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Around the Kindlesphere, October 5: New Yorker, Kindle Chronicles, Grisham and Gardner, FranzenNotGroovin

Compiled by Kindle Nation’s Intern Staff


A New Yorker for the Upper Crust? Citizens of Kindle Nation who have been reading the New Yorker for $2.99 a month since it became available on Kindle in early 2009 have nothing against iPad owners, in fact about 20 percent of us also own an iPad. So we’re happy to see that the New Yorker is now available on the iPad. 

But for an “iPaid” price of $4.99 a week? Are the color photos and advertisements really worth an extra $100 annually? (After all, the New Yorker’s finest artwork, its black-and-white sketches and cartoons, render very nicely on the new e-Ink Pearl Kindle 3 and Kindle DX displays.)

In a “Talk of the Town” piece this week, New Yorker editors mention the magazine’s earlier Kindle adoption in passing, but they don’t stoop to the level of discussing the glaring price differential between the Kindle version and the iPad’s: “Our Web site, newyorker.com, has been around, and evolving, for nine years; it’s also possible to subscribe to the magazine on electronic readers like Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook. We even offer a digital edition, which includes a replica of every issue, going back to the first, in February, 1925.”
The editors wrote that they are “at once delighted and a little bewildered about the latest digital development and our place in it: delighted because of the quality of what the tablet provides and the speed with which the magazine can be distributed, but bewildered, too, because we’d be liars if we said we knew precisely where technology will lead.”  Aptly put, they continue, “These are early days.”
They go on to compare editing for the iPad to “making television shows just after the Second World War, when less than one per cent of American households owned a television.” Yet they concede without question that “the digital revolution is already both long-standing and swift” and that many more iPads and Kindles will be sold.
Expanded access in these new venues, according to the magazine’s editors, is in line with the its founding mission about “free expression, the written word, and reading.” “We intend to keep providing the magazine in whatever form seems to work,” they concluded.
The Kindle Chronicles Prevails. Congratulations to podcaster extraordinaire Len Edgerly for overcoming some technological challenges and delivering another excellent weekly edition of The Kindle Chronicles. This week’s program featured an interview with Robert Darnton, author, cultural historian and director of the Harvard University Library as well as Jim Jones on “the iPad Guy and Kindle Girl” TV ad and Robert Green on Esquire’s Rule 695 for Social Networking and the Internet.
Edgerly traveled from his Harvard Square home to Wadsworth House, Harvard’s second oldest building, to visit Darnton, author of The Case for Books: Past, Present and Future and most recently Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris. E-book editions are not yet available.
A Kindle Confession from Grisham. John Grisham’s forthcoming novel The Confession is available for Kindle pre-orders just a few months after he ended his resistance to the Kindle in particular and the entire electronic marketplace in general.
The Kindle catalog continues to extend its reach everyday, whether it is with bestsellers like Grisham or newly offered literary backlist titles like those of John Gardner, author of the 1976 National Book Critics Circle award-winning novel October Light

Despite Grisham’s best-selling status for which some readers might expect to pay an impatience premium, Amazon has set a $9.99 pricetag for  The Confession, whose publisher is the Random House imprint Doubleday, an abstainer from other Big Six publishers’ agency model price-fixing scheme.

The Confession is the story of “an innocent man about to be executed” and the guilty man who can save him. Here’s a longer description, from the publisher:
For every innocent man sent to prison, there is a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn’t understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn’t care. He just can’t believe his good luck…He is content to allow an innocent person to go to prison, to serve hard time, even to be executed.
Travis Boyette is such a man. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row.
Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right and confess.

But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man?

Oops. An author’s worst nightmare—or at least a publisher’s—is the case of Jonathan Franzen’s British release of Freedom in which there are hundreds of mistakes in spelling and grammar and “small but significant changes to characterizations,” according to the author, because of an error made by his typesetters.

Freedom, of course, has become a best-seller and is being critically acclaimed, as the U.K’s Guardian notes, as a contemporary masterpiece. The article reports, “In a highly embarrassing move, publishers HarperCollins were today forced to offer to exchange thousands of copies after Franzen revealed that the UK edition of a novel dubbed “the book of the century” is based on an early draft manuscript…”
“More than 8,000 copies of the faulty first edition have been sold since it was published last week, with 80,000 hardbacks of the book in print. The mistakes were discovered yesterday,” the Guardian continues.
This “oops” moment is pretty expensive for HarperCollins and unfortunate for readers who have already purchased Franzen’s book in England (unless it turns out that the flawed edition gains rare book investment value in the future!) The good news is that the author and publisher are working quickly to create an exchange program so that readers can get the unblemished text in their hands soon at no cost. While the embarrassment might have been identical, the financial cost of a mistake like this on the Kindle or on another electronic platform would be nothing.  

Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Tuesday, October 5: A Dozen New Freebies Including Mr. Darcy, Remember Why You Play, Retirementology, Presenting to Win and More! plus Nomadin (Today’s Sponsor), with Links to Over a Million Free Kindle Titles

The contemporary free book catalog in Amazon’s Kindle Store continues to grow by leaps and bounds, and you can count on Kindle Nation to share the most interesting new additions with you each day, including a dozen free downloads this morning….


  
But first … a word from Today’s Sponsor

“Shawn Cormier is a wonderful new voice in fantasy, as he leads the reader on a fun and stout-hearted journey into imaginative and colorful Princess Bride territory. Nomadin will surely strike a receptive chord with fans of Tolkien and Robert Jordan. More, Shawn Cormier!”  
–Nancy Holder – author of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Blood and Fog  
4.7 out of 5 stars  (19 customer reviews) 


Young Ilien knows nothing of the dark tales told around late-night fires, or of the legendary Nomadin wizards and the prophesy that haunts them. But all that is soon to change. For a shadow touches the peaceful land of Nadae. An ancient evil is stirring. Already a NiDemon has crossed from the land of the dead. And now Ilien must run – from a monster of unimaginable cunning and power, toward a fate more frightening than that which hunts him. But he cannot run forever. Eventually he will have to make a stand. Sooner or later he will have to face what even the legendary Nomadin cannot . . . himself.

US Kindle customersclick here to download Nomadin (or the free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!

UK Kindle customers: Click here to download Nomadin (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!

Or, if you are reading this post on your computer you can begin reading the Nomadin sample right here on your browser!





Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them. 

Authors, Publishers, Kindle Accessory Manufacturers:
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

Free Promotional Titles in the Kindle Store
Note: (Updated Oct. 2010) – Click here for a separate list of Erotica titles sponsored by Rena Diane Walmsley’s steamy coming-of-age novel Girl on Fire


Click here for a complete listing of over 100 free promotional titles and links to millions of other free books for your Kindle.

Retirementology (Bonus Content Edition)

by Jennifer Topper – 4.4 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews) – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
Dark, twisted, and outrageous, 29 Jobs and a Million Lies is not the story of your all-American girl seeking glory and success, but a glimpse at counterculture’s underbelly and attempts to succeed within that world. From demented B-movie, roach-infested film production offices chock full of freakish characters to the Cannes Film Festival; from starting a punk rock record label to its hard but inevitable crash; from a grimy, Greenwich Village restaurant kitchen to failed attempts at joining the Navy, you gotta ask, What’s a nice girl from the suburbs doing all of this dirty work for, anyway?    
29 Jobs and a Million Lies is the gut-wrenching, self-deprecating account of how ambition to stand out was wiped out by clumsy choices, immaturity and self-defeating righteousness. Energized to prove to the doubters that she could succeed despite the unorthodox approach, this litany of boneheaded decisions portrays how the author painfully hurled heart and soul into a long trail of draining pursuits, failing so often that success was invisible. 29 Jobs is a post-GenX novel, except it’s true, and in the vein of Sarah Vowell, Chuck Klosterman, and Dave Eggers. 

Letters To My Mother
Letters To My Mother
by Rebecca Heath – 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
“You know, I never eat young ladies on Fridays. Only Tuesdays.” I couldn’t help laughing. “Do I look as apprehensive as all that?” “Yes, rather.” He opened the door for me. “But I have just the cure for you. It’s David Rosenau’s patented shyness remedy, strawberry shortcake garnished with whipped cream, to be taken at least once weekly in charming company. Doctor’s orders.”  When Professor Rosenau hires college junior, Kate Collins, as his typist, falling in love with the brilliant biochemist isn’t part of the job description, but the shy girl is immediately attracted to David by his kindness and understanding as he is to Kate by her innocence and passion for learning. Letters To My Mother is the story of an unconventional May-December romance set in 1950s Seattle.  

Dixie Divas

Dixie Divas
by Virginia Brown – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
“You found my philandering ex-husband?” Bitty asked. “Where? Mexico? Paris? In Tupelo with a cocktail waitress?” “In your closet,” I answered. “Dead.” Break out the hoop skirts and the zinfandel. The Divas are on the case. Wine. Chocolate. Transvestite strippers. Just another good-time get-together for the Dixie Divas of historic Holly Springs, Mississippi, where moonlight and magnolias mingle with delicious smalltown scandal.
But Eureka “Trinket” Truevine, the newest Diva, gets more than she bargained for when she finds her best Diva girlfriend Bitty Hollandale’s ex-husband in Bitty’s hall closet. He’s dead. Very dead. Now Trinket and the Divas have to help Bitty finger the murderer and clear her name. Virginia Brown is the nationally acclaimed, award-winning author of fifty novels.

The Death Trip
The Death Trip
by Marion Stein – 4.0 out of 5 stars – (6 customer reviews) – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
The Simulated Life Elapsed Process aka The Death Trip is touted as a pharmaceutical alternative to end of life pain and suffering — a dream state that makes the user’s last minutes feel like years spent living the perfect existence. But is this one-way ride really the paradise promised by Panacium Inc?  The Death Trip “comfort care for the dying” or something more nefarious? Some say there’s even a link to the newest party drug.  After the death of his beloved grandmother, Chuck decides to investigate and soon finds himself torn between two women — the activist who suspects a dark agenda and the beautiful MD who helped create the process.  

Concrete Underground
Concrete Underground
by Moxie Mezcal – 5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews) – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
An idealistic journalist sets out to expose corruption among the city’s elite and soon finds himself immersed in a conspiracy of murder, blackmail, espionage, and human trafficking. Pitted against the enigmatic CEO of one of the world’s largest tech companies, he must play a deadly game that threatens to unearth its players’ darkest secrets.  CONCRETE UNDERGROUND is postmodern pulp fiction – a gritty, labyrinthine murder mystery about identity and alienation in the digital age. 

Boob Tube
Boob Tube
by Mark Coker and Lesleyann Coker – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
Go behind the scenes of the daytime television soap opera industry with Boob Tube. Written by Lesleyann Coker (a former reporter for Soap Opera Weekly) and her husband Mark, the two interviewed dozens of soap opera industry insiders for their stories and then fictionalized everything here.  

For Sale in Palm Springs (Henry Wright Mystery #1)

For Sale in Palm Springs (Henry Wright Mystery #1)
by Albert Simon Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
 Retired police chief Henry Wright is now living in Palm Springs and is asked by his friend Wayne Johnson, a detective in the Palm Springs Police department to help solve a crime. Henry has been living as somewhat of a recluse since his wife passed away, but tracking down this killer brings him back to life. Follow his adventures as he travels around the state to solve this mystery. 


Click here for a complete listing of over 100 free promotional titles and links to millions of other free books for your Kindle.


Click here for a separate listing of free and bargain erotica titles for your Kindle.

 Outlander: with Bonus Content
by Diana Gabaldon 
4.4 out of 5 stars – (1,672 customer reviews) – Kindle Price:    $0.00 – Text-to-Speech: Not enabled 
Doubleday Book Club main selection, Literary Guild alternate.  

