Today's Deals 2/20

Today's Gold Box at Amazon is 59% off "Ben-Hur (50th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition)" and Select Blu-ray Oscar®-winning Titles for $13.99 (scroll down the page).

Today's free MP3 is the Green Hill Music - Celtic Sampler 2013 .

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Matthew Quirk's The 500 ($1.99).

Book Description
A gripping thriller debut, set deep in the heart of the world's most powerful political arena

A year ago, fresh out of Harvard Law School, Mike Ford landed his dream job at the Davies Group, Washington's most powerful consulting firm. Now, he's staring down the barrel of a gun, pursued by two of the world's most dangerous men. To get out, he'll have to do all the things he thought he'd never do again: lie, cheat, steal-and this time, maybe even kill.

Mike grew up in a world of small-stakes con men, learning lessons at his father's knee. His hard-won success in college and law school was his ticket out. As the Davies Group's rising star, he rubs shoulders with "The 500," the elite men and women who really run Washington -- and the world. But peddling influence, he soon learns, is familiar work: even with a pedigree, a con is still a con.

Combining the best elements of political intrigue and heart-stopping action, THE 500 is an explosive debut, one that calls to mind classic thrillers like The Firm and Presumed Innocent. In Mike Ford, readers will discover a new hero who learns that the higher the climb, the harder -- and deadlier -- the fall.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is The Banishment: A Novel of Regency England - Being the First Volume of The Daughters of Mannerling ($1.99), by M.C. Beaton & Marion Chesney.

Book Description
Isabella Beverley is blessed with unparalleled beauty but, unfortunately, has been raised in the most snobbish and haughtiest of families. And when her father gambles away their fortune--including Mannerling, the exquisite family mansion--Isabella discovers there is very little sympathy for her plight. As the eldest, Isabella is chosen to court Mr. Judd, the roguish bachelor who won Mannerling. Surely no sacrifice is too great to regain Mannerling? But tempting her away from Mr. Judd is Lord Fitzpatrick, an Irish rake who fears Isabella can never love a man as she does her home--but is nonetheless determined to convince her to choose man over manse!

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Blade Song ($0.99), the first title in the Colbana Files series by J.C. Daniels (aka Shiloh Walker).

Book Description
Kit Colbana--half breed, assassin, thief, jack of all trades--has a new job: track down the missing ward of one of the local alpha shapeshifters. It should be a piece of cake.So why is she so nervous? It probably has something to do with the insanity that happens when you deal with shifters--especially sexy ones who come bearing promises of easy jobs and easier money.Or maybe it's all the other missing kids that Kit discovers while working the case, or the way her gut keeps screaming she's gotten in over her head. Or maybe it's because if she fails--she's dead.If she can stay just one step ahead, she should be okay. Maybe she'll even live long to collect her fee...

War Crimes for the Home (£0.99 UK), by Liz Jensen, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).

Book Description
`You know what they say about GIs and English girls' knickers,' ran the wartime joke, `One Yank and they're off.' When Gloria met Ron, he was an American pilot who thought nothing of getting hit by shrapnel in the cockpit. She was working in a munitions factory in Bristol during the Blitz, but still found time to grab what she wanted. Ciggies. Sex. American soldiers. But war has an effect on people. Gloria did all sorts of things she wouldn't normally do - evil things, some of them - because she might be dead tomorrow. Or someone might. Now, fifty years on, it's payback time. In her old folks' home, Gloria is forced to remember the real truth about her and Ron, and confront the secret at the heart of her dramatic home front story. In a gripping, vibrant evocation of wartime Britain, Liz Jensen explores the dark impulses of women whose war crimes are committed on the home front, in the name of sex, survival, greed, and love.

Crossing Oceans ($8.54 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Gina Holmes, is the Nook Daily Find. No price match yet on Kindle, but this was free in Nov '10, a a $1.99 special the next year, so it may already be in your libraries.

