Today's Deals

The Fictionwise coupon code for the weekend, 062212, gives you 50% off for most books (no Samhain) and all magazines (of which there are several new issues this week). You you can add an extra 15% for the newly released titles (which change on Tuesday), although that is now limited to multi-format titles (which do work on Kindle), as no new eReader formatted titles have been released since April.

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is In the Courts of the Sun ($2.99), by Brian D'Amato. The sequel, The Sacrifice Game, is now available to pre-order, and will be an equally weighty tome in paper: 656 pages vs 700. Be warned, though: the synopsis for it contains spoilers for the earlier title, so I suggest not looking until you've finished it.

Book Description
The year is 2012. Math prodigy Jed DeLanda is enlisted to decipher an ancient Mayan codex containing the secrets of the Sacrifice Game. It foretells the end of civilization, and only Jed can prevent the coming apocalypse. He must play the Game himself-in a mind-bending journey that stretches from thousands of years in the past to the very brink of the end of time...

Little Girl Lost ($1.56 / £0.99 UK), by Brian McGilloway, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).

Book Description
During a winter blizzard a small girl is found wandering half-naked at the edge of an ancient woodland. Her hands are covered in blood, but it is not her own. Unwilling or unable to speak, the only person she seems to trust is the young officer who rescued her, Detective Sergeant Lucy Black. DS Black is baffled to find herself suddenly transferred from a high-profile case involving the kidnapping of a prominent businessman's teenage daughter, to the newly formed Public Protection Unit. Meanwhile, she has her own problems: caring for her Alzheimer's-stricken father; and avoiding conflict with her surly Assistant Chief Constable – who also happens to be her mother. As she struggles to identify the unclaimed child, Lucy begins to realise that this case and the kidnapping may be linked – by events that occurred during the blackest days of the country's recent history, events that also defined her own girlhood. Little Girl Lost is a devastating page-turner about corruption, greed and vengeance, and a father's love for his daughter.

Cleopatra and Antony: Power, Love, and Politics in the Ancient World ($9.49 Kindle, $3.99 B&N), by Diana Preston, is the Nook Daily Find. I see signs that the Kindle edition is changing price to match (it's matching in one pricing server, but not the one that displays the product page), to if it hasn't when you read this, be sure to check back a little later today.

Book Description

On a stiflingly hot day in August, 30 B.C., the thirty-nine-year-old Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, took her own life, rather than be paraded in chains through Rome by her conqueror, Octavian, the future emperor Augustus. A few days earlier, her lover of eleven years, Mark Antony, had died in her arms following his own botched suicide attempt. Oceans of mythology have grown up around them, all of which Diana Preston puts to rest in her stirring history of the lives and times of a couple whose names-more than two millennia later-still invoke passion, curiosity, and intrigue.
This book sets the romance and tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra's personal lives within the context of their political times. There are many contemporary resonances: the relationship between East and West and the nature of empire, the concealment of personal ambition beneath the watchword of liberty, documents forged, edited or disposed of, special relationships established, constitutional forms and legal niceties invoked when it suited. Indeed their lives and deaths had deep political ramifications, and they offer a revealing perspective on a tipping point in Roman politics and on the consolidation of the Roman Empire. Three hundred years would pass before the east would, with the rise of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, once again take a share of political power in the Mediterranean. In an intriguing postscript, Preston speculates on what might have happened had Antony and Cleopatra defeated Octavian at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C.

Because of Winn-Dixie ($3.50 Kindle, $2.99 B&N), by Kate DiCamillo, is the Nook Daily Find for Families. This one also shows signs of dropping in price, so may be there by afternoon.