In Outlander, a 600-page time-travel romance, strong-willed and sensual Claire Randall leads a double life with a husband in one century, and a lover in another. Torn between fidelity and desire, she struggles to understand the pure intent of her heart. But don’t let the number of pages and the Scottish dialect scare you. It’s one of the fastest reads you’ll have in your library.  While on her second honeymoon in the British Isles, Claire touches a boulder that hurls her back in time to the forbidden Castle Leoch with the MacKenzie clan. Not understanding the forces that brought her there, she becomes ensnared in life-threatening situations with a Scots warrior named James Fraser. But it isn’t all spies and drudgery that she must endure. For amid her new surroundings and the terrors she faces, she is lured into love and passion like she’s never known before.      I was lame and sore in every muscle when I woke next morning. I shuffled to the privy closet, then to the wash basin. My innards felt like churned butter. It felt as though I had been beaten with a blunt object, I reflected, then thought that that was very near the truth. The blunt object in question was visible as I came back to bed, looking now relatively harmless. Its possessor [Jamie] woke as I sat next to him, and examined me with something that looked very much like male smugness.”   Gabaldon creates characters that you’ll remember, laugh with, cry with, and cheer for long after you’ve finished the book. –Candy Paape From Publishers Weekly 

Absorbing and heartwarming, this first novel lavishly evokes the land and lore of Scotland, quickening both with realistic characters and a feisty, likable heroine. English nurse Claire Beauchamp Randall and husband Frank take a second honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands in 1945. When Claire walks through a cleft stone in an ancient henge, she’s somehow transported to 1743. She encounters Frank’s evil ancestor, British captain Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall, and is adopted by another clan. Claire nurses young soldier James Fraser, a gallant, merry redhead, and t

UK Edition, Kindle Nation Free and Bargain Book Alert: 7 Andre Norton Classic Sci-Fi Page-Turners for Just £0.74 or $0.99!, plus Cathy Wiley’s 5-Star Page-Turner Dead to Writes (Today’s Sponsor)





What’s the difference between “free” and the price of the great Andre Norton omnibus that is today’s addition to our UK Edition Kindle Nation Free and Bargain Book Alert listings? About 10 pence per book in the UK, or less than 15 cent each in the US….

But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor

Dead to Writes
by Cathy Wiley


I can’t think of a better way to introduce Dead to Writes, today’s UK Free & Bargain Book Alert sponsor, than to share this review by one of the top 100 reviewers on Amazon.com, Mark Baker:   


Who Is Ruining Cassie’s Great Day?

All her life, Cassie Ellis has dreamed of being a published author. And now that dream is days away from becoming reality. But what should be a great celebration turns tragic when someone shots Seth Montgomery. Seth is a convicted arsonist that Cassie has used in research for one of her books. And since the police find Cassie’s day planner next to the body, they haul her in for questioning.  

Cassie can’t quite get a read on Detective James Whittaker. Is she a suspect or not? Plus there’s the attraction they are both trying to hide, at least until this case is resolved. Then another of Cassie’s contacts is killed with the same gun. Who will the killer target next? Is Cassie a target? Or do the police still consider her a suspect?  

The plot started off strongly and pulled me in right away. The characters are wonderfully real. I feel like I know the main characters very well already, and this is just the first book in the series. This is especially true of Cassie who takes these deaths very hard. I found her reaction refreshingly realistic. The characters carried me though as the plot hit some uneven patches in the middle, but it came together for a very strong, page turning climax. And I loved the flirting between Cassie and James, which added a nice touch of humor to the proceedings. I’m looking forward to seeing how their relationship continues.  Cassie and James make a great sleuthing team. I’m already hoping for more books in this great series.


And that review is no outlier! Debuting in the US Kindle Store, Dead to Writes has already garnered a 4.9-star rating across its first 7 reviews. Here’s the set-up:
Author Cassandra Ellis is thrilled to death when her first murder mystery novel is released. She enjoys glowing reviews, praise from friends and family, and the excitement from being published.  
Her celebration is cut short when she becomes the primary suspect for a real life murder. One of the sources she used while writing her novels has been shot, and Cassie is the last to have seen him alive. With her passion for research, she always wanted a firsthand view of the Baltimore City Police Department’s inner workings. She never dreamed she’d get that experience by being taken in for questioning as a suspect.  
When another of her experts is murdered a few days later, she decides it’s time to investigate matters firsthand, much to the displeasure of James Whittaker, the homicide detective assigned to the case.  
Before more friends die… or before Cassie herself is targeted.
You can download your copy for just £2.91 in the UK Kindle Store or $3.99 in the US, or, if you are reading this post on your computer, start reading this sample now without leaving your browser!




UK Customers: Click on the title to download Dead to Writes(or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds

US Customers: on the title to download Dead to Writes (or a free sample) from the U.S. Kindle Store
Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors! 
*  
Authors, Publishers, Kindle Accessory Manufacturers:
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information: 

*     *     *
  • “Free” in the Kindle Store refers here to the price for download to UK-based Kindles.
  • No Kindle Required: Whether you are a long-time Kindle owner or you’ve just acquired an iPad and are filling it with ebooks for the first    time or you are reading Kindle books on a PC, Mac,  iPhone or iPad Touch, you can get any and all of these titles absolutely free on your                Kindle-compatible device of choice! Click here to download a free Kindle App for your device.
(Sponsorship can take a number of different forms and implies no endorsement either of or by Kindle Nation or a sponsor.)

7 Andre Norton Classic Sci-Fi Page-Turners for Just £0.74 or $0.99!

Visions of Distant Shores: An Andre Norton Collection
(Seven Andre Norton novels in one volume!)
by Andre Norton
Text-to-Speech: Enabled – Linked Table of Contents – Beautifully formatted for Kindle

Visions of Distant Shores is a collection of stories written by award-winning science-fiction author, Andre Norton. In most of Norton’s works, alienated outsiders undertake a journey through which they realize their full potential. Many planets in the books are Earth-like places, where humans can live without special protection, and have extensive flora and fauna which are described in considerable detail and often have substantial bearing on the plot.  
On February 20, 2005, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, which had earlier honored her with its Grand Master Award in 1983, announced the creation of the Andre Norton Award, to be given each year for an outstanding work of fantasy or science fiction for the young adult literature market, beginning in 2006.  Nobody today is telling better stories of straight-forward interstellar adventure.  
Included in this volume:

  • Book One: Storm Over Warlock – Stranded on the alien world of Warlock, Shann Lantree’s expedition camp has been wiped out by the Throgs, beings so alien that humans have yet to communicate with them. Lantree must quickly learn how to survive under harsh conditions while being chased by the Throgs — and how to distinguish the real from the dreamed when he meets the mysterious Wyverns. A satisfying and mature novel which readers will seize upon if they want to enjoy a good adventure story…  
  • Book Two: Star Born – When the oppressive global dictatorship of Pax took over Earth they put a stop to space exploration. Still, a few rebels escaped in the sleeper ships to found free new colonies — or perish in the attempt. Those few colonists that reached inhabitable worlds were cut off for centuries, and in that isolation and freedom they developed the mysterious mental powers that “civilization” had all but destroyed…  
  • Book Three: Star Hunter – Somewhere on the jungle world of Jumala, there was a man in hiding–a man whose mind had been reconditioned with another’s brain pattern and for whom there was a fabulous reward. Star Hunter is a thrill-packed account of that other-worldly game of hide-and-seek between a man who did not know all his own powers and an interstellar safari that sought something no man had a right to find…  
  • Book Four: Plague Ship – A fast-moving suspense tale, full of unusual detail and unexpected turns. Several highlights make the book really shine: the sunset gorp hunt on the reefs of an oily sea; a raid on an asteroid’s emergency station; and a landing in the Big Burn, resulting in an encounter with the mutant life-forms that reside there…  
  • Book Five: Voodoo Planet – Dane Thorson of the space-trader ‘Solar Queen’ found himself embroiled in a desperate battle of minds between the rational science of the spaceways and the hypnotic witchcraft of the mental wizard that ruled the Voodoo Planet…  
  • Book Six: The Gifts of Asti – Varta, the last priestess of Asti, lives alone with Lur, a telepath of the lizardfolk, in Asti’s isolated mountain retreat. Decadent Memphir has long since drifted away from the austere paths of Asti, and now the barbarians of Klem are sacking the city, and the smoke of its burning drifts up to the temple…  
  • Book Seven: The People of the Crater – “Send the Black Throne to dust; conquer the Black Ones, and bring the Daughter from the Caves of Darkness.” These were the tasks Garin must perform to fulfill the prophecy of the Ancient Ones–and establish his own destiny in this hidden land!  This are the original and unabridged versions of these tales. A must-have for science fiction fans!
You can download your copy for just £0.79 in the UK Kindle Store or $0.99 in the US, or, if you are reading this post on your computer, start reading this sample now without leaving your browser!





More Free Books Today in the UK Kindle Store!

The New World is a story-length Kindle Exclusive prequel that sets the stage for the world you will discover in The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men, each of which is now available for pre-order at Kindle-appropriate prices in the US Kindle Store, and we hope will soon be available for UK Kndle customers.

The New World 
by Patrick Ness – Kindle Price:    $0.00 – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 

    Ransom X (Legacy Series) 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ransom-X-Legacy-Series/dp/B002Q0Y0OY/kinnatdai-21
by I. B. Holder – Kindle Price:    £0.00 – Text-to-Speech: Enabled   

Martin Legace is a former special ops standout, once recognized as the top field interrogator in the American military complex. His study of the human mind was carried out in make-shift tents on the edge of the battlefield; he didn’t write or read the book on how to break a prisoner, he simply followed his instincts, dissecting human behavior in a way that verges on autism. He had a reputation for getting anything out of anyone – “had” being the operative word. Five years ago, a random crime shattered Legace’s world. Withdrawing inside himself, he built his life around the only family he had left, his teenage daughter. He withdrew from operations, and took the most isolated post he could, in the basement of the Alexandria FBI, working the archives. Legace brought consequence to the job. His tactics of getting inside the minds of criminals led to a controversial new form of investigation that came to be known as- shadow projection. It was a term coined by his insufferable regional director, Bailey, and Legace couldn’t begin to count the ways he hated the simplification of his process. Legace threw the deductive model out the window. He didn’t follow the trail of the criminal; he took on criminals who were smart enough to leave no trail. They were fixed objects like sundials casting a unique shadow for every incremental step in their journey. His methods involved knowing the inner workings of the criminal, and projecting forward to the next activity that such a person would engage in.  His life was verging on stable when a young female agent from Washington walked into his office with an opportunity, an obligation and a threat. Now, normally Legace would have ignored all three, but there was something about the case and the victim that struck a very personal chord in him.  All of his powers were going to be needed for a case that landed on his desk along the agent who now called herself his new partner. There was an abduction ring that was preying upon young women of marginal fame, using them in adult films and ransoming them for the price of pornography. The profit engine became a fad among perverts (the largest single unified economic bloc) and the income was staggering. This great influx of capital precipitated a bold move by the abductors. Their newest acquisition was the daughter of an old friend, the Director of the FBI. All hell was breaking loose over the Web and the world, and with a two-week window to find his quarry, Legace knew that his performance on this case would either cement his reputation as borderline charlatan with blood on his hands, or announce his reinstatement as borderline hero with all of the official responsibilities that entails, and he couldn’t actually say which outcome he feared more.

 4.3 out of 5 stars  (22 customer reviews) Kindle Price: £0.00 
‘The writing is elegant and surprisingly humorous — if you haven’t come across Beck before, you’re in for a treat.’ Guardian 
‘I have never read a finer police story.’ Los Angeles Times 
‘The decalogue about the Swedish Chief Inspector Martin Beck created by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo during the 1960s and 1970s are indeed classic police fiction. They changed the genre. Whoever is writing crime fiction after these novels inspired by them in one way or another.’ Henning Mankell 
‘If you haven’t read Sjowall/Wahloo, start now.’ Sunday Telegraph 
‘Their mysteries don’t just read well; they reread even better. Witness, wife, petty cop or crook — they’re all real characters even if they get just a few sentences. The plots hold, because they’re ingenious but never inhuman.’ New York Times London Review of Books 
Publisher: Harper Perennial (10 April 2009)

Other Martin Beck Titles – £2.99 Each

Murder at the Savoy by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
Buy: £2.99
Thousands of Free Classics for UK Kindle Readers!
With thousands of titles, the Kindle Store contains the largest selection of the books people want to read. This includes the most popular classics for free with wireless delivery in under 60 seconds to your Kindle, computer, or other mobile device.

A Brand New Free Kindle Nation Short: An Excerpt from “Space Junque,” A Novella by LK Rigel


By Stephen Windwalker

Editor of Kindle Nation Daily ©Kindle Nation Daily 2010

 

Maybe I am dating myself, but for me, the premise of every work of speculative fiction calls to mind the black and white image of Rod Serling walking casually toward me, cigarette in hand, from out of the big old Stromberg Carlson TV that was in our living room when I was 10 years old, and intoning…
 
“Imagine, if you will….”
 
