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Sunday, August 5, 2012

$3 Off Amazon Movie Rentals

Update: Appears to be sold out, at least in some areas and the national offer - try other areas to see if you can still get one.

Today only and while they last, you can get a Free Voucher Worth $3 Off Any Movie Rental or Purchase ($3.99 or Greater) from Amazon Instant Video through AmazonLocal. If your family has more than one account, you have to use different credit cards on each in order to get more than one voucher.
Deal Details
If you love movies, today's deal was written, directed, and produced just for you. Grab a free voucher and enjoy $3 off any movie rental or purchase (for items $3.99 or more) from Amazon Instant Video.

From summer blockbusters to timeless classics and everything in between, Amazon Instant Video offers more than 120,000 movies and TV shows. Enjoy family favorites like Mirror Mirror, popular comedies like 21 Jump Street, and action-packed thrillers like Lockout. Best of all, you can watch movies from Amazon Instant Video anywhere -- on your Kindle Fire, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Roku, and hundreds of other devices. Get your voucher now and enjoy a movie for less!

  • Voucher will expire if not used towards a movie rental or purchase from Amazon Instant Video by August 12, 2012
  • Voucher is valid for a $3 discount off the price of a movie rental or purchase $3.99 or greater; customer will be responsible for payment to Amazon.com for final price of movie after discount, plus applicable taxes
  • The promotional code may not be used for certain titles. The detail pages for such titles will state that they are not eligible for promotions
  • Available only to U.S. customers
  • Limit 1 voucher per customer; limited quantities available
  • Voucher is not redeemable for any other types of merchandise sold at Amazon.com
  • Offer is not transferable, not exchangeable and has no cash value
  • Amazon.com account with valid credit card required to get this voucher

Free Audiobook - The Disciplines of the Christian Life

Christianaudio's free audiobook this month is The Disciplines of the Christian Life ($6.98 Kindle; $9.95 Audible), by Eric Liddell, narrated by Simon Vance.
Book Description
The Christian life should be a life of growth. I believe the secret of growth is to develop the devotional life. - Eric Liddell

The Disciplines of the Christian Life is Eric Liddell's practical guide to helping Christians grow spiritually through a daily practice of prayer and Bible study, structured around key topics he believes are basic knowledge for any Christian. He introduces his topic with a discussion of discipleship, including a his definition of a disciple.

At the foundation of the book is a Bible reading plan with a suggested reading for each day of the year. Readings are organized into chapters for each month of the year, and focus on 12 subject areas the author considers essential. In each chapter, Liddell offers additional information about the topic to further guide the understanding of the reader. Not content to merely offer truth, Liddell helps the reader to apply the scriptures to their life throughout the book. New Christians will be helped by the clear information presented in an easy to understand style, while seasoned Christians will find their spiritual life challenged by Liddell's clear call to a life of discipleship.

About the Author
Eric Henry Liddell was a Scottish athlete, rugby union international player, and missionary. He is perhaps most well known as the subject of the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire, which depicted his experiences training and racing in the Olympics and the religious convictions that influenced him. In his book about spiritual disciplines, he outlines his own pattern for living which has as its foundation a daily Bible reading plan.
Get the free audio download from Christianaudio and scroll down the page three titles that are discounted to $4.98 for the month.

The checkout process is very streamlined (a coupon code is no longer required), as is the download process (no longer do you have to download each part of the book separately). You can also send a gift download of the free audiobook to someone else!

After finishing your order, download a zip file with the entire audiobook: select MP3 if you want to be able to play the book on your Kindle (M4B for the iOS, iTunes or QuickTime). Unzip the contents to the \audiobooks directory on your Kindle (not \music) in order to have audiobook controls and see it on your Kindle home page.

Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Mama Does Time ($1.99), a Mace Bauer Mystery by Deborah Sharp.
Book Description
Meet Mama: a true Southern woman with impeccable manners, sherbet-colored pantsuits, and four prior husbands, able to serve sweet tea and sidestep alligator attacks with equal aplomb. Mama's antics — especially her penchant for finding trouble — drive her daughters Mace, Maddie, and Marty to distraction.

