Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Friday, October 15: The Bite Before Christmas, An Unwanted Hunger, Emotions, and Minesweeper, a new (or newly outed) game for your Kindle! – plus a highly original 99-cent undiscovered gem in J.M. Pierce’s Failing Test (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

We first told Kindle owners back in 2008 about the stripped down, bare-bones version of Minesweeper that you could bring up by pressing ALT+M on your Kindle, but we’re happy to report that Amazon has brought the game out of the closet with a much more graphically realized and user-friendly version of the game that now joins Shuffled Row and Every Word as free games in the Kindle Store. So, if your Kindle love extends to graphically realized and user-friendly games, it’s a good day.

But there’s another cool Kindle feature we should mention — reading! — and if that’s your thing, it’s an even better day with a handful of brand new free book listings for your Kindle library….

But first … a word from our sponsor….

Failing Test

by J.M. Pierce

$0.99 in the Kindle Store

(Editor’s Note: At the risk of “creeping you out,” to borrow from the parlance of my 12-year-old son, I have a confession to make. When his older sisters were teenagers, I used to actually read the latest issues of YM and Sassy when they came into the house, initially because I figured that part of my job as a Dad was to kind of be inside their heads enough to know what the challenges and dangers were. Then I branched out a bit and started reading the fiction that they were reading. Not so much the things they had to read for school, but the things they read on their own. One of the things that I discovered in the process, and it is something that I still believe, is that some of the best writing for adults is fiction that may actually be intended for teens. Some of the walls come down, the imagination is set free, and a sense of wonder is unleashed. Or, in the case of a dystopian novel like the one that Danny and I are reading together as a bedtime story just now, an essential sense of hope against an unutterably gloomy backdrop. I had a point here that relates back to the undiscovered, highly original 99-cent gem that is today’s sponsoring novel, and here it is: you don’t have to be a teenager to read, enjoy, and even recommend a book like J.M. Pierce’s Failing Test. Don’t read it because it only costs 99 cents or because 15 of its 18 reviewers gave it 5 stars. Read it because there are teenagers in your life and it may be a gateway not only to getting them reading but also to your ability to connect with them and learn something about their worlds. Just a thought. –S.W.)

Here’s the set-up:

You know him, but you can’t remember his name. He is the one that is always there, in the background, all but invisible to those roaming the hallways. What if he had a secret? What if it was a secret that even he didn’t know?

Test Davis has always been a blur to those around him. He’s a shadow like a million other kids–not smart enough for the academic team, not beast enough for the football team, not extroverted enough for the drama crowd. In all things Test is just…not, which is why no one ever notices him.

But what happens when someone does notice him– Nicole Paxton, a cheerleader, no less? What happens on the night that Test finds out there’s nothing average about him and that a powerful gift has been hidden within, secretly waiting to be set free and alter his life forever? The question is, will that power save him and those he loves or tear them apart?

About the Author

J.M. Pierce is a simple midwestern man with a creative side that has found writing as its primary outlet. He lives happily with his wife and two children in rural Kansas and finds happiness in a good cup of coffee, a Kansas sunrise, a good book, the sound of his daughter singing, his son’s laughter, and his wife’s eyes. Everything else is gravy.

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