Game of the Day - The Scruffs

Amazon's Game Download of the Day is a $2.99 download of The Scruffs, the #1 game in the Seek & Find and Puzzle categories for Game Downloads. I picked this one up in February last year, when it was free for a brief time. Seeing it discounted today reminded me to install it on my netbook (where I've been wasting time playing it for a while this morning).

Update: This game qualifies to get a $5.00 credit on MP3 downloads from Amazon MP3, if you have not already received this on their current promotion. Essentially, pay $3 for the game and get $5 to spend on MP3's (or, get a $5 album for $3 and a free game tossed in). Not a bad deal at all.

Game Description

• Meet The Charming Scruff Family.
• Immersive Storyline With Witty Banter.
• Unique And Fun Hint Mechanism.
• Innovative Mini-Games

The Scruffs need your help to save their beloved family home from being sold! Grandpa Scruff has a solution - a scavenger hunt to recover his valuable artifacts. But in a surprising twist, Grandpa Scruff reveals that he's been hiding something else - a shocking family secret! Help the Scruffs uncover the secret that will change their lives forever by finding lost items and putting together the clues they need! The Scruffs - laugh at their witty family banter and fall in love with their charm!

Free Book (PDF) - Scags at 7

Scags at 7 (out of print), by Deborah Emin, is available as a free PDF on the author's website. It didn't convert very well to the Mobi format, but looks like it should be easily readable on my DX in the original PDF format.

Book Description
It is 1958, Skokie, IL. Seven-year old Claudia Harper Morgenstern, or Scags her proud name of choice begins the summer between second and third grade full of excitement and dread. Two months of no school is keen-o, but her best friend, Julia, will be at summer camp for weeks. Scags makes a new friend in Julia's absence, Davy, a hard talking nine-year old who tries his best to teach young Scags everything he knows, especially the things she shouldn't. But Scags soon has other things to distract her from missing Julia: something is wrong with Pops. He doesn't let her walk on the ceiling and drive the car anymore and he's taken up bowling his empty beer bottles into the fireplace. Mama tries to hold him together, while struggling to continue her life as a suburban lady of leisure, with help from Odessa, the maid who comes in from the South Side of Chicago. Everyone attempts to keep things in order, but what becomes clear to all is that Pops may not make it through the heat of the summer in one piece.

Click HERE to sign up for the free download. You'll need to supply an email address (just use a junk account, as you don't even need to look for a link; after you click submit the PDF will load in your browser and you can save it to your Kindle or computer.

The Surgeon - $1.99 (or less)

Tess Gerritsen’s The Surgeon has been updated and now comes with "Bonus Content." It looks like it is in all the major stores, with the lowest price at Kobo. This was one of the first free books I read on my Kindle and one of the first I posted about here on the blog (on 9/11/08). After reading it, I immediately went and found more books in the series to read. Even at two dollars, it's a good read at an excellent price.

Update: Amazon has announced on their blog that this price is only going to be good until June 21st. I haven't tried (and probably won't), but you might even be able to get customer service to "update" your version of this book, if you got it previously, as I did. I know that I didn't get a notice that a corrected version had been posted (as I have with a few others this week), so that might not be possible. And the Bonus Content probably isn't enough to warrant an update, if you've already read the book.

You can also get an earlier version of this book for free over on Scribd, in PDF format. Just run it thru Calibre or the Amazon conversion services and you can read it on your Kindle or other reader (I wouldn't try it in PDF format, except on a DX or similar size screen).

This enhanced eBook includes the full text of the novel plus the following additional content:

• An exclusive preview chapter from Tess Gerritsen’s Ice Cold, on sale in hardcover June 29, 2010
• Rizzoli & Isles, In Their Own Words: learn more about the lead characters in these special essays written by the author
  Rizzoli & Isles TV Pilot script: read pages from the script for the pilot episode of the TNT drama

Book Description
In her most masterful novel of medical suspense, New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen creates a villain of unforgettable evil--and the one woman who can catch him before he kills again.

He slips into their homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, unaware of the horrors they soon will endure. The precision of the killer's methods suggests he is a deranged man of medicine, propelling the Boston newspapers and the frightened public to name him "The Surgeon."

