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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
A crippling EMP strike thrusts the nation into disarray… Hidden Homestead: A Small Town Post Apocalypse EMP Thriller Boxset by Colton Lively
A crippling EMP strike thrusts the nation into disarray… Hidden Homestead: A Small Town Post Apocalypse EMP Thriller Boxset by Colton Lively
Fans of James Patterson or Michael Connelly will love Retribution: A Gripping Paranormal Thriller by C. M. Sutter
Fans of James Patterson or Michael Connelly will love Retribution: A Gripping Paranormal Thriller by C. M. Sutter
A steamy, emotional secret rockstar small town romance set in Colorado, where the nights are cold…but steamy! Love and Lies by Jade C. Jamison
A steamy, emotional secret rockstar small town romance set in Colorado, where the nights are cold…but steamy! Love and Lies by Jade C. Jamison
A fascinating and shrewdly-observed world that you will savor like your first-morning bite of pain au chocolate… Once Upon a Villa: Adventures on the French Riviera by Andrew Kaplan
A fascinating and shrewdly-observed world that you will savor like your first-morning bite of pain au chocolate… Once Upon a Villa: Adventures on the French Riviera by Andrew Kaplan
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Balance Exercises for Seniors Without a Personal Trainer: Easy & Simple Routines For Fall Prevention, Improved Posture and Increased Confidence in Just 5 Minutes Daily by Ioannis Lekkas
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Balance Exercises for Seniors Without a Personal Trainer: Easy & Simple Routines For Fall Prevention, Improved Posture and Increased Confidence in Just 5 Minutes Daily by Ioannis Lekkas
We’re at the beginning of a fun time here at Kindle Nation. Not only do we have plenty to share with you in this week’s newsletter, but you may have already noticed that we’re in the process of adding some pretty cool enhancements to our overall presence, including (and this is just a beginning):
Our regular Kindle Nation Daily Free and Bargain Book listings page is easier to use than ever, and now includes “author” and “date added” data for each of the more than 100 contemporary tiles found there. Soon we hope to add the ability to sort by title, author, or date added as well as the ability to open a sample of any listed book from within your browser!
We’ve made our “Around the Kindlesphere” news summary a regular feature that you’ll be seeing at least once a week.
Our sister site, Planet iPad, is back up and running with a wealth of information for folks who enjoy reading on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, thanks to new editor Tom Dulaney. Check it out or click here to subscribe to the Kindle edition!
We’ve cut way back on posts aimed at UK Kindle owners and will soon close them out almost entirely, but not because we have forsaken fellow Kindle owners across the pond. Instead, we believe we’ll be better able to serve Kindle owners everywhere before the end of 2010 by making a totally separate Kindle Nation UK the first of several in-country Kindle blogs beyond US borders.
Finally, and this is pretty exciting, we have been selected by Amazon and its AmazonEncore publishing imprint to play a major role in a new book release — over the course of the next two weeks — that will be one of the major new media publishing stories of the season. More on that item this week!
But enough about what we’ll be doing in future weeks. We’ve got plenty to share with you this week, so let’s get started! Click on any heading in the linked table of contents below to navigate to the entire article.
Has the Kindle Become a Staple? Staples, the prominent office-supplier, just announced that the Kindle, which remains Amazon.com’s #1 best-selling, most-wished-for and most-gifted product, is now available in its stores. The superstore joins Target as among the first physical stores to carry Kindle devices.
“Kindle is just one example of a host of hot tech items customers can get at Staples this holiday season,” said Jevin Eagle, executive vice president of merchandising and marketing at Staples. “From our hands-on displays to our knowledgeable associates, Staples makes buying technology easy any time of year.”
The following models will be available at these prices:
Amazon’s move to sell Kindles at Staples will broaden the already wide reach of the Kindle marketplace and promote its technology to new consumers who might be less frequent Web visitors. Of course, if you are reading this piece and you’d like to stock up on Kindles as holiday gifts without leaving your home or office, we hope you will support Kindle Nation by using the links just above to place your orders!
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Random Rising. Random House’s ebook sales appear not to have collapsed as a consequence of its decision to abstain from the agency model price-fixing scheme in which all of the other Big Six publishers have colluded with Apple’s Steve Jobs. Random House ebooks are not available in Apple’s iBooks store, which is one factor in keeping iBooks’ market share at what we expect is probably the single digits. But Random House, according to a recent interview with CEO Markus Dohle, “expects electronic books to contribute more than 10 percent of its U.S. revenue next year.”
Dohle told German magazine Der Spiegel, via Reuters, that “e-book revenue had already jumped to 8 percent in the United States and had turned into a new growth driver for the publisher of Dan Brown, John Grisham and Stieg Larsson.”
The article quoted Dohle saying, “We’re at 8 percent in the United States currently…it rose by leaps and bounds. I could well imagine that we get beyond 10 percent next year.”
Moreover, he considers e-book technology “a major opportunity” that will allow the company to build “record growth”and predicts that his company’s share of e-books as revenue will likely be between 25 and 50 percent by 2015.
