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

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FYI for those who may have missed these specially priced kindle books with bonus content last Dec, they were pulled for a while, but are back again at the same price $1.99:

The Good, the Bad, and the Undead with Bonus Material by Kim Harrison
The Breach with Bonus Material by Patrick Lee
Dying for Mercy with Bonus Material by Mary Jane Clark
Bulls Island with Bonus Material by Dorothea Benton Frank

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The Kindle game app Mahjong Solitaire by Mobigloo is now discounted to $1.99 (from $3.99)

Product Description

Discounted 50% for a limited time and with newly updated navigation! Now you can guide your cursor directly to a tile in v1.1!

Play the popular matching game Mahjong Solitaire on Kindle - anytime, anywhere.

In Mahjong Solitaire, you match pairs of identical tiles in order to remove them from the board. Only free tiles can be matched. Tiles are considered free if they do not have other tiles to either the left or right of them, or on top of them. The objective of the game is to clear all the tiles from the board. The game ends when all tiles have been removed or when there are no more free tiles left to match.

Mahjong Solitaire tracks the number of pairs of free tiles available to be matched for you. In addition, the game allows for unlimited undos, and contains a Hint feature that will give you suggestions for your next move, as well a Shuffle feature that will rearrange the tiles when you get stuck.

Mahjong Solitaire provides 10 different game board layouts to choose from. The game maintains game statistics that track your best time for each layout finished.

Enjoy Mahjong Solitaire on Kindle today!

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Bargain ebook:

Lee Smith's historical (post–Civil War) novel On Agate Hill is $2.67 for the Kindle (It's $9.99 for the Nook)

Product Description:

A Washington Post Book World Best Book and An Atlanta Journal-Constitution Notable Book

Indomitable, unforgettable, and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly Petree is about to embark on an extraordinary journey toward a life she could never have imagined…

A dusty box discovered in the wreckage of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in North Carolina contains the remnants of an extraordinary life: diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones. It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree.

Raised in those ruins and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly is a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. When a mysterious benefactor appears out her father's past to rescue her, she never looks back.

Spanning half a century, On Agate Hill follows Molly’s passionate, picaresque journey through love, betrayal, motherhood, a murder trial—and back home to Agate Hill under circumstances she never could have imagined.

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FREE:

Sunrise by Jacquelyn Cook (also free at Amazon UK)

Product Description:

The true love story behind one of Georgia's most famous antebellum mansions. In the 1850's Anne Tracy, a smart and well-educated young woman from the stifled but elegant world of Macon, Georgia, made a polite marriage with an older, wealthy merchant, William Butler Johnson. The unlikely pairing blossomed into a romantic and devoted marriage. The Butlers' wide travels through 1850's Europe inspired them to return to Macon and build an incredible Italiente mansion. Through the trials and trbultions of family tragedy and later the Civil War, the Butlers maintained an amazing legacy and an amazing home.

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Honeymooning: A Cypress Hollow Yarn Short Story with Bonus Materiall, by Rachael Herron, is a free pre-order

Book Description
.. none yet ..

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Bargain book:

Stalina by Emily Rubin ("available for a limited time for just $.99.")

*This book was featured in the Amazon editors' blog (Kindle Daily Post) "Daphne Kalotay Reviews Stalina; now just $.99 for a limited time"

Product Description:

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Stalina Folskaya’s homeland is little more than a bankrupt country of broken dreams. She flees St. Petersburg in search of a better life in America, leaving behind her elderly mother and the grief of the past. However, Stalina quickly realizes that her pursuit of happiness will be a hard road. A trained chemist in Russia, but disillusioned by her prospects in the US, she becomes a maid at The Liberty, a “short-stay” motel on the outskirts of Hartford. Able to envision beauty and profit even here, Stalina convinces her boss to let her transform the motel into a fantasy destination. Business skyrockets and puts the American dream within Stalina’s sights. A smart, fearless woman like Stalina can go far…if only she can reconcile the ghosts of her past. Obsessed with avenging her family while also longing for a new life, Stalina is a remarkable immigrant’s tale about a woman whose imagination—and force of personality—will let her stop at nothing.

About the Author
Emily Rubin’s fiction has been published in the Red Rock Review, Confrontations, and HAPPY. She is a past nominee for the Pushcart Prize.