One night, while settling in to look for ex-beaus on COPS, Mace gets a frantic call from her mother. This time, the trouble is real: Mama found a body in the trunk of her turquoise convertible and the police think she's the killer. It doesn't help that the handsome detective assigned to the case seems determined to prove Mama's guilt or that the cowboy who broke Mace's heart shows up at the local Booze ‘n' Breeze in the midst of the investigation. Before their mama lands in prison — just like an embarrassing lyric from a country-western song — Mace and her sisters must find the real culprit.

The Summer of Secrets ($1.56 / £0.99 UK), by Alison Lucy, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition). If you pick this one up, you will definitely also want to grab The Summer of Secrets - The Early Years (Main/UK), a UK exclusive freebie that has three short stories, all taking place before the The Summer of Secrets.
Book Description
One heady summer. Three big secrets.

1989: Newlyweds Danny and Harriet arrive at their honeymoon paradise in the Caribbean. Days later Harriet returns home. Danny is left distraught but finds comfort in the arms of two women. Nine months later, three baby girls are born...

2010: Megan leaves her childhood sweetheart behind in the UK to go in search of her long-lost father. Miles from home and temptation is at every corner - not least in the arms of the gorgeous Ray...

Esme, a Mexican beauty, married Miguel at fifteen. In unlocking the secrets of her past, can she shed the shackles of her enforced marriage?

Claudia has led a life of privilege but she's never really known what it feels like to be loved. Could David be the answer? Or will he disappoint her, just like her mother always did?

Three women set off on an adventure to uncover the secrets surrounding their missing father. It may be the only way to lay their demons to rest but seeking out the truth could tear their lives apart.

Win a holiday to Mexico and take off on your own Summer of Secrets. Go to www.canvasbooks.co.uk for details.

The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe ($12.99 $2.99 Kindle, B&N), by J. Randy Taraborrelli, is the Nook Daily Find. Once again, Hatchette should be price matching on Kindle (and all other stores), but has yet to drop the price. I've reported it on the Kindle page and expect it may drop by late this afternoon. In the meantime, though, you might want to grab The Last Year In the Life of Marilyn Monroe, A Hidden History, Volume 1 and Volume 2, by Don O'Melveny, which are currently free in the Kindle store. His credentials may not be as high, but it has a decent quote from Kirkus Reviews (and hey, it's free!); it is fiction, but based on historical fact.

Update: Now price matched at Amazon!
Book Description
From New York Times bestselling author J. Randy Taraborrelli comes the definitive biography of the most enduring icon in popular American culture.

When Marilyn Monroe became famous in the 1950s, the world was told that her mother was either dead or simply not a part of her life. However, that was not true. In fact, her mentally ill mother was very much present in Marilyn's world and the complex family dynamic that unfolded behind the scenes is a story that has never before been told...until now. In this groundbreaking book, Taraborrelli draws complex and sympathetic portraits of the women so influential in the actress' life, including her mother, her foster mother, and her legal guardian. He also reveals, for the first time, the shocking scope of Marilyn's own mental illness, the identity of Marilyn's father and the half-brother she never knew, and new information about her relationship with the Kennedy's-Bobby, Jack, and Pat Kennedy Lawford. Explosive, revelatory, and surprisingly moving, this is the final word on the life of one of the most fascinating and elusive icons of the 20th Century.

Surprise Island ($4.49 Kindle, $2.10 B&N), the second title in The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner, is the Nook Daily Find for Families.
Book Description
Summer vacation on an almost private island gives the Aldens a challenge.

Grade Level: 2 and up

Roseflower Creek ($7.99 Kindle, $3.99 B&N), by Jackie Lee Miles, is this weekend's Nook Summer Reading Deal. If you are a long-time reader, you should have this one in your library, as it was free in both stores in Jan '11.
Book Description
"The morning I died it rained. Poured down so hard it washed the blood off my face."

It seems everyone in young Lori Jean's life has a secret, but only one secret will cost her everything.

A surprising tribute to our ability to heal and love in the most difficult circumstances. Roseflower Creek will stay with you long past its final page.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Today's Deals

The publisher finally matched the $2.99 price on Marcia Clark's newest release, Guilt by Degrees, at Amazon late last night. It's still at that lower price, if you want to grab it (it's already gone back up to $12.99 at B&N).

A few new coupon codes for Kobo: LWAUG325XY (25% off select titles; exp 8/6), c2auto35 (35% off the same list; exp 8/4), Save30Aug3j9 (30% off; exp 8/6, may only work on a selected list of titles); I'd also try these on any non-Agency title, although they may actually be limited to the lists given. It also appear that ac4auto45 (45% off) is back and seems to be usable once a month, as does thankyou40 (40% off).