Meanwhile, readers who want to read Random House ebooks on their iPads, iPhones, iPod Touches, BlackBerries, computers, and Android devices can do so easily by downloading the free Kindle apps for these devices and shopping in the Kindle Store. “Dohle said he was not sure about Apple’s [agency] model which forces publishers to determine the end-consumer price, unlike for printed books which are priced by retailers,” according to Reuters.
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Piracy Fears Overblown? Consumer demand for pirated e-books did not grow in 2010, according to a Teleread piece by Eric Hellman: “Online piracy of ebooks has been a persistent worry for book publishers who look at the successes and failures of other media that have moved to digital forms. A surprising number and variety of ebooks are easily availabile on file sharing websites and peer-to-peer networks that use bitTorrent and similar protocols.”
In his study, Hellman used Google trends to determine the demand for a particular pirated e-book title by giving it “keywords that reproduce these searches.”
Moreover, Hellman describes his 2010 findings, compared to 2008:
To eliminate seasonal variations, I computed the year over prior year growth of pirate ebook search activity. The resulting plot is quite smooth. After a few years of 100% per year growth, 2008 showed a clear slowing of growth. This slowing of growth continued up to the beginning of 2010, and then flat-lined. Since February of 2010, the growth of interest in pirated ebooks has stopped completely.
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Backlist 101? While the Kindle catalog has been growing dramatically this year, there are still many miles to go when it comes to titles by non-English language authors and backlist titles by important writers in any language. MediaBistro’s e-Book Newser, observes that “while Amazon offers 101 books by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, only one is available on Kindle.” That book is literary criticism with a large dose of cultural analysis, The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and “Les Miserables” (Princeton University Press).
Peruvian novelist and political activist Llosa won the Nobel Prize in Literature the other day, according to the Nobel committee, “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.”
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And Now, the W-Book. At the other end of the political spectrum, the much-anticipated Bush-43 memoir “Decision Points” will be released November 9 in two different e-book editions. According to the publisher’s press release, “The book is a chronicle of the fourteen most critical and historic decisions in the life and public service of the 43rd President of the United States.”
A deluxe edition with audio and video enhancements will be released for platforms and devices that support such media, including the Kindle app for iPhone and iPad. It will include:
Videos from the defining moments of the Bush presidency, including President Bush’s inspiring speech to 9/11 rescue workers, intimate Bush family movies, and a special introduction to the edition by the President himself
Handwritten letters from President Bush’s personal correspondence
Full texts of President Bush’s most important speeches, including his addresses to the nation about the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and his Second Inaugural
More than 50 additional photographs not contained in the print edition
If you are reading this post in your browser, here’s a trailer for the deluxe e-book edition (it can also be viewed at www.GeorgeWBushEbook.com):
Decision Points will also be released as an audiobookread by the former president. It will, apparently and perhaps not surprisingly, be an abridged version. A cloth-bound, signed, and numbered limited edition ($350) will be published on November 30, 2010.
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Frankfurt Book Fair. Publishers Weekly has a story on the recently concluded 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair’s embrace of the e-book community. It seems the book fair has evolved into a multi-platform e-book and new media conference.
On one panel that included Brian Murray, CEO, HarperCollins; Evan Schnittman, managing director, Bloomsbury; Andrew Savikas, v-p, O’Reilly Media; and Rick Joyce, CMO, Perseus, “all of the panelists noted explosive growth in e-book revenues,” said the report.
“Murray said e-books made up about 9% of HarperCollins’ total revenue, but when that number was adjusted to filter out things like children’s books or other materials not easily consumed digitally, closer to 20% of trade title revenue was now derived from e-books.”
“This year, e-books and digital are looked at more as an opportunity than a threat.”
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Ginsberg Gibberish? Elsewhere a PW blogger Craig Morgan Teicher warns lovers of poetry to beware of formatting flaws on e-books. The writer recently—and excitedly—bought Allen Ginsberg’s Collected Poems in e-book format only to discover missing and inaccurate indentations.
“The liniation of the poems in the book was all messed up,” Teicher writes elegantly. “Doesn’t a trade publisher as big as HarperCollins have the money to pay a professional to do a bit of extra work on an e-book for a figure as big as Ginsberg, especially when there’s a movie about him in theaters now? What’s going on?”
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Amazon to Launch Android App Store. Just when observers are beginning to tire of endless predictions that Google Editions — when it is launched at mid-century — will be the trojan horse that allows Google to rise to dominance over the world of ebooks, it appears that Amazon is running a rather elegant trojan horse play of its own.
Kindle Nation citizens are already aware that Amazon is working on a Kindle-compatible app store, and now, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and Engadget, Amazon has sent its Android SDK application to developers in an effort “to entice them to start signing on to the store.”
Wired is speculating that Amazon’s app will be very similar to Apple’s app stores for its various iOS devices: “carefully curated and targeted at consumers who are tired of the chaos in the Google Android Market”as well as ongoing spam issues and problematic apps for Android.
There is no word yet on whether Amazon’s app will be free or paid, what it will look like, what features it will offer users, and where it will be offered (in the United States or globally).
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Interactive Fiction Gaming for Kindle. Andrys at Kindle World reports on the Register’s discovery that “Kindle users can now lose themselves in the worlds of Zork I, II and III…” free of charge. On the Kindles 2, 3, and DX, search “kindlequest.com” within the Web browser.
