Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Gregor the Overlander ($1.99), the first title in The Underland Chronicles, a middle-grade series by Suzanne Collins. This one isn't an Agency publisher, so it's a bit of a coincidence that it is also the Nook Daily Find for Families today.

Despite being written for a younger audience than her bestselling Hunger Games series, many of the reviews are from adults who have read and enjoyed the series. If you think you'll read the entire series, though, grab Gregor the Overlander Collection (Books 1-5) instead; it's $19.22, but that works out to under $4 per volume and you have the entire series, in order, with only one entry on your Kindle home page. For those who need EPUB, it's a bit more over at Kobo, but you can use a coupon code there to get it even cheaper.

Book Description
This irresistible first novel tells the story of a quiet boy who embarks on a dangerous quest in order to fulfill his destiny -- and find his father -- in a strange world beneath New York City. When Gregor falls through a grate in the laundry room of his apartment building, he hurtles into the dark Underland, where spiders, rats, cockroaches coexist uneasily with humans. This world is on the brink of war, and Gregor's arrival is no accident. A prophecy foretells that Gregor has a role to play in the Underland's uncertain future. Gregor wants no part of it -- until he realizes it's the only way to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance. Reluctantly, Gregor embarks on a dangerous adventure that will change both him and the Underland forever.

Grade Level: 4 and up

The Secret Olympian: The inside story of the Olympic experience ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), an anonymous account by Olympic athletes, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.66).

Book Description
The vast majority of us can only dream of being an Olympic-level athlete - but we have no real idea of what that means. Here, for the first time, in all its shocking, funny and downright bizarre glory, is the truth of the Olympic experience.

It is an unimaginable world:

• the kitting-out ceremony with its 35kg of team clothing per athlete
• the pre-Olympic holding camp with its practical jokes, resentment and fighting, and freaky physiological regimes
• the politicians' visits with their flirty spouses
• the vast range of athletes with their odd body shapes and freakish genetics
• the release post-competion in the Olympic village with all the excessive drinking, eating, partying and sex (not necessarily in that order)
• the hysteria of homecoming celebrations and the comedown that follows - how do you adjust to life after the Games?

The Secret Olympian talks to scores of Olympic athletes - past and present, from Munich 1960 right through to London 2012, including British, American, Australian, Dutch, French, Croatian, German, Canadian and Italian competitors. They all have a tale to tell - and most of those tales would make your eyes pop more than an Olympic weightlifter's.

Total Recall ($0.99 Kindle, B&N), a short story by Philip K. Dick, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. This particular story doesn't appear to be in the public domain (although several are, which you can get free from Feedbooks), having appeared in numerous collections after it's original magazine publication. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has this one marked at $4 list price, so I'd grab it now if you want to read it (although it will be one of the stories included in The Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick, which should be released as an ebook next April).

Book Description
The inspiration for upcoming film, Total Recall, starring Colin Farrell and Kate Beckinsale, and directed by Len Wiseman. This ebook only edition of Philip K. Dick’s classic short story tells the story of Douglas Quail, an unfulfilled bureaucrat who dreams of visiting Mars, but can't afford the trip. Luckily, there is Rekal Incorporated, a company that lets everyday stiffs believe they’ve been on incredible adventures. The only problem is that when technicians attempt a memory implant of a spy mission to Mars, they find that real memories of just such a trip are already in Quail's brain. Suddenly, Quail is running for his life from government agents, but his memories might make him more of a liability than he is worth. Originally published as "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale."

Get a $3 MP3 Voucher (AmazonLocal)

Another deal thru AmazonLocal (even if there are no local offers in your area):

Free Voucher Worth $3 Off Any MP3 Album ($5.99 or Greater) from Amazon MP3.

Grab the voucher now and you can use it anytime until thru September 2, 2012. First, you click HERE to redeem the voucher code (which you can see at AmazonLocal by clicking on Your Offers, then clicking on View Code to get the promo code, then the discount is automatically applied to the next MP3 purchase that qualifies (including any gift purchase).

The offer claims that it will last thru Aug 20 or while supplies last. It's that last bit that is important, as they have previously sold out of these vouchers before noon on the day that they have offered them.

Today's Deals

New Kobo coupon codes: aug1725yz for 25% off select titles and KWLsave30 for 30% off Indie Reads; both expire Aug 20.

