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A thrilling private club romance that explores the limits of dominance and submission… The Dominant: A Brother’s Best Friend Complete Series by Sienna Snow
A thrilling private club romance that explores the limits of dominance and submission… The Dominant: A Brother’s Best Friend Complete Series by Sienna Snow
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Lakeside Cottage by Susan Wiggs
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Lakeside Cottage by Susan Wiggs
Samantha Whiskey has done it again! Don’t miss her steamy new #1 release! Gareth: A Billionaire’s Game Novel (Billionaire’s Game series Book 5) by Samantha Whiskey
Samantha Whiskey has done it again! Don’t miss her steamy new #1 release! Gareth: A Billionaire’s Game Novel (Billionaire’s Game series Book 5) by Samantha Whiskey
Life isn’t easy for any eleven-year-old… Chloe the “Military Brat” (Cul-de-sac Kids Book 1) by A. L. Zeine
Life isn’t easy for any eleven-year-old… Chloe the “Military Brat” (Cul-de-sac Kids Book 1) by A. L. Zeine
Think The West Wing done as an episode of The Twilight Zone… IMP: A Political Fantasia (Revised Edition) by Steven Paul Leiva
Think The West Wing done as an episode of The Twilight Zone… IMP: A Political Fantasia (Revised Edition) by Steven Paul Leiva
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out The Doctor’s Devotion (Eagle Point Emergency) by Cheryl Wyatt
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out The Doctor’s Devotion (Eagle Point Emergency) by Cheryl Wyatt
Read the book that inspired the classic coming-of-age film: The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Read the book that inspired the classic coming-of-age film: The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Fans of Craig Johnson and CJ Box will love this outstanding first novel…. Frontier Justice: A Coogan Mystery by Michael Cardwell
Fans of Craig Johnson and CJ Box will love this outstanding first novel…. Frontier Justice: A Coogan Mystery by Michael Cardwell
They say love and hate are the same feelings experienced under different circumstances, and it’s true… Vicious (Sinners of Saint Book 1) by L.J. Shen
They say love and hate are the same feelings experienced under different circumstances, and it’s true… Vicious (Sinners of Saint Book 1) by L.J. Shen
Only the fires of decoherence will set her free—at the cost of her life. No one will settle for anything less… A Path of Possession by Charles Brass
Only the fires of decoherence will set her free—at the cost of her life. No one will settle for anything less… A Path of Possession by Charles Brass
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Fortune and Fate: The Complete Justice Belstrang Mysteries by John Pilkington
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Fortune and Fate: The Complete Justice Belstrang Mysteries by John Pilkington
Get ready to devour these yummy stories. Download now to steam up your Kindle all night long! Dark Romance Books for Adults: 5 Spicy Novels by Natalie Brolack
Get ready to devour these yummy stories. Download now to steam up your Kindle all night long! Dark Romance Books for Adults: 5 Spicy Novels by Natalie Brolack
Walter Wangerin Jr.’s freshly fictionalized take on a familiar biblical saga, and Geri Scazzero’s I Quit!: Stop Pretending Everything Is Fine and Change Your Life top Sunday morning’s Kindle Nation Free Book Alert listings….
But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor
Good news for the many Kindle Nation readers who have already enjoyed L.J. Sellers’ Detective Wade Jackson mysteries like The Sex Club, Secrets to Die For, and Thrilled to Death that have been previously featured as Kindle Nation sponsors: Today we feature Sellers’ stand-alone medical thriller The Suicide Effect!
When Sula overhears a shocking revelation about a drug being developed by her employer, she¹s paralyzed with indecision. She desperately needs her job to gain the judge¹s favor in a custody hearing for her son. Yet hundreds of patient lives could be at stake.
Two days later when the drug¹s lead scientist disappears, Sula is compelled to search for the incriminating data. But Prolabs¹ CEO is a desperate man determined to stop her. Can Sula get the proof and expose the drug¹s fatal flaw before the CEO risks everything to silence her?
Author’s note: I wrote this novel while working as a senior editor on a pharmaceutical magazine. Although the story is fictitious, the plot was inspired by the pressures and data manipulation I saw in the industry.
Oh, and by the way…. Here’s some especially good news for readers who have yet to discover this talented novelist: Her debut Detective Wade Jackson novel, The Sex Club, the number #3 bestselling police procedural in the Kindle Store and in the top 400 among all paid books overall, has been reduced by Sellers and her publisher to just 99 cents!
