Bargain Book Roundup

I swear, the fact that I have a terrible cold and feel like one of the walking dead has nothing to do with why I've picked The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga, as the first title to highlight today. I love this series (on TV) and hated that Dish blocked it for a while, while they fought with AMC over the broadcast rights. I'm sending this one to my Kindle to be read soon.

Book Description
In the Walking Dead universe, there is no greater villain than The Governor. The despot who runs the walled-off town of Woodbury, he has his own sick sense of justice: whether it’s forcing prisoners to battle zombies in an arena for the townspeople’s amusement, or chopping off the appendages of those who cross him. The Governor was voted “Villain of the Year” by Wizard magazine the year he debuted, and his story arc was the most controversial in the history of the Walking Dead comic book series. Now, for the first time, fans of The Walking Dead will discover how The Governor became the man he is, and what drove him to such extremes.

The Aylesford Skull ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), a new novel in James P. Blaylock's Tale of Langdon St. Ives series, dropped first dropped at B&N, but has now caught up at Amazon. For those new to his work, you are in luck, as Subterranean Press has the omnibus edition, The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives, on sale for $4.99. At over 500 pages, it includes both of the earlier novels and several short stories in the series, along with an introduction by Tim Powers and illustrations by JK Potter.

Book Description
It is the summer of 1883 and Professor Langdon St. Ives - brilliant but eccentric scientist and explorer - is at home in Aylesford with his family. However, a few miles to the north a steam launch has been taken by pirates above Egypt Bay; the crew murdered and pitched overboard. In Aylesford itself a grave is opened and possibly robbed of the skull. The suspected grave robber, the infamous Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, is an old nemesis of Langdon St. Ives.

When Dr. Narbondo returns to kidnap his four-year-old son Eddie and then vanishes into the night, St. Ives and his factotum Hasbro race to London in pursuit...

The first new steampunk novel in over twenty years from one of the genre's founding fathers!

The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), an anthology edited by John Joseph Adams, is worth picking up if you spot even one of your favorite authors below.

Book Description
From Victor Frankenstein to Lex Luthor, from Dr. Moreau to Dr. Doom, readers have long been fascinated by insane plans for world domination and the madmen who devise them. Typically, we see these villains through the eyes of good guys. This anthology, however, explores the world of mad scientists and evil geniuses—from their own wonderfully twisted point of view.

An all-star roster of bestselling authors—including Diana Gabaldon, Daniel Wilson, Austin Grossman, Naomi Novik, and Seanan McGuire…twenty-two great storytellers all told—have produced a fabulous assortment of stories guaranteed to provide readers with hour after hour of high-octane entertainment born of the most megalomaniacal mayhem imaginable.

Everybody loves villains. They’re bad; they always stir the pot; they’re much more fun than the good guys, even if we want to see the good guys win. Their fiendish schemes, maniacal laughter, and limitless ambition are legendary, but what lies behind those crazy eyes and wicked grins? How—and why—do they commit these nefarious deeds? And why are they so set on taking over the world?

If you’ve ever asked yourself any of these questions, you’re in luck: It’s finally time for the madmen’s side of the story.

At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death ($1.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo) is the first novel in James Runcie's Grantchester Mystery series. Looks like another novel is due out this year for this series, but no pre-order pages are up yet. Instead, you mightconsider his standalone novel, The Colour of Heaven, currently on sale at $3.79, although it doesn't have the same reviews as his more recent work.

Book Description
It is 1953, the coronation year of Queen Elizabeth II . Sidney Chambers, vicar of Grantchester and honorary canon of Ely Cathedral, is a thirty-two-year-old bachelor. Tall, with dark brown hair, eyes the color of hazelnuts, and a reassuringly gentle manner, Sidney is an unconventional clerical detective. He can go where the police cannot.

Together with his roguish friend, inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney inquires into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewelry theft at a New Year’s Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a jazz promoter’s daughter, and a shocking art forgery that puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty, but he nonetheless manages to find time for a keen interest in cricket, warm beer, and hot jazz—as well as a curious fondness for a German widow three years his junior.