Don’t know Zork? Wikipedia defines the game: “Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure.”
Sheila Weller tells the story of a generation through the lives of three of its iconic singer-songwriters — Joni, Carly, and Carole — in the first of several brand new additions to our newly updated list of free Kindle ebooks….
But first … a word from our sponsor….
Okay, enough with singer-songwriters already. The deal here is that you’re a stuffed bunny and it’s the end of the world….
I’m hoping that that last line just before the cover image got your attention, because this is serious! Well, it could be.
Remember those choose-your-own-ending books you grew up with or read to your kids? They were great fun, but perhaps just a tad earnest?
Now, with Zombocalypse Now, we can reimagine them and take control of our own destinies in a grownup comedy/horror reimagining of the choose-your-own-ending books you grew up with. This madcap, PG-13, pick-your-path adventure book is ideal for the Kindle as it places the reader on a blind date with the living dead, and then spirals out of control along any number of increasingly-bizarre paths. You’ll be confronted with undead hordes, improper police procedure, the sexiest zombie ever, and the very real possibility that you’ll lose your grip on reality and wind up chewing the carpets. Novel-length (the trade paperback runs 280 pages), Zombocalypse Now includes 112 possible endings, including at least seven in which you don’t die. Yep, you could download this one and still be alive tomorrow!
Quick links to each choice make the Kindle the ideal way to enjoy this madcap, pick-your-path adventure (without even having to stick your fingers in the pages to mark your place while you are trying to guard against disaster!).
The zombie apocalypse has never been this much fun.
And here … major testimonial just ahead … although the author and publisher have placed this carefully in the PG-13 category … I confess that I read this one to my 12-year-old son Danny a few weeks back … yep he’s 12 and about to be taller than me and I still read him to sleep … and he gave it the Danny Seal of Approval, which I assure you is not given out easily!
Click on the title to download Zombocalypse Now (Chooseomatic Books)(or a free sample) to your Kindle or free Kindle app and start reading within 60 seconds!
UK Kindle customers: click on the title to download Zombocalypse Now
Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them.
If you love a great detective story that’s beautifully written, full of suspense and keeps you guessing and turning pages … we’ve got a suggestion ….
But first … a word from our sponsor….
Girl on Fire by Rena Diane Walmsley
A few words from the latest customer review:
Enticing plot dynamics and authentic voice, October 4, 2010
By
Respin Destu “P Diamo” (San Francisco, CA USA) – See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: Girl on Fire (Kindle Edition)
I read this book on a friend’s suggestion; available information causing me to wonder what a former Miss Massachusetts might have to say about the esoteric subject matter as a young girl and as an older woman. The writer’s voice comes across as authentic and nuanced in both ages; something difficult to pull off for a new writer.
She developed several dynamic plots within the book, each pulling the reader into a desire to find out more about the lives of the characters. I notice other reviewers commenting about the central plot. Having been a blogger for more than ten years and in touch with numerous “crazies” with all sorts of improbable realities, the story line does not seem so difficult to believe as some might think.
At any rate, her writing served to draw and keep my interest effectively as the story unfolded and that’s how I measure any book’s worth. Definitely an inventive and surprising set of turns.
I’m not a routine reader of erotica because the genre can be a haven for those who can only turn out “shock and flaw” work. But I do feel this writer did quite well with this first effort and will find an eager audience in erotica and any other area of fiction she chooses.
If I’m not mistaken, I believe Ms. Walmsley won the Miss America Talent competition with an acting effort. The empathy and observation required by such talent serves her well as this book demonstrates a solid ability to build imaginative plots and characters the reader can care about.
Looking for love in all the right places? Not Alicia Wentworth, the enchantingly frisky teenaged heiress at the heart of Rena Diane Walmsley’s debut memoir-as-novel. Alicia escapes from her privileged, sheltered life at an elite Concord, Massachusetts boarding school and pulls a “visiting room switch” to break in to a nearby state prison so she can rendezvous with Teddy Lake, an exquisitely chiseled 21-year-old Native American convict for whom she has fallen hard while volunteering in a creative writing class for inmates. But Alicia is left alone and vulnerable when Teddy is hauled off to solitary, and she must reach deep within herself to concoct a gritty and initially degrading scheme to blackmail the prison system into freeing them both. This deliciously literate debut is framed by Alicia’s present-day perspective as “a respectable thirty-something Unitarian minister” in a suburb west of Boston: while she is cognizant of the scars she wears from her early experiences, she is also engaged by a sense of something sacred therein that informs her daily life years later.
Not all coming-of-age novels are alike, and not every thirty-something narrator is able to cast an unflinching eye on the choices she made and the chances she took at the cusp of adulthood. But Walmsley’s unique novel-as-memoir never blinks, and her stunning sexual description breaks new narrative ground on age-old but ever-engaging terrain. Women and men alike will be enchanted and enriched by their journeys through her ultimately cautionary web of words.
About the Author Rena Diane Walmsley lives with her family in Massachusetts, the state that she represented in the Miss America pageant when she was nineteen. Girl on Fire is her first novel.
Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them.