Click here to download The Suicide Effect (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
October 23, 2010 – 6 pm Eastern by Kindle Nation’s Crackerjack Army of Astute Undergraduate Interns, and the Editor
The Kindle Revolution continues, if Amazon’s third quarter earnings report is any indication.The company posted a significant increase in top line sales: third-quarter revenue overall jumped 38.7% to $7.56 billion and net income rose 16% to $231 million. Media sales grew 14%.
Where was the biggest increase? No surprise here. “Worldwide Electronics & Other General Merchandise” sales, which is the category that includes the Kindle device and the astonishly popular (and profitable) new lighted Kindle covers, grew 68% to $3.97 billion. For those of you who are keeping score at home, that’s 52.5% of the company’s total worldwide revenue.
That said, Amazon reported that sales of print and digital books increased from the second to third quarter indicating “strong overall book gains.” In this period, the Kindle store expanded to include 720,000 digital books. According to the company, the new Kindles “are the fastest selling Kindles of all time and the bestselling products on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.”
Publishers Weekly reports that Amazon “is expecting a blowout fourth quarter in terms of sales with revenue projected to increase between 26% and 40%, although it said that operating income could be anywhere from down 24% to up 18%.” Always looking for an excuse to create volatility, after-hours day traders interpreted that report to mean “soft margins,” and the stock fell 4% while the markets were closed, but when the market re-opened today investors took over — with a more nuanced understanding of Amazon’s plans to invest heavily in the warehousing and fulfillment costs required to support that “blowout fourth quarter” — and Amazon’s share price closed today at $169.13, three dollars above its previous all-time high and up over 50% in the past 90 days.
Kindles Appeal to Kings and Commoners Alike. A recent USA Today story talks about the growing appeal of the Kindle for book readers and publishers everywhere. Besides citing the recent AAP figure we reported on earlier this week (that e-books now comprise 9% of market), the story quotes some heavy-hitters and ordinary citizens to substantiate that point, including:
Novelist Stephen King, who says he does nearly one-third of his own reading on an iPad or Kindle, sees e-books becoming 50% of the market ‘probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012.
HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray reports ‘a sea change in the past few months’ among new best-selling books: ‘On some books, the e-books are outselling the hardcovers.’
Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs Books says “in the same way that people moved from silent pictures to talking pictures to movie theaters to television to television-on-demand. We are adapting to the notion that we can choose where, when and how we read books.”
In Roanoke, Va., Liz Jones, 58, a legal secretary, says her iPod Touch with a Kindle app is ‘so much easier to carry than a regular book.’”
Self-Deprecating Laughter from the Gadget Press? So people who love to read get it, and authors and publishers are coming around, but the last to show up at the party seem to be the gadgetheads and the gadget press. Mediabistro even pokes some fun at itself in putting the spotlight on a November 2007 post in which Center Networks’ presented a “long list of reasons that the new Amazon Kindle [will] fail.”
How long ago was November 2007? There are different ways to count. A little over 1,000 days ago. Or a little over 5 million Kindles ago.
eBook Adoption Slower on College Campuses. The New York Times reports this week that despite the growth of e-book technology, many students at Hamilton College—and campuses nationwide—are still lugging print textbooks to classes.
“They text their friends all day long. At night, they do research for their term papers on laptops and commune with their parents on Skype. But as they walk the paths of Hamilton College, a poster-perfect liberal arts school in this upstate village, students are still hauling around bulky, old-fashioned textbooks — and loving it,” writes Timeswoman Lisa Foderaro.
Foderaro reports that even amidst “a tide of digital books, blogs, and other Web sites” students still gravitate towards traditional textbooks—perhaps because universities and publishers are not adequately emphasizing these new technologies, their usefulness, and their affordability.
“That loyalty comes at a price. Textbooks are expensive — a year’s worth can cost $700 to $900 — and students’ frustrations with the expense, as well as the emergence of new technology, have produced a confounding array of options for obtaining them,” she adds.
The article cites a disheartening statistic from the National Association of College Stores: digital books compose under 3 percent of textbook sales. But, as more academic e-book titles become available, NACS expects that share to reach 10 to 15 percent by 2012
Our take? With exciting projects like the Clearwater High School Kindle project described in our recent post, Hundreds of Kindles May Be Coming to a High School Near You!, it seems more likely that the real tidal wave of college campus Kindle adoption will roll in over the course of the next two or three years as today’s high school students matriculate.
The Nook: RIP or Redux? Long-time readers of Kindle Nation (see Exhibits A, B, and C) may be surprised to find us taking up for the Nook, but we’re not so sure about a Silicon Alley Business Insider post this week in which Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues that Barnes & Noble’s should just “pull the plug on the Nook already.”
Before discussing his chief problem with the Nook, Gobry praises B&N;’s device for its “smart full-color touchscreen,” which was “really nice” in his view.