[koland]

You've probably heard of Amazon's plans to introduce a new class of ebook, the Single. The description has sounded like it could mean short stories or novellas, but would also encompass non-fiction, which has meant mostly the business short, so far. The problem with all of these categories, though, has been that with ebooks, it's difficult to tell which one they belong to, as even the filesize isn't always a good indicator of a full length novel or a doorstopper, since any images are included. Today, Amazon has released the first entries in their Singles series and we see that there is mostly short non-fiction plus collections of short stories with a single theme (and, so far, a single author) and a longer short story (that is perhaps even novella length). Here's Amazon's description of the category:

Each Kindle Single presents a compelling idea--well researched, well argued, and well illustrated--expressed at its natural length. From an elaborate bank heist in Lifted, to Congolese rebel camps in The Invisible Enemy, to Jodi Picoult’s moving portrayal of family in Leaving Home, they offer nuanced journeys of both fact and fiction. This first set of Singles was selected by our team of editors, and includes works by Rich Cohen, Pete Hamill, Darin Strauss, and Ian Ayres. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we have.

All current prices are under three dollars and the title always has (Kindle Single) at the end, so that you know you are buying a shorter piece. Here are a few of the ones that I thought were interesting:

Darkstar ($2.99), by Christopher R. Howard, whose first novel, Tea of Ulaanbaatar ($9.17 paperback pre-order), "a story about the Peace Corps, Mongol hordes, hallucinogenic tea, and American nightmares", is due to be released in May.

Haunted by a diabolical voice, Sailor is a homeless Irish teen who seeks to reunite with the soulmate he hasn't seen since boyhood, as a cosmic event threatens to extinguish life on Earth. "Darkstar" is a pre-apocalyptic tale of love in the most dire and desperate of realities.


Jodi Picoult's Leaving Home: Short Pieces ($2.99) is an example of the work that many authors have hiding in their office, unpublished due to the perception that there isn't a market for short story collections (and, truthfully, there probably isn't for even mainstream bookstores that specialize in bestsellers, let along discount stores that also carry books).

Leaving Home brings together three, previously published short pieces, each dealing with a variation on the theme of leaving home. The first, “Weights and Measures,” deals with the tragic loss of a child; the second is a non-fiction letter Picoult wrote to her eldest son as he left for college; and, “Ritz” tells the story of a mother who takes the vacation all mothers need sometime.


The $500 Diet: Weight Loss for People Who Are Committed to Change ($2.99), by Ian Ayres, is definitely not your mom's diet book.

Most diet books obsess about what you should put in your mouth. But information is not the problem. You already know that to lose weight you need to eat a bit less or exercise a bit more.

The $500 Diet is a different kind of diet plan, because it doesn’t tell you how much to eat or exercise. You are smart enough—with the help of the Internet and dozens of dieting books—to figure that out. What’s unique about The $500 Diet is that it works on another dimension. It lets you change your own incentives to lose weight. New York Times best-selling author, Ian Ayres, tells you about his own struggles with weight loss, and lays out advice for how you can use commitment contracts to safely lose 10 percent of your body weight. You’ll learn about his seven-step plan to a happier and lighter you. Most important, Ayres tells you what you should do to keep it off. Most diet books are written by physicians and scientists, but Ayres is a contract lawyer and an economist who uses the tools of his crafts to help you change how much you want to eat. If you are serious about losing weight, The $500 Diet provides a simple tool that can help you commit to a healthier life. If you’d rather lose a pound next week instead of losing 500 bucks, then this is the diet for you. This booklet is a companion to the book Carrots and Sticks: Unlock the Power of Incentives to Get Things Done.


Piano Demon: The globetrotting, gin-soaked, too-short life of Teddy Weatherford, the Chicago jazzman who conquered Asia ($1.99), by Brendan I. Koerner

Piano Demon: The globetrotting, gin-soaked, too-short life of Teddy Weatherford, the Chicago jazzman who conquered Asia

At age six, Teddy Weatherford was working in the coal mines of Virginia. By his early twenties he was the toast of Chicago’s jazz scene, rivaling Louis Armstrong and wowing Jelly Roll Morton with his piano talent. But when Weatherford left segregated America for the allures of Shanghai and Bombay, he set out on a adventure he hadn't imagined. The man they called “The Seagull” would become the globetrotting jazz king of Asia in the shadow of World War II, and provide the soundtrack for the last gasp of an empire. The Atavist, a new home for original nonfiction storytelling, presents Brendan I. Koerner's true tale of how a forgotten legend lived the American Dream by leaving it behind—and helped globalize music with a piano and a sharkskin suit.

