[arcadata]

Night Shift (Jill Kismet) by Lilith Saintcrow from Orbit is $2.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description:

Not everyone can take on the things that go bump in the night.

Not everyone tries.

But Jill Kismet is not just anyone.

She’s a Hunter, trained by the best – and in over her head.

Welcome to the night shift…

Life After Forty by Dora Heldt from AmazonCrossing is $2.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description:

When Christine’s husband of ten years dumps her over the phone while she watches a Hugh Grant film she is sent spinning on a cathartic, self-medicated journey to the land of self-acceptance and self-reliance. Surrounded by her sister and a strong support group of friends, Christine learns how to deal with the horrors of dating, finding new appliances, and the exhilarating feeling of shopping without consequence.

An uproarious look at the suddenly single life of a divorcee, Dora Heldt’s first book to appear in English captures the zeitgeist of the new millennium with searing insight while never deigning to take itself too seriously. Sparkling dialogue and unforgettable characters create a vibrant world of sardonic, take-no-prisoners women who hold their own in a world geared toward acceptance of their younger selves. Not since Bridget Jones’ Diary or Sex in the City has anything like Life After Forty so accurately and thoroughly expressed the modern female point of view with such startling clarity.

House and Home by Kathleen McCleary from Hyperion is $3.03 (US Kindle)

Book Description:

The story of a woman who loves her house so much that she’ll do just about anything to keep it.

Ellen Flanagan has two precious girls to raise, a cozy neighborhood coffee shop to run, terrific friends, and a sexy husband. She adores her house, a yellow Cape Cod filled with quirky antiques, beloved nooks and dents, and a million memories. But now, at forty-four, she’s about to lose it all.

After eighteen roller-coaster years of marriage, Ellen’s husband, Sam–who’s charismatic, spontaneous, and utterly irresponsible–has disappointed her in more ways than she can live with, and they’re getting divorced. Her daughters are miserable about losing their daddy. Worst of all, the house that Ellen loves with all her heart must now be sold.

Ellen’s life is further complicated by a lovely and unexpected relationship with the husband of the shrewish, social-climbing woman who has purchased the house. Add to that the confusion over how she really feels about her almost-ex-husband, and you have the makings of a delicious novel about what matters most in the end . . .

Set in the gorgeous surroundings of Portland, Oregon, Kathleen McCleary’s funny, poignant, curl-up-and-read debut strikes a deep emotional chord and explores the very notion of what makes a house a home.

West of Here by Jonathan Evison from Algonquin Books is $3.99 (US Kindle)

Book Description:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011

At the foot of the Elwha River, the muddy outpost of Port Bonita is about to boom, fueled by a ragtag band of dizzyingly disparate men and women unified only in their visions of a more prosperous future. A failed accountant by the name of Ethan Thornburgh has just arrived in Port Bonita to reclaim the woman he loves and start a family. Ethan’s obsession with a brighter future impels the damming of the mighty Elwha to harness its power and put Port Bonita on the map.

More than a century later, his great-great grandson, a middle manager at a failing fish- packing plant, is destined to oversee the undoing of that vision, as the great Thornburgh dam is marked for demolition, having blocked the very lifeline that could have sustained the town. West of Here is a grand and playful odyssey, a multilayered saga of destiny and greed, adventure and passion, that chronicles the life of one small town, turning America’s history into myth, and myth into a nation’s shared experience.

The Hundred Year Diet: America’s Voracious Appetite for Losing Weight by Susan Yager from Rodale is $1.84 for US Kindle

Book Description:

A lively cultural history of the American weight loss industry that explores the origins of our obsession with dieting

As a nation battling an obesity epidemic, we spend more than $35 billion annually on diets and diet regimens. Our weight is making us sick, unhappy, and bigger than ever, and we are willing to hand over our hard-earned money to fix the problem. But most people don’t know that the diet industry started cashing in long before the advent of the Whopper.

The Hundred Year Diet is the story of America’s preoccupation with diet, deprivation, and weight loss. From the groundbreaking measurement of the calorie to World War I voluntary rationing to the Atkins craze, Susan Yager traces our relationship with food, weight, culture, science, and religion. She reveals that long before America became a Fast Food Nation or even a Weight Loss Nation, it was an Ascetic Nation, valuing convenience over culinary delight.

Learn how one of the best-fed countries in the world developed some of the worst nutritional habits, and why the respect for food evident in other nations is lacking in America. Filled with food history, cultural trivia, and unforgettable personalities, The Hundred Year Diet sheds new light on an overlooked piece of our weight loss puzzle: its origins.

Kill the Dead: A Sandman Slim Novel by Richard Kadrey from HarperCollins is $3.79 (US Kindle)

* FYI, the next book in the series Aloha from Hell: A Sandman Slim Novel by Richard Kadrey is also $3.79

Description:

Supernatural fantasy’s best antihero returns, in the high-octane follow-up to Richard Kadrey’s acclaimed Sandman Slim

James Stark, a.k.a. Sandman Slim, crawled out of Hell, took bloody revenge for his girlfriend’s murder, and saved the world along the way. After that, what do you do for an encore? You take a lousy job tracking down monsters for money. It’s a depressing gig, but it pays for your beer and cigarettes. But in L.A., things can always get worse.

Like when Lucifer comes to town to supervise his movie biography and drafts Stark as his bodyguard. Sandman Slim has to swim with the human and inhuman sharks of L.A.’s underground power elite. That’s before the murders start. And before he runs into the Czech porn star who isn’t quite what she seems. Even before all those murdered people start coming back from the dead and join a zombie army that will change our world and Stark’s forever.

Death bites. Life is worse. All things considered, Hell’s not looking so bad.