Content FREE (and bargain) books for the Kindle - April 2011

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Bargain book [Science]:

The Viking in the Wheat Field: A Scientist's Struggle to Preserve the World's Harvest by Susan Dworkin is $2.58 at the US Kindle Store (B&N has it listed at $14.30)

Product Description:

In 1999, a terrifying new form of stem rust–spotted in Uganda and dubbed “UG99″–quickly turned robust golden fields into dark, tangled ruins. For decades plant scientists had bred wheat varieties with rust-resistant genes, but these genes did not work against UG99. Since rust migrates high in the atmosphere, it could spread from country to country, continent to continent. Breeders worried that UG99 would soon reach India and Pakistan, where 50 million small farmers produced 20% of the global wheat supply. If that happened, China, the world’s largest wheat producer, might be next, and it would be only a matter of time before it reached American wheat fields.

Breeders everywhere began searching wheat germplasm collections for sources of resistance. The largest collection was at the Center for Improvement of Maize and Wheat (CIMMYT) in Mexico, developed by the brilliant Danish scientist Bent Skovmand. For three decades, Skovmand amassed, multiplied, and documented thousands of wheat varieties. He served as an advisor on wheat genetic resources to dozens of countries, and hunted for seeds that would contain the genes to protect the harvest from plagues like UG99 and the stresses of global warming.

From the mountains of Tibet to the jungles of Mexico, he trekked into fields to consult with farmers. In an era when corporations and governments often jealously guarded breeding information, Skovmand fought to keep his seed bank a center for free, open scientific exchange.

By telling the story of Skovmand’s work and that of his colleagues, The Viking in the Wheat Field sheds a welcome light on an agricultural sector–plant genetic resources–on which we are all crucially dependent.

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Bargain Book [Memoir]

Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses, a Memoir by Paula McLain (Author of the bestseller The Paris Wife: A Novel) is discounted to $1.99 at the US Kindle store [*Originally $9.99]

Product Description
The first book by the author of the New York Times bestseller The Paris Wife is a powerful and haunting memoir of the years she and her two sisters spent as foster children.

In the early 70s, after being abandoned by both parents, the girls were made wards of the Fresno County, California court and spent the next 14 years-in a series of adoptive homes. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years--a book the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr'sThe Liar's Club.

McLain's beautiful writing and limber voice capture the intense loneliness, sadness, and determination of a young girl both on her own and responsible, with her siblings, for staying together as a family.

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A Fool Again: A Novella by Eloisa James is now free again at the US Kindle store (and now has the title, cover & description).

Product Description

A Fool Again is the story of Genevieve, who once made a dash to Gretna Greene to marry, but was caught by her father. Now, a few years later, she attends the funeral of her elderly husband (not the man she ran away to marry) and who does she see but The One Who Got Away! Can they make their love work this time around or will Genevieve be A Fool Again?

[koland]

Divine , by Karen Kingsbury, is free once again on Kindle courtesy of Christian publisher Tyndale House. Also free in the UK

Book Description
Best-selling author Karen Kingsbury weaves another dramatic story of tragedy and redemption!

Mary Madison was a child of unspeakable horrors, a young woman society wanted to forget. Now a divine power has set Mary free to bring life-changing hope and love to battered and abused women living in the shadow of the nation's capital.

Mary is educated and redeemed, a powerful voice in Washington, D.C.—both to the politically elite and to other women like her. But she also has a past that shamed polite society. Her experiences created in her paralyzing fear, faithlessness, addiction, and promiscuity. At the crossroads of her life, only one power set Mary free and gave her a lifetime of love and hope. A power that could only be divine.

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Bargain book:

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (winner of the first Minotaur Books/MWA Best First Crime Novel award) is discounted to $2.99 (Originally $9.99) at the US Kindle store

Product Description:

Stefanie Pintoff’s acclaimed and award-winning debut is the taut historical tale of Detective Simon Ziele, a man who lost his fiancée in the 1904 General Slocum ferry disaster and thereafter flees New York City for Dobson, New York, to escape the memories of her death. But months into his tenure, he catches the worst homicide of his career: a young woman brutally murdered in her own bedroom in the middle of the afternoon. His investigation quickly takes him to Columbia University criminologist Alistair Sinclair and one of his patients. But what could lead this Michael Fromley, with his history of violent behavior, to target such a proper young lady? Is Michael really behind the murder or is someone mimicking him?