If you love a great detective story that’s beautifully written, full of suspense and keeps you guessing and turning pages … we’ve got a suggestion …. grab “Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery” right now. It cost over $9 the other day and I felt smug because I had gotten it free two weeks ago. But it’s free again, for the moment.Grab it now, then come back and read the rest of this later.
If you are also intrigued by by what it must have been like in London during World War II, you have twice the reason to enlist in author James R. Benn’s platoon of happy readers.
Billy is a young Boston flatfoot just promoted to detective when the draft catches up with him. His all-cop family calls in a favor from Uncle Ike–Dwight Eisenhower to the rest of us. The Boyles, ardent Irishmen with little love for the British, hope to wangle Billy a desk job in safe Washington DC for the duration. Billy gets the new job, but so does Ike: Commander of allied forces, headquartered in London. Just in time for the Nazi bombing Blitz, Billy arrives in wartime London, where the steadfast British stiffen their upper lips, race into the subways to ride out each bombing run, and emerge to heroically bury the dead and stack the bricks of bombed out homes neatly for rebuilding when the war is over.
Uncle Ike quickly puts Billy on the job to find a spy who is trying to undermine Allied plans to invade Nazi-occupied Norway. Billy, an untried detective, rises to the challenge and sweeps the reader along for the adventure. Especially satisfying are Benn’s descriptions of London under the gun. This historical backdrop is accurate, and a surprise awaits readers who don’t know just how tricky Winston Churchill could be in confounding the Nazi’s wth amazing–and totally true–ploys.
You won’t pay a dime for this book for now, but it’ll still cost you. “Billy Boyle” is only the first of five books in the series, so far. The series takes Billy to all fronts–Africa, Ireland, Sicily– all WWII detective stories by James. R Benn. I was captured by the freebie, marched as happy prisoner back to Amazon again and again, and bought the lot of them.
Benn and character Billy make a team who will have me running back if and when the sixth book in the series is ever written. I am hopeful, because there were strong hints in the fifth book that Billy would take me inside the Vatican.
In reviews stuck on the book’s Amazon page, Publisher’s Weekly sniffed that the book isn’t “fully realized” and Booklist chides Benn for “wartime cliches.” I humbly but rigorously disagree with both.
It’s a great day for novelist Kathy Bell, and it’s a treat to be part of it for us here at Kindle Nation.
The debut novel in her Infinion Trilogy of speculative fiction, Regression, was released almost a year ago but it continues to ride high on genre bestseller lists in the Kindle Store. And today, which just happens to be Thanksgiving in her native Canada, is the release date for Evolussion, the second Infinion novel and the sequel to Regression.
We’re paying tribute to the double significance of the date by welcoming Kathy as today’s feature author in our Free Kindle Nation Shorts program, and she has generously provided a 10,000-word excerpt from Regression which has garnered 45 4- and 5-star reviews at Amazon. The full-length novel, a triumph of imagination, comes with text-to-speech enabled and has been discounted by Amazon to just $2.39 in the Kindle Store!
Here’s the set-up:
Fourteen-year-old Adya Jordan is too good to be true and too smart for her own good. Her skills with people, information, and technology make her the perfect new intern at megacorp Three Eleven, the company which covertly controls the world in an alternate 1985.
Could this be because this is not her first lifetime? Or even her second? Or does it have more to do with the strange sequence of DNA in her cells?
Find out what makes Adya tick as she and a group of elite scientists strive to prevent a global disaster.
Scroll down to begin reading the free excerpt now
What Reviewers Say About Regression
Adya Jordan, a forty-year-old mother of six, injured in a terrible car accident, awakens to find herself in her fourteen-year-old body once again. Consumed with grief over being separated from her family, she tries to live like a normal teenager. That’s when she begins to notice that things are slightly different than they were the first time around; all minor things that when put together add up to major differences. Adya is offered an opportunity to join the ranks of the most powerful people in the world, an opportunity of a lifetime, making her the envy of most. She seizes it without hesitation, as anyone else would. However soon, she discovers that something will go terribly wrong in the future. With time running out on the human race, it’s up to her to make the most powerful people in the world see the truth and change course before its too late. Kathy Bell has done a fair share of research for this book and it shows. As science comes to life inside the dialogue and plot in her novel, it became easy to suspend disbelief in the possibility of humans traveling Interdimensionally. All told, Regression was an enjoyable read with fully developed characters and enough plot twists to keep me turning the pages long after dark-thirty in the morning. –Amazon.com Review
The past, present and future meet in Kathy Bell’s debut novel, Regression. Bell, who was born in a small Ontario town on the shores of Lake Huron, is an Owen Sound teacher, and, when she is not in the classroom, a novelist. I puzzled over this one, testing my disbelief as I always do when approaching speculative fiction. At first, I found Adya Jordan’s time regression a bit hard to take but then I sank into the story, a time shaping novel about a mysterious corporation, Three Eleven, out to change the world. Laced with dialogue that races the story on, Regression shows a clever use of plot, time changes and an inventive mind that all add up to a surprise – a wellcrafted work of futuristic fiction. –Andrew Armitage, Book Editor, Owen Sound Sun Times
Click on the title to download Regression (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
the newest release in Cathy Bell’s Infinion Trilogy!