Book Description
2011 Carol Award winner for Debut Author from ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers)

Jenny Lucas swore she’d never go home again. But being told you’re dying has a way of changing things. Years after she left, she and her five-year-old daughter, Isabella, must return to her sleepy North Carolina town to face the ghosts she left behind. They welcome her in the form of her oxygen tank–toting grandmother, her stoic and distant father, and David, Isabella’s dad . . . Who doesn’t yet know he has a daughter. As Jenny navigates the rough and unknown waters of her new reality, the unforgettable story that unfolds is a testament to the power of love and its ability to change everything—to heal old hurts, bring new beginnings . . . Even overcome the impossible. A stunning debut about love and loss from a talented new voice.

Today's Kindle Teen Daily Deal is The Stones of Mourning Creek ($1.99), by Diane Les Becquets.

Book Description
When fourteen-year-old Francie befriends Ruthie, a black girl, amidst the rampant prejudice in their small town in 1960s Alabama, she suffers from the gruesome harassment of her white peers. But Ruthie demonstrates the humanity and love that helps Francie uncover the truth behind her mother’s death and deal with her father’s neglect and alcoholism.

Books for a Buck

An extended trio of 99 cent books from HarperCollins that may not last long at this price. Links below are for Amazon, but those wanting EPUB should check at BooksonBoard, as well as Barnes & Noble or Kobo, for price matching (or even better, sometimes, at BoB).

Hit Man ($0.99), the first title in the Lawrence Block's John Keller Mysteries series. The companion audiobook is $2.99. The next three titles in the series are also on sale, at $3.99 apiece (50% off).

Book Description
Keller is your basic urban Lonely Guy.He makes a decent wage, lives in a nice apartment.Works the crossword puzzle. Watches a little TV. Until the phone rings and he packs a suitcase, gets on a plane, flies halfway across the country...and kills somebody. It's a living. But is it a life?

Keller's not sure. He goes to a shrink, but it doesn't work out the way he planned. He gets a dog, he gets a girlfriend. He gets along.

Final Appeal ($0.99), by Lisa Scottoline. Despite the title info shown at Amazon, this is a standalone title and not a part of the Rosato & Associates series.

Book Description
Grace Rossi is starting over after a divorce, and a part-time job with a federal appeals court sounds perfect. But she doesn't count on being assigned to an explosive death penalty appeal. Nor does she expect ardor in the court in the form of an affair with the chief judge. Then Grace finds herself investigating a murder, unearthing a secret bank account and following a trail of bribery and judicial corruption that's stumped even the FBI. In no time at all, Grace under fire takes on a whole new meaning.

Last up, the entire Sign of the Zodiac series by Vicki Pettersson is on sale for $0.99 per volume. I had the first four in the series, so quickly snapped up the two I need to complete it. Essentially, you get this entire Urban Fantasy series for less than the cost of a single paperback!.

The Scent of Shadows (check your libraries on this one, as a bonus edition was free in May 2010)

When she was sixteen, Joanna Archer was brutally assaulted and left to die in the Nevada desert.

By rights, she should be dead.

Now a photographer by day, she prowls a different Las Vegas after sunset—a grim, secret Sin City where Light battles Shadow—seeking answers to whom or what she really is . . . and revenge for the horrors she was forced to endure.

But the nightmare is just beginning—for the demons are hunting Joanna, and the powerful shadows want her for their own...

The Taste of Night

Equal parts Light and Shadow, Joanna Archer must fulfill a destiny she never wanted. Once a photographer and heiress to a casino fortune, she is now dedicated to the cause of good . . . but susceptible to the seductions of evil.

A deadly virus is descending on Las Vegas—a terrifying plague unleashed by the powerful overlord of Zodiac's dark side: Joanna's father. Chaos and panic grip Sin City as agents of Light fall prey to the terrifying epidemic. Death reigns supreme—and Joanna stands at dead center of an epic and terrible war long foretold, the last hope of a damned world.

But first she must somehow conquer the malevolence that grows all around her . . . and within.