Ziele must discover the truth in this story of a haunted man on the trail of a killer while on the run from his own demons.

About the Author
Stefanie Pintoff is the winner of the inaugural Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel competition and has been shortlisted for a prestigious Edgar Award for Best First Crime Novel.

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Lessons in Love: A Cambridge Fellows Mysteries, Book 1 by Charlie Cochrane is free at the US KIndle store [Mystery/Gay Romance]

Product Description
He didn't think he had a heart. Until he lost it.

A Cambridge Fellows Mysteries, Book 1

St. Bride's College, Cambridge, England, 1905.

Jonty Stewart is handsome and outgoing, with blood as blue as his eyes. When he takes up a teaching post at the college where he studied, his dynamic style acts as an agent for change within the archaic institution. He also has a catalytic effect on Orlando Coppersmith.

Orlando is a brilliant, introverted mathematician with very little experience of life outside the university walls. He strikes up an alliance with Jonty and soon finds himself heart-deep in feelings he's never experienced. Before long their friendship blossoms into more than either man had hoped.

Then a student is murdered within St. Bride's. Then another...and another. All the victims have one thing in common: a penchant for men. Asked by the police to serve as their eyes and ears within the college, Jonty and Orlando risk exposing a love affair that could make them the killer's next target.

This book has been previously published and has been revised and expanded from its original release.

Warning: Contains sensual m/m lovemaking and men in punts.

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Kiss Me, Stranger: An Illustrated Novel by Ron Tanner is free at the US Kindle store

Product Description

Set in an unnamed country sometime in the past, present, or future, Kiss Me, Stranger is the story of one woman's attempts to keep her family together while a civil war rages around her. Featuring illustrations by the author, Kiss Me, Stranger is a comical and tragic commentary on war, violence, and consumerism.

Ron Tanner's awards for fiction include a Faulkner Society gold medal, a Pushcart Prize, and a New Letters Award first prize. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including The Iowa Review, West Branch, and the Quarterly. His collection of stories, A Bed of Nails, won both the G.S. Sharat Chandra Award and the Towson Prize for Literature. He teaches writing at Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland, and is currently the president of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

Walking on Broken Glass by Christa Allan is free at the US Kindle store [Christian Fiction]

Product Description

Leah Thornton’s life, like her Southern Living home, has great curb appeal. But a paralyzing encounter with a can of frozen apple juice in the supermarket shatters the façade, forcing her to admit that all is not as it appears. When her best friend gets in Leah’s face about her refusal to deal with her life, Leah is forced to make an agonizing decision. Can she sacrifice what she wants to get what she needs? Joy, sadness, and pain converge, testing Leah’s commitment to her marriage, her motherhood, and her faith.

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Bargain book:

Hungry as the Sea by Wilbur Smith is $2.99 at the US Kindle store and B&N

Product Description
Wilbur Smith sets his vividly realistic novels on the razor's edge between human courage and nature's wrath. In Hungry As The Sea, this master storyteller takes us to the frigid South Atlantic, where one man fights for his life-- and for redemption.

Nicholas Berg is steaming out of Cape Town aboard the salvage tug Warlock. Once Berg ruled an ocean-going empire. Now, his future has come down to a powerful boat and a daring rescue mission. One of his former ships is being lashed against the cliffs of Cape Alarm, surrounded by deadly icebergs and survivors clinging to their boats. Berg has gambled everything on reaching the Golden Adventurer before a competitor and a violent storm-- to win a fortune in salvage fees. But if Nick Berg succeeds, and climbs back into the international shipping game, that's when the real danger will begin...

From the power of a relentless ocean to the hunger of men to survive upon her, this is a towering novel of adventure, love and the daring of the human soul.