The cops' only clue rests with another surgeon, the victim of a nearly identical crime. Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and killed her attacker before he could complete his assault. Now she hides her fears of intimacy behind a cool and elegant exterior and a well-earned reputation as a top trauma surgeon.

Cordell's careful facade is about to crack as this new killer recreates, with chilling accuracy, the details of Cordell's own ordeal. With every new murder he seems to be taunting her, cutting ever closer, from her hospital to her home. Her only comfort comes from Thomas Moore, the detective assigned to the case. But even Moore cannot protect Cordell from a brilliant hunter who somehow understands--and savors--the secret fears of every woman he kills.

Filled with the authentic detail that is the trademark of this doctor turned author . . . and peopled with rich and complex characters--from the ER to the squad room to the city morgue--here is a thriller of unprecedented depth and suspense. Exposing the shocking link between those who kill and cure, punish and protect, The Surgeon is Tess Gerritsen's most exciting accomplishment yet.

Click HERE to get it for $1.99 at Amazon
Click HERE to get it for $1.99 at B&N
Click HERE to get it for $1.59 at Kobobooks (and enter their contest to get a free Kobo Reader).
Click HERE for a free PDF of the original version, at Scribd.

Music to Read By - Jazz

If yesterday's Indie & Alternative Rock are not your style, you may be more interested in Amazon's Spring Jazz Sale. Again, they have a number of MP3 albums marked down (boxed sets, $6.99 and under $10 categories, as well as several on old-fashioned vinyl), they once again have several sampler albums available for free download.

Borders Kobo Reader - Pre-Order now for Father's Day

By now, you've probably heard that Borders Bookstore is coming out with their own reader, the Kobo eReader. It's already been introduced in Canada (by KoboBooks, a Borders subsidiary) and is available to pre-order in the US ($149) and Australia ($199 AU; from the Kobo Global website). Delivery should be just in time for Father's Day (current delivery date is June 17). I was talking to the manager at our local store last weekend and he said they will be putting in a download station in place of most or all of the customer service desk, so that customers can purchase ebooks in the store and load them onto their readers. That'll eliminate the need for a computer and for much technical know-how on the part of those who get one (although you can still do your own backups and transfers at home, using either bluetooth or (I'll presume) USB).

So far, there isn't a Borders eBook Store, but it is being worked upon (and scheduled to open in June). There are quite a few differences with the readers available already - a quilted back should make it quite a bit easier to hold, but the big single button on the front seems to perform most of the chores that several keys or buttons are needed for with others. The desktop app is preloaded on the device - hook it to your computer and it will install, eliminating the requirement to find the software yourself (which I've run into with other readers). You get five type sizes and a choice of serif or sans serif fonts; there are several options for sorting books, but the only "collection" appears to be a way to tag "books I'm currently reading". The screen is a now-standard 6" eInk display and the unit is one of the lighter ones out there, at 8 ounces. Capacity-wise, though, you get one gigabyte of memory and an SD slot (but not an SDHC slot) that essentially means an unlimited capacity. So far, the formats supported at ePUB, PDF, and Adobe DRM (which should mean PDF and EPUB); I don't see any support for DOC, TXT or some of the other formats that many other readers support, but all of those are easily converted to ePUB by an application like Calibre.

Once you buy any books at Borders, one big question is always which devices can be used to read them. So far, they have announced free eBook Apps for the Mac, PC, Blackberry, Android, iPhone, and iPad. Books can be synced among devices (including via Bluetooth directly from the Reader to a phone). It looks like you'll be able to buy books from other bookstores, as well, so long as they "support Reader^® Mobile Technology from Adobe." The only downside to their bookstore, that I see so far, is that they claim you'll need to use the Borders eBook Desktop App to search or browse for books (which you will presumably also be able to do in stores). I'd much rather use a web based store and download books to my computer for manual transfers. So far, it appears that only PDF's can be manually loaded, while EPUBs will require the desktop application.

I'm not sure I'd like it for a primary reader, but as a secondary reader (for those DRM'd epubs you keep picking up, to read books from Penguin that you can't get for Kindle, currently, or for additional people in the household, for example), it looks like a very good deal (especially at $100 or so less than the other readers that are the same size).