Today's Deals

Audible is having what they call a Beachcomber Sale: 5 new audiobooks for $6.95 apiece each day, but with clues to their identity only, forcing you to track them down. For those that don't have the patience (or time) for that, each day they'll post the previous day's books, complete with the links to listen and buy. Like many of their sales, it is limited to those with a "membership" - the cheapest of which is $10/year; you can't sign up for this directly, but will be offered this membership when you cancel a trial (or regular) subscription.

New coupons at Kobo: 56b6c435, good for 35% off, 56b6c230, for 30% off; both expire Aug 23.

On B&N's Facebook page, you can now vote for this weekend's $3.99 deal: Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child vs The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer (the winner should be price matched at Amazon). Since I already have the former, I'm voting for the latter and, so far, it's winning by a decent margin.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Mafia Summer ($1.99), by E. Duke Vincent.

Book Description
One a Sicilian Hell's Kitchen gang leader, the other a sickly but brilliant Orthodox Jewish boy who lives next door, Vinny Vesta and Sidney Butcher meet on a fire escape during the blistering New York City summer of 1950. Their friendship develops over the course of a summer that will change Vinny's fortunes forever, at a cost he could never have imagined. Based on a true story, Mafia Summer brilliantly captures a pivotal moment in Mafia history and in the lives of the teenagers caught up by the Mob.

Heaven's Shadow ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Michael Cassutt and David S Goyer, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.99).

Book Description
Heaven's Shadow begins with the discovery of an object of unknown origin headed toward Earth. Speculation as to what it might be runs high, and leads to an international competition to be the first to land on it, to claim both the prestige and whatever other benefits there might be. Thus, two rival teams of astronauts begin a thrilling and dangerous race – but what they find when they reach their goal will turn out to be unlike anything they could have imagined . . .

What they have landed on is no asteroid but a spacecraft from a civilization that has travelled tens of thousands of years to reach earth. While the team try to work out what it is they are needed for, more sinister occurrences cause them to wonder if their involvement with this alien race will ead to anything but harm for humanity.

The Innocents ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Francesca Segal, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, twenty-eight-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish suburb of London. He has been dating Rachel Gilbert since they were both sixteen and now, to the relief and happiness of the entire Gilbert family, they are finally to marry. To Adam, Rachel embodies the highest values of Temple Fortune; she is innocent, conventional, and entirely secure in her community—a place in which everyone still knows the whereabouts of their nursery school classmates. Marrying Rachel will cement Adam’s role in a warm, inclusive family he loves.

But as the vast machinery of the wedding gathers momentum, Adam feels the first faint touches of claustrophobia, and when Rachel’s younger cousin Ellie Schneider moves home from New York, she unsettles Adam more than he’d care to admit. Ellie—beautiful, vulnerable, and fiercely independent—offers a liberation that he hadn’t known existed: a freedom from the loving interference and frustrating parochialism of North West London. Adam finds himself questioning everything, suddenly torn between security and exhilaration, tradition and independence. What might he be missing by staying close to home?

Francesca Segal was born in London and studied at Oxford and Harvard University before becoming a journalist and critic. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, and The Observer, among other publications. For three years she wrote the Debut Fiction column in The Observer and was, until recently, a features writer at Tatler. She lives in London.

A Smart Girl's Guide to Starting Middle School ($8.15 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Julie Williams Montalbano and Sara Hunt, is the Nook Daily Find for Families (requires NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet or NOOK Study).

Book Description
Middle school is all about change. This book, filled with tips and quizzes, will help girls feel more confident as they anticipate and adjust to the changes of middle school. Includes insights and information on what to expect, plus advice from other smart girls who’ve already made the grade in middle school.

Grade Level: 4 and up

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Boo: The Life of the World's Cutest Dog ($1.99), by J.H. Lee and Gretchen LeMaistre (Photographer).

Book Description
Everyone loves Boo! His signature fluffy head and teddy bear like persona are irresistibly adorable. With nearly a million Facebook fans, and adding more each day, Boo is poised to become an international superstar. This charming book features exclusive new photographs of Boo doing all his favorite things: lounging around, playing with friends, exploring the whole wide world, and making those famous puppy-dog eyes. To know Boo is to love him, and this book is for anyone who loves the cutest dog ever.

Free Audiobook + eBook - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Get a free MP3 download of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ($19.95 Audible), by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Simon Prebble (Narrator), along with a DRM-free PDF ebook over at Tantor Media.