The Touch of Twilight (companion audiobook $3.49)

On the surface she's a sexy, sophisticated socialite, at home among the beautiful people of the Las Vegas upper crust. But Joanna Archer inhabits another world: a place ordinary humans cannot see . . . a dangerous dimension where an eternal battle rages between the agents of Light and Shadow. And Joanna is both.

Stalked by an enigmatic doppelganger from a preternatural realm, Joanna can feel the Light failing—which is propelling her toward a terrifying confrontation with the ultimate master of evil, the dark lord of Shadow: her father.

Vegas is all about winning big . . . or losing everything. To save her friends, her future, her worlds, Joanna Archer must gamble it all by fully embracing the darkness inside her.

City of Souls

In Sin City, a little girl suffers from a strange and terrible malady. If she dies, the Light will die along with her.

Warrior, avenger, Joanna Archer has survived countless otherworldly terrors—and has found her rightful place among the agents battling the all-pervasive evil of Shadow . . . even as she struggles against the darkness within herself.

A war is raging for Las Vegas—a city without a heart—one that catapults Joanna into a new world hidden from mortal sight. In this lethally seductive alternate dimension the lines blur between good and evil, love and hate, and here lies the last hope for the Light. But Joanna's price of admission is a piece of her own soul—and the odds of her escaping are slim . . . to none.

Cheat the Grave

Las Vegas socialite and otherwordly avenger Joanna Archer gave up everything when she embraced mortality—abandoning her powers and altering her destiny to save a child . . . and a city. Now her former allies are her enemies—and her enemies have nothing to fear.

Yet still she is bound to a prophecy that condemns her to roam a nightmare landscape that ordinary humans cannot see and dare not enter. And a beast is on her trail—an insane killer blinded by bloodlust, who's determined to rip much more from Joanna than merely her now-fragile life. Survival is no longer an option in this dark realm where good and evil have blurred into confusing shades of gray—unless she can gather together an army of onetime foes and destroy everything she once believed in.

The Neon Graveyard

Once she was a soldier for the Light, the prophesied savior who would decide the outcome of the eternal conflict raging unseen in the dark corners of her glittering hometown. Now Joanna Archer is just another mortal—still born of an impossible union of Shadow and Light . . . still hunted by both—and carrying the unborn child of a lover held captive by a depraved demon goddess. Joining forces with a band of rogue Shadow agents, Joanna's ready to storm the stronghold of her demonic foe, risking everything to enter this ghastly, godforsaken realm where the price of admission is her eternal soul. Because in a world that has stripped her of her power, identity, and fortune, Joanna has nothing left to lose—except her baby, her future, and the epic war poised to consume the city.

A bonus for those reading thru to the end: Three free backlist/sidelist titles and a collection of essays from children's book author and PBS contributor Daniel Pinkwater.

• The Ghost of Squire House, by Joanne Pence
• Limbo Man, by Blair Bancroft
• The Serpent and the Grail (The Perilous Order of Camelot), by A. A. Attanasio
• Fish Whistle: Little Short Essays, by Daniel Pinkwater

Today's Deals 2/18

Today's Gold Box at Amazon is 70% off of Norton 360 Multi-Device software. This is what I use on my systems for anti-virus and other online protection. If you don't have anything or are due to renew, you might want to pick this up (you can hold it until you are ready to install and your year of protection starts when it is installed).

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Still with Me ($0.99), by Thierry Cohen and Summer Robinson (Translator), with the companion audiobook $1.99. This is an Amazon exclusive translation published by AmazonCrossing.

Book Description
Since its initial publication in France, Still with Me has been published in 15 countries. The book won France’s Grand Prix Jean d’Ormesson in 2007.

Jeremy takes his life on his twentieth birthday after childhood friend Victoria rejects his love.

On his twenty-first birthday, he wakes up.

Victoria is at his side, blissfully in love with him. While Jeremy can’t remember the previous year, he savors the miracle of waking up alongside the woman he loves.

The next time he wakes, another year has passed and he finds himself a spectator of his own life. Victoria now carries his child, but the man alongside her is a disturbingly different person—a cruel, egotistical, seemingly unknowable Jeremy. Is it amnesia? Insanity? Or has the God Jeremy defied with his selfish act now cursed him?

