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Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood (HarperCollins) is $3.99

Book Description:

John Wood discovered his passion, his greatest success, and his life’s work not at business school or helping lead Microsoft’s charge into Asia in the 1990s but on a soul-searching trip to the Himalayas. He made the difficult decision to walk away from his lucrative career to create Room to Read, a nonprofit organization that promotes education across the developing world. By the end of 2007, the organization will have established over 5,000 libraries and 400 schools, and awarded long-term scholarships to more than 3,000 girls, giving more than one million children the lifelong gift of education.

If you have ever pondered abandoning your desk job for an adventure and an opportunity to give back, Wood’s story will inspire you. He offers a vivid, emotional, and absorbing tale of how to take the lessons learned at a hard-charging company like Microsoft and apply them to the world’s most pressing social problems.

The Eighth Dwarf by Ross Thomas (MysteriousPress.com/Open Road) is $2.99

Book Description:

“What Elmore Leonard does for crime in the streets, Ross Thomas does for crime in the suites.” —The Village Voice

Searching for a killer of Nazi war criminals, an ex-spy finds an unlikely ally

Nicolae Polscaru, a three-and-a-half-foot-tall dwarf, is tossed into a Hollywood swimming pool by four drunken screenwriters, who take bets on how long he can tread water. Minor Jackson, his OSS training still fresh a year after World War II’s end, beats the bullies senseless and pulls Nicolae from the water. A friendship is born.

Jackson is broke, his spying days over, and Nicolae offers him a job. A former spy himself, the globetrotting Romanian has a commission to find Kurt Oppenheimer, an expert assassin of high-ranking Nazis. Kurt won’t stop killing, no matter what the bloodshed will do to the fragile world peace, and the Soviets, the British, and the remains of the Nazi High Command all want his head. Jackson will beat them all to finding Kurt—unless his new friend betrays him first.

The Eighth Trumpet (Jared Kimberlain) by Jon Land (Open Road) is $3.99

Book Description:

“The comparisons with Tom Clancy are ill-placed . . . Land clearly writes better.” —Boston Book Review

A killer proves he can penetrate the world’s finest security systems, and an undercover op must come out of retirement before the President enters the crosshairs

$25,000 a week buys an impressive security system, and America’s billionaires have the best they can get. Round-the-clock guards, electrified fences, and bulletproof glass protect their mansions—but they are no longer enough. Three of the nation’s most powerful businessmen have died in seemingly impossible ways: one electrocuted, one blown up in his sleep, and the third hacked to death in an impenetrable room.

The security service chief contacts an old special-forces colleague, Jared Kimberlain, who quit the life when he lost his taste for clandestine ops. He’s spent the last years trying to undo the wrongs he did when he lived without a conscience. Kimberlain doesn’t care about the troubles of billionaires, but their security was as good the President’s—and he could be next.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jon Land including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini (Harper Perennial) is $1.99

Book Description:

Robert V. Remini’s prize-winning, three-volume biography Life of Andrew Jackson won the National Book Award on its completion in 1984 and is recognized as one of the greatest lives of a U.S. President.

In this meticulously crafted single-volume abridgment, Remini captures the essence of the life and career of the seventh president of the United States. As president, from 1829-1837, Jackson was a significant force in the nations’s expansion, the growth of presidential power, and the transition from republicanism to democracy.

Jackson is a highly controversial figure who is undergoing historical reconsideration today. He is known as spurring the emergence of the modern American political division of Republican and Democractic parties, for the infamous Indian removal on the Trail of Tears, and for his brave victory against the British as Major General at the Battle of New Orleans.

Never an apologist, Remini portrays Jackson as a foreceful, sometimes tragic, hero–a man whose strength and flaws were larger than life, a president whose conviction provided the nation with one of the most influential, colorful, and controversial administrations in our history.

The Anderson Tapes by Laurence Sanders (Open Road) is $2.99

Book Description:

The explosive debut novel — told entirely through surveillance recordings, eyewitness reports, and other “official” documents — by New York Times bestselling author Lawrence Sanders

New York City. Summer 1968.

Newly sprung from prison, professional burglar John Anderson is preparing for the biggest heist of his criminal career. The mark is a Manhattan luxury apartment building with the tony address of 535 East Seventy-Third Street. Enlisting a crew of scouts, con artists, and a getaway driver, Anderson orchestrates what he believes to be a foolproof plan. To pull off the big score, he needs one last thing: the permission of the local mafia, who expect a piece of the action.

But no one inside Anderson’s operation knows that the police have recorded their conversations. The New York Police Department has hatched a plot of its own — but even its task force may not be enough to stop such a cunningly planned robbery.

About the Author
Lawrence Sanders, one of America’s most popular novelists, was the author of more than twenty-two bestsellers.

Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan (HarperCollins) is $1.99

Book Description:

For Abraham Lincoln, whether he was composing love letters, speeches, or legal arguments, words mattered.

In Lincoln, acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan explores the life of America’s sixteenth president through his use of language as a vehicle both to express complex ideas and feelings and as an instrument of persuasion and empowerment. Like the other great canonical writers of American literature—a status he is gradually attaining—Lincoln had a literary career that is inseparable from his life story. An admirer and avid reader of Burns, Byron, Shakespeare, and the Old Testament, Lincoln was the most literary of our presidents. His views on love, liberty, and human nature were shaped by his reading and knowledge of literature.

Since Lincoln, no president has written his own words and addressed his audience with equal and enduring effectiveness. Kaplan focuses on the elements that shaped Lincoln’s mental and imaginative world; how his writings molded his identity, relationships, and career; and how they simultaneously generated both the distinctive political figure he became and the public discourse of the nation. This unique account of Lincoln’s life and career highlights the shortcomings of the modern presidency, reminding us, through Lincoln’s legacy and appreciation for language, that the careful and honest use of words is a necessity for successful democracy.

Illuminating and engrossing, Lincoln brilliantly chronicles Abraham Lincoln’s genius with language.