With a whiff of Agatha Christie and a touch of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, The Grantchester Mysteries introduces a wonderful new hero into the world of detective fiction.

Farside ($1.99 Kindle, B&N) is definitely a must-buy for fans of Six-time Hugo-Award winner Ben Bova, at this price.

Book Description
Farside, the side of the Moon that never faces Earth, is the ideal location for an astronomical observatory. It is also the setting for a tangled web of politics, personal ambition, love, jealousy, and murder.

Telescopes on Earth have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some thirty light-years away. Now the race is on to get pictures of that distant world, photographs and spectra that will show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth, and if it bears life.

Farside will include the largest optical telescope in the solar system as well as a vast array of radio antennas, the most sensitive radio telescope possible, insulated from the interference of Earth’s radio chatter by a thousand kilometers of the Moon’s solid body.

Building the Farside observatory is a complex, often dangerous task. On the airless surface of the Moon, under constant bombardment of hard radiation and infalling micrometeoroids, builders must work in cumbersome spacesuits and use robotic machines as much as possible. Breakdowns—mechanical and emotional—are commonplace. Accidents happen, some of them fatal.

What they find stuns everyone, and the human race will never be the same.

At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

Saved by the Rancher ($0.99 Kindle, B&N, Kobo), the first novel in The Hunted series by Jennifer Ryan, is for romance fans, so you don't think I've forgotten about you.

Book Description
From the moment rancher Jack Turner rescues Jenna Caldwell Merrick, he is determined to help her. Soon, he is doing more than tend her wounds; he is mending her heart. Jenna is a woman on the run—hunted down by her ex-husband, David Merrick, from the day she left him, taking part of his company with her, to the second she finds herself in the safety of Jack's ranch. More than just a haven, Jack's offering the love, family, and home she thought were out of reach.

Jack's support will give Jenna the strength she needs to reclaim her life. The hunted will become the hunter, while David gets what he deserves, when they have an explosive confrontation in the boardroom of Merrick International. But not before Jack and Jenna enter into a fight … for their lives.

If you are a programmer, you know that computer books can be costly and you always need to keep up-to-date. O'Reilly has a special on their pre-release books right now. Get 50% off using coupon code WKEARSE (expires Mar. 7, 2013) and remember that you'll get all updates to their books, for life, it purchased direct.

Today's Deals 2/28

Thru February 28, members at Audible can take advantage of the Buy One Get One Free Sale, doubling the values of your credits. It's the last day and there are twice as many books, with 100+ added to the sale.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Guilt by Degress ($1.99), the second in Marcia Clark's Rachel Knight series [Mulholland/Hachette].

Book Description
Someone has been watching D.A. Rachel Knight--someone who's Rachel's equal in brains, but with more malicious intentions. It began when a near-impossible case fell into Rachel's lap, the suspectless homicide of a homeless man. In the face of courthouse backbiting and a gauzy web of clues, Rachel is determined to deliver justice. She's got back-up: tough-as-nails Detective Bailey Keller. As Rachel and Bailey stir things up, they're shocked to uncover a connection with the vicious murder of an LAPD cop a year earlier. Something tells Rachel someone knows the truth, someone who'd kill to keep it secret.

Harrowing, smart, and riotously entertaining, GUILT BY DEGREES is a thrilling ride through the world of LA courts with the unforgettable Rachel Knight.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Falling in Love...Again: TruLove Collection ($1.99), by Anonymous and BroadLit.

Book Description
Whether you're heartbroken or have sworn off love forever; it's perfectly timed or when you least expect it, this collection of fourteen inspirational stories will convince you that there's always a chance you'll...fall in love again. It's hard to imagine that out of the depths of despair can eventually come a new opportunity for love, but in these tales you'll meet a jilted bride, a single mom, a 9/11 widow, and a bitter city girl who all get a second chance at loving happily ever after.

