one person is missing. Hannah offers to track down Uncle Gus, but her search leads to a shocking find. Over by the bar at the pavilion, she spots two slices of her infamous carrot cake, frosting-side down on the floor-and Gus-s corpse with an ice pick jutting out of his chest!

Now Hannah-s got to sift through a long list of suspects to find a killer-even if it could mean a recipe for her own demise-

Read an E-Book Week Roundup

Well, Read an E-Book Week has ended and I did manage to finish up the book I was reading at the start and nearly finish the next one I started (Made to Be Broken by Kelley Armstrong). The E-Book Week only giveaways have ended, but I now have enough free books to keep me busy for weeks. There were literally hundreds of giveaways (too many to even attempt to get them all, even if every one appealed to you) and I think I downloaded a couple of hundred to try (on some I grabbed every format, in case there were problems in conversion or as a hedge against future hardware changes, so it's a bit hard to tell). I may not read them all and I'll definitely be more likely to drop one that doesn't grab my interest in the first few pages, but there are bound to be a number of gems in there -- several books I'd had on my wish list turned up free this past week, so I know there are good ones in the pile. But, if you didn't get your fill, I have rounded up a few last freebies and bargains to round out the week.

The first-ever completely online world science fiction convention Flycon 2009 has been going on this week and Vera Nazarian is offering her novella "The Duke in His Castle" as a free PDF download this weekend only. From the comments, it appears you'll still be able to grab this one on Monday, as she'll leave it up for those who don't check their computers on the weekend and those in other time zones.

There are a number of other freebies from FlyCon are available: Chris Dolley has posted Resonance in several formats (including Kindle-compatible mobi), The Admonishments of Kherishdar and The Aphorisms of Kherishdar are online reads (the latter is also available in paperback). Two audiobooks are also available: Spherical Tomi: A Novel of Despair, by Jack Mangan, and Temple of Cod (the first third of Brine, registration required), by Adrienne Jones.

Chris Howard, who released SeaBorn as a free PDF earlier this week, has another ebook, nanowhere, as a free ebook, available in several formats.

Jeffrey Carver, author of The Chaos Chronicles, has previously made Sunborn available as a free PDF, but now, for a limited time, has posted several other formats as free downloads. The PDF should remain free, but the additional formats are coming down when this one is released as a Tor ebook (which could be anytime now). And if you haven't picked up the Chaos Chronicles, they are on the same download page, also in several formats.

Jeffrey Thomas's Deadstock, a science fiction thriller, can be downloaded in PDF and mobipocket reader format. His latest, Blue War: A Punktown novel and Punktown (coming in April), aren't yet available in ebook format, but you can always click on the "Kindlize me" link for the paperback version.

If you're ready for a break from fiction or want to polish up a few work skills, be sure to check out the How to Think Like a Programmer series at Green Tea Press.

Leaving the purely free realm, there are a few bargains in the Kindle store. Pacific Avenue, by Anne L. Watson, is on sale for a penny.

Darksome Thirst by Morven Westfield is $3.98. This is a witches and vampire book, but promises to be a different kind of vampire, for those tired of good vampires or bad ones that run in packs.

BARRACUDA by Mike Monahan is marked down to $0.99 (be sure to check the price - the older listing for $7.96 is still there). Detectives, an island paradise, mafia, yakuza and a barracuda eating the tourists - what more could a story need?

Last, an online comic, Digger, is now online with free archives going back to the beginning (2007). Until recently it was a subscription only comic; now it's all free and updated every Tues and Thurs.

Free Ebook: Chris Howard's Seaborn

Seaborn by Chris Howard is available as a free download (see below). This was scheduled to move to the Kindle, but has apparently been backlisted, so Chris is setting it free. Either format should convert fairly well to the Kindle (although the margins are a bit off).

Synopsis

Corina Lairsey has just clawed her way free from one controlling relationship when she finds herself in another-only this guy, Aleximor, has really gotten under her skin. Literally. A 400-year-old sorcerer who gathers the drowned dead off the ocean's floor for the King of the Seaborn, he's inside her head and is wearing her body like a wetsuit. Corina desperately schemes to regain control of her self, fighting against time as Aleximore trades pieces of her life away in exchange for power over the path between the worlds of the living and the dead . . . Kassandra is the King of the Seaborn's granddaughter. She comes from the sea, but has spent her whole life in exile on the surface, struggling to control frightening powers she barely understands. She declares war on her murderous grandfather and manipulates her family, friends, oceanic royalty, and the US Navy to aid her- but Aleximore intends to use Kass to carry out his revenge against the entire Seaborn royal line. And she's also fallen in love-one more struggle for an already troubled soul.

Free download in PDF or HTML format.

Read an E-Book Week, Day 6

Nanya by Huang Chin-tsu, edited/translated by Edward C Patterson, is a a 12th Century, Sung Dynasty, manuscript. Read online or download the book in three section (under the Files link).

Black Ice by Madeleine Miles and The Realm Of Magic Kingdoms by christopher parrish are both available as free PDF downloads over at LuLu.com.

C.C. Finlay's The Patriot Witch is available as a free PDF download. The rest of the Traitor to the Crown series, unfortunately, is scheduled to release on paper only at this point: A Spell for the Revolution (in May) and The Demon Redcoat (coming in June).

If your tastes run more to SciFi than Fantasy, head over to Concept SciFi and pick up the first four issues of their magazine (PDF and Mobi formats). Then bookmark the site, as the April issue is coming up.

The Heritage (Olivia) is available at Will Ashon's website. It's a printer's proof PDF, as the book was ready to go to print and the publisher pulled out, which not format well if converted for the Kindle. Still, he's put the entire thing up for free (along with a rant against the publisher, so be warned ... he was pretty mad when he posted it and it shows).