Kobo also has a couple of limited time promotions: 70% off Bestsellers with code GBAug04Save70, good only for those in the UK) and Get 75% off Romance with code surrender75, both of which expire 08-10-2012.

This weekend's Fictionwise coupon is 080412 and gets you 45% off (non-Samhain).

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Lucky Man ($1.99), by Michael J. Fox.
Book Description
A funny, highly personal, gorgeously written account of what it's like to be a 30-year-old man who is told he has an 80-year-old's disease.

"Life is great. Sometimes, though, you just have to put up with a little more crap." --Michael J. Fox

In September 1998, Michael J. Fox stunned the world by announcing he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease -- a degenerative neurological condition. In fact, he had been secretly fighting it for seven years. The worldwide response was staggering. Fortunately, he had accepted the diagnosis and by the time the public started grieving for him, he had stopped grieving for himself. Now, with the same passion, humor, and energy that Fox has invested in his dozens of performances over the last 18 years, he tells the story of his life, his career, and his campaign to find a cure for Parkinson's.

Combining his trademark ironic sensibility and keen sense of the absurd, he recounts his life -- from his childhood in a small town in western Canada to his meteoric rise in film and television which made him a worldwide celebrity. Most importantly however, he writes of the last 10 years, during which -- with the unswerving support of his wife, family, and friends -- he has dealt with his illness. He talks about what Parkinson's has given him: the chance to appreciate a wonderful life and career, and the opportunity to help search for a cure and spread public awareness of the disease. He is a very lucky man, indeed.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation
Michael J. Fox is donating the profits from his book to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, which is dedicated to fast-forwarding the cure for Parkinson's disease. The Foundation will move aggressively to identify the most promising research and raise the funds to assure that a cure is found for the millions of people living with this disorder.

The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is the Picador 40th Anniversary Edition of Eight bestselling literary novels for (£0.99 ($1.56) each. Most of these are fairly high priced in the US, except for Edward St Aubyn's novel; it's not only under $5 (pre-order), there is a great bundle deal to get the first four of his Patrick Melrose novels for under $10. I'd grab it now, if you are interested, as it will likely either disappear or go up in price when the individual titles are released.
In 2012 Picador celebrates its 40th anniversary. During that time we have published many prize-winning and bestselling authors including Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy, Alice Sebold and Helen Fielding, Graham Swift and Alan Hollinghurst. Years later, Picador continue to bring readers the very best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry from across the globe.
The Lovely Bones (Main/UK) by Alice Sebold ($9.99 US edition).
First published in 2002, The Lovely Bones became an instant worldwide bestseller. There are now over ten million copies in print. A film adaptation of the novel, directed by Peter Jackson, was released in 2010.

Susie Salmon was fourteen years old when she was murdered by a man from her neighbourhood. Now in heaven, she can have whatever she wishes for – except the one thing she wants most: to be back with the people she loved on earth. Susie watches from above as her suburban family is torn apart by grief; as her friends grow up, fall in love, and do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. In time, Susie will realise that even in death, life is not quite out of reach . . .
Room (Main/UK) by Emma Donoghue ($9.99 US edition).
A number-one bestseller, Room was published in 2010 to ecstatic reviews around the world and quickly became a word-of-mouth sensation. It has won or been shortlisted for more than a dozen awards (including shortlistings for both the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize) and has sold more than a million copies.

Room is the story of Ma and Jack. They live in a single, locked room. Five-year-old Jack loves watching TV, but he knows that nothing he sees on the screen is truly real – only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits there’s a world outside . . .
The Line of Beauty (Main/UK) by Alan Hollinghurst ($7.19 US edition).
A huge critical success on first publication in 2004, the novel went on to win that year’s Man Booker Prize. It was adapted for television and broadcast on BBC2 in 2006.

It is the summer of 1983, and young Nick Guest, an innocent in the matters of politics and money, has moved into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious new Tory MP, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their children Toby and Catherine. As the boom years of the mid-80s unfold, Nick becomes caught up in the Feddens’ world, while pursuing his own private obsession, with beauty – a prize as compelling to him as power and riches are to his friends.
The Sea (Main/UK) by John Banville ($9.99 US edition).
First published in 2005, The Sea was critically acclaimed as an extraordinary achievement. It went on to win that year’s Man Booker Prize, one of the most hotly contested in the history of the award.

When Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss and confronting a distant trauma. Mr and Mrs Grace and their twin children Myles and Chloe appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. He grew to know them intricately, even intimately, and what ensued would haunt him for the rest of his years and shape everything that was to follow.
Last Orders (Main/UK) by Graham Swift (no US Kindle edition).
Last Orders is a much-loved classic of English literature. It won both the 1996 Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2001, it was adapted into an award-winning film starring Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins.

Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea. For reasons best known to herself, Jack’s widow, Amy, declines to join them. On the surface the tale of a simple if increasingly bizarre day’s outing, Last Orders is Graham Swift’s most poignant exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives.
All the Pretty Horses (Main/UK) by Cormac McCarthy ($11.99 US edition).
All the Pretty Horses, the first novel of the Border Trilogy, published in 1992, was an international bestseller, winning both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

It tells the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself the last bewildered survivor of generations of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he ever imagined. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
Mother's Milk (Main/UK) by Edward St Aubyn ($4.99 US edition pre-order, but the best deal is to get The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk for $9.99).
First published in 2006, Mother’s Milk is the fourth novel in the critically acclaimed Patrick Melrose series. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize that year and won the 2007 Prix Femina Étranger and the 2007 South Bank Literature Award.

The once illustrious, once wealthy Melroses are in peril. Patrick Melrose, caught in the wreckage of broken promises, child-rearing and adultery, can only look on as his wife is consumed by motherhood and his mother is consumed by a New Age foundation. Only Patrick’s five-year-old son Robert understands, and far more than he ought. Acerbically witty, disarmingly tender, Mother’s Milk goes to the core of a family trapped in the remains of its ever-present past.
White Noise (Main/UK) by Don DeLillo ($12.99 US edition).
First published in 1985, White Noise won the National Book Award. It is now regarded as a classic of postmodern literature.

Jack Gladney is a pioneering professor in the field of Hitler Studies at the bucolic Midwestern College-on-the-Hill. Married five times, he has a brood of children and stepchildren with his current wife, Babette. Over the course of an absurd, tragic year, Jack and Babette will each be forced to confront the question that keeps them awake at night: who will die first?

Stuck With You ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Trish Jensen, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. This was briefly free in February, on Kindle only.
Book Description
Two feuding divorce lawyers. One infectious "love bug" virus. The symptoms are hard to resist . . .

Paige Hart is blessed and cursed with a large, loving and...
colorful Southern family. As the only lawyer in the clan, she can't say no when her cousin needs her help in a messy, no-holds-barred divorce. Tax attorney Paige squares off with Ross "the Snake" Bennett - one of the slickest divorce lawyers in the county. The case is going as well as an acrimonious, zinger-filled, wrangle of epic proportions can go until exposure to an infectious bug with an unusual side effect lands both lawyers in quarantine together.

Arthur's Pet Business ($6.99 paperback, 4-for-3 eligible; no Kindle edition; $1.99 B&N), by Marc Brown, is the Nook Daily Find for Families.
Book Description
Arthur starts his own petsitting business to show Mom and Dad that he can be responsible! But between a boa constrictor, an ant farm, and a group of frogs, he's got his hands full! Can Arthur still prove he can handle a dog of his own?

Grade Level: P and up

Friday, August 3, 2012

6 Months of NewsWeek for $5!

Today only, get Newsweek (6-month) [Print + Kindle] subscription for only $5! You can even subscribe without any Kindle devices (add them later or just don't bother), as this is a good discount over the print subscription price (normally $39/year). You can manage any renewal of this or any other magazine ordered thru Amazon using their Magazine Subscription Manager page. After you've placed your order, you'll need to visit that page at least once, though, to activate your digital subscription; you'll need to pick one Kindle app or device for automatic delivery (but can view the issues on any compatible device on the account).

This is just one of several Print+Digital magazine subscriptions that Amazon now has (I'm most tempted by Horticulture, where the digital subscription is a full color app for the Kindle Fire or iPad).

The Kindle subscription works on these devices:
Kindle
Kindle Touch
Kindle Fire
Kindle Keyboard
Kindle DX
Kindle (2nd Generation)
Kindle (1st Generation)
Kindle for iPad
Kindle for iPhone
Kindle for Android