Brendan I. Koerner is an award-winning journalist and the author of Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier’s Flight From the Greatest Manhunt of World War II (Penguin, 2008), which was optioned for film by Spike Lee. He is also a contributing editor at Wired, and contributor to Slate.com, The New York Times, and many other publications.


Chinese Dreams ($2.99), by Anand Giridharadas

What does the next generation of Chinese want -- besides economic growth? A report from China on the country's search for meaning, by Anand Giridharadas, columnist for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times online, and author of "India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking."

Amazon.com Review
When Westerners think about China, they see unbridled authoritarianism, censorship, and propaganda used to control a diverse, dissatisfied population. They see the grow-at-any-cost mentality: corruption, factory sweatshops, pollution, lead-tainted toys, and massive infrastructure projects. But how do Chinese view themselves? Author Anand Giridharadas, who writes on global culture for The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, ventures to four of the country's largest cities, spending time with people across a range of professions. He discovers that many Chinese feel that the country has grown too quickly--centuries of progress in decades--and lost its roots in a massive money chase. Part narrative, part reporting, Chinese Dreams is contextually intelligent, exploring a country and people adrift between borrowed and inherited cultures. Voyeuristic and deeply nuanced, this well-written piece tells the stories of people trying both to hold on and to let go of their culture. --Paul Diamond


Long Island Shaolin ($1.99), by Darin Strauss

Amazon.com Review
Now he's a New-York-based author of three acclaimed novels, but as a teenager, Darin Strauss was more interested in martial arts than literary arts. In elementary school Strauss was beaten up in a big brawl. At the start of junior high school he began watching Shaolin kung fu movies. When Strauss became a teenager, a kung fu master opens a school in his neighborhood, and so begins this puerile coming-of-age story featuring retributive justice, adrenaline, lots of bruises, and a kung fu master who takes a kick in the groin without wincing or flinching. Strauss brings people to life with captivating physical and psychological descriptions that go straight to the core of the awkward teenage years. His brief, informative history of Shaolin serves to balance the shenanigans of the teenagers, who are always scheming to get each other beaten up by their unremittingly abusive instructor. --Paul Diamond

More Kindle Singles (or visit the Kindle Singles Page)

The Real Lebowski
The Invisible Enemy
They Are Us
Octomom and the Politics of Babies
How To Not Succeed In Show Business By Really Trying
Rescuing Evil
Homo Evolutis
The Happiness Manifesto
Days of Thunder
The Dead Women of Juárez
The Business of Media
Reboot-enanny
Beware Dangerism!
Journey to the Edge of the Light
Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks
Lifted

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FYI, this is the direct link for the Amazon Kindle Single page so you can see all the included books.

[koland]

Originally Posted by arcadata

This is the direct link for the Amazon Kindle Single page so you can see all the included books.

The original post contains all the included books on the program ... but thanks for adding your own affiliate link to the thread (without doing any work creating a post with content).

moderator - feel free to delete this.

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Bargain book:

FYI, Hide by Lisa Gardner is discounted to just $0.77 for Canadian Kindle readers (It's $5.00 for the US)

Product Description
BONUS: This edition includes the full text of the novel plus the following content:
-- Lisa Gardner on Detective D.D. Warren: Who was the inspiration for D.D. Warren? Find out in this essay.
-- An excerpt from Lisa Gardner’s Love You More.

You have good reason to be afraid. . . .

It was a case that haunts Bobby Dodge to this day—the case that nearly killed him and changed his life forever. Now, in an underground chamber on the grounds of an abandoned Massachusetts mental hospital, the gruesome discovery of six mummified corpses resurrects his worst nightmare: the return of a killer he thought dead and buried. There’s no place to run. . . . Bobby’s only lead is wrapped around a dead woman’s neck. Annabelle Granger has been in hiding for as long as she can remember. Her childhood was a blur of new cities and assumed identities. But what—or who—her family was running from, she never knew. Now a body is unearthed from a grave, wearing a necklace bearing Annabelle’s name, and the danger is too close to escape. This time, she’s not going to run. You know he will find you. . . .

