Today's Deals 12/31

Have a safe New Year's Eve, everyone!

Today's Kindle Teens Daily Deal is Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children ($1.99), by Ransom Riggs, an Amazon Best of the Month Book from June, 2011.

Book Description
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here—one of whom was his own grandfather—were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Art of Fielding ($1.99), by Chad Harbach, which was Amazon's Best Book of 2011.

Book Description
At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment--to oneself and to others.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is On the Island ($1.99), by Tracey Garvis Graves.

Book Description
Two people stranded on an island struggle to survive—and slowly fall in love—in the runaway New York Times bestseller from the author of the forthcoming novel COVET.

Anna Emerson is a thirty-year-old English teacher desperately in need of adventure. Worn down by the cold Chicago winters and a relationship that’s going nowhere, she jumps at the chance to spend the summer on a tropical island tutoring sixteen-year-old T.J.

T.J. Callahan has no desire to go anywhere. His cancer is in remission and he wants to get back to his normal life. But his parents are insisting he spend the summer in the Maldives catching up on all the school he missed last year.

Anna and T.J. board a private plane headed to the Callahan’s summer home, and as they fly over the Maldives’ twelve hundred islands, the unthinkable happens. Their plane crashes in shark-infested waters. They make it to shore, but soon discover that they’re stranded on an uninhabited island.

At first, their only thought is survival. But as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.’s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is The Eyre Affair ($1.99), the first Thursday Next novel by Jasper Fforde.

Book Description
Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series of Thursday Next novels introduces literary detective Thursday Next and her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England

Fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it’s a bibliophile’s dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy—enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel—unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix. Thursday’s zany investigations continue with six more bestselling Thursday Next novels, including One of Our Thursdays is Missing and the upcoming The Woman Who Died A Lot. Visit jasperfforde.com.

The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is three titles for £0.99 each (~80% off).

Burning Man (Main/UK), by Alan Russell (US edition $4.99)

LAPD cop Michael Gideon and his police dog partner Sirius became reluctant celebrities after capturing a notorious serial killer in the midst of an inferno. For their heroism, they were chosen to head up the newly formed Special Cases Unit. Now the duo tackles out-of-the-ordinary cases, anything deemed unusual or bizarre even by Hollyweird standards.

When a teenager is found crucified in a city park, Gideon and Sirius are handed the bizarre case. Confronting the gruesome tableau and having to work the case worsens Detective Gideon’s PTSD, a condition he has tried to hide from others. Gideon’s burns may have healed, but the fire haunts him still...in more ways than one.

Eerily prescient since that terrible night of the fire, Gideon has unusual insights into the crimes he investigates, a skill he and Sirius must learn to trust as much as they do each other if they are to solve—and survive—this case.

House of Evidence (Main/UK), by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson, translated by Andrew Cauthery and Björg Árnadóttir (US edition $4.99)

On a cold January morning in 1973, inside a stately old house in Reykjavik, blood pools around Jacob Kieler Junior from a fatal gunshot wound to his chest. Detective Jóhann Pálsson, an expert in the emerging field of forensics, is called to the scene and soon discovers something more unsettling than the murder itself: the deceased’s father, Jacob Kieler Senior, a railroad engineer, was shot to death in the same living room nearly thirty years earlier. The case was officially closed as a botched robbery.

Pálsson soon uncovers diaries that portray Kieler Senior as an ambitious man dedicated to bringing the railroad to Iceland no matter the cost. Sensing a deeper and darker mystery afoot, the detective and his colleagues piece together through the elder Kieler’s diaries a family history rich with deceit…

Shame (Main/UK), by Alan Russell (US edition $4.99)

Although it’s been many years since the death of his father—an infamous serial killer known as Shame—Caleb Parker still struggles to free himself from his father’s dark shadow. Caleb wishes only for a normal life without being branded a “killer’s son,” but his dreams are shattered when a new string of murders surfaces that are all too reminiscent of Shame’s terrible killings.

When the police label him the prime suspect, Caleb forges an unlikely partnership with true-crime author Elizabeth Line, a writer whose career began when she survived an encounter with Shame and who then went on to document his life—and death. As the body count begins to pile up, Elizabeth and Caleb come to the conclusion that one of them has been targeted by the killer, and a game of cat and mouse begins as they try to uncover the murderer’s identity before becoming his next victims.