The issue is very simple: the Nook suffers from a meager catalogue of books—and Gobry says “customers are finding out.” Compared to Amazon’s “huge media store…smartly spreading to every platform,” the Nook affords readers much less.“And Amazon is currently in a battle royale with Apple’s iBookstore to be the dominant store for e-books – and winning. B&N; is imitating that strategy, but we don’t know anyone who reads B&N; e-books on their iPad, and Amazon is promoting the hell out of Kindle,” he adds.
Gobry thinks the Nook is completely out of contention, and here’s the final blow, in his estimation: “This means that between those two giants, Barnes and Noble stands no chance. It’s a retailer. It doesn’t have the software or hardware culture, or the experience of running media stores, that Apple and Amazon have.”
Our take is that, while the Nook until now has been very much in the decade-long B&N; tradition of doing exactly what Amazon does, two years later and not as well, the tables may be turning. Rumors are rampant that B&N; will launch a full-color $249 Nook as early as this Tuesday, and if the company hits a home run it could end up actually taking the fight to Amazon for the 2010 holiday season. Amazon is already planning to copy one Nook feature — ebook lending — in coming weeks.
But we’ll see, and we note that B&N; would have to display much greater product-launch acumen than we saw with last year’s pathetic Nook 1 launch to become a serious player.
One recurring myth about free offerings in the Kindle Store is the “you get what you pay for” myth, supporting the claim that the only books that turn up free are those that could never get a following if people had to pay real money for them. In fact, authors and publishers are increasingly aware of the benefits of providing one free title by a prolific, highly regarded author as a way of introducing the world’s greatest readers to that author’s other work. That’s what is going on with the very popular offering by R.A. Salvatore — who has about 40 other titles available in the Kindle Store — that leads this morning’s Kindle Nation Free Book Alert listings….
(Ed. Note: Talk about serendipity. I received an email from an author just last night, in which she mentioned that she had written a “literary fiction” novel, and wondered how that would go over with the citizens of Kindle Nation. I told her that my own tastes are pretty ecumenical, and that the same was true for many readers here, and that the same readers who have sent romances and hard-boiled suspense novels soaring into the Kindle Store Movers and Shakers’ list have done the same for great literary fiction like Tonya Plank’s Swallow and even for literary erotica like Rena Walmsley’s Girl on Fire. The truth is that Kindle owners are the greatest readers in the world, and that Kindle Nation readers are the
The funny thing is that as I was responding to that author’s email, I hadn’t checked the calendar to see who today’s sponsor would be, and it had been a couple of weeks since I had read The Brightest Moon of the Century, the enchanting literary novel that serves as today’s sponsor. Here, among the greatest readers in the world, a great read is a great read and genre is secondary. And if you miss The Brightest Moon of the Century, you’ll be missing a great read and an introduction to a master story teller. –S.W.)
Here’s the set-up:
In a book that covers four decades like a John Irving novel, with humor reminiscent of Nick Hornby, Christopher Meeks’s The Brightest Moon of the Century follows Edward, a young Minnesotan. He needs a place in the universe, but he also wants an understanding of women. He stumbles into romance in high school, careens through dorm life in college, whirls into a tornado of love problems as a mini-mart owner in a trailer park in Alabama, and aims for a film career in Los Angeles.
“Charming and endlessly entertaining”
— The Midwest Book Review
“I have to say I’ve gone from being an admirer of his work to a full-blown fan bordering on groupie.”
— Marc Schuster, Small Press Reviews
“Christopher Meeks chronicles one man’s path to middle-age and, in doing so, illustrates how choices and circumstances—even those that seem arbitrary at the time—have a way of irrevocably cementing a person’s future.” — Cherie Parker, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Christopher Meeks has produced up to now two of the finest, most intelligent, entertaining, and socially sensitive collections of short stories (THE MIDDLE-AGED MAN AND THE SEA and MONTHS AND SEASONS). For those of us who have become Meeks devotees based on these short stories, the anticipation of a full-length novel has been both exciting and a bit dubious. It is an entirely different challenge to carry a character and a few ideas, well developed as they are in Meeks’ hands, along a path that justifies a complete novel. But with THE BRIGHTEST MOON OF THE CENTURY Christopher Meeks has crossed that bridge so successfully that his stance in the echelon of new important American writers seems solidly secure.” — Amazon Top 10 Reviewer Grady Harp
Christopher Meeks was born in Minnesota, earned degrees from the University of Denver and USC, and has lived in Los Angeles since 1977. He’s taught English at Santa Monica College, and creative writing at CalArts, UCLA Extension, Art Center College of Design, and USC. His fiction has appeared often in Rosebud magazine as well as other literary journals, and his books have won several Noble (not Nobel) Awards. His short works have been collected into two volumes, “The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea” and “Months and Seasons,” the latter which appeared on the long list for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He’s had three plays produced, and “Who Lives?: A Play” is available in the Kindle Store. His focus is now on longer fiction, and his first novel is “The Brightest Moon of the Century.”