This strange and beautiful novel tells the tale of a man lost between life and death, but connected by the love—as friend, lover, son, and father—given and taken over the course of a lifetime, a love that simply won’t let go.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Crooked Hearts ($1.99), by Patricia Gaffney [Open Road].

Book Description
Two con artists team up in 1880s California for the score of a lifetime—but end up fighting for their lives instead

In a stagecoach en route to San Francisco, Grace Rousselot is posing as a nun to drum up “donations” from fellow travelers. Across from her, Reuben Jones is faking blindness to prey on unsuspecting travelers. Both grifters are surprised to learn that they have competition, and even more surprised when their stagecoach is ambushed and robbed, leaving them both flat broke.

Not keen to discuss the robbery with the police, Reuben and Grace decide to work together to recoup some of their losses. Soon enough, what starts out as a practical partnership evolves into something more. And with the Chinese mafia hot on their heels, neither is sure just how far they can trust a man—or a woman—with a crooked heart.

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Wild Seed ($2.99), by Octavia E. Butler [Open Road].

Book Description
When two immortals meet in the long-ago past, the destiny of mankind is changed forever

For a thousand years, Doro has cultivated a small African village, carefully breeding its people in search of seemingly unattainable perfection. He survives through the centuries by stealing the bodies of others, a technique he has so thoroughly mastered that nothing on Earth can kill him. But when a gang of New World slavers destroys his village, ruining his grand experiment, Doro is forced to go west and begin anew.

He meets Anyanwu, a centuries-old woman whose means of immortality are as kind as his are cruel. She is a shapeshifter, capable of healing with a kiss, and she recognizes Doro as a tyrant. Though many humans have tried to kill them, these two demi-gods have never before met a rival. Now they begin a struggle that will last centuries and permanently alter the nature of humanity.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author’s estate.

Playing It Safe: Crazy Stories from the World of Britain's Health and Safety Regulations (£0.99 UK), by Alan Pearce, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $5.82).

Book Description
Journalist Alan Pearce collects hilarious (all true, unfortunately) examples of Health and Safety gone mad from UK newspapers and websites that will make you cringe while crying with laughter. Includes:

• The author who was banned from selling his book in case it caused paper cuts.
• The swings removed from a playground in case children were blinded by the sun while playing on them.
• An international cycle race banned after worries about urinating cyclists.
• The risk assessment needed before a local village hall could sell mince pies.

After Dark ($7.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), the first novel in the Harmony/Ghost Hunters series by Jayne Castle, is the Nook Daily Find; this isn't yet price matched on Kindle, but should drop soon, as it's from Penguin, an Agency publisher.

Book Description
Welcome to Harmony—where the rules are a little different.

Life is tough these days for Lydia Smith, licensed para-archaeologist. Seriously stressed-out from a nasty incident in an alien tomb, she is obliged to work part-time in Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors, a very low-budget museum. She has a plan to get her career back on track, but it isn’t going well. Stuff keeps happening.

Take the dead body that she discovered in one of the sarcophagus exhibits. Who needed that? Finding out that her new client, Emmett London, is one of the most dangerous men in the city isn’t helping matters either. And that’s just today’s list of setbacks. Here in the shadows of the Dead City of Old Cadence, things don’t really heat up until After Dark.

Includes a preview of Jayne Castle’s Rainshadow Novel DECEPTION COVE

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is How to Hug ($1.99), by Maryann MacDonald and Jana Christy (Illustrator), published by Amazon's new imprint, Amazon Children's Publishing.

Book Description
Hugs can be tricky! But you can learn how to hug. Never hug anyone too tight—ouch! And don’t hug too many people at once—uh-oh! You can be a leg hugger or a bear hugger or a surprise hugger. If you don’t want a hug, it’s okay to say so. But if you learn how to give a hug and do it just right, you might get one back...so be ready! Jana Christy’s digital illustrations provide a charming twist to something everyone loves to do.