Brutal and unapologetic, Shame draws you into the mind of a serial killer with no chance of escape until the last page is turned.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir ($12.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Jenny Lawson, is the Nook Daily Find; it should be price matched on Kindle, as it is from one of the Agency publisher holdouts, Penguin.

Book Description
For fans of Tina Fey and David Sedaris—Internet star Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, makes her literary debut.

Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives—the ones we’d like to pretend never happened—are in fact the ones that define us. In the #1 New York Times bestseller, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson takes readers on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor. Chapters include: “Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel”; “A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband”; “My Vagina Is Fine. Thanks for Asking”; “And Then I Snuck a Dead Cuban Alligator on an Airplane.” Pictures with captions (no one would believe these things without proof) accompany the text.

$2 Credit on Apps and Games (KSO)

This offer is only for those with a Kindle Fire with Special Offers (KFSO):

$2 Credit on Apps and Games in the Amazon Appstore

From the home page of your KFSO, swipe the top menu to the left until you see Offers, then press/click in order to see the current offers. Click on the offer, then on the orange button to add the credit directly to your account. It's nearly instant and the next screen offers to take you to Amazon so you can spend that credit away! If you miss that screen, though, don't worry - a document about the offer will appear on your home page.

You can shop from your Kindle Fire or your PC, but you need to check for any individual product that is excluded from this (and all other) promotions, on the product detail page and I don't know if you can see that info on the mobile pages you get on the Fire itself. You must sign up by Midnight January 1, 2013 and use the credit by midnight, Jan 8.

You might as well apply this one to your account right away, since it will apply automatically to any eligible purchase.

This deal drops the cost of premium games such as Angry Birds Star Wars Premium HD or PAC-MAN HD down to 99 cents or is enough pick up a one or two of games such as Skylanders Cloud Patrol or Pudding Monsters HD, at no charge. Always check the compatibility before buying, to make sure it will run on the device you intend to use and don't assume anything from the name (that last one has HD in the name, but works on every device I have, including my phone; others I've seen with HD in the name won't work at all on the Kindle Fire HD devices). To make your credit go the furthest, check out some of the sale games on the New Releases or Bestseller pages, such as Monopoly MILLIONAIRE and Need for Speed Most Wanted for only 99 cents, marked down from $5 and $7! If you are searching for something more educational, for your little ones, Team Umizoomi Math: Zoom into Numbers and several other Nickelodeon games are also 99 cents or less right now.

Today's Deals 12/30

At Tantor Media, they are having another $4.99 audiobook sale, this one good until the 1st, so you have a couple of days to listen to the samples.

If you are an Amazon Prime member, you have two more days to make your Kindle loan selection for this month, if you've forgotten to do. If you bought any of the new Kindle Fires for the holidays, there is a decent chance that Amazon activated a 30 day trial of Prime, when you registered the device, so you might want to check, even if you don't think you are a Prime member

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is continues with year-end deals: "Today only, 50 mysteries and thrillers are each just $1.99 or less, including 14 James Bond novels and suspenseful books by Frank Wheeler Jr., Andrew Peterson, T.R. Ragan, and more" (up to 80% off). Looks like I'll be going thru samples once again, later today.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Fire Dance ($0.99), by Delle Jacobs, with the companion audiobook only $4.99.

Book Description
A mysterious castle.
A deadly gift.
A missing, unwilling bride.
And a Norman knight determined to conquer all.

Ordered by his King to carry out a cryptic command—kill a wicked sorcerer lord, seize his castle, and take his daughter as a wife—Alain de Crency expects a fierce battle. Instead he discovers a defenseless castle, the daughter missing, and the sorcerer dead, shrouded in a magnificent purple cloak. With no knowledge of the evil lurking within it, Alain takes the cloak as his own before investigating the whereabouts of his supposed betrothed.

Upon Alain’s arrival, Melisande, the sorcerer’s daughter who begrudgingly learned her father’s sinister trade, hides in plain sight as a servant. But Alain suspects this beautiful blonde knows more than she claims, and he resolves to uncover the truth—if he can resist his burning desire for her.