About the author:
WILBUR SMITH was born in Central Africa. He has written thirty novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. His books are now translated into twenty-six languages and have sold over 110 million copies.

P.S. And for those who missed getting Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen last Dec for $5.00, it is now discounted to $4.17 (maybe to take advantage of all the publicity for the movie) at the US Kindle store

[koland]

The Charmer ($0.99 US), by Autumn Dawn, the first in her Dark Lands series, is free for UK customers in the Kindle store this morning. (UK link)

This self-published author has several other titles in this series and others (Draconian, Spark), all under $2.99 per title, as well as a couple of titles published by Love Spell (No Words Alone is $3.72).

Book Description
What would you do if your best friend was the wolf queen?

Jasmine didn’t realize her friend Wiley was something special until they were both drawn into another world. Here Wiley is the ruler of the Haunt, a were race as dangerous as they are proud. Cousins to wolves, they have no place for an ordinary human, especially one set on helping their reluctant princess escape.

Keilor is the master of soldiers, a man few would cross, yet he’d never met a menace like the little brunette his princess called friend. Determined to protect Wiley in their own way, the two cross verbal daggers as Jasmine tries to find the portal home.

But when Wiley begins to develop feelings for her betrothed, Jasmine is at a loss. Should she still try to run, or act on the animal attraction between her and her wolfman?

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The Dangerous Dimension by L. Ron Hubbard is free again at the US Kindle store

Product Description:

Dr. Henry Mudge undergoes a striking personality change when he discovers a mathematical formula "Equation C" that defines a mysterious negative dimension. He is instantly transported to any location in the solar system by merely thinking of it--even when he doesn't want to.

[badgoodDeb]

Has Radium Halos been mentioned? Its $0.99 down from $11.99 and has a rating indicating people like it. I just picked it up.

Radium Halos is historical fiction based on the true events of the Radium Girls: a group of female factory workers who, in the early 1920s, contracted radiation poisoning from painting luminous watch and clock dials with radium paint. Our narrator is Helen Waterman, a 65-year-old mental patient who worked at the factory when she was 16. She tells us her story through flashbacks, slowly revealing her past, the loved ones she's lost, and the dangerous secrets she's kept all these years. "While the subject matter is intense, the tone of the novel is surprisingly light. Thanks is due to Helen who adds humor through her naive and bluntly honest outlook."

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The Duchess's Tattoo: Thoughts on THE AMERICAN HEIRESS by Daisy Goodwin is free for pre-order at the US Kindle store.

*There's no product info, but this may be a prequel/companion for Daisy Goodwin's The American Heiress

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Lilith Saintcrow's Dante Valentine: The Complete Series is just $9.99 at the US Kindle store (Each individual book in the bundle is $6.99-7.99 if bought separately)

Product Description
Necromancer. Bounty hunter. Killer.

Dante Valentine has been all three in her life. But in the beginning, she was a Necromancer for hire. And while she was choosy about her jobs, there were just some she couldn't turn down. Like when the Devil showed up at the door and offered her a deal. Her life - in exchange for the capture and elimination of a renegade demon. But how do you kill something that can't die?

Dante Valentine, one of urban fantasy's hottest series, is compiled into one volume for the first time. Included in this omnibus edition are: Working for the Devil, Dead Man Rising, The Devil's Right Hand, Saint City Sinners, and To Hell and Back.

[desertblues]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Has Radium Halos been mentioned? Its $0.99 down from $11.99 and has a rating indicating people like it. I just picked it up.

Thank you: bought it.

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Be a Dividend Millionaire: A Proven, Low-Risk Approach That Will Generate Income for the Long Term by Paul Rubillo (US Kindle)

Product Description

This is the eBook version of the printed book.
In Be a Dividend Millionaire, Dividend.com founder Paul Rubillo helps you use dividend investing to build your nest egg with less risk! Learn why dividend stock investing works… discover how to find safe dividend yields… avoid “dividend traps”… profit from knowing dividend dates… choose better dividend stocks … and more!