Through my decades of reading one thing I’ve noticed is that, if a truly imaginative story is going to take hold of me, I’m almost invariable drawn in from the very first sentences.
 
The premise will be as evident as the writer’s command, and both unfold seamlessly before I have any chance to throw up a force field of resistance.
 
So it is with today’s Free Kindle Nation Short, an excerpt from LK Rigel’s award-winning novella Space Junque. 

Here’s the set-up:


The world is on the brink of ecological cataclysm set off by the Oil Spill of 2010 and exacerbated by the Sea Level Rise of 2070. When the Defenders of Gaia set off dirty bombs in random cities, Char Meadowlark accepts an invitation to visit the Imperial Space Station until the terror subsides.



Mike Augustine, Char’s connection on the station, wants more than friendship, but Char is attracted to Jake Ardri, the pilot who transports her off planet in his shuttle, the Space Junque.



War escalates into world-wide environmental cataclysm, and Char is stranded in orbit on the Space Junque. She and her fellow refugees encounter terrorists, shapeshifters and a demanding goddess in a changing new world order. Mike makes romantic moves on Char, but her heart is drawn to Jake, the shuttle pilot who rescued her.



But is love even possible in flagrante apocalypto?


by LK Rigel
Kindle Edition

List Price: $2.99

Buy Now

Click here to download Space Junque to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!

 

An Excerpt from 
Space Junque

A Novella By LK Rigel


Copyright 2002, 2010 by LK Rigel and reprinted here with her permission.