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is all three novels in Richard Phillips's The Rho Agenda series for $0.99 each. These are relatively new editions from Amazon's 47North publishing imprint, but were originally self-published (I know I have at least one in an older edition).

The Second Ship (companion audiobook $1.99)

In 1948, an alien starship fell from the New Mexico sky—and immediately vanished behind the walls of the Los Alamos Laboratory. Since that day the US military has endeavored to reverse engineer the ship’s alien technology through top-secret research known only as the Rho Project. Now, sixty years after the crash, the government is prepared tell all.

Or so it claims…

For there is a second ship, hidden for decades just out of the military’s reach. And when a trio of students discovers it buried deep inside a remote canyon, they are changed forever. With a single touch, the technology the government has spent billions trying to unlock is uploaded into the minds of three teenagers—teenagers who now know the frightening truth about the Rho Project. Together they are thrust into a violent world of secrets and corruption, becoming reluctant soldiers in a war destined to alter what it means to be human.

Immune (companion audiobook $1.99)

In the final pages of the spellbinding novel The Second Ship, NSA director Jonathan Riles failed to halt the Rho Project’s infiltration of the US government. Now the Project’s alien nano-serum is loosed upon the world, disguised as a miracle cure and leaving too many people—good people—dead. And anyone still alive to challenge the Project won’t be for long: an assassin known only as El Chupacabra is systematically eliminating any and all opposition.

At the top of the hit list is NSA fixer Jack Gregory, along with Heather McFarland and Mark and Jennifer Smythe, the three teenagers who first exposed the Rho Project’s evil agenda. In just a few short months, the trio has seen life as they know it stripped away, trapping them in a confusing new reality where human DNA is modified at an alarming rate. Struggling to understand what they are becoming and on the run for their lives, the teens and their remaining allies must stop the Rho Project before it alters the very fabric of humanity.

Wormhole (companion audiobook $1.99)

When the Rho Project’s lead scientist, Dr. Donald Stephenson, is imprisoned for his crimes against humanity, the world dares to hope the threat posed by the Rho Project’s alien technologies is finally over.

The world is wrong.

In Switzerland, scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider have discovered a new threat, a scientific anomaly capable of destroying the earth—and only Rho Project technology can stop it. In exchange for a full pardon, Dr. Stephenson agrees to create a wormhole that will send the anomaly into deep space. But his promise masks the alien agenda that brought the Rho Ship to earth.

Now a trio of altered humans, Heather McFarland and Mark and Jennifer Smythe, must infiltrate Stephenson’s wormhole project and stop it, no matter the cost. The ultimate battle has begun and, this time, mankind cannot afford to lose. The final installment to Richard Phillips’s Rho Agenda trilogy brings the epic tale to an explosive conclusion that will echo long past the final page.

Gardens of Water (£0.99 UK), by Alan Drew, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $11.99).

Book Description
Turkey, 1999. A devastating earthquake brings Istanbul crumbling to the ground, ripping apart the fragile stability of Sinan's world. His family home becomes a makeshift tent in a camp run by Western missionaries whom he stubbornly distrusts, and he soon finds himself struggling to protect his family's honour and values. As he becomes a helpless witness to his daughter's dangerous infatuation with a young American, Sinan takes a series of drastic decisions with unforeseeable consequences. Cultures clash, political and religious tensions mount, and Sinan's actions spiral into a powerful and heartbreaking conclusion.

In the Time of the Butterflies ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Julia Alvarez [Algonquin Books], is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas—“The Butterflies.”

In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters—Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé—speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from hair ribbons and secret crushes to gunrunning and prison torture, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human cost of political oppression.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is New York Times best-selling Wintergirls ($2.99), by Laurie Halse Anderson [Penguin], with the companion audiobook for $4.95.

Book Description
“Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
I am that girl.
I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.
I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.

Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the skinniest. But what comes after size zero and size double-zero? When Cassie succumbs to the demons within, Lia feels she is being haunted by her friend’s restless spirit.

In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the multiple-award-winning Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson explores Lia’s descent into the powerful vortex of anorexia, and her painful path toward recovery.