Click here to download The Brightest Moon of the Century (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
From the bestselling author of Hammer of the Gods comes a late addition to today’s Free Book Alert listings, the complete story of Guns N’ Roses – from their drug-fueled blastoff in the 80s to the turbulent life of legendary singer Axl Rose, and his fifteen-year, multimillion dollar quest to make the perfect hard rock album….
(Ed. Note: Even before I added a contact page to the Kindle Nation website, I would occasionally receive emails from readers with question about the honest opinions I share with regard to the books whose authors sponsor our daily Free Book Alerts.
Q: Do I read them all?
A: I do not read every word of every book, but I read all of many of them and a substantial part of nearly every one.
Q: How do we know when you really like something?
A. I try to say positive or neutrally descriptive things, and I am well-suited for this job in that I am someone who loves to read and enjoys a great deal of what I read. If I think a book is a waste of time, I won’t accept it as a sponsor. If I’m only moderately positive, I’ll probably limit myself to neutral description of what a book’s about rather than going negative. But then there are the really special books….
But when I’m really committed to a book, I’ll find a way of getting the point across in a special way. So here’s what I’ve got to say about today’s sponsor, Christina Dudley, and her novel Mourning Becomes Cassandra:
It’s the real thing. There are no vampires, time-travelers, or interplanetary adventures, but there are real laughs and real tears throughout. And finally, this:
We’ve had well over a hundred sponsoring authors at Kindle Nation these past few months, yet I can count on the fingers of one hand the authors about whom I have written to my contacts among publishing industry editors, acquisitions people, and literary agents. Christina Dudley will be the sixth, and I will be surprised, when you’ve downloaded Mourning Becomes Cassandra and read it, if you disagree. –S.W.)
I’m clear enough about my own opinions that I don’t need corroboration in these matters, but it turns out I am not alone. You’ll see what I mean if you check out the book’s customer reviews, with lines like this one:
Brilliantly funny and simultaneously touching, the “moral of the story” comes with none of the in-your-face preaching that I would have associated with a book labeled as “Christian fiction,” but with such power and conviction that even the most jaded agnostic would have to pause and ponder its message.
Funny, that “Christian fiction” label. If you’d label the works of Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, or James Joyce as “Christian fiction,” I’m sure you could apply the label to this one, but there’s nothing formulaic of pedantic about this novel. Here’s the set-up:
You think you’ve got issues. Meet Cass Ewan.
After Plan A for her life falls to pieces, she moves in with single friends and reluctantly decides to mentor an at-risk teen. Never mind that Cass knows nothing about drugs, alcohol, or criminally-minded loser boyfriends. Once the prickly, dog-whispering 15-year-old Nadina enters Cass’s life, everything is up for grabs.
There’s new employment at a video game company with a charming fellow mentor. There’s an unlikely friendship with her womanizing housemate Daniel, because who else can she ask about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll? And finally there’s the epiphany about her own role in the universe. Where she once considered herself a cosmic unresolved plotline, Cass finds she still has a pivotal role to play.
And, finally, here are a few pretty telling review snippets:
“A fun and highly recommended read that shouldn’t be overlooked.” –Midwestern Book Review
“Heartbreaking and at times hilarious” — July 2009 Book of the Month –LoveWebRadio.com
Click here to download Mourning Becomes Cassandra (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similar ity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo copying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by AmazonEncore P.O. Box 400818 Las Vegas, NV 89140
Present day
2010, August 10
I had to take a break from rubbing the rope against the edge of the concrete. The salt Mr. K had applied had gotten into the raw skin on my wrists, and the pain was otherworldly. I could have worked through the pain, but it was so bad it caused me to cry, and the crying was accompanied by a runny nose.
With the ball gag in my mouth, the only way I could breathe was through my nostrils. A stuffy nose could kill me.
So I rested, keeping still, trying to calm down enough so I could regain control over my emotions. I’d never felt so along before. The only company I had was the unknown machine humming in the background, and my thoughts and memories.
It would have been okay if there were some good memories mixed with the bad.
Unfortunately, my head was filled with bad stuff that refused to fade away.
Most of the bad stuff revolved around my career. I’d chased, and caught, my share of human monsters. But catching them, or even killing them, didn’t bring their victims back. It also didn’t make me sleep any better at night.