Book Description
The summer Opal and her father, the preacher, move to Naomi, Florida, Opal goes into the Winn-Dixie supermarket and comes out with a dog. A big, ugly, suffering dog with a sterling sense of humor.A dog she dubs Winn-Dixie. Because of Winn-Dixie, the preacher tells Opal ten things about her absent mother, one for each year Opal has been alive.Winn-Dixie is better at making friends than anyone Opal has ever known, and together they meet the local librarian, Miss Franny Block, who once fought off a bear with a copy of WAR AND PEACE. They meet Gloria Dump, who is nearly blind but sees with her heart, and Otis, an ex-con who sets the animals in his pet shop loose after hours, then lulls them with his guitar.

Opal spends all that sweet summer collecting stories about her new friends and thinking about her mother. But because of Winn-Dixie or perhaps because she has grown, Opal learns to let go, just a little, and that friendship and forgiveness can sneak up on you like a sudden summer storm.

Recalling the fiction of Harper Lee and Carson McCullers, here is a funny, poignant, and utterly genuine first novel from a major new talent.

Grade Level: 4 and up

Three Free Audiobooks from Random House Audio

Random House Audio has three free audiobooks this summer, for anyone signing up for their newsletter. Two are complete novels, while the third is a short story of only 11 minutes.

First up, you'll get The Chicago Way ($9.99 Kindle; $23.95 Audible), by Michael Harvey; if you like to get the book to read along while listening, you should instead grab the omnibus volume, Michael Harvey Thrillers 2-Book Bundle: The Chicago Way, The Fifth Floor, currently on sale for $7.99.

Book Description
Private detective Michael Kelly is hired by his former partner to solve an eight-year old rape and battery case long gone cold. But when the partner turns up dead, Kelly enlists a team of his savviest colleagues to connect the dots between the recent murder and the cold case it revived: a television reporter whose relationship with Kelly is not strictly professional; his best friend from childhood, a forensic DNA expert; and an old ally from the DA's office. To close the case, Kelly will have to face the mob, a serial killer, his own double-crossing friends, and the mean streets of the city he loves.

The second selection is Jillian Larkin's debut novel Vixen (The Flappers) ($9.99 Kindle; $26.95 Audible).

Book Description
Jazz . . . Booze . . . Boys . . . It’s a dangerous combination.

Every girl wants what she can’t have. Seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody wants the flapper lifestyle—and the bobbed hair, cigarettes, and music-filled nights that go with it. Now that she’s engaged to Sebastian Grey, scion of one of Chicago’s most powerful families, Gloria’s party days are over before they’ve even begun . . . or are they?

Clara Knowles, Gloria’s goody-two-shoes cousin, has arrived to make sure the high-society wedding comes off without a hitch—but Clara isn’t as lily-white as she appears. Seems she has some dirty little secrets of her own that she’ll do anything to keep hidden. . . .

Lorraine Dyer, Gloria’s social-climbing best friend, is tired of living in Gloria’s shadow. When Lorraine’s envy spills over into desperate spite, no one is safe. And someone’s going to be very sorry. . . .

From debut author Jillian Larkin, VIXEN is the first novel in the sexy, dangerous, and ridiculously romantic new series set in the Roaring Twenties . . . when anything goes.

The last of the three free downloads is a single short story, Thicker Than Blood, taken from the anthology Yondering ($5.99 Kindle), by Louis L'Amour.

Book Description
“Over the years I have been proud to write about the men and women of the American frontier. But I have written many stories with entirely different settings which I have long wanted to share with my readers.

“I have collected some of these in Yondering. They are glimpses of what my own life was like during the early years. Those were the rough years; often I was hungry, out of work and facing situations such as I have since written about.

“Although these stories take place in a variety of locales, they are stories of people living under conditions similar to the way they might have lived on the frontier. I hope you’ll enjoy Yondering.”

—Louis L’Amour

Sign up for the newsletter to get the free audiobooks from Random House. After signing up, you get download links for all three as DRM-free MP3's, which means you can move them to any device for listening, including your Kindle.

Today's Deals

Get 40% off these Hot Romance Titles titles at Kobobooks using promo code romance40 from now till July 6th. I even see Linda Lael Miller's new release of Big Sky Country in the list, which I am about half-way thru.