Book Description
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close - the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. When "The Final Problem" was first published, the struggle between Holmes and his arch nemesis, seemingly to the death, left many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but it also led to his immortality as a literary figure. The stories that precede it included two narratives from Holmes himself - on a mutiny at sea and a treasure hunt in a Sussex country house - as well as a meeting with his brilliant brother, Mycroft.

Included in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are "Silver Blaze", "The Yellow Face", "The Stock-Broker's Clerk", "The Gloria Scott", "The Musgrave Ritual", "The Reigate Puzzle", "The Crooked Man", "The Resident Patient", "The Greek Interpreter", "The Naval Treaty", and "The Final Problem".

Get the free audiobook/ebook combo from Tantor Media. Once you've completed your purchase and have it in your library, you can download individual segments of the audiobook or grab the complete ZIP download, which also contains the PDF ebook, at any time.

Today's Deals

If you weren't able to get a Kindle w/ Special Offers for $47 from Amazon due to having the wrong credit card, check your local Walmart. They are advertising a $49 effective price, in-store only. You pay $79 and get a $30 gift card, which can be used for any other purchases (valid immediately). This does work out to be a bit more, since you'll also have taxes to pay and must shop at Walmart to get any use out of the gift card (hopefully it also works on gas purchases, for those that otherwise avoid the megastores). The sale ends Aug 25, 2012, or when they run out.

Tantor Media is having a $6.99 sale, with 137 MP3 downloads available at that price.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive ($1.99), by Steve Earle, one of Amazon's Best Books of the Month, May 2011. If you listen to any country music, you know who he is and will be familiar with the ghost in the story; combined with the rave reviews, this will be a must read.

Book Description
Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just in the figurative sense, not just because he was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him.

In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is wracked by addiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, his morphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So he lives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south side of San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knife or gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc's services, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist that never heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe, for Hank's angry ghost—who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doing well.

A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of music history, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is also a marvelous novel in its own right, a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

Apples ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Richard Milward, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.62).

Book Description
Out of the bleakness of their Middlesbrough housing estate, fueled by cheap plonk, porn and dysfunctional families, Adam and Eve narrate this dazzling, tragicomic love story of adolescence in all its f[****]d-up glory.

As a distraction from sleazy male admirers, spiteful classmates and her mother's cancer, Eve's eyes are opened to a multicolour life of one-night stands, drug-fueled discos and cheap plonk. She barely has time to notice Adam. Adam, however, notices Eve. While contending with sexual frustration, a violent father and increasingly compulsive behaviour, is he too busy reading Razzle in the attic to make his move?

Narrated alternately by Adam and Eve, alongside a cast of delinquents, perverts and butterflies, "Apples" is an exploration of the difficulties of growing up and of getting 'f[****]d as quick as you can'.

A Short History of the World ($7.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Christopher Lascelles, is the Nook Daily Find.

Book Description
There is an increasing realisation that our knowledge of world history–and how it all fits together–is far from perfect. A Short History of the World aims to fill the big gaps in our historical knowledge with a book that is easy to read and assumes little prior knowledge of past events.

The book does not aim to come up with groundbreaking new theories on why things occurred, but rather gives a broad overview of the generally accepted version of events so that non-historians will feel less ignorant when discussing the past.

To help readers put events, places and empires into context, the book includes 32 maps specially commissioned to accompany the text. The result is a book that is reassuringly epic in scope but refreshingly short in length. An excellent place to start to bring your historical knowledge up to scratch!

The Paper Bag Princess ($1.89 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko (Illustrator), is the Nook Daily Find for Families, slightly better than price matched on Kindle. Note that the Nook edition requires a NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet or NOOK Kids for iPad, while the Kindle edition requires a Kindle Fire, Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle for iPad or Kindle for Android.

Book Description
In this bestselling modern classic, Princess Elizabeth is slated to marry Prince Ronald when a dragon attacks the castle and kidnaps Ronald. In resourceful and humorous fashion, Elizabeth finds the dragon, outsmarts him, and rescues Ronald—who is less than pleased at her un-princess-like appearance.

Grade Level: P and up. Kindle edition features Kindle Text Pop-Up on Kindle Fire and select Kindle Apps.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Amulet of Samarkand ($1.99), the first title in the Bartimaeus series by Jonathan Stroud. I've been reading this series and definitely recommend it, regardless of your age.