Before my recent retirement, I’d almost called it quits several times. I never did, but I had come pretty close. In my never-ending quest to prove myself to my coworkers, I’d endured a lot of sexist and chauvinist attitudes. A lot of male cops didn’t think women had what it took to work Homicide. It was too ugly for their delicate sensibilities.
In my opinion, it was too ugly for anyone’s sensibilities, female or not, delicate or not. But the fact was, women did have a definite disadvantage when working violent crime cases. It didn’t have to do with physical brawn or stronger stomachs. It had to do with empathy.
Women in general had the ability to feel the emotions of others. Pain in particular.
I’d seen a lot of pain in my years on the force. It was tough to handle.
Coming upon some horrific crime scene, seeing what some psycho had done to a fellow human being, was difficult for me to cope with. Because I could put myself in their place.
I could see their last moments. The struggling. The fighting. The final breath. I could hear their pleas for mercy. I could feel their fear, their agony, sense their helplessness, imagine their horror so deeply it had led to a lifetime of nightmares. That is, when I could get to sleep at all.
Thinking back over the victims I’d encountered, two stood out as the absolute worst ways a person could die. Both were at the merciless hands of Mr. K.
One was known as the Guinea Worm.
The other, the Catherine Wheel.
Lying there in the storage locker, eyes closed, I couldn’t help but shudder at the horrible images they induced.
I also couldn’t help but wonder what was making that ominous humming noise next to me.
Three years ago
2007, August 8
W hen backup arrived at Merle’s U-Store-It, there was more vomiting, every time someone new showed up. I got wise and pulled a garbage can over to the scene, but that was about the only wise thing I’d done that day. Even Phil Blasky, who had a stomach made of titanium and could often be seen eating lunch while doing an autopsy, flinched when he saw the body.
“He’s been here at least three days,” Blasky said during his cursory examination. “Maybe longer. He’s wearing an adult diaper. Got two healing IV marks on his arm, where the needle pulled out from the spinning.”
According to Blasky, Mr. K had visited the vic at least three times, to change his IV bag, keeping him hydrated and alive during the terrible agony he’d endured.
“Tripod probably held a camcorder,” Herb said. “Or maybe a camera taking time-lapse photos. Gives some cred to the theory that Mr. K is a hit man.”
I nodded. When the Outfit ordered an execution, they often wanted proof. A picture was a nice memento to keep around to remind you what you did to your enemies. Both Herb and I had worked cases before where videotapes were involved, but those were sex murders. This death didn’t appear to have a sexual element. This was about causing as much pain as possible.
The particular torture Mr. K employed dated back to medieval times, where it was known as the Catherine Wheel. It resembled a circus knife-throwing act, where someone was strapped to a large, round board, spread-eagled, and then spun in circles while knives hit the spaces between their limbs. But in this case, there were no thrown knives. The pain came from broken limbs—the victim’s arms and legs were each fractured in several places.
For seventy-two hours, a small electric motor had spun him slowly around, his compound fractures stretching and rubbing together, until his arms and legs were so swollen they looked like they’d been inflated.
I couldn’t imagine a more horrible way to die.
“Nothing at all. Not a damn thing.” Officer Scott Hajek, from the crime scene team, frowned at me. He couldn’t find a single shred of evidence anywhere, inside or outside the unit. No fingerprints. No footprints. Even the floor had been swept prior to our arrival. Mr. K didn’t leave anything behind.
“Jack, I’d like to talk when you have a sec.”
I glanced at Herb, whose fat jowls were hanging down like a basset hound’s. Then I nodded and walked him down the hallway.
“I left my post,” he said when we were far enough away from the others. “You told me to wait downstairs and watch the exit.”
“Herb…”
“I screwed up, Jack. If you want to lodge a formal reprimand—”
“I don’t want to lodge a reprimand. Forget about it, Herb.”
He stared at me, pained. I tried to keep my face neutral. Because it wasn’t Herb’s fault. He’d come to my aid when I didn’t respond. I was the one who should have exercised some control, told my partner the perp was on his way down.
It wasn’t Herb’s fault Mr. K got away.
It was mine.
And I deserved more than a reprimand. For letting that monster escape, I felt I deserved to have my badge taken away.
“Let’s focus on what to do next,” I said, eager to get off the subject of blame. “We’ve got his car, his plates, his address. We can go talk to him.”
“But we didn’t catch him in the act, Jack. Did you see him in the locker, with the vic?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Did we get a good look at his face when he walked into the building? Can we even put him at the scene?”
