Book Reviews and Bargain reads for the Amazon Kindle, nook, Kobo, Sony and other ereaders, Kindle Fire, nookColor, Kobo Vox, and other tablets, along with some games, music, technology and computers tossed in now and then.
. Currently, Hatchette (the parent company of Orbit) has the entire book available to be read online (no downloading to a reader or storing on your PC). The free read selection at Hatchette comes and goes, with little notice - Jeff Somer's Digital Plague ($9.99) was recently available, but is now gone. So, if you want to read it for free, don't wait too long.
Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Third Bullet: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel ($1.99), by Stephen Hunter, with the companion audiobook for $4.49..Book Description
Bob Lee Swagger is back in a thriller fifty years in the making . . .
It’s not even a clue. It’s a whisper, a trace, a ghost echo, drifting down through the decades via chance connections so fragile that they would disintegrate in the puff of a breath. But it’s enough to get legendary former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger interested in the events of November 22, 1963, and the third bullet that so decisively ended the life of John F. Kennedy and set the stage for one of the most enduring controversies of our time.
Swagger begins his slow night stalk through a much-traveled landscape. But he’s asking questions that few have asked before: Why did the third bullet explode? Why did Lee Harvey Oswald, about to become the most hunted man on earth, risk it all by returning to his rooming house to secure a pistol he easily could have brought with him? How could a conspiracy that went unpenetrated for fifty years have been thrown together in the two and a half days between the announcement of the president’s route and the assassination itself?
As Bob investigates, another voice enters the narrative: knowing, ironic, almost familiar, that of a gifted, Yale-educated veteran of the CIA Plans Division. Hugh Meachum has secrets and the means and the will to keep them buried. When weighed against his own legacy, Swagger’s life is an insignificant expense—but to blunt the threat, he’ll first have to ambush the sniper.
As each man hunts the other across today’s globe and through the thickets of history, The Third Bullet builds to an explosive climax that will finally prove what Bob Lee Swagger has always known: it’s never too late for justice.
Today's Kindle Romance Daily Deal is Masquerade ($0.99), by Nicole Flockton [Crimson Romance].Book Description
After being humiliated by her fiancee, Sophie Franklyn has decided that getting involved with work colleagues and men in general isn’t for her. Now her focus is going to be on her career and her recent promotion. That is until at a New Year’s Eve masquerade ball, she meets a man that tempts her to question her choices.
Alex Scavoni is extremely dedicated to his job, so dedicated that his first marriage crumbled under the pressure of his dedication. Now he’s happily single, with a new job he’s excited to start. When he meets a masked Sophie at the ball, she fires desires in him he thought long dead. He spends a wonderful night with her, but wakes up alone.
The next time the two meet, it’s in the high pressure world of Emergency Room medicine where they must work side by side. While they deal with the stresses of the Emergency ward, they endeavor to keep their feelings for each other on a professional nature. When the desire that pushed them together that one night flares to life again, can they ignore them or will their one night together have consequences neither of them planned on?
Sensuality Level: Sensual
Today's Kindle SciFi/Fantasy Daily Deal is The Iron Wyrm Affair ($1.99), the first novel in the Bannon & Clare series by Lilith Saintcrow [Orbit/Hachette], with the companion audiobook for $3.99. Book Description
Emma Bannon, forensic sorceress in the service of the Empire, has a mission: to protect Archibald Clare, a failed, unregistered mentath. His skills of deduction are legendary, and her own sorcery is not inconsiderable. It doesn't help much that they barely tolerate each other, or that Bannon's Shield, Mikal, might just be a traitor himself. Or that the conspiracy killing registered mentaths and sorcerers alike will just as likely kill them as seduce them into treachery toward their Queen.
In an alternate London where illogical magic has turned the Industrial Revolution on its head, Bannon and Clare now face hostility, treason, cannon fire, black sorcery, and the problem of reliably finding hansom cabs.
The game is afoot..
Today's Kindle Teen Daily Deal is The Night She Disappeared ($2.99), by April Henry [Henry Holt and Co./Macmillan].Book Description
Gabie drives a Mini Cooper. She also works part time as a delivery girl at Pete’s Pizza. One night, Kayla—another delivery girl—goes missing. To her horror, Gabie learns that the supposed kidnapper had asked if the girl in the Mini Cooper was working that night. Gabie can’t move beyond the fact that Kayla’s fate was really meant for her, and she becomes obsessed with finding Kayla. She teams up with Drew, who also works at Pete’s. Together, they set out to prove that Kayla isn’t dead—and to find her before she is.
My Father's House (£0.99 UK), by Bethany Dawson [Liberties North], is the Kindle Deal of the Day for those in the UK (the US edition is $7.19).Book Description
‘It had not been a conscious decision to cling to the better memories of his childhood. It had just happened when Hannah came along and the possibility of a brighter future dragged his scowling face away from the details of his past. Now, standing in the middle of the poorly part-mowed field, in front of the house that was hiding all the reasons he had run away, he wondered if it would be possible to hold the past and present in tension.’
Robbie Hanright has a normal, settled life in Dublin. With a wife and baby, an undemanding job and a nice home, everything is just as he wants it. However, after an enduring estrangement from the rural landscape of his youth, Robbie receives a phone call from his sister asking him to come home. Left with little choice, Robbie returns once more to County Down, and to Larkscroft Farm, to confront the father who tormented his childhood and face up to a history he wants only to forget. Set against the backdrop of a decaying farmhouse and fragile family connections, My Father’s House is a powerful, lyrical story of loss and regret, through which Bethany Dawson reveals an affecting compassion for the profound, and often painful, complexities of family life.
The Language of Spells (£0.99 UK), by Sarah Painter [Carina], is the Kindle Deal of the Day for for Romance Fans in the UK (the US edition is $7.69).Book Description
When you are ready, seek, and you shall find. It is your gift. Gwen Harper left Pendleford thirteen years ago and hasn’t looked back. Until an inheritance throws her into the mystical world she thought she’d escaped. Confronted with her great-aunt’s legacy Gwen must finally face up to her past. The magic she has long tried to suppress is back with a vengeance but gift or burden, for Gwen, it always spells trouble. She has to stay – she has nowhere else to go – but how can she find her place in the town that drove her out after branding her a witch…?
Before I Fall ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), a standalone novel by Lauren Oliver [HarperCollins], is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.Book Description
What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?
Samantha Kingston has it all: the world's most crush-worthy boyfriend, three amazing best friends, and first pick of everything at Thomas Jefferson High—from the best table in the cafeteria to the choicest parking spot. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life.
Instead, it turns out to be her last.
Then she gets a second chance. Seven chances, in fact. Reliving her last day during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.