Chapter 1Let’s Get the Hell Off This Rock

Ghosts would stay off the roads. Why risk an encounter with Homeland Security? But when Char Meadowlark floored the Malibu, their heads popped up all over the fields along Baseline Road. Don’t hit anybody. Don’t hit anybody. Don’t hit anybody.
By the time any of them realized she wasn’t IHS, she’d be out of range even if one had a vehicle. She just hoped some ghost kid didn’t wander out in front of her.
This stretch of putrid fields was condemned by the EPA. While the corporate owners appealed court orders to clean the site, the tainted rice and flax had become home to ghosts and vermin and great white herons. It was said the fields were so polluted that raptors wouldn’t hunt here.
Not that Char believed that stuff about raptors.
At the train tracks a heron perched on the listing stop sign. No train would come, but out of habit she slowed. The bird seemed to disapprove of her classic 2031 Chevy. Yeah, its oil-based fuel system was embarrassing, but she had the carbon credits.
Besides, she had to make the launch, and she had no other way to get to the airport.  
Smoke billowed up from downtown Sacramento, black on gray rising into the orange afternoon sky. She slid the zoom on her sunglasses’ camera and projected the image onto the windshield. 801 K Street was burning, flames shooting through smoke on the top floors.
Mike had better be right that the launch was still secure. It’s Sacramento, Char.The DOGs have higher priority targets. Maybe the fire at K Street was just another maintenance issue. The old capital city had gone to hell since the Imperial Congress abolished California and the other state governments.
On Interzone-5 she raced past a few CitiCars in the commuter lane, risking nothing but the psychic wrath of her eco-betters. No cops gave speeding tickets anymore. Waste of personnel.
Get to the terminal and don’t bother parking. Just leave your car on the street. Go to the shuttle boarding gate. You’re on the list.
She had thought Mike was being overdramatic, demanding she come up to the space station for a visit. He was just trying to scare her out of the cocoon she’d crawled into after what happened to Sky. And Brandon.
Well, it was working.
The airport was guarded by Imperial Homeland Security. No enviros got past them, not even the DOGs. At the gate, two cars waited ahead of her. While a guard chatted with the first driver, more vehicles pulled up in line.
Forty minutes to launch. Cutting it close, but Mike had said her ID would put her in the terminal’s express queue.
The chat at the head of the line disintegrated into an argument. IHS poured out of the guard shack and surrounded the vehicle with weapons drawn, officers screaming at the occupants to get out.
The car in front of Char pulled out of line and drove away. Two more behind her followed. Everybody hated IHS. She had the urge to leave too, despite being such an upstanding citizen. Hell, at university, she and her sister had both won Imperial internships. People called them the hydro twins. Sky was a hydropower engineer and Char a hydroponics agronomist.
IHS didn’t care about that. Everybody was a potential person of interest.
Cripes. Ghosts got out of the car. What possibly made them think they could pass? These must be new if they still had the will to mix in society, but even the kids were just skin and bones. Poor things.
On IHS recommendation ghosts had been declared anathema by Imperial decree. Rights advocates argued that ghosting was not a disease but a mutation. Their theory: after exposure to a critical level of toxicity, the ghosting gene switched on and a person became pathologically apathetic.
Ghosts didn’t eat, didn’t work or sing or play. Didn’t make love. No one knew why they didn’t die of starvation.
The officers took the ghosts away and moved their car, motioning Char forward. She showed the ID card Mike had emailed half an hour ago.
“Sorry you were delayed, ma’am.” The guard smiled pleasantly and waved her through. As the gate slid open, she let out her breath and cruised onto the airport loop.
Cars and buses were parked at haphazard angles all over the road, more of them the closer she got to the terminals. Two hundred yards from the buildings, she abandoned the Malibu.
She slung her backpack over one shoulder. The world might implode, but she’d have a toothbrush and fresh underwear. She zipped her ID into her flight pants.
The comfortable loose pants with multiple zippered pockets on the legs had come into fashion when Vacation Station opened to civilians. Char never thought she’d wear them on an actual flight. Too bad her top was a spandex tube with a single strap, not at all proper for the Imperial Shuttle, but Mike had said to waste no time changing clothes.
A sickly blend of excitement and nausea swept over her. Of course she wouldn’t see the car again. It would be stolen as soon as things calmed down a bit, well before she got back. But she wasn’t coming back, was she?
It was the ghosts. There were so many in the fields this time. Too many. The Pacific Zone must be headed for quarantine, and Mike knew it. He couldn’t breach security by telling her, but he could invite her up, then send her to a clean zone when she returned to the planet surface.
He was a good guy. The best. He’d really watched out for her since Sky was lost. If only Sky had married Mike when he asked. They might have lived together. Sky would be up there above the clouds today instead of buried half a mile below ground.
Char set the Malibu’s admin program to ANY DRIVER and left the carbon credit voucher in the glove box. There was still gas in the tank. Someone who couldn’t catch a flight might use it to get somewhere safe. Safe. As if the word meant something.
At the terminal sidewalk the crackle of ack-ack filled the sky. A private jet without greenlights escaped through the smoke of tiny explosions. Enviros must have set up an anti-aircraft battery outside the airport’s perimeter.
Not DOGs. Please, not DOGs.
Inside, the air buzzed with a low hum of impending hysteria. Monitors showed the burning K Street building on a loop spliced with random scenes of mayhem and War on Terra in the crawl. Nothing unusual in that, but the talking heads did seem more breathless than usual, excited. Something different was happening. Real news.
“The DOGs call themselves radical environmentalists,” the news anchor said to a familiar expert. “But they destroy another little piece of the planet every day, don’t they, Don?”
“DOG stands for Defenders of Gaia, Nancy, so you’re right. It is an ironic name. They believe the only way to save Gaia, as they call the earth, is to wipe out the technology which they posit is destroying the planet.”
The Imperial boarding gate was on the mezzanine. Char got on the escalator behind a woman with a small boy who repeatedly jumped up and down though the woman kept telling him to stop. Shib. Char was getting a headache, either from stress or lack of caffeine.
The little boy missed his step and fell into Char, and they both stumbled against a huge guy in flame-colored overalls. The label on his chest read Imperial Homeland Security.
“Hey now, young man. You don’t want to be doing that.” He scooped up the boy and steadied Char, his voice pleasant and concerned. Not a jerk. “You don’t want to be stuck in California just now.”
The woman went stone silent, sweat breaking out above her eyebrows.
California. The old state name sounded odd coming from IHS. They usually insisted on using Pacific Zone, never California or Oregon or Washington. At the mezzanine, he stepped off to the right, his free arm on Char’s elbow, guiding her away from the human stream that flowed toward the screeners.
He asked for Char’s ID and put the little boy down. The woman’s eyes were wild as she grabbed the boy, “Shibadeh, do you want me to leave you for the raptors?”
A collective gasp erupted all around, not at the curse word but at the mention of raptors. The woman broke into sobs, hugging the child, glaring at the onlookers. Everybody was starting to crack.
“Raptors.” Char tried to sound light-hearted. “They’ve replaced the bogeyman.” She wasn’t enthusiastic about children herself but acknowledged their necessity. She hoped the IHS guy wouldn’t mark the woman’s license. It was hard enough to get clearance to have one, and who could blame anybody for stressing when the entire zone was freaking out?
But he wasn’t paying attention to the woman or the boy. He was looking at Char’s ID, nodding. “You’re pre-cleared.” Her card was blue level, another favor from Mike. “I’ll take you to your gate.”
“How do you know where I’m going?”
“You got a blue card, you’re getting off this rock.” He could play for the Corporate League, he was so big; but for IHS he wasn’t very scary. Maybe it was true that Homeland Security treated people with blue cards better.
It would have taken an hour to get through the screeners, but the IHS guy took Char past them. You got a blue card, you’re getting off this rock.
In the pre-cleared terminal, a man at the coffee kiosk could have been a cover model for Natural Man Today. There was nothing enhanced about him. Dark brown eyes and unprocessed medium brown hair, casually shaggy but not too long, broad shoulders — beautiful. And calm. A touchstone of peace in the maelstrom.
Char was more interested in the coffee. She grabbed the IHS guy’s arm. “Do I have time? I need to get some caffeine in my body.”
Natural Man scanned her from boots to bare shoulders. “It would be a crime to deprive that body of anything it wanted.”
Jerk. But to her surprise she responded to his suggestive gaze.
He recognized the IHS guy. “So, Tyler. I take it you found that package?”
“Being delivered as we speak,” the IHS guy, Tyler, said. “Did you get clearance?”
“Cleared and waiting for you.”
“You got it, Jake. As soon as I make sure Ms. Meadowlark gets her place on the Imperial Shuttle.”
“Blue carder, must be nice.” Jake turned back to Char. He had great teeth and a dangerous smile. “There’s an interesting bar on the ISS. The Blue Marble. Maybe I’ll see you there sometime. My junk is slow, but it eventually gets me where I need to go.”
“Such beauty spoiled by such bad jokes.” She wished she hadn’t said that.
“You think I’m beautiful?” He spread his arms as if he were on display. His flight pants were the real thing: olive green, sturdy canvas, the pockets actually full.
“She’s phoenix,” Tyler said, not like a warning exactly, but a reminder.
There was a firebird logo on her ID, but she didn’t know it meant anything. Tyler might have said she’s a mutant, the way Jake took a step back.
“Right,” Jake said. “If you’re coming with me, you’d best hurry. I’m leaving –” he looked at Char “– as soon as I get some caffeine in my body.”
Tyler swung her backpack over his shoulder. “We should get to the gate.”
“Meadowlark,” Jake said. “Now that’s…real pretty.” Not safe, not like Brandon. “Sure you don’t want to see my junk?”
“Oh, groan,” she deadpanned. “Let’s go, Tyler.”
Categories Books

Start reading the books you love right on your browser with Kindle for Web: Paul Levine’s REVERSAL

Today is the first Monday in October, when the Supreme Court of the United States convenes each year.   It’s therefore particularly appropriate for us to have “Reversal,” the Supreme Court thriller by Paul Levine, today’s Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert Sponsor.  The book was the inspiration for the CBS drama “First Monday” starring Joe Mantegna and James Garner, which was co-created by Levine and Don Bellisario (“NCIS,” “JAG”, “Magnum P.I.”).

You’ve gotta love what comedy author Dave Barry had to say about today’s Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert Sponsor, Paul Levine’s REVERSAL:

“If I had known there was so much sex and intrigue on the Supreme Court, I’d have asked the President to appoint me.”  – Dave Barry

It’s pretty clear that we citizens of Kindle Nation know a good thing when we see it. Since we posted today’s Free Book Alert, REVERSAL has soared to #8 on the Kindle Store Movers + Shakers List and #2 among all “hard-boiled” fiction in the Kindle Store. Just in case you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s an easy way to begin reading without leaving your browser:




Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Monday, October 4: Dixie Divas, 29 Jobs and a Million Lies, For Sale in Palm Springs (Henry Wright Mystery #1), Letters To My Mother, The Death Trip, Concrete Underground, Boob Tube , and, for the First Monday in October, Paul Levine’s Supreme Court thriller Reversal (Today’s Sponsor), with Links to Over a Million Free Kindle Titles

It’s the first Monday in October, and it’s a great day in Kindle Nation as we highlight a sweet bundle of Kindle Store freebies that cannot be ignored….