Free Books Posts are Ended

In order to comply with Amazon's new policy, I won't be mentioning any free books on my blogs (at least, until their policy changes). Amazon has changed the associates policy to penalize any site whose readers buy "too many" free books in a month by forfeiting their entire income for that month.

I tried to set up the ability to post on another account, that simply would not be paid, but Amazon has said that doing so would result in my accounts being closed entirely. Although some readers have suggested that the links be posted without an affiliate tag, all this does is pushes any credit for that book to the last affiliate site you have been to. This also applies even if you go to Amazon on your own and enter the book in a search there. That Associate might be me or it may be some other hardworking associate whose site you were at earlier in the day.

Amazon Associates Support has also said that if you post links without tags, even on another site, if they can link you in any way, then they'll shut down your account. So, there will no longer be any links to free books at Amazon on any of my sites.

Tomorrow I'll be removing all older free book posts and moving them to an archive site. The Free Books page and links on the menus have already been removed.

If you are going to buy free books at Amazon, please consider clearing your browser cookies before doing so, after arriving at Amazon, in order to avoid costing this site or any other affiliate site their income at Amazon (to clear your cookies, press Ctrl-Shift-Delete, then choose Cookies from the page that is displayed).

Don't Upgrade your Kindle for iPad App

Got a notice on this via NetGalley -- if you upgrade your Kindle App on iOS (iPad or iPhone, etc), the current version has a bug that will delete all of your existing books on the device AND all your bookmarks and notes. The good news is, if this happens to you, you can redownload your books and your notes and bookmarks that have been backed up should be downloaded with them. For those who don't have the app already installed, you can download the current version without issue, but Amazon has issued a warning not to upgrade for existing users. A new version is on the way (and hopefully will fix the problem). More info can be read over on CNET.

Today's Deals 2/27

Thru February 28, members at Audible can take advantage of the Buy One Get One Free Sale, doubling the values of your credits. There will be a different selection every day, so be sure to stop buy and see what is new.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Dead Asleep ($0.99), by Jamie Freveletti [HarperCollins], an author that is new to me. At 99 cents, though, it looks like it may be worth taking a chance on. Be careful clicking on her other titles - there is a novella split into 3 "books" at 99 cents apiece. I have no problem with charging $2.99 for a novella of around 120 pages, but why clutter up our libraries with three entries?

Book Description
A former Chicago trial lawyer-turned-critically acclaimed thriller writer, Jaime Freveletti hit the ground running with her debut novel, Running from the Devil—winning a Thriller and a Barry Award and nominations for the Macavity and Crimespree Awards as well. With her fourth novel, Dead Asleep, Freveletti proves she hasn't let up for an instant, plunging her brilliant, tough-as-nails series protagonist, biochemist Emma Caldridge, into a Caribbean island nightmare of voodoo superstition, terrorist plots, and deadly plague. Dead Asleep is intelligent, action-packed suspense fiction—rich in invention and frightening scientific plausibility—that will enthrall fans of Lee Child and Daniel Silva, and Kathy Reichs and Tess Gerritsen readers equally.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Whole Lotta Trouble ($1.99), by Stephanie Bond. Romance fans will need no introduction (just to go check their libraries - I picked this up on a KDP free promotion last summer).

Book Description
Sometimes the best laid plans go sideways . . .

Three female mystery book editors in Manhattan have personal and professional problems galore--which intersect with one bad-boy agent. When they set out to humiliate their problematic playboy, their plans go horribly awry. The women suddenly realize that when it comes to friendship, flirtation and felony, they're in a WHOLE LOTTA TROUBLE!

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is The Investigation ($1.99), by Stanislaw Lem [Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]. We've seen several of his titles in Daily Deals recently and I see that one of them, Return From The Stars, is currently marked down to $2.99, only a dollar over the Daily Deal price, for those that missed it.

Book Description
A young officer at Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate a puzzling and eerie case of missing-and apparently resurrected-bodies. To unravel the mystery, Lt. Gregory consults scientific, philosophical, and theological experts, who supply him with a host of theories and clues.