Today's Deals 2/17

Today's Kindle Teen Daily Deal is Secondhand Charm ($1.99), by Julie Berry [Bloomsbury].

Book Description
In a secluded village, magic sparkles on the edges of the forest. There, a young girl named Evie possesses unusually strong powers as a healer. A gypsy's charms-no more than trinkets when worn by others-are remarkably potent when Evie ties them around her neck. Her talents, and charms, have not escaped the notice of the shy stonemason's son. But Evie wants more than a quiet village and the boy next-door. When the prince's carriage arrives one day, and his footman has fallen ill, Evie might just get her chance after all . . .

Berry's debut novel garnered glowing reviews and strong sales-and now she's done it again with a beautifully woven tale to keep all readers, young and old, absolutely charmed.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Last Dance ($1.99), the fiftieth (50!) novel in Ed McBain's long-running 87th Precinct Mysteries series [Simon & Schuster]. A number of the older titles in this series are now published by Thomas & Mercer on Kindle, so are regularly priced at $4.99, while the newer, traditionally priced, titles are generally higher.

Book Description
The fiftieth is pure gold: from the author The New York Times calls "the man with the golden ear" comes the fiftieth novel in the 87th Precinct series.

In this city, you can get anything done for a price. If you want someone's eyeglasses smashed, it'll cost you a subway token. You want his fingernails pulled out? His legs broken? You want him more seriously injured? You want him hurt so he's an invalid his whole life? You want him skinned, you want him burned, you want him -- don't even mention it in a whisper -- killed? It can be done. Let me talk to someone. It can be done.

The hanging death of a nondescript old man in a shabby little apartment in a meager section of the 87th Precinct was nothing much in this city, especially to detectives Carella and Meyer. But everyone has a story, and this old man's story stood to make some people a lot of money. His story takes Carella, Meyer, Brown, and Weeks on a search through Isola's seedy strip clubs and to the bright lights of the theater district. There they discover an upcoming musical with ties to a mysterious drug and a killer who stays until the last dance.

The Last Dance is Ed McBain's fiftieth novel of the 87th Precinct and certainly one of his best. The series began in 1956 with Cop Hater and proves him to be the man who has been called "so good he should be arrested."

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Pulled ($1.99), by A. L. Jackson.

Book Description
Melanie Winters and Daniel Montgomery shared a love they believed bonded them together for life. After a tragic loss, overwhelming grief and misguided guilt distorts the truth, and their relationship ends in unanswered questions.

For nine years, they drift through life, each unable to forget the one who holds their heart.

Now, when their lives again intersect, will the power that drew them together be enough to heal the wounds from their past?

Pulled is a story of attraction and separation, of a love so strong it refuses to give up even when all others have.

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is all the three books in Stephen Leather's terrifying, top-rated "Nightingale" series for just $1.99 each. In addition, each has a companion audiobook, also priced at $1.99.

Nightfall (companion audiobook)

“You're going to hell, Jack Nightingale.”

These are the words that ended Jack Nightingale's career as a police negotiator. Now a struggling private detective, the chilling words return with a vengeance when Jack inherits a mansion with a priceless library—and a terrifying warning from a man who claims to be his father.

Nightingale quickly learns his soul was sold at birth and a devil will come to claim it on his thirty-third birthday, which is just three short weeks away. It’s a hard pill to swallow. He doesn't believe in Hell and probably doesn't believe in Heaven either. But when people close to him start to die horribly, he is led to the inescapable conclusion that real evil may be at work. And if he doesn't find a way out, he'll be damned for eternity.

Dripping with brooding intensity, unrelenting suspense, and surprising wit, United Kingdom thriller master Stephen Leather’s first book in the Nightingale series is a riveting, heart-stopping mystery with extraordinary range and power.

Midnight (companion audiobook)

“Your sister is going to hell, Jack Nightingale.”

Somehow, variations of that line keep former police negotiator Nightingale’s life careening in wild, unforeseen directions. This time, it is uttered by a dead woman hanging over a staircase, her neck broken by the laundry cord she tied around it before tossing herself over the banister. But Jack and his sister have been separated since birth…How can he save someone he’s never met?