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A Brand New Free Kindle Nation Short:
An Excerpt from Regression
A Novel By Kathy Bell
Copyright 2009, 2010 by Kathy Bell and reprinted here with her permission.
PROLOGUE
Journal of Doctor Nicholas Weaver
July 27, 98 Post Impact
To perform the regression requires almost 70 exajoules. The amount of power consumed by humans during one year when we were at the peak of our civilization. Such incredible discharges of energy are virtually impossible to achieve. Meteor impacts, megathrust earthquakes, or a blast of 17 gigatons of TNT might approximate the power. Not simple to orchestrate. It is both to my horror and to my advantage such an instance occurs November 11, 2011, providing thirty times the force required. The phenomenon precipitates the need for the regression while also providing the means to complete it. What tragic irony.
CHAPTER ONE
“No, Daddy. Want Mommy.”
Daniel Davies shook his head, grimacing at his wife as she reached for the struggling toddler.
Adya smiled. “Poor Daddy.” She winked over the head of the little blonde girl. “You just don’t measure up.”
“Ouch.” He buckled the last of their children into the van before rounding to the driver’s side window. “I’ll see you in a bit; Jim wants me to help him put the equipment away.” Leaning in, he kissed her, and then strode toward the ivy-covered stone building still surrounded by people in uniforms.
“Bye, honey.” Adya turned and smiled over the seatback at the young ones. “You were all very well behaved for the memorial service, thank you.” Singing in chorus to “One Tin Soldier” on the radio with a clear, sweet voice, she drove toward her mother’s house. Twelve year old Serina leaned forward from the middle passenger seat.
“Why do we have to sit through that each year?”
“Your great-grandfathers fought in both wars, we owe it to their memories, and to−”
“Blah, blah, blah, you’ve said it all before.”
“Serina, don’t interrupt me. It’s a sign of respect to attend the Remembrance Day activities at the cenotaph. People sacrificed their lives to allow us to be there today.”
Suitably chastised, the child changed the subject. “So if grandma’s turning sixty today how old was she when she had you?”
“Not back then. People used to have kids a lot younger than they do now. I had your brother when I was twenty-four.”
“Is that when you decided to stay home with us?”
“Sort of. I did research part time on my Master’s Degree, so I was still in school.” Adya glanced at her oldest daughter and smiled. “You guys were too cute to leave.”
“Do you miss it, working?”
“I didn’t give up working, just chose a different way of doing it. I think I would have stayed in school anyway and the experience of having you kids actually inspired quite a bit of my research. My thesis about older siblings setting the precedent for younger ones−”
Luke rolled his eyes as only a seven-year-old could, “Mom, you’re doing it again.”
She pulled the minivan into a gas station flying flags at half mast. “What?”
“Talking big…use language we understand, not your shrink words.”
With an exasperated sigh she replied “Sorry, Luke. Anyway, you were my lab rats.” Serina snorted in laughter and Luke began to squeak like a rat. Two year old Jessica squealed in feigned terror. The gas attendant approached the vehicle as Adya lowered the window.
“How’s the family today, Doctor Davies?”
“They’re just wonderful, John. How are your little granddaughters?”
“Couldn’t be better, and they’d love to come visit again any time you want to study them. They thought it was a real hoot.” He peeked into the van. “Sounds like you have a zoo in there. What’s with all the animals?” The children laughed even harder while making new, louder animal sounds.
“I told the kids they were my lab rats, just like your girls were. Could you fill it up, please?”
“Yes, ma’am.” John quickly topped up the tank.
“You know, I hope you don’t close up this station, there aren’t many full serve places left.” She grinned as she passed him the payment.
“I don’t know…my son doesn’t really want to take over the place. But, folks like you keep coming, I’ll keep pumping.” The old man limped back to his little booth. She drove on through a residential neighbourhood, to pull into the driveway of her mother’s house. The children piled out the sliding doors while their mother unbuckled the infant. Grandmother Samantha approached from the front porch where she had been waiting, grey hair in a long braid down her back. She stopped to toss a fallen branch from the driveway before reaching the van.
“Happy birthday, Mom.”
“Thanks, honey. I saw you at the service, but didn’t see Daniel. Is he joining us?”
“Yes, he got caught up with something at the university so won’t be here till later. Where’s Dad?”
“Out back in his shop, putting the finishing touches on Hope’s chest.” She peered into the van. “You don’t have room to take it with you today.”
Adya shuffled bags inside the vehicle before looking helplessly at her mother. “Shoot. I forgot the diaper bag and your gifts. Do you mind if I drive back to pick them up? I’ll take Hope, is it okay if I leave the others here?”
“These monkeys? I don’t know… but, I do have a new game for them to play inside. C’mon guys, come see grandma’s new video game.” The children rushed into the house as their mother slipped back into the driver’s seat. Adya reversed out of the laneway and turned the corner. The ring-shaped birthmark on her right hand began to throb, distracting her as she rubbed at it.
Her head snapped up as tires screeched on her left. A large sport utility vehicle seemed to approach her minivan in slow motion – she watched in mute horror as the side panel folded beneath the onslaught of the larger vehicle. A rainbow glitter accompanied the groan of bending metal as the windows fractured and refracted the headlights of an oncoming car. The world spun to the right, her stomach lurched, and a piercing pain lanced through her hand as she screamed before all went black.