Book Description
Nathaniel is a magician's apprentice, taking his first lessons in the arts of magic. But when a devious hot-shot wizard named Simon Lovelace ruthlessly humiliates Nathaniel in front of his elders, Nathaniel decides to kick up his education a few notches and show Lovelace who's boss. With revenge on his mind, he summons the powerful djinni, Bartimaeus. But summoning Bartimaeus and controlling him are two different things entirely, and when Nathaniel sends the djinni out to steal Lovelace's greatest treasure, the Amulet of Samarkand, he finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of magical espionage, murder, and rebellion.

Grade Level: 5 and up

The Hunger Games ($1.99 Kindle, Google), by Suzanne Collins, is today's Flash Sale eBook on Google Play, price matched on Kindle, as is the rest of the Hunger Game series ($5.99) and the Underland Chronicles ($5.24). If you missed it when it was on sale earlier in the year, grab it now, as it has gone back up to $9+ in other stores.

Book Description
The astonishing bestseller...

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Today's Deals

Additional formats on free books:

• Grave Danger (K/N/E)

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Midnight in Austenland ($1.99), by Shannon Hale.

Book Description
When Charlotte Kinder treats herself to a two-week vacation at Austenland, she happily leaves behind her ex-husband and his delightful new wife, her ever-grateful children, and all the rest of her real life in America. She dons a bonnet and stays at a country manor house that provides an immersive Austen experience, complete with gentleman actors who cater to the guests' Austen fantasies.

Everyone at Pembrook Park is playing a role, but increasingly, Charlotte isn't sure where roles end and reality begins. And as the parlor games turn a little bit menacing, she finds she needs more than a good corset to keep herself safe. Is the brooding Mr. Mallery as sinister as he seems? What is Miss Gardenside's mysterious ailment? Was that an actual dead body in the secret attic room? And-perhaps of the most lasting importance-could the stirrings in Charlotte's heart be a sign of real-life love?

The follow-up to reader favorite Austenland provides the same perfectly plotted pleasures, with a feisty new heroine, plenty of fresh and frightening twists, and the possibility of a romance that might just go beyond the proper bounds of Austen's world. How could it not turn out right in the end?

The Moth Diaries ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Rachel Klein, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US Kindle edition).

Book Description
At an exclusive girls' boarding school, a sixteen-year-old girl records her most intimate thoughts in a diary. The object of her obsession is her room-mate, Lucy Blake, and Lucy's friendship with their new and disturbing classmate. Ernessa is a mysterious presence with pale skin and hypnotic eyes. Around her swirl dark secrets and a series of ominous disasters. As fear spreads through the school, fantasy and reality mingle into a waking nightmare of gothic menace, fuelled by the lusts and fears of adolescence. And at the centre of the diary is the question that haunts all who read it: Is Ernessa really a vampire? Or is the narrator trapped in her own fevered imagination?

A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), by Steven Kotler, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Steven Kotler was forty years old and facing an existential crisis—which made him not too different from just about every other middle-aged guy in Los Angeles. Then he met Joy, a woman devoted to the cause of canine rescue. "Love me, love my dogs," was her rule, and not having any better ideas, Steven took it to heart. Together with their pack of eight dogs—then fifteen dogs, then twenty-five dogs, then, well, they lost count—Steven and Joy bought a tiny farm in a tiny town in rural New Mexico and started the Rancho de Chihuahua, a sanctuary for dogs with special needs.

While dog rescue is one of the largest underground movements in America, it is also one of the least understood. This insider look at the cult and culture of dog rescue begins with Kotler's personal experience working with an ever-peculiar pack of dogs and becomes a much deeper investigation into exactly what it means to devote one's life to the furry and the four-legged.

Along the way, Kotler combs through every aspect of canine-human relations, from human's long history with dogs through brand new research into the neuroscience of canine companionship, in the end discovering why living in a world of dogs may be the best way to uncover the truth about what it really means to be human.

Number the Stars ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Lois Lowry, is the Nook Daily Find for Families, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
This Newbery Medal Book describes how a ten-year-old Danish girl's bravery is tested when her best friend is threatened by Nazis in 1943.

As the German troops begin their campaign to “relocate” all the Jews of Denmark, Annemarie Johansen’s family takes in Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen Rosen, and conceals her as part of the family.

Through the eyes of ten-year-old Annemarie, we watch as the Danish Resistance smuggles almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark, nearly seven thousand people, across the sea to Sweden. The heroism of an entire nation reminds us that there was pride and human decency in the world even during a time of terror and war.