Soon Melisande realizes her father’s infernal magic reaches beyond the grave—and that only Alain can save her people from the menacing evil. But with Alain’s new cloak dyed in poison, can Melisande save her people’s savior without revealing her dark secrets to the man who’s captured her heart?

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One ($1.99), by Evan Currie. Published by Amazon's 47North imprint, I'll probably pick this one up, to go with two others of his that I've snagged on sales.

Book Description
After an epic maiden voyage that introduced Earth to a larger universe—and a cosmos full of terrifying new enemies—Captain Eric Weston and the crew of the NAC spacecraft Odyssey have spent months cooling their heels under their admiral’s watchful eye. But when Earth’s newest ally, the Priminae, strike a defense deal with the North American Confederacy, the Odyssey finally receives her orders: return to Ranquil, the Priminae’s war-ravaged homeworld, and lend badly needed support against the invading Drasin.

Weston and his crew are hungry for action, yet once back on Ranquil, they realize not all is as it seems. Yes, the Drasin are a formidable foe, but Weston suspects a powerful unseen force is waging the war that could alter forever the face of the universe. Determined to unmask the mysterious puppet masters, Weston and his motley crew defy NAC protocol and venture into deep space…where they will discover an enemy unlike any they have ever faced. The long-awaited follow-up to the spectacular Into the Black: Odyssey One combines old-school space opera with modern storytelling to create an exhilarating new sci-fi adventure.

Tuesday's Gone (£1.99 UK), the second novel in the Frieda Klein series by Nicci French, is the first Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is a $14.99 pre-order).

Book Description
Internationally bestselling authors Nicci Gerard and Sean French, writing as Nicci French, have sold more than eight million copies of their books worldwide. But nothing they’ve written written before has grabbed the attention of reviewers and readers like Blue Monday and its iconic heroine, Frieda Klein. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it a “superb psychological thriller . . . with brooding atmosphere, sustained suspense, a last-minute plot twist, and memorable cast of characters.”

In Tuesday’s Gone, a London social worker makes a routine home visit only to discover her client, Michelle Doyce, serving afternoon tea to a naked, decomposing corpse. With no clues as to the dead man’s identity, Chief Inspector Karlsson again calls upon Frieda for help. She discovers that the body belongs to Robert Poole, con man extraordinaire. But Frieda can’t shake the feeling that the past isn’t done with her yet. Did someone kill Poole to embroil her in the investigation? And if so, is Frieda herself the next victim?

A masterpiece of paranoia, Tuesday’s Gone draws readers inexorably into a fractured and faithless world as it brilliantly confirms Frieda Klein as a quintessential heroine for our times.

The Enemy (£0.99 UK), by Charlie Higson, is the second Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $6.99).

Book Description
The first unputdownable adventure story in this phenomenal series, from the author of the bestselling Young Bond series and award-winning comedy writer and performer (The Fast Show, Down the Line), Charlie Higson.

They'll chase you.
They'll rip you open.
They'll feed on you . . .

When the sickness came, every parent, policeman, politician - every adult - fell ill. The lucky ones died. The others are crazed, confused and hungry.

Only children under fourteen remain, and they're fighting to survive.

Now there are rumours of a safe place to hide. And so a gang of children begin their quest across London, where all through the city - down alleyways, in deserted houses, underground - the grown-ups lie in wait.

But can they make it there - alive?

Think of a Number (£0.99 UK), by John Verdon, is the third Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.99).

Book Description
Think of a Number is the chilling debut from John Verdon.

It begins with a letter . . . The letter contains a request - think of a number, any number - and a sealed envelope. Inside the envelope is that number.

When Dave Gurney, retired NYPD homicide detective, is contacted by an old college acquaintance about some startling letters he's been receiving, it is at first little more than a diverting but sinister puzzle. Until the acquaintance is brutally killed.

Suddenly Gurney finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation that makes no sense. The killer seems to have known his victim intimately. How else was he able to predict his victim's thoughts, even his actions? How did he know his darkest secrets?