The Titan's Curse (#3) ($6.59 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), the third title in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, is the Nook Daily Find for Families, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
When the goddess Artemis goes missing, she is believed to have been kidnapped. And now it’s up to Percy and his friends to find out what happened. Who is powerful enough to kidnap a goddess? They must find Artemis before the winter solstice, when her influence on the Olympian Council could swing an important vote on the war with the titans. Not only that, but first Percy will have to solve the mystery of a rare monster that Artemis was hunting when she disappeared—a monster rumored to be so powerful it could destroy Olympus forever.

Grade Level: 5 and up

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is A Small Fortune ($0.99), by Audrey Braun.

Book Description
When Celia Donnelly’s husband, Jonathon, surprises her with a family vacation to Mexico, the harried book editor couldn't be happier. She is overworked and exhausted, a situation that has taken a toll on her eighteen-year marriage, not to mention her relationship with her teenaged son. Escaping the perpetually rainy Pacific Northwest for the sugary sands of Mexico could be just what the doctor ordered. Yet shortly after their arrival south of the border, a chance encounter with a stranger sparks illicit memories of a former affair. The moment passes, but that brief encounter proves enough to change her life forever. Hours later, Celia is lured from the beach and abducted off the street. At first a seemingly random victim, Celia quickly realizes her captors know exactly who she is. Desperate for news of her family and devastated by the betrayal of someone she trusts, Celia, along with an unlikely ally, is soon running for her life. Pursued from the balmy shores of Mexico to the steamy thickets of the jungle, to the crisp, cold mountains of Zurich, Celia will stop at nothing to find her way home.

Black Tide ($1.56 / £0.99 UK), the second titles in the Jack Irish series by Peter Temple, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $5.15). The first title in his Broken Shore series is also on sale for £2.04 ($3.16 Main).

Book Description
'I went to George Armit's funeral. It was a small affair. Almost everyone George had known was dead. Many of them were dead because George had had them killed...'

Jack Irish however, has no shortage of friends. Jockeys and journos, lawyers and standover men, people in nameless occupations who aren't in the phone book. These days, though, the only family he sees are Irish men in faded football team photographs on the pub wall. So when Des Connors, the last link to his father, calls to ask for help in the matter of a missing son, Jack is happy to lend a hand. But sometimes prodigal sons go missing for a reason. As Jack begins to dig, he discovers that Gary Connors was a man with something to hide. And his friends are people with darker and more deadly secrets...

No Mercy ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), #14 in the Dark-Hunter series by Sherrilyn Kenyon (#19 at FantasticFiction), is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Live fast, fight hard and if you have to die then take as many of your enemies with you as you can. That is the Amazon credo and it was one Samia lived and died by. Now in contemporary New Orleans, the immortal Amazon warrior is about to learn that there’s a worse evil coming to slaughter mankind than she’s ever faced before.

Shapeshifter Dev Peltier has stood guard at the front of Sanctuary for almost two hundred years and in that time, he’s seen it all. Or so he thought. Now their enemies have discovered a new source of power- one that makes a mockery of anything faced to date.

The war is on and Dev and Sam are guarding ground zero. But in order to win, they will have to break the most cardinal of all rules and pray it doesn’t unravel the universe as we know it.

Today's Deals

This weekend only, get 30% off any one title from Candlewick over at Kobo, using coupon code candlewick30.

Additional formats on free books:

• Peaches (K/N/E/I)
• Forty Stories (K/DF)

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is River of the Brokenhearted ($1.99), by David Adams Richards.