* * *
“Hope!” Adya struggled to rise in the hospital bed while fighting the restraints of the entangling linens. Tears rushed to her eyes as she again cried her daughter’s name. Frantically she pressed the call button. The cord pulled from the wall as she tumbled to the floor, sheets wrapped around her legs. Nurses rushed through the door. From her knees, she wailed, “My baby… how is my baby? Please God; let my baby be okay…please let me know where she is.”
The nurses attempted to restrain and reassure, murmuring platitudes she did not quite hear. “You need to return to your bed. You should sit down. We’ll get things straightened out for you.”
Her heart pounded and her breath came in short pants as she escaped the confining sheets, stumbling into the hall. An older nurse firmly held her arm to guide her back to her room. No patience for anything but answers, she screeched, “I need to see my baby, where is she?” She struck out, flailing with all her might until a needle in her arm finally subdued her with darkness.
* * *
Beeping roused her. A regular, low tone sounded every second, punctuated occasionally by a higher pitched double tone. The whirring of a ventilation system and the drone of fluorescent lights nagged at her, bringing her to the edge of consciousness. Muted voices were drowned by the wail of a very young child, the sound of which finally brought recognition. She was in a hospital room. Three people were conversing at the bedside as she cracked open her eyes.
“She was hysterical, insisting she needed to see her child. We had to sedate her to get her back into the room. I don’t think she has a child, her mother never mentioned one.” The nurse’s voice sounded familiar, an echo in her head predating the panic.
“She’s likely delusional from the head injury. We need to work through the delusion without allowing her to become too agitated.” This voice familiar too.
She opened her eyes. “I’m not delusional; I just need to see my daughter.” One of the speakers approached the bed as she propped herself up on her elbows. Closing her eyes again against the dizziness, she regained equilibrium and reopened them. The man standing in front of her towered over the bed, she had to crane her neck to see him. He spoke softly, with gentle concern.
“Hello there, I’m Doctor Redborne. Nurse Skinner tells me you gave them a bit of a scare. I need to ask you some questions, alright?” At her nod he continued. “What’s your name?”
“Adya Davies. Where’s my daughter?”
The doctor frowned. “When were you born?”
“April 28, 1971. Why won’t anyone tell me if Hope’s okay?”
“What’s the last date you remember?”
“November 11, 2011…”
His frown deepened and he wrote a quick note on the chart in his hand. “How old are you?”
“Forty. I want to see my husband and children. Can you at least let me see them?”
The physician rested his hand on her shoulder, his face still clouded. “I need to check your vitals, make sure you can tolerate visitors. Can you remain calm while I do that?” She inclined her head, closing her eyes against another wave of pain. The doctor raised the head of the bed and flashed a light directly into her pupils. As she began to get restless, he addressed her. “Adya, you were involved in a serious car accident and suffered a head injury. You’ve been in a coma for seven days. This is the first time you’ve been conscious during that time.”
She looked toward the nurse for confirmation. The nurse nodded encouragement and agreement. Her gaze returned to the doctor, still confused. “What about Hope? Is she okay? Where’s my husband?”
“The brain is a mysterious organ. We’re never quite sure how it will respond to trauma. During your coma you may have experienced a dream which seems like reality to you. The current year is 1985 and you are a single young lady of fourteen−”
She interrupted him. “That doesn’t make any sense. You’re telling me I’m only fourteen?” Seeing stars with a vigorous head shake, she persisted, “What is this, some kind of joke?”
“I realize this might be very difficult for you, you need to−”
“I can see it all so clearly, though, all the little details, everything about them. I have children, a husband, a home…and you say this was all my imagination? There’s just no way.” Standing up, she was ready to run from the room to find the truth. A flash of movement caught her eye, the mirror where her reflection moved in the glass. The familiar laugh lines around her eyes were missing although the clear blue colour was unchanged. No parenthesis lines at the corners of her mouth echoed decades of smiles. Not the face of a forty year old. She slumped down on the bed while the doctor continued.
“Today is Saturday, July 27, 1985. You’re in Stamford General Hospital. Your mother’s in the cafeteria on the bottom floor having lunch and should return shortly.” The doctor gently laid a hand on her shoulder as he spoke. “You are indeed only fourteen and have your whole life ahead of you to have those children, the husband, the house, and everything else you could ever imagine.”
Adya looked solemnly into his eyes. “I’m fourteen.” He nodded. “It’s 1985.” The doctor agreed again. “I guess I get to relive the eighties again. Perhaps this time the music will be better.” He laughed with her, his relief evident, and then jotted more notes on her chart. “Will I have to stay here much longer?”
“We need to run some tests and keep you under observation for a little bit. You had a serious concussion. But, if things look normal you’ll be out within the week. I’ll look in on you again later in the evening. You should try to rest.” With a reassuring smile on his angular face, he left the room.
The nurse added her own notes after lowering the bed, and departed as well. Adya closed her eyes and visualized the life she had been living. The faces of her husband and children were clear in her mind, especially the children. The slightly chubby cheeks of her eldest daughter. The wiry hair of Tyler as a toddler when he snuggled beside her in the morning. Hope’s blue, blue eyes.