This was a common problem with law enforcement. Sometimes, we knew who the bad guy was, but couldn’t legally connect him to his crimes. Getting a conviction meant following a specific protocol. If any step along the way wasn’t rock solid, the state’s attorney wouldn’t even attempt to prosecute.
“Dust the elevator,” I said. “And the knob on the security door. Let’s see if we can get that watchman downstairs to ID him.” I had a bad thought. “We should also check to see if our perp has a locker here under his real name.”
My worry turned out to be prophetic. The man we followed here did indeed have a storage unit in his name, also on the third floor. Locker 312. That meant he had a reason to be at this facility, and could easily plead innocence in connection with the murder scene. Even if we did find a fingerprint, it wouldn’t matter.
Smart guy. Smart, careful, and utterly devoid of humanity.
While Herb called judge after judge, trying to find one who would issue a warrant to search unit 312, I considered our next move.
There was only one. We had to talk to the guy.
It was doubtful he’d give us a full confession. It was doubtful he’d even let us into his home. And if he did let us in, I wasn’t sure that was a place I wanted to be.
I’d encountered quite a few psychos in my day. But never one that scared the shit out of me like Mr. K did.
Present day
“H
2010, August 10
ey, Phin. It’s Harry.”
Phineas Troutt rubbed his bleary eyes, wishing he’d checked the caller ID before picking up. He didn’t really like Harry McGlade. No one really liked Harry McGlade. But the private detective was bearable in small doses, and they had enough of a history that Phin had a grudging respect for the guy.
Plus, Harry was Jack’s new partner, and Jack had told Phin to be nice. While Phin couldn’t see how Jack could have gone into the private sector with someone so fundamentally flawed—especially since Jack hated being Harry’s partner when they’d been rookies on the force twenty years ago—he respected her wishes. Phin was still adjusting to suburban life, being Jack’s live-in boyfriend. It was her house, and she paid all the bills, including paying for his latest round of chemotherapy. If she found some warped sort of satisfaction being McGlade’s partner again, Phin wouldn’t try to talk her out of it. Even though it personally would have driven him nuts.
“What’s up, Harry?”
“Is Jack there?”
“No. She was gone when I woke up this afternoon.” Phin still felt a bit nauseous from his treatment yesterday, along with having a whopper of a headache, and was thinking about climbing back into bed as soon as he got off the phone.
“She was supposed to stop by the office so we could divvy up the latest cases. Got one where this guy wants to find out if his mother is cheating on his father with his brother. You can’t make shit like that up. Ugly as hell, too. Mom looks like a fat, pink gorilla, but with bigger feet. The son has a face like a carp. I swear, I want to throw a hook in it every time he starts talking. I think people below a certain minimum standard of beauty should have to get a license before they reproduce. A minimum standard of intelligence, too.”
He was one to talk on both counts. “I’ll tell Jack you called when she gets in touch.”
Phin raised his thumb to hit the disconnect button, but Harry’s voice continued to drone on.
“I called her four times. Her phone isn’t on. Goes right to voice mail.”
“Maybe it isn’t charged.” Or maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to you.
“You sure she’s not there?”
“I’m sure, Harry. I’m alone in the house.”
“Did you guys buy a second car?”
“No.”
The only car they had was Jack’s, a new SUV to replace the Chevy Nova she’d owned for almost half her life. Phin hadn’t owned a legitimate car in a while. Before moving in with Jack, the only vehicles he drove were illegally obtained. After being diagnosed with cancer, Phin’s concept of morality had become a bit…skewed for a time. The only people who knew he lived with Jack were Harry, Jack’s mom, and Jack’s old partner, Herb Benedict. There were several warrants out for Phin’s arrest.
Funny he should wind up falling for a cop.
“Well, you know I put a tracker in Jack’s car,” Harry said. “Doesn’t hurt to play it safe, especially with her history. According to my GPS, it’s still parked in your garage.”
Phin felt a jolt of concern course through him. That same sensation he had while on the street, right before trouble started. He walked through the living room, opened the garage door, and stared at the SUV. In three more steps his hand was on the hood. The engine was cold. But that wasn’t what made Phin’s heart rate double. The back security door, the one leading to the yard, was missing a section of glass. A neat circle had been cut through it, carefully avoiding the foiled edges that would have set off the house alarm.
“The car is here,” Phin said. “When was the last time you talked to Jack?”
“Yesterday.”
“Call Herb.”
“Herb? I hate that guy. He’s like a big, mean walrus.”
“Someone broke into the house. I think someone took our girl, Harry. You and Herb meet me here soon as you can. Bring everything you and Jack have been working on lately, and every case going back six months. And tell Herb to bring a list of everyone Jack arrested who just got out of prison.”
“I’m on it.”