Book Description
From the author of the Giller Prize-winning novel Mercy Among the Children comes the utterly beguiling, big-hearted story of one woman's resolute struggle to overcome small-town prejudice and deceit. Spanning generations, River of the Brokenhearted explores the life and legacy of Janie McCleary, a brave Irish Catholic girl who dared to marry a man from the Church of England. Their union is quickly deemed scandalous, and when her husband dies just before the Great Depression, everyone in town, led by the unscrupulous Joey Elias, turns against her. Janie is left alone to raise a family. Her solution is to open one of the first movie theaters in North America, which she runs with such success that she manages to ostracize herself even further. She is a pioneer before the age of feminism, and the burden of her salty individualism will shape the lives of her children and grandchildren. Written with compassion and mastery, River of the Brokenhearted muses on the tyranny of memory and history, and peers into the hearts of extraordinary characters, where Richards finds an alchemy of venality and goodwill, deceit and brotherliness, and marked cruelty and true love. Once again, David Adams Richards has brought us a work of astonishing grace, rooted in his special territory on the great river of New Brunswick, but firmly universal in scope.

An Agatha Raisin Omnibus ($1.56 / £0.99 UK), by M. C. Beaton, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK. Although you can't buy this edition, which contains four titles (The Quiche of Death, The Potted Gardener, The Vicious Vet and The Walkers of Dembley) in the US, we can get a great deal on the individual titles in the series, as a large number of them are currently on sale for $2.99 each (for the US, but not the UK). Those in the UK can also get another omnibus edition by the same author, which contains the first four books in her Hamish Macbeth series for £6.71 ($10.38 in the Main store).

Book Description
THE QUICHE OF DEATH
Revenge is a dish best served warm...

High-flying public relations supremo Agatha Raisin has decided to take early retirement. She's off to make a new life in a picture-perfect Cotswold village. To make friends, she enters the local quiche-making competition - and to make quite sure of first prize she secretly pays a visit to a London deli.

Alas, the competition judge succumbs after tasting her perfect quiche, and Agatha is revealed as a cheat and potential poisoner. Definitely not the best start. So Agatha must turn amateur sleuth - she's absolutely got to track down the real killer!

THE POTTED GARDENER
Agatha goes digging where she shouldn't...

Agatha is taken aback when she finds a new woman ensconced in the affections of her attractive bachelor neighbour, James Lacey. The beautiful Mary Fortune is superior in every way, especially when it comes to gardening - and with Carsely Garden Open Day looming, Agatha feels this deficiency acutely.

So when Mary is discovered murdered, buried upside down in a pot, Agatha seizes the moment and immediately starts yanking up village secrets by their roots and digging the dirt on the hapless victim. But Agatha has an awkward secret too . . .

THE VICIOUS VET
Agatha lets sleeping vets lie...

Retired PR boss Agatha Raisin is enjoying life in her pretty Cotswold village of Carsely. It even seems likely that the attractive new vet, Paul Bladen, has taken a shine to her. But before romance can blossom, Paul is killed in an accident with Lord Pendlebury's horse. Only the circumstances are rather suspicious.

Agatha decides she must once more play amateur investigator. And this cloud has a silver lining - she can persuade her usually stand-offish neighbour, James Lacey, to become her partner in the quest. As usual, Agatha is quite prepared to rush in, heedless of the lurking menace to both James and herself.

THE WALKERS OF DEMBLEY
An unexpected hike to the Other Side . . .

After time away, Agatha Raisin returns to her beloved Cotswold village of Carsely - and to her handsome neighbour, James Lacey. True, James seems less than thrilled to see her, but Agatha is soon distracted by a sensational murder. The victim, found in a field, is young hiker Jessica Tartinck, who spent her life enraging landowners by insisting on her right to roam. Hope springs eternal in Agatha's breast as she lures the reluctant James into her investigation. There are so many leads to follow, for Jessica's fellow walkers - not to mention the landowners - all seem able to commit murder.

WAR ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Sebastian Junger, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. I loved his earlier title, The Perfect Storm, so will definitely look at the sample on this one.

Book Description
In his breakout bestseller, The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger created "a wild ride that brilliantly captures the awesome power of the raging sea and the often futile attempts of humans to withstand it" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, Junger turns his brilliant and empathetic eye to the reality of combat--the fear, the honor, and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Through the experiences of these young men at war, he shows what it means to fight, to serve, and to face down mortal danger on a daily basis.