Grade Level: 4 and up

Finally, there is a new feature in the Today's Deals posts: the Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site ($1.99), by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld, which steadily climbed up the New York Times' Bestseller list throughout 2011, reaching #1 in January of this year. On the Amazon product page, you can also read an exclusive interview with Ms. Rinker, complete with several illustrations from the creative process.

Book Description
As the sun sets behind the big construction site, all the hardworking trucks get ready to say goodnight. One by one, Crane Truck, Cement Mixer, Dump Truck, Bulldozer, and Excavator finish their work and lie down to rest - so they'll be ready for another day of rough and tough construction play! With irresistible artwork by best-selling illustrator Tom Lichtenheld and sweet, rhyming text, this book will have truck lovers of all ages begging for more.

Grade Level: P and up. Features Kindle Text Pop-Up for reading text over images on the Kindle Fire and Kindle for Android App.

Today's Deals

Additional formats on free books:

• Alone Time (K/DF)

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is The Tea-Olive Bird Watching Society ($1.99), by Augusta Trobaugh.

Book Description
A modern spin on the classic film Arsenic and Old Lace

The women of a small town’s bird watching society secretly plan to “eliminate” the husband of one of their members in this new novel written by the beloved author of Sophie and the Rising Sun.

In a story replete with coconut cake, grits, and poisoned turtle stew, the founding members of the Tea-Olive Bird Watching Society in tiny Tea-Olive, Georgia, are conspiring to murder retired judge L. Hyson Breed, a newcomer to Tea-Olive. It all begins when the judge tricks one of them into marriage, steals her land for a development project, and sweet talks his way right onto the town council. By the time they discover his evil plans the judge is already a permanent fixture in town. Or is he?

The Shrink and the Sage ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Julian Baggini and Antonia Macaro, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition). One the UK's best-known philosophers, Baggini's The Ego Trick ($1.71 / £1.09 UK) is also on sale for those in the UK, while his Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests ($1.50) is on sale for US customers.

Book Description

• Can infidelity be good for you?
• What does it mean to stay true to yourself?
• Must we fulfill our potential?

Self-help with a distinctly cerebral edge, the shrink and the sage – aka Julian Baggini and Antonia Macaro – have been dispensing advice through their FT column since October 2010. Combining practical advice on personal dilemmas with meditations on the meaning of concepts like free will, spirituality and independence, this book – their first together – expands on these columns and adds much more. Through questions of existential unease, metaphysical trauma and – for instance – how much we should care about our appearance, intellectual agony uncle and aunt team Baggini and Macaro begin to piece together the answer that we’d all like to hear: what is the good life, and how we can live it?

Breaking Free: Discover the Victory of Total Surrender ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), by Beth Moore, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Do you want to know God and really believe Him? Do you want to find satisfaction in God, experience His peace, and enjoy His presence? Do you want to make the freedom Christ promised a reality in your daily life?

In Breaking Free, Beth Moore embarks on a study of selected passages from the book of Isaiah, drawing several parallels between the captive Israelites and today's Christians, in order to show how to make freedom in Christ a daily reality. Moore teaches readers to remove obstacles that hinder freedom by identifying spiritual strongholds in their lives and overcoming them through the truth of God's Word--truth that will set us free.

Attack of the Vampire Weenies: And Other Warped and Creepy Tales ($5.99 Kindle, $3.60 B&N), by David Lubar, is the Nook Daily Find for Families. This is an Agency publisher, so should be price matched (eventually, it probably will be). According to the synopsis in both stores, this is being sold DRM-free, so you should be able to buy the EPUB from B&N and convert it for Kindle, but it isn't something I've tried with a heavily illustrated children's book.

Book Description
A boy steals a ticket to an amusement park and gets the ride of a lifetime—literally. The first day of middle school turns into a free-for-all when the gym teacher offers a “get-out-of-gym-free” card. Sick of his sister’s vampire wannabe friends, a kid decides to teach them a lesson at their next party. But the tables are turned when some surprise guests show up.

Critically acclaimed author and master of the macabre, David Lubar, is back with thirty more warped and creepy tales for fans of his bestselling Weenies story collections, which have sold more than 1.7 million copies to date.

Don’t be a weenie. Read these stories. If you dare!

Grade Level: 4 and up

Shatter Me ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), by Tahereh Mafi, is the Nook Weekend Deal, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
"You can't touch me," I whisper. I'm lying, is what I don't tell him. He can touch me, is what I'll never tell him. But things happen when people touch me. Strange things. Bad things. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon. But Juliette has plans of her own. After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever.

Grade Level: 9 and up