  
But first … a word from Today’s Sponsor

(Editor’s Note: What better way to mark the first Monday in October than to have, as today’s sponsor, the novel that inspired the 2002 CBS Supreme Court drama “First Monday,” by Paul Levine, Kindle Nation fave and author of the Jake Lassiter crime series! You can read REVERSAL on your Kindle today for under $3, and if I can figure out the text-to-speech command that substitutes the voices of Joe Mantegna, James Garner, and Charles Durning for the Kindle’s read-aloud voice, I promise to come back to let you know. S.W.)

REVERSAL 
by Paul Levine
5.0 stars – 2 Reviews – Kindle Price:    $2.87 Text-to-Speech: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:
Newly appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Sam Truitt takes the bench with high ideals, lofty intentions…and a troubled marriage. Lisa Fremont, his stunning and brilliant law clerk, has a dark secret in her past. If Lisa doesn’t get Truitt’s vote in multi-million dollar case involving a catastrophic airplane crash, she’ll be killed.
REVERSAL is a tale of seduction and betrayal, of passion and greed. Truitt, who has always followed the rules, and Lisa, who never has, join together to battle those who live by no law at all.  (Note: REVERSAL was originally published in hardcover as 9 SCORPIONS).

WHAT’S THE VERDICT ON PAUL LEVINE’S REVERSAL?

“A relentlessly entertaining summer read.” – New York Daily News

“A breakout book, highly readable and fun.” – USA Today

“A big brash blend of violence, sex, and the Supreme Court.” – The Miami Herald

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of 14 novels, Paul Levine won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and was nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, and James Thurber prizes. A former trial lawyer, he also wrote more than 20 episodes of the CBS military drama “JAG” and co-created the Supreme Court drama “First Monday” starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. He is also the author of the “Solomon vs. Lord” series and the thriller “Illegal.”

Click on the titleto download REVERSAL (or the free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
UK Customers: Click on the title to download REVERSAL (or the free sample) from the UK Kindle Store
Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them. 

Authors, Publishers, Kindle Accessory Manufacturers:
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

Free Promotional Titles in the Kindle Store
Note: (Updated Oct. 2, 2010) – Click here for a separate list of Erotica titles sponsored by Rena Diane Walmsley’s steamy coming-of-age novel Girl on Fire

Click here for a complete listing of over 100 free promotional titles and links to millions of other free books for your Kindle.

by Jennifer Topper – 4.4 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews) – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
Dark, twisted, and outrageous, 29 Jobs and a Million Lies is not the story of your all-American girl seeking glory and success, but a glimpse at counterculture’s underbelly and attempts to succeed within that world. From demented B-movie, roach-infested film production offices chock full of freakish characters to the Cannes Film Festival; from starting a punk rock record label to its hard but inevitable crash; from a grimy, Greenwich Village restaurant kitchen to failed attempts at joining the Navy, you gotta ask, What’s a nice girl from the suburbs doing all of this dirty work for, anyway?    
29 Jobs and a Million Lies is the gut-wrenching, self-deprecating account of how ambition to stand out was wiped out by clumsy choices, immaturity and self-defeating righteousness. Energized to prove to the doubters that she could succeed despite the unorthodox approach, this litany of boneheaded decisions portrays how the author painfully hurled heart and soul into a long trail of draining pursuits, failing so often that success was invisible. 29 Jobs is a post-GenX novel, except it’s true, and in the vein of Sarah Vowell, Chuck Klosterman, and Dave Eggers. 

Letters To My Mother
Letters To My Mother
by Rebecca Heath – 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
“You know, I never eat young ladies on Fridays. Only Tuesdays.” I couldn’t help laughing. “Do I look as apprehensive as all that?” “Yes, rather.” He opened the door for me. “But I have just the cure for you. It’s David Rosenau’s patented shyness remedy, strawberry shortcake garnished with whipped cream, to be taken at least once weekly in charming company. Doctor’s orders.”  When Professor Rosenau hires college junior, Kate Collins, as his typist, falling in love with the brilliant biochemist isn’t part of the job description, but the shy girl is immediately attracted to David by his kindness and understanding as he is to Kate by her innocence and passion for learning. Letters To My Mother is the story of an unconventional May-December romance set in 1950s Seattle.  

Dixie Divas

Dixie Divas
by Virginia Brown – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
“You found my philandering ex-husband?” Bitty asked. “Where? Mexico? Paris? In Tupelo with a cocktail waitress?” “In your closet,” I answered. “Dead.” Break out the hoop skirts and the zinfandel. The Divas are on the case. Wine. Chocolate. Transvestite strippers. Just another good-time get-together for the Dixie Divas of historic Holly Springs, Mississippi, where moonlight and magnolias mingle with delicious smalltown scandal.
But Eureka “Trinket” Truevine, the newest Diva, gets more than she bargained for when she finds her best Diva girlfriend Bitty Hollandale’s ex-husband in Bitty’s hall closet. He’s dead. Very dead. Now Trinket and the Divas have to help Bitty finger the murderer and clear her name. Virginia Brown is the nationally acclaimed, award-winning author of fifty novels.

The Death Trip
The Death Trip
by Marion Stein – 4.0 out of 5 stars – (6 customer reviews) – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
The Simulated Life Elapsed Process aka The Death Trip is touted as a pharmaceutical alternative to end of life pain and suffering — a dream state that makes the user’s last minutes feel like years spent living the perfect existence. But is this one-way ride really the paradise promised by Panacium Inc?  The Death Trip “comfort care for the dying” or something more nefarious? Some say there’s even a link to the newest party drug.  After the death of his beloved grandmother, Chuck decides to investigate and soon finds himself torn between two women — the activist who suspects a dark agenda and the beautiful MD who helped create the process.  