Phin hung up, examining the hole in the window. Jack’s home had been invaded before, and she had since beefed up her security. That included foiling the windows—running a paper-thin strip of metal along the perimeter that was hooked up to electricity. If the window was shattered, the alarm went off. The doors also had magnetic sensors, which were supposed to go off if they were opened without a key. A quick look on the outside doorjamb revealed why it hadn’t worked; a larger ceramic magnet was stuck to the frame, preventing the mechanism from springing.
Fighting nausea, Phin hurried back into the house. He grabbed the .45 ACP he kept on top of the fridge, jacked a round into the chamber, and shoved it down the back of his jeans. Then he marched down the hallway to the bedroom. The sheets were still tousled from their night of sleep. Phin remembered popping some Compazine for nausea and codeine for pain, half asleep and groggy when Jack finally came to bed—late as she always did, watching infomercials until three a.m.
“How are you feeling, hon?” she’d asked.
“Better, now.”
He fell asleep holding her hand.
Staring at the bed now, he tried to imagine someone coming in the room and grabbing Jack while he slept off the effects of the drugs. Why hadn’t she struggled? Screamed? The antiemetic and painkillers he took were strong, but if she’d woken him coming to bed, why hadn’t she roused him while being dragged off?
Phin rubbed his eyes, then extended the motion down his face and chin, trying to imagine how he would abduct a woman with her lover sleeping beside her. Especially a woman who was a former cop and no doubt had guns in the house.
He examined the bed, the blankets, the pillows, then scanned the carpeting, following it out into the hallway.
There. A smudge of dirt. Faint, no more than two inches long. It repeated, a foot later, and a foot after that, the dash-dash-dash pattern continuing into the kitchen. Phin went back into the hallway and saw the smudge had gotten longer, now a continuous, muddy line. He walked out the back door and into the yard, spying the narrow wheel track in the patch of dirt where the grass had been thin. It hadn’t rained last night, but dew collected on the lawn prior to dawn, making it damp.
Phin walked into the tree line, where the grass ended, into a copse of trees. Plenty of places to hide and watch and wait for Jack and her boyfriend to fall asleep.
He folded his arms across his chest, feeling a chill even though it was warm. Then he went back inside and got on Jack’s computer. First he checked her e-mail, including her deleted files and spam folder. Without finding anything out of the ordinary, he logged onto Jack’s cell phone account and printed out a list of all her recent calls, going back a week. Most of the numbers he recognized, but a few he didn’t. Using an online reverse directory, Phin worked his way through several restaurants, cable TV shopping channels, and two unknown numbers that either Herb or Harry could help with.
Then he opened up Firefox and looked at Jack’s browsing history. Netflix. Amazon. Clothing retailers. A planned parenthood site.
Phin accessed that and quickly read the page. It was about pregnancy in women over forty.
He left the computer and went to the bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet. He found Jack’s birth control pills, ten still left in the pack. Then he checked the garbage can next to the toilet.
An empty box that read “EPT,” along with a wrapper for one of the tests.
Phin dug deeper, but the pregnancy test wasn’t in there. He went into the kitchen and checked the garbage can under the sink. Nothing.
Where was it? And where was Jack?
Twenty-one years ago
1989, August 16
“S o Armani makes clothes for women, too?” I asked Shell, holding the black pantsuit in front of me and staring into the body-length mirror adjacent to Lord & Taylor’s fitting rooms.
“It’s called a power suit,” Shell said. He stood behind me, close enough for me to feel his breath on the back of my head.
“The shoulder pads are too big. I look like I could play defensive tackle for the Bears.”
“Try it on. You’ll see.”
Skeptical, I took the suit, along with a white silk blouse by someone named Ralph Lauren, and slipped into the closest room. Two minutes later, the Sears suit was in piles on the floor around me, and I stepped back out into the store in bare feet and stood in front of Shell and the mirror.
It was like looking at a stranger.
The pants tapered high at the waist and flared out, clinging to my curves, making it obvious this was designed for women. The blouse hugged my breasts, and the shoulder pads I’d been dubious about made them look bigger than they ever had before.
I was astonished. I actually looked feminine, while still coming across as professional.
More than that, I was hot. Not hot in a slutty way. Hot in a confident, mature, here’s a woman in complete control way. No wonder it was called a power suit.
“Try these on as well.”
Shell knelt down next to me, holding a pair of black heels. “These are Givenchy. You’re a size seven and a half?”
I nodded, wondering how he knew. Shell gently lifted up my left foot, fit on the strappy heel, and then repeated the process with its twin. Somehow, they made the lines of the suit even stronger.
“What do you think?” he asked, staring up at me.