The killer is smart and he is playing with the police. Gurney needs to be smarter if he's going to catch him, but this seems only to be the beginning. And the killer alone knows where it will end.

Think of a Number is the debut from John Verdon and is the first in a series starring the retired detective Dave Gurney. In the tradition of Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay, John Verdon's unique high-concept plot and memorable cast of series characters will be a major hit with thriller fans. Subsequent titles include let The Devil Sleep and Shut Your Eyes Tight.

Rainshadow Road ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), the second Friday Harbor novel by Lisa Kleypas, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Lucy Marinn is a glass artist living in mystical, beautiful, Friday Harbor, Washington. She is stunned and blindsided by the most bitter kind of betrayal: her fiancé Kevin has left her. His new lover is Lucy’s own sister. Lucy's bitterness over being dumped is multiplied by the fact that she has constantly made the wrong choices in her romantic life. Facing the severe disapproval of Lucy's parents, Kevin asks his friend Sam Nolan, a local vineyard owner on San Juan Island, to "romance" Lucy and hopefully loosen her up and get her over her anger. Complications ensue when Sam and Lucy begin to fall in love, Kevin has second thoughts, and Lucy discovers that the new relationship in her life began under false pretenses. Questions about love, loyalty, old patterns, mistakes, and new beginnings are explored as Lucy learns that some things in life—even after being broken—can be made into something new and beautiful.

Today's Kindle Teen Daily Deal is Flat-Out Love ($0.99), by Jessica Park.

Book Description
He was tall, at least six feet, with dirty blond hair that hung over his eyes. His T-shirt read Nietzsche Is My Homeboy.

So, that was Matt. Who Julie Seagle likes. A lot. But there is also Finn. Who she flat out loves.

Complicated? Awkward? Completely.

But really, how was this freshly-minted Boston transplant and newbie college freshman supposed to know that she would end up living with the family of an old friend of her mother's? This was all supposed to be temporary. Julie wasn't supposed to be important to the Watkins family, or to fall in love with one of the brothers. Especially the one she's never quite met. But what does that really matter? Finn gets her, like no one ever has before. They have connection.

But here's the thing about love, in all its twisty, bumpy permutations—it always throws you a few curves. And no one ever escapes unscathed.

New York Times best-selling author Jessica Park mines the territory of love’s growing pains with wit, sharp insights, and a discernible heat and heartbeat. Her previous novels include Relatively Famous, and she authored the e-shorts What the Kid Says (Parts 1 and 2) and Facebooking Rick Springfield.

Today's Deals 12/29

In a repeat of the sale after last Christmas, Amazon has over 2,000 MP3 Albums for $5, so you can fill up your Cloud Player (or your new Kindle Fire) at a discount. This list of albums is separate from their usual 100 MP3 Albums for $5 monthly deal. The sale lasts thru the end of January (although I suspect some albums have a limit on the number included in the sale and that the total selection may decline as the sale continues.

For those that missed it when it was free in a bonus edition (two years ago), this is now free on Kindle, in addition to B&N (but may not last long):

• Executive Privilege (K/N)

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Bridge to Terabithia ($1.99), by Katherine Paterson and Donna Diamond (Illustrator).

Book Description
All summer, Jess pushed himself to be the fastest boy in the fifth grade, and when the year's first school-yard race was run, he was going to win.But his victory was stolen by a newcomer, by a girl, one who didn't even know enough to stay on the girls' side of the playground. Then, unexpectedly, Jess finds himself sticking up for Leslie, for the girl who breaks rules and wins races. The friendship between the two grows as Jess guides the city girl through the pitfalls of life in their small, rural town, and Leslie draws him into the world of imaginations world of magic and ceremony called Terabithia. Here, Leslie and Jess rule supreme among the oaks and evergreens, safe from the bullies and ridicule of the mundane world. Safe until an unforeseen tragedy forces Jess to reign in Terabithia alone, and both worlds are forever changed.

In this poignant, beautifully rendered novel, Katherine Paterson weaves a powerful story of friendship and courage.