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is We, the Drowned ($1.99), by Carsten Jensen, translated by Charlotte Barslund and Emma Ryder.

Book Description
Carsten Jensen’s debut novel has taken the world by storm. Already hailed in Europe as an instant classic, We, the Drowned is the story of the port town of Marstal, whose inhabitants have sailed the world’s oceans aboard freight ships for centuries. Spanning over a hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War, and from the barren rocks of Newfoundland to the lush plantations of Samoa, from the roughest bars in Tasmania, to the frozen coasts of northern Russia, We, the Drowned spins a magnificent tale of love, war, and adventure, a tale of the men who go to sea and the women they leave behind.

Ships are wrecked at sea and blown up during wars, they are places of terror and violence, yet they continue to lure each generation of Marstal men—fathers and sons—away. Strong, resilient, women raise families alone and sometimes take history into their own hands. There are cannibals here, shrunken heads, prophetic dreams, forbidden passions, cowards, heroes, devastating tragedies, and miraculous survivals—everything that a town like Marstal has actually experienced, and that makes We, the Drowned an unforgettable novel, destined to take its place among the greatest seafaring literature.

The Detachment ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Barry Eisler, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $5.99/KLL Eligible).

Book Description
John Rain is back. And “the most charismatic assassin since James Bond” (San Francisco Chronicle) is up against his most formidable enemy yet: the nexus of political, military, media, and corporate factions known only as the Oligarchy.

When legendary black ops veteran Colonel Scott “Hort” Horton tracks Rain down in Tokyo, Rain can’t resist the offer: a multi-million dollar payday for the “natural causes” demise of three ultra-high-profile targets who are dangerously close to launching a coup in America.

But the opposition on this job is going to be too much for even Rain to pull it off alone. He’ll need a detachment of other deniable irregulars: his partner, the former Marine sniper, Dox. Ben Treven, a covert operator with ambivalent motives and conflicted loyalties. And Larison, a man with a hair trigger and a secret he’ll kill to protect.

From the shadowy backstreets of Tokyo and Vienna, to the deceptive glitz and glamour of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and finally to a Washington, D.C. in a permanent state of war, these four lone wolf killers will have to survive presidential hit teams, secret CIA prisons, and a national security state as obsessed with guarding its own secrets as it is with invading the privacy of the populace.

But first, they’ll have to survive each other.

The Detachment is what fans of Eisler, “one of the most talented and literary writers in the thriller genre” (Chicago Sun-Times), have been waiting for: the worlds of the award-winning Rain series, and of the bestselling Fault Line and Inside Out, colliding in one explosive thriller as real as today’s headlines and as frightening as tomorrow’s.

Storm ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), the first title in Brigid Kemmerer's Elemental series, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. There are two novellas in the series, Elemental ($0.99, prequel) and Fearless ($1.99, between), leaving the pre-order of Spark to complete the series (so far). The two novellas are $1.59 apiece at B&N, while Kobo is matching Amazon's prices, but allows coupons on each.

Book Description
Becca Chandler is suddenly getting all the guys-- the ones she doesn't want. Ever since her ex-boyfriend spread those lies about her.

Then she saves Chris Merrick from a beating in the school parking lot. Chris is different. Way different: he can control water--just like his brothers can control fire, wind, and earth. They're powerful. Dangerous. Marked for death.

And now that she knows the truth, so is Becca.

Secrets are hard to keep when your life's at stake. When Hunter, the mysterious new kid around school, turns up with a talent for being in the wrong place at the right time, Becca thinks she can trust him. But then Hunter goes head-to-head with Chris, and Becca wonders who's hiding the most dangerous truth of all.

The storm is coming. . .

Newbery Medal winner The Giver ($5.59 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Lois Lowry, is the Nook Daily Find for Families; neither edition is price matched on Kindle, but I've reported the lower price.

Book Description
Twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind this fragile community.

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

Grade Level: 7 and up

Free Audiobook - Kluge

Get a free MP3 download of Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind ($9.99 Kindle, $17.95 Audible), by Gary Marcus, narrated by Stephen Hoye, over at Tantor Media today.

Book Description
Are we "noble in reason"? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but a "kluge", a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind - think duct tape, not supercomputer - that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.