Concrete Underground
Concrete Underground
by Moxie Mezcal – 5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews) – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
An idealistic journalist sets out to expose corruption among the city’s elite and soon finds himself immersed in a conspiracy of murder, blackmail, espionage, and human trafficking. Pitted against the enigmatic CEO of one of the world’s largest tech companies, he must play a deadly game that threatens to unearth its players’ darkest secrets.  CONCRETE UNDERGROUND is postmodern pulp fiction – a gritty, labyrinthine murder mystery about identity and alienation in the digital age. 

Boob Tube
Boob Tube
by Mark Coker and Lesleyann Coker – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
Go behind the scenes of the daytime television soap opera industry with Boob Tube. Written by Lesleyann Coker (a former reporter for Soap Opera Weekly) and her husband Mark, the two interviewed dozens of soap opera industry insiders for their stories and then fictionalized everything here.  

For Sale in Palm Springs (Henry Wright Mystery #1)

For Sale in Palm Springs (Henry Wright Mystery #1)
by Albert Simon Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
 Retired police chief Henry Wright is now living in Palm Springs and is asked by his friend Wayne Johnson, a detective in the Palm Springs Police department to help solve a crime. Henry has been living as somewhat of a recluse since his wife passed away, but tracking down this killer brings him back to life. Follow his adventures as he travels around the state to solve this mystery. 


Click here for a complete listing of over 100 free promotional titles and links to millions of other free books for your Kindle.


Click here for a separate listing of free and bargain erotica titles for your Kindle.

 Outlander: with Bonus Content
by Diana Gabaldon 
4.4 out of 5 stars – (1,672 customer reviews) – Kindle Price:    $0.00 – Text-to-Speech: Not enabled 
Doubleday Book Club main selection, Literary Guild alternate.  

In Outlander, a 600-page time-travel romance, strong-willed and sensual Claire Randall leads a double life with a husband in one century, and a lover in another. Torn between fidelity and desire, she struggles to understand the pure intent of her heart. But don’t let the number of pages and the Scottish dialect scare you. It’s one of the fastest reads you’ll have in your library.  While on her second honeymoon in the British Isles, Claire touches a boulder that hurls her back in time to the forbidden Castle Leoch with the MacKenzie clan. Not understanding the forces that brought her there, she becomes ensnared in life-threatening situations with a Scots warrior named James Fraser. But it isn’t all spies and drudgery that she must endure. For amid her new surroundings and the terrors she faces, she is lured into love and passion like she’s never known before.      I was lame and sore in every muscle when I woke next morning. I shuffled to the privy closet, then to the wash basin. My innards felt like churned butter. It felt as though I had been beaten with a blunt object, I reflected, then thought that that was very near the truth. The blunt object in question was visible as I came back to bed, looking now relatively harmless. Its possessor [Jamie] woke as I sat next to him, and examined me with something that looked very much like male smugness.”   Gabaldon creates characters that you’ll remember, laugh with, cry with, and cheer for long after you’ve finished the book. –Candy Paape From Publishers Weekly 

Absorbing and heartwarming, this first novel lavishly evokes the land and lore of Scotland, quickening both with realistic characters and a feisty, likable heroine. English nurse Claire Beauchamp Randall and husband Frank take a second honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands in 1945. When Claire walks through a cleft stone in an ancient henge, she’s somehow transported to 1743. She encounters Frank’s evil ancestor, British captain Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall, and is adopted by another clan. Claire nurses young soldier James Fraser, a gallant, merry redhead, and the two begin a romance, seeing each other through many perilous, swashbuckling adventures involving Black Jack. Scenes of the Highlanders’ daily life blend poignant emotions with Scottish wit and humor. Eventually Sassenach (outlander) Claire finds a chance to return to 1945, and must choose between distant memories of Frank and her happy, uncomplicated existence with Jamie. Claire’s resourcefulness and intelligent sensitivity make the love-conquers-all, happily-ever-after ending seem a just reward. 

Click here to see a dozen other Kindle editions by Diana Gabaldon, most in the $6 to $8 range.

The New World is a story-length Kindle Exclusive prequel that sets the stage for the world you will discover in The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men, each of which is now available for pre-order at Kindle-appropriate prices in the Kindle Store. (Order them now and they will be delivered automatically to your Kindle or Kindle App on October 18, but between now and then you’ll have plenty of time to read this free copy of the prequel, which runs 589 locations).

The New World 
by Patrick Ness – Kindle Price:    $0.00 – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 

Kudos to indie publisher Candlewick Press in my neighboring town of Somerville for working with Amazon to nail the perfect Kindle-appropriate process of bringing out a new sci-fi/fantasy/YA series for Kindle readers!

Elvis and The Dearly Departed
Elvis and The Dearly Departed
by Peggy Webb
4.2 out of 5 stars  (9 customer reviews) – Kindle Price: $0.00 Text-to-Speech: Enabled

They say you can’t get to Heaven without passing through the Eternal Rest Funeral Home. And no one gets into Eternal Rest without passing muster with Elvis-the basset hound who’s convinced he’s the reincarnation of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Brewing up a big ol’ pitcher of Mississippi mystery, Peggy Webb’s delightful new series is as intoxicating as the Delta breeze.

PM Update to Sunday’s Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert: The Boss, Now Free in the Kindle Store!

Here is a very interesting free ebook with two essays by singer-songwriter-rocker Bruce Springsteen on his own early creative process in the years after he soared to mega-stardom in the late summer of 1975 with Born to Run. I’ve read them and recommend them to anyone with an interest in Springsteen, the creative process, and American culture in the second half of the last century. They reminded me a bit of some of Bob Dylan’s writing in Chronicles, which I guess should not be surprising.

The downloaded material says that the essays will be included in Springsteen’s upcoming book Songs, which is not yet available for pre-order but which I hope will be an update and expansion of his 1998 book Bruce Springsteen: Songs, which is out of print in hardcover and paperback.


Thoughts on The Promise and Darkness On The Edge Of Town
by Bruce Springsteen
Free in the Kindle Store!
Speaking of free, while we’re here, let me take a moment to share a free sample that you can read right on your browser from today’s Kindle Nation Free Book Alert sponsor, Kismet’s Kiss (Alaia: The Women of Kismet, Book One), by Cate Rowan. Kismet’s Kiss has been raking in the 5-star reviews from thoroughly enchanted readers and if this sample strikes your fancy you can grab the entire book for just $2.99 in the Kindle Store.