Nightingale goes on the hunt for the sister he never knew, but everyone he talks to about her dies horribly. It’s as if someone—or something—is determined to keep them apart. If he's going to save her, he's going to have to do what he does best: negotiate. But any negotiation with the forces of darkness comes at a terrible price, and first Jack must ask himself a question: is every soul worth saving?

Sharp and intense, UK master Stephen Leather’s second book in The Nightingale Trilogy is a taut, relentlessly paced thriller as terrifying and dark as midnight itself.

Nightmare (companion audiobook)

The last case of police negotiator Jack Nightingale’s career ended in the death of nine-year-old Sophie Underwood. Since then he’s saved his own soul from the devil…but now he’s haunted by Sophie’s cries for help. And when a gangbanger lying in a hospital bed with no brain activity repeatedly drops Jack’s name, Nightingale realizes Sophie may desperately need him. But why?

Police superintendent Ronald Chalmers is determined to pin the gangbanger’s almost-murder on Jack, but he is preoccupied with Sophie and whether or not she’s in eternal torment—or if demons are torturing and deceiving him in order to gain the ultimate prize. With time running out, he’ll have to face down Chalmers and the police, south London gangs, and Hell itself in order to find the answer…

A riveting climax to The Nightingale Trilogy, Nightmare is a freight train of action, intensity, and suspense that delivers the force of eternal damnation and the power of the human soul.

The Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK is six books in the For Dummies series priced at £2.69 - £2.89 each.

• Astronomy For Dummies (Main/UK) by Stephen P. Maran
• Starting a Business For Dummies, UK Edition (Main/UK) by Colin Barrow
• Writing a Novel and Getting Published For Dummies (Main/UK) by George Green and Lizzy Kremer
• British History for Dummies (Main/UK)by Sean Lang
• Marketing For Dummies (Main/UK) by Gregory Brooks, Alexander HIAM, Craig Smith and Ruth Mortimer
• Living Paleo For Dummies (Main/UK) by Melissa Joulwan and Kellyann Petrucci

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Ann Voskamp, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Just like you, Ann Voskamp hungers to live her one life well. Forget the bucket lists that have us escaping our everyday lives for exotic experiences. 'How,' Ann wondered, 'do we find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and daily duties? What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long---and sometimes even dark? How is God even here?'

In One Thousand Gifts, Ann invites you to embrace everyday blessings and embark on the transformative spiritual discipline of chronicling God's gifts. It's only in this expressing of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we've always wanted ... a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved --- by God.

Let Ann's beautiful, heart-aching stories of the everyday give you a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of being present to God that makes you deeply happy, and a way of living that is finally fully alive.
Come live the best dare of all!

Today's Deals 2/15

I've found another of the massive classical music compilations on sale at Amazon: the Big Mozart Box has nearly 14 hours of music for 99 cents!

Amazon's Android Free App of the Day is Cubistry. This is basically a 3D Mahjongg game that uses shapes and colors, rather than oriental tiles or card faces. I just played thru one game and it looks like one I'll keep on the favorites list.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Swan Song ($1.99), by Robert R. McCammon, with the companion audiobook at $3.95 (if you don't want the book, you can save a dollar by getting the audiobook only at $4.95 on the members-only Win-Win sale, thru the 18th).

Book Description
McCammon’s epic bestselling novel about a girl psychic struggling to survive in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust

Something flashes in nine-year-old Swan’s brain, telling her that trouble is coming. Maybe it’s her mother, fed up with her current boyfriend and ready to abandon their dismal trailer park and seek a new home. But something far worse is on the horizon. Death falls from the sky—nuclear bombs which annihilate American civilization. Though Swan survives the blast, this young psychic’s war is just beginning.