The Boxcar Children Summer Special: Three Adventures of the Boxcar Children ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Gertrude Chandler Warner, is the Nook Daily Find for Families, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
The Mystery at the Ballpark
There’s a mystery at Greenfield’s ballpark. A special bat goes missing, Jessie’s favorite glove disappears, and the team almost doesn’t make it to their first game. Can the Boxcar Children save the team?

The Mystery of the Hidden Beach
While the Aldens are in Florida they find a beautiful hidden beach then learn that it’s full of secrets. Once again, the Boxcar Children must find the truth.

The Summer Camp Mystery
It’s time for the camp Olympics, but someone isn’t playing fair. Are some campers so desperate to win that they’re willing to cheat? The Boxcar Children are determined to solve the mystery before the competition is ruined for everyone!

Free Audiobooks - Irises & Sense and Sensibility

There are two new free audiobook from Sync today. First, I've linked in the info from the ebook or audiobook version of each title (Amazon has the best reviews), then a link to get your copies free.

Irises ($9.89 Kindle, $28.18 Audible), by Francisco X. Stork, narrated by Carrington MacDuffie.

Book Description
Two sisters discover what's truly worth living for in the new novel by the author of MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD.

TWO SISTERS: Kate is bound for Stanford and an M.D. -- if her family will let her go. Mary wants only to stay home and paint. When their loving but repressive father dies, they must figure out how to support themselves and their mother, who is in a permanent vegetative state, and how to get along in all their uneasy sisterhood.

THREE YOUNG MEN: Then three men sway their lives: Kate's boyfriend Simon offers to marry her, providing much-needed stability. Mary is drawn to Marcos, though she fears his violent past. And Andy tempts Kate with more than romance, recognizing her ambition because it matches his own.

ONE AGONIZING CHOICE: Kate and Mary each find new possibilities and darknesses in their sudden freedom. But it's Mama's life that might divide them for good -- the question of *if* she lives, and what's worth living for.

IRISES is Francisco X. Stork's most provocative and courageous novel yet.

Sense and Sensibility ($0.99 Kindle; $20.95 Audible), by Jane Austen, narrated by Wanda McCaddon. My mother bought this exact audiobook, just the other day (Sorry, Mom!). There are various Kindle editions of this classic, but the one I've linked in the title is the Oxford World Classic edition, which is currently on sale for 99 cents.

Book Description
Jane Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is a wonderfully entertaining tale of flirtation and folly that revolves around two starkly different sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. While Elinor is thoughtful, considerate, and calm, her younger sister is emotional and wildly romantic. Both are looking for a husband, but neither Elinor's reason nor Marianne's passion can lead them to perfect happiness - as Marianne falls for an unscrupulous rascal and Elinor becomes attached to a man who's already engaged.

Startling secrets, unexpected twists, and heartless betrayals interrupt the marriage games that follow. Filled with satiric wit and subtle characterizations, Sense and Sensibility teaches that true love requires a balance of reason and emotion.

Click HERE to get the free downloads (you'll need to enter your name and an email address. You'll end up clicking about three pages (for each book), before the audiobook actually downloads. Don't stop so long as you still see a button that talks about your Sync download (or until you see the Overdrive software open up; there is a link at Sync, if you don't already have Overdrive installed).

Once in Overdrive, you'll need to tell it where to save the files (just click OK to use the default location, since Overdrive will keep track of them for you), then again to actually start the download (by default, all parts of the book are downloaded; I would suggest not changing this in the last dialog box, just click on OK to get the download started). Make sure your audiobook is fully downloaded before the end of the week, as once the promo period is over, you won't be able to get them free.

You can't get any titles that have been missed, but once they are loaded into Overdrive (which you will need to install, if you are not already using it for library books), they are yours to keep (there is no expiration date). Two new titles each Thursday!