Stone Maidens (£0.99 UK), by Lloyd Devereux Richards, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK. A Daily Deal in the US earlier this month, the US edition is $4.99/KLL Eligible and the companion audiobook is $1.99.

Book Description
As the chief forensic anthropologist for the FBI’s Chicago field office, Christine Prusik has worked her fair share of bizarre cases. Yet this one trumps them all: a serial killer is strangling young women and dumping their bodies in the steep, forested ravines of southern Indiana. With each victim, the killer leaves a calling card: a stone figurine carved like the spirit stones found among the primitive tribes of Papua New Guinea—the same tribes from whom Prusik narrowly escaped a decade earlier while doing field research. The similarity is eerie and, frankly, terrifying; Prusik still carries the scars from the tribesmen’s attack. But is the connection real? Or have the dark details of Prusik’s nightmares finally wormed their way into her waking life? Displaying the expertise of a veteran writer, debut novelist Lloyd Devereux Richards skillfully builds layers of psychological suspense and terror into a compulsively readable whodunit.

Hemingway's Girl ($9.99 Kindle, $2.99 B&N), by Erika Robuck [Penguin], is the Nook Daily Find. This is an Agency pricing publisher (the lone holdout, I think) and should have already been price matched on Kindle, so wait for it to drop.

Book Description
“She remembered when Hemingway had planted a banyan tree at his house and told her its parasitic roots were like human desire. At the time she’d thought it romantic. She hadn’t understood his warning.”

In Depression-era Key West, Mariella Bennet, the daughter of an American fisherman and a Cuban woman, knows hunger. Her struggle to support her family following her father’s death leads her to a bar and bordello, where she bets on a risky boxing match...and attracts the interest of two men: world-famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, and Gavin Murray, one of the WWI veterans who are laboring to build the Overseas Highway.

When Mariella is hired as a maid by Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, she enters a rarified world of lavish, celebrity-filled dinner parties and elaborate off-island excursions. As she becomes caught up in the tensions and excesses of the Hemingway household, the attentions of the larger-than-life writer become a dangerous temptation...even as straightforward Gavin Murray draws her back to what matters most. Will she cross an invisible line with the volatile Hemingway, or find a way to claim her own dreams? As a massive hurricane bears down on Key West, Mariella faces some harsh truths...and the possibility of losing everything she loves.

Today's Kindle Teen Daily Deal is Touch ($0.99), the first novel in Jus Accardo's Denazen YA series [Entangled Teen]. Probably not suited for younger teens, as I've glanced thru a review copy and it starts out with a drunken high schooler party, with skateboarding off of a barn roof (at least they land in hay and don't have too many injuries), followed by more drinking. From there, though, the story veers off of a manual on how to upset your parents (although is a tiny bit of a cautionary tale on walking home, alone, thru the woods, afterward). In any case, it seems well written enough that I've sent it to my Kindle to see if it still hooks me when I finish my current re-read of The Scent of Shadows (which, by-the-way, is still on sale for 99 cents, as are the other 5 titles in the series!).

Book Description
When a strange boy tumbles down a river embankment and lands at her feet, seventeen-year-old adrenaline junkie Deznee Cross snatches the opportunity to piss off her father by bringing the mysterious hottie with ice blue eyes home.

Except there’s something off with Kale. He wears her shoes in the shower, is overly fascinated with things like DVDs and vases, and acts like she’ll turn to dust if he touches her. It’s not until Dez’s father shows up, wielding a gun and knowing more about Kale than he should, that Dez realizes there’s more to this boy—and her father’s “law firm”—than she realized.

Kale has been a prisoner of Denazen Corporation—an organization devoted to collecting “special” kids known as Sixes and using them as weapons—his entire life. And, oh yeah, his touch? It kills. The two team up with a group of rogue Sixes hellbent on taking down Denazen before they’re caught and her father discovers the biggest secret of all. A secret Dez has spent her life keeping safe.

A secret Kale will kill to protect.