Stomach churning, she sat up again. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, dizziness returned, prevented her from standing. Panic slid up her spine and her panting breaths ruffled the front of the hospital gown as she tucked her chin to her knees to fight the rising vertigo. Bare feet stuck out from under the edge of her gown and she focused her concentration on her toes to fight down the queasiness. Looking more closely at her feet, her eyes widened.
“The scar’s gone.” At seventeen a bicycle accident had left a large scar across the top of her foot. Riding on the handlebars of her boyfriend’s bike when he lost control speeding down the hill toward his house, she had spilled onto the pavement and abraded the top layer of skin off her left foot and forearm. Slowly elevating the arm, she inspected the intact skin. Twisting and turning foot and arm, she gazed at the smooth flesh, running her fingers where the scars should be. She shook her head again, “No. No…they can’t just make twenty-six years disappear.” Her feet were steady as she slid to the floor.
Cautiously, she checked the hallway from the door. No nurses within view. The elevators were across the way and the nurses’ station out of sight around the corner. She slipped over to the elevator, pressing the down button before hurrying back to her room. At the ping of the indicator, she rushed through the open doors, holding the ‘close door’ button down with a white-knuckled finger. The portal whooshed shut, and Adya paced the confines of the car while it glided downward.
With a quick glance through the doors, she darted toward the front entrance.
“Hey.” An older lady yelled as she pushed past her. The front desk attendant rose, concern written across her face.
“Wait, young lady. Hold on.” The authoritative voice did little to slow her flight. She made it through the entrance and stopped short, her gaze locked on the hospital sign. A rushing sound built in her ears and the corners of her vision blackened.
THANK YOU FOR HELPING REACH OUR 1985 FUNDRAISING GOAL $250,000
A horn blared. Adya turned toward the sound. The angular fenders of a tiny Toyota reflected the light from the sign. A 1984 Toyota. She slowly wilted to the ground.
* * *
“−fluctuations in serotonin and dopamine. Right now her levels are high.” She faded in and out of consciousness.
” -aggression and paranoia at the high end, depression and apathy at the low end.”
“Will it improve?” A familiar female voice, soft with worry.
“Hard to say. She’ll be under observation here for at least a week.”
“What does it mean? Is she going to be normal?”
“She might exhibit paranoia and delusions. Serotonin is involved in the control of emotions, but I expect levels will return to normal after she recovers from the shock of awakening.” The sound of quiet weeping echoed in her ears before she succumbed to shadows again.
* * *
Adya could barely take her eyes from her mother’s more youthful visage as she came to.
“Hi.” Samantha’s voice quavered.
“Hi.”
“How do you feel?”
“Okay. I…”
Samantha approached the bed and gathered the young girl in her arms. Softly caressing her daughter’s back, her voice was thick. “I love you so much. I’ve been worried about you.”
A tide of tears welled from deep within, great wracking sobs rocking her shoulders within the confines of her mother’s embrace. The flow slowed and finally stopped.
“I heard from the nurse you lived a whole lifetime in the past week…” Uncertainty dulled Samantha’s eyes. “I’m supposed to ask…”
“I guess I was really out to lunch when I woke up.” A tremulous smile crossed her lips. “Have we ever been to Brighton?”
“We’ve driven through on the way to grandpa’s house but we’ve never stopped there. Did you dream about Brighton?”
“Yes, that’s where I lived.” She shook her head, pushing out the memories. The lancing pain twisted her lips.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, shouldn’t have moved my head so fast. Is Dad coming to visit?”
“Your father will come in tomorrow. He’s working out of town tonight, dear. He really misses you.”
“How’s everybody? Evan and Annie are okay?” She shrugged her shoulders with a wry smile. “It really feels like years.”
“Evan got the job at Colbert’s he was shooting for. He’s been working lots of hours. They’re really pleased with him.”
“Colbert’s?”
“The grocery store downtown…you don’t remember it? It’s been there for years, hon.” Samantha gently patted her child’s head. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. We don’t know what effects the coma will have. Do you remember the accident at all?”
“No, not really…everyone else okay?”
“Yes, but the deer didn’t make it. Aunt Sarah felt terrible about that but she felt even worse about you. She asks every day if you’re gonna to be alright, you really should write her a letter to reassure her you’re fine. She won’t take my word for it.” At Adya’s continuing puzzled expression she added, “You were on the way to grandpa’s cottage with Aunt Sarah, Uncle Jack, Penny and Cyndi when the deer ran out.”
“Oh, no, I ruined everyone’s holiday.” The cottage, located on the shore of Lake Huron, was a favourite family activity each summer.
“Don’t think of that, honey, just get well, okay?”
A nurse entered the room. With businesslike brusqueness she turned down the lights and ushered Samantha out. Adya sat quietly in the darkness, barely moving. A chill shook her body, then another. One small, muffled sob escaped before she regained control. Inhaling deeply, she collected herself. Resolve straightened her spine. She would make the best of this, and figure out if she was crazy, hormonal, or just recovering from a head injury. Turning on her side, she fell into a restless sleep.