I turned, looking at it from behind. It was as if Armani had made this especially for me. I’d never felt better wearing any outfit.
“It’s amazing,” I said.
Shell stood, putting his hand on my neck, finding my ponytail holder. He freed my long, brown hair, and I shook it loose and watched it cascade over my shoulders. I’d gone from being a professional businesswoman, to ready for a night on the town.
“You’re beautiful,” Shell said.
I’d never been called beautiful before by anyone other than my mother. I was a size six, thanks to the Jane Fonda workout tapes I’d stuck with for the past few years, and my face was okay, but no one would ever put me on the cover of a magazine. Yet when Shell said it, for a brief, magical moment, I believed him. The word made me feel young and girlish and a little bit heady.
“How much is this little ensemble?” I asked. I hadn’t checked the tags because I was afraid.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m paying.”
I turned, facing him. “I make a decent living, Shell. I can buy my own clothes.”
I’ve enjoyed it lately when I have been able to organize our daily Free Book Alerts a bit thematically, and today’s new additions offer an opportunity to get a little more control in our lives. After all, once we are on top of managing people and managing our personal finances, what could possibly remain? Everything else, but there are probably free books in our listings for all those other things, too….
(Ed. Note: Even before I added a contact page to the Kindle Nation website, I would occasionally receive emails from readers with question about the honest opinions I share with regard to the books whose authors sponsor our daily Free Book Alerts.
Q: Do I read them all?
A: I do not read every word of every book, but I read all of many of them and a substantial part of nearly every one.
Q: How do we know when you really like something?
A. I try to say positive or neutrally descriptive things, and I am well-suited for this job in that I am someone who loves to read and enjoys a great deal of what I read. If I think a book is a waste of time, I won’t accept it as a sponsor. If I’m only moderately positive, I’ll probably limit myself to neutral description of what a book’s about rather than going negative. But then there are the really special books….
But when I’m really committed to a book, I’ll find a way of getting the point across in a special way. So here’s what I’ve got to say about today’s sponsor, Christina Dudley, and her novel Mourning Becomes Cassandra:
It’s the real thing. There are no vampires, time-travelers, or interplanetary adventures, but there are real laughs and real tears throughout. And finally, this:
We’ve had well over a hundred sponsoring authors at Kindle Nation these past few months, yet I can count on the fingers of one hand the authors about whom I have written to my contacts among publishing industry editors, acquisitions people, and literary agents. Christina Dudley will be the sixth, and I will be surprised, when you’ve downloaded Mourning Becomes Cassandra and read it, if you disagree. –S.W.)
I’m clear enough about my own opinions that I don’t need corroboration in these matters, but it turns out I am not alone. You’ll see what I mean if you check out the book’s customer reviews, with lines like this one:
Brilliantly funny and simultaneously touching, the “moral of the story” comes with none of the in-your-face preaching that I would have associated with a book labeled as “Christian fiction,” but with such power and conviction that even the most jaded agnostic would have to pause and ponder its message.
Funny, that “Christian fiction” label. If you’d label the works of Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, or James Joyce as “Christian fiction,” I’m sure you could apply the label to this one, but there’s nothing formulaic of pedantic about this novel. Here’s the set-up:
You think you’ve got issues. Meet Cass Ewan.
After Plan A for her life falls to pieces, she moves in with single friends and reluctantly decides to mentor an at-risk teen. Never mind that Cass knows nothing about drugs, alcohol, or criminally-minded loser boyfriends. Once the prickly, dog-whispering 15-year-old Nadina enters Cass’s life, everything is up for grabs.
There’s new employment at a video game company with a charming fellow mentor. There’s an unlikely friendship with her womanizing housemate Daniel, because who else can she ask about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll? And finally there’s the epiphany about her own role in the universe. Where she once considered herself a cosmic unresolved plotline, Cass finds she still has a pivotal role to play.
And, finally, here are a few pretty telling review snippets:
“A fun and highly recommended read that shouldn’t be overlooked.” –Midwestern Book Review
“Heartbreaking and at times hilarious” — July 2009 Book of the Month –LoveWebRadio.com
Click here to download Mourning Becomes Cassandra (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
to download The Suicide Effect
and 
, grew 68% to $3.97 billion. For those of you who are keeping score at home, that’s 52.5% of the company’s total worldwide revenue.
and even for literary erotica like Rena Walmsley’s 
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, and there are plenty of other Kindle Nation citizens whose tastes run even wider. Fans of 
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” and “
,” the latter which appeared on the long list for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He’s had three plays produced, and “
” is available in the Kindle Store. His focus is now on longer fiction, and his first novel is “
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