Grade Level: 4 and up

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is is another blockbuster sale! "Save up to 90% on a diverse selection of more than 200 books, including literary fiction, mysteries and thrillers, biographies and memoirs, and more." I actually see 233 titles, at $1.99 each, in the sale and once on the deals page, you can narrow the list by genre, using the menu on the left sidebar. There are way too many to list, so I'll leave you to explore on your own (good thing it isn't a workday for most of you!). My problem will be narrowing down my choices, as I've already spotted such interesting titles as Kitty Cornered: How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home by Bob Tarte, Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America's Heartland by Thomas Wolf and Patricia L. Bryan, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Baileyand An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance ($1.99), by Nancy Verde Barr. I bought this in September, but haven't managed to get to it yet.

Book Description
After ending a bad relationship, Casey Costello, an executive chef at a morning television show, swears off men. Who has the time anyway? She's busy overseeing a rambunctious food-prep crew in a kitchen the size of a closet; trying to please high-maintenance celebrity guest chefs; and dealing with her large extended Italian American family, who believe that the solutions to life's problems involve food. And in the midst of her high-energy, stress-inducing career—punctuated by a steady stream of parties and restaurant openings that must not be missed—she's trying to uncover why Sally Woods, a grand old dame of the culinary world and regular on the television show, is suddenly ready to jump ship and find a new station and a new executive chef.

When Danny O'Shea, a handsome chef from one of New York's hottest new restaurants, makes a guest appearance on the show, Casey smells trouble. But feelings ignite faster than a flambé dessert, especially when Danny whips up a few surprises during a television shoot in Italy.

Narrated in Casey's smart and refreshingly disarming voice, Last Bite is an irresistible culinary caper, with characters whose appetites are as big as their personalities.

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Hillary Jordan's When She Woke, Steve Stern's The Frozen Rabbi, Carrie Brown's Rose's Garden, and Jack O'Connell's The Resurrectionist, each on sale for $1.99 (up to 90% off).

When She Woke, by Hillary Jordan

Bellwether Prize winner Hillary Jordan’s provocative new novel, When She Woke, tells the story of a stigmatized woman struggling to navigate an America of a not-too-distant future, where the line between church and state has been eradicated and convicted felons are no longer imprisoned and rehabilitated but chromed—their skin color is genetically altered to match the class of their crimes—and then released back into the population to survive as best they can. Hannah is a Red; her crime is murder.

In seeking a path to safety in an alien and hostile world, Hannah unknowingly embarks on a path of self-discovery that forces her to question the values she once held true and the righteousness of a country that politicizes faith.

The Frozen Rabbi, by Steve Stern

Award-winning novelist Steve Stern’s exhilarating epic recounts the story of how a nineteenth-century rabbi from a small Polish town ends up in a basement freezer in a suburban Memphis home at the end of the twentieth century. What happens when an impressionable teenage boy inadvertently thaws out the ancient man and brings him back to life is nothing short of miraculous.

Rose's Garden, by Carrie Brown

Conrad and Rose met as children, fell in love as teenagers, and married young. Conrad earned a living as a gilder, raised homing pigeons, and worshipped Rose. Rose gardened. They lived together for more than fifty years, and then Rose died. At seventy-five, Conrad found himself alone, staring at the walls of his house and neglecting Rose's garden. Then an angel came to the garden, the last person he ever thought to see wearing wings. Startled, he felt compelled to spread the news throughout his town, and to his surprise, people he'd known all his life began to reveal their deepest selves to him. ROSE'S GARDEN tells an unforgettable story of a woman whose garden extended far beyond the boundaries of property and time, and the man who came into full blossom in its bower.

The Resurrectionist, by Jack O'Connell

The Resurrectionist is a wild ride into a territory where nothing is as it appears. Part classic noir thriller, part fabulist fable, it is the story of Sweeney and his comatose son, Danny. Hoping for a miracle, Sweeney has brought Danny to the fortresslike Peck Clinic, whose doctors claim to have "resurrected" patients who were similarly lost in the void. but the real cure for his son's condition may lie in Limbo, a comic book world beloved by Danny before he slipped into a coma.

O'Connell has crafted a spellbinding novel about stories and what they can do for and to those who create them and those who consume them. About the nature of consciousness and the power of the unknown. And, ultimately, about forgiveness and the depth of our need to extend it and receive it.