The new threat could be the dead psychopath’s copycat, his protégé—or something far more terrifying. Dodge knows the only way to find him is to solve the mystery of Annabelle Granger, and to do that he must team up with his former lover, partner, and friend D. D. Warren from the Boston P.D. But the trail leads back to a woman from Bobby’s past who may be every bit as dangerous as the new killer—a beautiful survivor-turned-avenger with an eerie link to Annabelle. From its tense opening pages to its shocking climax, Hide is a thriller that delves into our deepest, darkest fears. Where there is no one to trust. Where there is no place left to hide.

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Bargain book:

FYI, Hardly Knew Her by Laura Lippman is discounted to $0.99 for Canadian Kindle readers. (It's priced at $7.99 for the US)

Product Description

New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman has been hailed as one of the best crime fiction writers in America today, winning virtually every major award in the genre. The author of the enormously popular series featuring Baltimore P.I. Tess Monaghan as well as three critically lauded stand-alone novels, Lippman now turns her attention to short stories—and reveals another level of mastery.

Lippman sets many of the stories in this sterling anthology, Hardly Knew Her, in familiar territory: her beloved Baltimore, from downtown to its affluent suburbs, where successful businessmen go to shocking lengths to protect what they have or ruthlessly expand their holdings, while dissatisfied wives find murderous ways to escape their lives. But Lippman is also unafraid to travel—to New Orleans, to an unnamed southwestern city, and even to Dublin, the backdrop for the lethal clash of two not-so-innocents abroad. Tess Monaghan is here, in two stories and a profile, aligning herself with various underdogs. And in her extraordinary, never-before-published novella, Scratch a Woman, Lippman takes us deep into the private world of a high-priced call girl/madam and devoted soccer mom, exploring the mystery of what may, in fact, be written in the blood.

Each of these ingenious tales is a gem—sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, always filled with delightfully unanticipated twists and reversals. For people who have yet to read Lippman, get ready to experience the spellbinding power of "one of today's most pleasing storytellers, hailed for her keen psychological insights and her compelling characterizations," (San Diego Union-Tribune), who has "invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative, and exciting work" (George Pelecanos). As for longtime devotees of her multiple award-winning novels, you'll discover that you hardly know her.

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Bargain book:

FYI, The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman is $0.99 for Canadian Kindle readers. (It's now priced at $7.99 for the US)

Product Description:

Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.

The crime was called in by Rina Lazarus, and Decker is relieved to discover that she is a calm and intelligent witness. She is also the only one in the sheltered community willing to speak of this unspeakable violation. As Rina tries to steer Decker through the maze of religious laws the two grow closer. But before they get to the bottom of this horrendous crime, revelations come to light that are so shocking that they threaten to come between the hard-nosed cop and the deeply religious woman with whom he has become irrevocably linked.

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Originally Posted by arcadata

Bargain book:

FYI, Hide by Lisa Gardner is discounted to just $0.77 for Canadian Kindle readers (It's $5.00 for the US)

Good murder thriller! I paid full price for it, a bit ago.

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Bargain book:

FYI, Legend of a Suicide: Stories by David Vann is $1.99 for Canadian Kindle readers (it's priced at $9.99 for the US)

Product Description

In semiautobiographical stories set largely in David Vann's native Alaska, Legend of a Suicide follows Roy Fenn from his birth on an island at the edge of the Bering Sea to his return thirty years later to confront the turbulent emotions and complex legacy of his father's suicide.

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FYI, only free for UK Kindle readers (so far...)

A Child al Confino by Eric Lamet (Amazon UK, Amazon Main)

Product Description
Eric Lamet was only seven years old when the Nazis invaded Vienna—and changed his life and the lives of all European Jews forever. Five days after Hitler marched in, Eric Lamet and his parents fled for their lives. Unable to remain together, the family split—he and his mother hid out in Italy, while his father returned to his native Poland and an even darker fate.

In this remarkable feat of memory and imagination, Lamet recreates the Italy he knew from the perspective of the scared and lonely child he once was. We not only see the hardships and terrors faced by foreign Jews in Fascist Italy, but also the friends Eric makes and his mother's valiant efforts to make a home for him.

In a style as original as his story, the author vividly recalls a terrible time yet imbues his recollections with humor, humanity, and wit. With a rare compassion toward friend and foe alike, little Eric Lamet shows us that there is light to be found in the darkest places—and that we should remember the good as well as the bad.