Daily Deal - The Reluctant Matchmaker (E)

The Reluctant Matchmaker ($12.99 $9.39 Kindle), by Shobhan Bantwal [Kensington], is today's Deal of the Day at at Diesel E-Books, where it's discounted to $2.60.

Book Description
In her thought-provoking, uplifting new novel, Shobhan Bantwal vividly blends the nuances of contemporary Indian-American culture with an unconventional romance. . .

At thirty-one, Meena Shenoy has a fulfilling career at a New Jersey high-tech firm. Not that it impresses her mother and aunts, who make dire predictions about her ticking biological clock. Men are drawn to Meena's dainty looks and she dates regularly, but hasn't met someone who really intrigues her. Someone professional, ambitious, confident, caring. Someone like her new boss, Prajay Nayak.

Just as Meena's thoughts turn to romance, Prajay makes an astonishing request. He wants her to craft a personal ad that will help him find a suitable wife: a statuesque, sophisticated Indian-American woman who will complement his striking height.

Despite her attraction to Prajay and the complications of balancing work and her "marriage consultant" role, Meena can't refuse the generous fee. And as her family is thrown into turmoil by her brother's relationship with a Muslim woman, Meena comes to surprising realizations about love, tradition, and the sacrifices she will--and won't--make for the sake of both.

Get the book from Diesel; be sure to check the sales price, as the Deal of the Day often sells out. Deals change at 11AM Eastern Time, USA.

Free Nook App - Townsmen 6

Townsmen 6 ($1.25 Amazon), by HandyGames, is this week's Free Friday App from Barnes & Noble.

App Description
Townsmen 6 is a challenging building and strategy game that takes you to eighteenth-century France where you can play your part in the French Revolution. Aristocratic oppression, massive class inequalities, and beheadings by the thousands frame the scene…but before you can conquer the crown, you have a few things to do back in town.

Reign of Work
You'll need soldiers to defeat government corruption, and soldiers need a place to live. Sound simple? It means constructing buildings, catching fish, harvesting fields, fetching water, gathering various natural resources to establish a solid economic cycle and expand your influence, and a few other things. How will you get it all done? Wake up those sleeping Townies, of course, and put them to work.

Mobilize Your Townies
For Townies and Townettes, the division of labor is traditional; it is the eighteenth century, after all. Townies work hard to provide an economic structure and gather power to fight the king while Townettes devote their attention to the general welfare by getting water from the well and gathering food.

While the Townies and Townettes are on hand for employment, they also need a constant supply of food and water, which means more work. To make matters worse, as your town becomes more stable, the Townies get more picky and demanding about their eats. Townies do work for a healthy economy and the more satisfied they are, the faster they can gather and produce. So it's a good idea to keep them employed, well fed, and happy since you need them to be strong for your campaign against the king.

To see how many Townies and Townettes live in your town, click the Town Info screen. Townies will also help you out by displaying various icons above their heads: snoring zzz's if unemployed, fish or other resources they have gained, and a smiley if they're happy.

Build Your Town
After your Townies have collected and produced the necessary materials, you can start building. Whiz-kid Townies can perform university research to help with upgrading buildings and improving functionality. As you complete phases and sub-phases of research, you unlock new building opportunities.

Meanwhile, keep a lookout for surprise events. At any moment you might face a lack of housing, extreme weather conditions, or a merchant visiting the town for some friendly trading. Merchants stay only for a few days, so you'll want well-stocked supplies when they visit. If you don't, you can always put up a marketplace to trade without a merchant.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Life-and-Death Battles, and Other Stuff
Think you're prepared to take on the crown? Start by finding the best way to knock at the gates of Paris and call for the king's head. If your mission succeeds, you'll win action points that can be spent after each level for troop movements, bonus resource changes, and more.

Train your soldiers at military buildings and gather propagandists at coffee houses. Assign soldiers and propagandists to besiege and conquer neutral or royal buildings. But beware the king's wrath: Royal troops will defend their buildings and even attack your institutions, leading to life-and-death battles.

Leave it to Fate
In the Overview Map Mode, you'll toss the coin of fate to see which advantages and disadvantages await you. Depending on how the coin lands, you'll either gain some bonus gold or your opponent gains an additional soldier in an occupied or neutral zone. After the coin toss, you can explore all the different map levels including royal, occupied with hostile soldiers, your own zones, and territories that can be conquered. When you solve a mission, you earn action points that you can spend on distributing soldiers throughout the map, a new fate coin toss, or changing a selected bonus resource.

Join the Revolution
Play Townsmen 6 and enjoy stunning graphics, upbeat music, entertaining sound effects, a map generator that offers infinite replay value, and the option to save your progress and resume play at any time. You can also set various factors such as use of rivers and coasts and the aggressiveness of your war enemy. An extensive tutorial and help functions are also included and Poopsy the pig provides helpful hints along the way. You know your revolutionary spirit wants to join the fray so why wait. The Revolution needs you.

Get the free App from Barnes & Noble.

Kindle Daily Deals 7/5

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Death at La Fenice ($1.99), the first Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon [Grove Press].

Book Description
Beautiful and serene Venice is a city almost devoid of crime. But that is little comfort to Maestro Helmut Wellauer, a world-renowned conductor whose intermission refreshment comes one night with a little something extra in it-cyanide. For Guido Brunetti, vice-commissario of police and detective genius, finding a suspect isn't a problem; narrowing the large and unconventional group of enemies down to one is. As the suave and pithy Brunetti pieces together clues, a shocking picture of depravity and revenge emerges, leaving him torn between what is and what should be right -- and questioning what the law can do, and what needs to be done.

Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Shot Through the Heart ($0.99), by D'Ann Lindun [Crimson Romance].

Book Description
When Laramie Porter’s sister-in-law Julie is beaten so badly by her husband she miscarries her baby, Laramie takes her home from the hospital. But just a few minutes after the women arrive home, Julie’s husband, who also happens to be a drug addict and the local police sheriff, shows up at the house on a murderous rampage.

He kills Julie and attempts to murder Laramie. When he doesn’t succeed, he hauls them into the mountains and throws them off a cliff. Julie’s body lands in a pond, but Laramie hits a ledge, where she perches, terrified.

Derrick Garrison is in the mountains moving his cattle when his dog finds Julie’s body in the pond. Creeped out, Derrick at first doesn’t believe his ears when he hears a girl crying for help. But he finds Laramie and pulls her to safety. Before she can tell him anything, a lightning strike starts a forest fire and they flee to a hidden valley.

Fleeing a drug hazed killer, the fire, and a gun-toting old lady bent on collecting a reward, Laramie and Derrick do their best to evade all three . . . and fall in love along the way.

Sensuality Level: Sensual

Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is PODs ($1.99), a YA dystopian novel by Michelle Pickett [Spencer Hill Press].

Book Description
Seventeen-year-old Eva is a chosen one. Chosen to live, while others meet a swift and painful death from an incurable virus so lethal, a person is dead within days of symptoms emerging. In the POD system, a series of underground habitats built by the government, she waits with the other chosen for the deadly virus to claim those above. Separated from family and friends, its in the PODs she meets David. And while true love might not conquer all, its a balm for the broken soul.

After a year, scientists believe the population has died, and without living hosts, so has the virus. Thats the theory, anyway. But when the PODs are opened, survivors find the surface holds a vicious secret. The virus mutated, infecting those left top-side and creating... monsters.

Eva and David hide from the infected in the abandoned PODs. Together they try to build a life--a new beginning. But the infected follow and are relentless in their attacks. Leaving Eva and David to fight for survival, and pray for a cure.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is The Curse: Touch of Eternity ($1.99), by Emily Bold and Jeanette Heron (Translator) [Skyscape].

Book Description
A centuries-old curse, a mysterious amulet, and a young love reignite a vendetta that had died down long ago…

When seventeen-year-old Samantha goes on a school-exchange trip to Scotland, she takes with her an old pendant that she found amongst her grandmother’s belongings. As soon as she arrives at her host family’s home, she is drawn into the country’s tales and myths. Then she meets the dangerously attractive Payton –a mysterious Highlander who soon conquers Sam’s heart. Caught up in her feelings, she doesn’t realize how much danger she’s in. Payton’s past holds a dark secret. A secret that has bound together both their families’ fates for hundreds of years and is now also endangering Sam’s life.

UK Kindle Daily Deal 7/5

The Boy from Reactor 4 (£0.99 UK), by Orest Stelmach [Thomas & Mercer], is the Kindle Deal of the Day for those in the UK (the US edition is $4.99; $1.99 companion audiobook).

Book Description
Nadia’s memories of her father are not happy ones. An angry, secretive man, he died when she was thirteen, leaving his past shrouded in mystery. When a stranger claims to have known her father during his early years in Eastern Europe, she agrees to meet—only to watch the man shot dead on a city sidewalk. With his last breath, he whispers a cryptic clue, one that will propel Nadia on a high-stakes treasure hunt from New York to her ancestral homeland of Ukraine. There she meets an unlikely ally: Adam, a teenage hockey prodigy who honed his skills on the abandoned cooling ponds of Chernobyl. Physically and emotionally scarred by radiation syndrome, Adam possesses a secret that could change the world—if she can keep him alive long enough to do it. A twisting tale of greed, secrets, and lies, The Boy from Reactor 4 will keep readers guessing until the final heart-stopping page.

Grace Grows (£0.99 UK), by Shelle Sumners [Allen & Unwin], is the Kindle Deal of the Day for for Romance Fans in the UK (the US edition is $8.89).

Book Description
A wonderfully upbeat and quirky romance in which a young textbook editor in New York, who takes herself a little too seriously, falls for a singer-songwriter who appears to take nothing at all seriously . . .

Like many young women, Grace Barnum's life is precariously balanced on sensible choices and uncomfortable compromise. She dutifully edits textbooks that she fears may be more harmful than helpful to kids. She is engaged to a patent attorney with whom she has a reliable relationship. She has a cautious relationship with her fascinating father, a renowned New York painter, and she prefers her mother slightly drunk as she's easier to handle that way.

Always organised, always a planner, Grace carries her life around in a handbag - that is, until the responsibility-challenged Tyler Wilkie shows up. Tyler of the warm eyes and a smile that makes Grace drop things. Worst of all, he writes tender, loving, devastating songs - about her. Tyler reaches something in Grace, something she needs, but can't admit to. Something she wants, but won't succumb to. Falling in love with him would ruin everything. And yet . . .

An enchanting story about learning to love and learning to let go.

Nook Daily Find 7/5

Prophecy of the Sisters ($7.59 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), the first novel in the Prophecy of the Sisters series by Michelle Zink, is the Nook Daily Find [Hachette].

Book Description
An ancient prophecy divides two sisters-

One good...

One evil...

Who will prevail?

Twin sisters Lia and Alice Milthorpe have just become orphans. They have also become enemies. As they discover their roles in a prophecy that has turned generations of sisters against each other, the girls find themselves entangled in a mystery that involves a tattoo-like mark, their parents' deaths, a boy, a book, and a lifetime of secrets.

Lia and Alice don't know whom they can trust.

They just know they can't trust each other.

Grade 7 Up