As the survivors try to make new lives in the wasteland, an evil army forms, intent on murdering all those tainted with the diseases brought by fallout. When Swan finds a mysterious amulet that could hold the key to humankind’s salvation, she draws the attention of a man more dangerous than any nuclear bomb. To rescue mankind, this little girl will have to grow up fast.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Unto These Hills ($0.99), by Emily Sue Harvey. Long time readers may have this in their libraries, as it was free on Kindle and at B&N in January 2012.

Book Description
Unto These Hills is an unforgettable novel of love, scandal, family, and roots by one of the most emotionally authentic authors of our time. Taking us into the deep South's Tucapau Mill Hill, it introduces us to the unforgettable Sunny Acklin. Betrayed, abandoned, and violated, Sunny faces one seemingly insurmountable challenge after another. But she never loses her spirit or the memory of the love that once so richly illuminated her world. As years go by, Sunny does everything she can to make something of her life until at last an opportunity arises, one charged with promise...and undeniable risk.

From its vivid evocation of mill hill life to its pitch perfect rendering of the complexities of family and relationships, Unto These Hills is at once epic and intensely intimate. It is the richest novel yet from a writer who fluently speaks the language of our deepest feelings.

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is Blackcollar ($1.99), the first book of the series by Timothy Zahn [Open Road]. If you read military SciFi, it's a must have for your library.

Book Description
The blackcollars—an elite, genetically enhanced fighting force—may be humanity’s only hope

Decades after a successful invasion of Earth and the Terran Democratic Empire by the Ryqril—hostile, leathery-skinned aliens—resistance fighter Allen Caine is training for an undercover mission. He will assume the identity of an aide to the senate—part of the government that colludes with the invaders. But when the mission begins earlier than planned, Caine finds himself stuck on the off-planet outpost of Plinry with no idea of what awaits. He’s responsible for the most important mission undertaken by the resistance in twenty years, and when the operation goes awry, Caine’s only hope is to locate Plinry’s so-called blackcollars—the elusive, martial arts–trained guerilla force whose wartime resistance efforts are legendary. With his life and the freedom of everyone in the TDE on the line, Caine’s success will depend on whether or not he can find them. . . .

Jenny's War (£0.99 UK), by Margaret Dickinson, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (no US edition).

Book Description
Is it possible for a ten-year-old girl to fall in love? Jenny Mercer thinks so. Evacuated to Lincolnshire from the East End of London at the outbreak of war, she is frightened of the wide open spaces and the huge skies. But the kindly Thornton family soon makes her feel welcome. And no one more so than Georgie, the handsome RAF fighter pilot who is caught up in the battle for Britain’s survival. When Georgie is posted missing, presumed dead, Jenny is devastated. More heartbreak is to come when Jenny’s mother Dot decides she wants her daughter home and Jenny is forced to return to live in the city which is now under almost daily attack from enemy bombers. Dot’s ‘fancy man’, Arthur Osborne, treats Jenny kindly. But is Arthur only interested in the girl because she can be useful to him? No one will suspect a ten-year-old of being involved with the Black Market . . . When the law comes a little too close for Arthur’s comfort, the family flees in the city and heads towards the hills and the dales of Derbyshire. There, Jenny is caught up in a life of deception. All she really wants is to go back to Lincolnshire. For Jenny has never given up hope that one day, Georgie will come back.

The Raven Boys ($9.50 $2.99 Kindle, B&N), the first title in Maggie Stiefvater's new Raven Cycle series, is the Nook Daily Find. I've reported the lower price on the Kindle book page, in hopes it will drop there by afternoon. Update: That was fast! Now price matched on Kindle, where the companion audiobook $5.49

Book Description
"There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark's Eve," Neeve said. "Either you're his true love . . . or you killed him."

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them--not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain. He has it all--family money, good looks, devoted friends--but he's looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.

From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we've never been before.

Today's Kindle Young Adult Daily Deal is Grave Mercy ($1.99), the first title in Robin LaFevers' His Fair Assassin series and an Amazon "Best of the Month" pick (April, 2012). The next volume of the series, Dark Triumph, won't be released until April, but you may need the extra time, as this one runs to 550+ pages in print.

Book Description
Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf? Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.

Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?