Taking us on a tour of the fundamental areas of human experience - memory, belief, decision making, language, and happiness - Marcus reveals the myriad ways our minds fall short. He examines why people often vote against their own interests, why money can't buy happiness, why leaders often stick to bad decisions, and why a sentence like "people people left left" ties us into knots even though it's only four words long.

He also offers surprisingly effective ways to outwit our inner kluge - for example, always consider alternative explanations, make contingency plans, and beware the vivid, personal anecdote. Throughout, he shows how only evolution - haphazard and undirected - could have produced the minds we humans have, while making a brilliant case for the power and usefulness of imperfection.

Get the free audiobook from Tantor Media.

Today's Deals

Susan Wiggs and Tess Gerritsen are having a Sizzle & Chill contest on Facebook. Like both pages, then enter on either one to try to win an Adirondack chair and a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses.

Additional formats on free books:

• Final Vector (K/N/E/I)
• Hide In Plain Sight (K/N/DF)

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is White Lies ($1.99), by Jeremy Bates.

Book Description
While driving to a charming village tucked away deep in the Cascade Mountains of eastern Washington, where she is to begin a new job teaching high school English, Katrina Burton picks up a young hitchhiker who turns out to be drunk and predatory. Fearful for her safety, she lies about her destination in order to get him out of the car. But when she later discovers that he is a teacher at the same school, she finds herself feeding that initial lie with more lies. Then Katrina meets a mysterious man . Handsome, charismatic and strong, he is exactly what she needs to extricate her from the expanding network of lies, now spinning out of control. She falls fast and hard for him. But her perfect solution soon becomes a nightmare that lands her in the middle of a grisly murder. And Katrina's problems don't stop there. She must decide whether to betray her new love or to cover up the murder and hope for the best.

Those Faraday Girls ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Monica McInerney, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.99).

Book Description
From the bestselling author of Family Baggage and The Alphabet Sisters comes a warm and captivating story of family secrets, traditions and ties. As a child, Maggie Faraday grew up in a lively, unconventional household with her young mother, four very different aunts and her eccentric grandfather. With her mother often away, her aunts took turns to look after her – until, just weeks before Maggie’s sixth birthday, a shocking event changed everything. Twenty years on, Maggie is living alone in New York City when a surprise visit from her grandfather brings a revelation and a proposition to reunite the family. As the Faradays gather in Ireland, Maggie begins to realize that the women she thought she knew so intimately all have something to hide . . .

The Gingerbread House ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), the first title in the Hammarby series by Swedish mathematician and author Carin Gerhardsen and Paul Norlén (Translator), is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. I picked this up last month when it was a Kindle Daily Deal (at the same price).

Book Description
In a short space of time, several bestial murders occur in central Stockholm. When criminal investigator Conny Sjöberg and the Hammarby police begin to suspect that there’s a link between the murders, Sjöberg goes completely cold. There is a killer out there whose motives are very personal, and who will not be deterred.

The Gingerbread House by Carin Gerhardsen is the first in the Hammarby series, thrillers with taut, suspenseful plots and unexpected twists and turns. This haunting novel explores schoolyard bullying among young children and the effect it has on them when people look the other way. Many of the scenes in this book are self-experienced and based on Gerhardsen’s own childhood. Urban settings and strong portraits of authentic characters are crafted in depth and detail, insuring the books will linger in the reader’s mind long after the finish.

The Gingerbread House is written in the same tradition as the Sjöwall / Wahlöö crime novels, and has been described as a book version of the tv series The Wire. It is not only published by the same publisher as Stieg Larsson’s The Millennium Trilogy, but by the same editorial team.

Inkspell (Inkheart Trilogy #2) ($8.13 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Cornelia Funke, is the Nook Daily Find for Families. This was a Nook Find in April, but never did get a price match, so if you missed it then, you might want to go ahead with the B&N edition.

Book Description
The captivating sequel to INKHEART, the critically acclaimed, international bestseller by Cornelia Funke!

Although a year has passed, not a day goes by without Meggie thinking of INKHEART, the book whose characters became real. But for Dustfinger, the fire-eater brought into being from words, the need to return to the tale has become desperate. When he finds a crooked storyteller with the ability to read him back, Dustfinger leaves behind his young apprentice Farid and plunges into the medieval world of his past. Distraught, Farid goes in search of Meggie, and before long, both are caught inside the book, too. But the story is threatening to evolve in ways neither of them could ever have imagined.

Grade Level: 4 and up