The Kindle Fire edition of Guinness World Records 2013 ($2.09 / £1.29 UK) is the first Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.99). Don't have a Kindle Fire? Grab the e-Ink Edition ($2.09 / £0.99 UK) at an even lower price.

Book Description
The Guinness World Records 2013 eBook (Kindle Fire) has been specifically designed for the Kindle Fire and features thousands of brand new inspirational achievements and exclusive pictures in full colour chronicling Guinness World Records from all over the world! With more than 4,000 records and a dozen chapters Guinness World Records 2013 is the must-have eBook of the year for aspiring record-breakers of all ages. From Wacky Vehicles and Animalympics to special pages devoted to a world tour of superlatives and an exploration of the extremes of record-breaking, Guinness World Records 2013 is lavishly designed and brings to you the world of record-breaking like you’ve never seen it before!

Do Cats Have Belly Buttons?: And Answers to 244 Other Questions on the World of Science: And Answers to 249 Other Curious Questions ($1.60 / £0.99 UK), by Paul Heiney, is the second Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.32).

Book Description
Why do jellies wobble? Why don't the oceans overflow? Why do racing cars have fat tyres? How do widgets in beer cans work? How many bones does a giraffe have in that long neck? I've been told that dogs only see in black and white. Is that true? How do we know that no two snow crystals are the same? Why is the earth round? And how do we know it is? why do camels have such bad breath? What is a bruise? Are chemicals in my brain responsible for my falling in love? Will they fade as I grow older? How long can love last? Do Cats Have Belly Buttons? is a follow-up to the successful Can Cows Walk Down Stairs?. Answering life's big questions, as well as the small, it unravels the science behind those things we take for granted, and explains just why the world and its contents are as they are. Informative, entertaining, humorous, it is the perfect present for quizaholics, science addicts, the insatiably questioning, and anyone curious about life on earth.

Can Cows Walk Down Stairs?: Perplexing Questions Answered: The Best Brains Answer the Biggest and Smallest Scientific Questions ($1.60 / £0.99 UK), by Paul Heiney, is the third Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $8.15).

Book Description
What is ear wax for? Do bacteria have sex? How do they put stripes in toothpaste? Does your nose run in space? What are stars made of? This book answers those tantalising or perplexing questions for which you thought you'd never find an answer. A book for the naturally curious, as well as those seekers after scientific truths, it unravels both those things we take for granted, such as wehn you boil an egg, why does the yolk stay in the middle, or why is the sky blue, as well as questions which probe deeply, such as, what does an atom look like, or what was there before the beginning of time? if you were to write in the dust on the moon, how big would the letters have to be so you could see them from earth without a telescope? Drawing on the expertise of a team of enthusiastic scientists around the world, authoritative, entertaining, and often a touch humorous, it will appeal to anyone who's ever been curious about life on earth.

A Will & a Way ($4.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Nora Roberts, is the Nook Daily Find; it's likely to be price matched on Kindle later today.

Book Description
It was worse than winning the lottery—much worse. This bequest might mean more money, but the strings attached had Pandora McVie tied up in knots. Respecting Uncle Jolley's last wishes meant spending time isolated in the Catskills with Michael Donahue, her least favorite—though best looking—distant relative and cobeneficiary.

Living with a carrottopped termagant wasn't Michael's idea of a good time, either, but he realized they were stuck. Jolley was a matchmaker to the end—and apparently for some time beyond. What could happen in six months? Michael answered that one himself: almost anything.

RSS and Email Update

For those who get the Emailed version of the RSS Feed, I believe the new Feedblitz subscription is working and now delivers once a day, between 4 and 7 PM Eastern US time (more or less). So, I'll shut off the old feedburner emails this weekend (so those who only get that subscription will see this message and subscribe to the new feed, instead).

Note that the new subscription allows YOU to change how often you want it to be updated. You can keep the default once/day update or use the Click here to change your preferences link at the very bottom of any email to change your Delivery schedule. Options available are Default, Every 4 Hours, Every 8 Hours and Every 12 Hours. Any of these additional options may result in more than one email per day, but they'll also get you any late-breaking articles (like this one) many hours before the default subscription time.