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What’s the best way for us, as Kindle owners, to fight back against the ridiculous $19.99 price that agency model publisher Penguin’s Dutton Adult imprint has set for Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants?
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A Special Free Book Alert for Enjoyment on Your Kindle:
Fall of Giants
Although the novelist Ken Follett has managed to sell over 100 million copies of his books without much help from me, I’ve been aware of his marvelous storytelling gifts since I saw Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan in the film adaptation of his Eye of the Needle over 25 years ago. And for the past year or so I have been encouraged repeatedly by friends possessing a wide variety of reading tastes, most recently my sweetheart Betty, that I should make time to read his sweeping medieval saga The Pillars of the Earth. I recently bought that one in the Kindle Store for $6.99 and downloaded it for my Kindle and Betty’s, and am only waiting until she finishes so that I can read it without fear of losing her place if our respective Kindles, both on the same account, approach the kind of synchronicity that their owners appear to have achieved.
But I digress. All the buzz now is about Follett’s latest novel, Fall of Giants, a sweeping saga set in the 20th century, for which agency model publisher Penguin’s Dutton Adult imprint has set a Kindle Store price of $19.99.
And I am here — even if I am putting my literary credibility as a Harvard-educated English Lit major at risk — to tell you that it is one hell of a terrific read.
But that $19.99 price is literary larceny, of course, and I’ll have none of it. The same publisher is allowing the Kindle book to be sold for about half that price to Kindle customers in some other countries, and in the UK where there is no agency model, the price is £8.55, which translates into $13.64 US. The three-dead-trees 985-page hardcover is available on Amazon and elsewhere for less than the $19.99 US Kindle price.
So it is not surprising that 205 of the book’s 300 Amazon reviews to date have awarded it 1 star, but it is also true that plenty of people are buying the Kindle book even at the ridiculous price. It’s #12 just now on the Kindle Store bestseller list. I suspect it would be in the top five in the Kindle Store if it were priced at $9.99, but none of us really knows.
I absolutely will not pay $19.99 to download the Kindle book to my Kindle at that price, but I’m reading it and enjoying it thoroughly … on my Kindle. I paid $9.56 for Fall of Giants, because I got the complete unabridged audiobook version from Audible.com in a terrific 441-MB set of four files that took me less than 10 minutes to download and transfer to my Kindle before I started listening to John Lee’s beautiful narration.
I got the $9.56 price because that’s the monetary price of the “1-credit” cost that Audible.com charges for Fall of Giants, based on my Audible.com subscription plan, a prepaid 2-audiobooks-a-month plan that gets me 24 books for about $229. Under other available plans for less frequent flyers, the price of a single credit runs from $11.48 to $14.95.
But if I were a Kindle owner who was just starting out with a 30-day trial for a brand new Audible.com account, the cost would be ZERO. Free. Zilch. $0.00.
And what better way to use the free 1-book credit that comes with a free 30-day trial than to pick up a book that you want to read (if you do) for which the publisher is trying to gouge you out of 20 bucks? And if enough of us do it so that it makes an impression on the publishers, all the better.
Maybe you already know all about this, but if it’s new to you, here are the basics.
All Kindle models do a great job of playing audio files from Audible.com as well as MP3 music files from the Amazon music store. Just download any file to your computer and use your USB connection to transfer them to the audible folder on your Kindle. In fact, very soon, Kindle 3 owners will be able to download such content wirelessly to their Kindles using a Wi-Fi connection. For now, as the marketing copy says, “At Audible.com, you can choose to download any of 75,000 audiobooks and more, and listen on your Kindle™, iPhone®, iPod®, or 500+ MP3 players.”
Meanwhile, if you want to read other books by Ken Follett, there are over a dozen that are well worth picking up from the Kindle Store, since all the rest are priced where Fall of Giants will eventually be priced — between $6.29 and $9.99.
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, via Reuters, that “e-book revenue had already jumped to 8 percent in the United States and had turned into a new growth driver for the publisher of Dan Brown, John Grisham and Stieg Larsson.”
(Princeton University Press). 
” will be released November 9 in two different e-book editions. According to the publisher’s 
, compared with the “list price” of $35 for both print and ebook editions. Amazon is currently discounting 
read by the former president. It will, apparently and perhaps not surprisingly, be an abridged version. A cloth-bound, signed, and numbered limited edition ($350) will be published on November 30, 2010.
in e-book format only to discover missing and inaccurate indentations. 
(or a free sample) to your Kindle or free Kindle app and start reading within 60 seconds!
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is her first novel. 
of his 
over 25 years ago. And for the past year or so I have been encouraged repeatedly by friends possessing a wide variety of reading tastes, most recently my sweetheart Betty, that I should make time to read his sweeping medieval saga 
. I recently bought that one in the Kindle Store for $6.99 and downloaded it for my Kindle and Betty’s, and am only waiting until she finishes so that I can read it without fear of losing her place if our respective Kindles, both on the same account, approach the kind of synchronicity that their owners appear to have achieved.
, a sweeping saga set in the 20th century, for which 
. Just download any file to your computer and use your USB connection to transfer them to the audible folder on your Kindle. In fact, very soon,