Bargain (Agency) newly reduced from HarperCollins

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Waiting : The True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg ($2.99 - Kindle)

Product Description

A veteran waitress dishes up a spicy and robust account of life as it really exists behind kitchen doors.

Part memoir, part social commentary, part guide to how to behave when dining out, Debra Ginsberg's book takes readers on her twentyyear journey as a waitress at a soap-operatic Italian restaurant, an exclusive five-star dining club, the dingiest of diners, and more. While chronicling her evolution as a writer, Ginsberg takes a behind-the-scenes look at restaurant life-revealing that yes, when pushed, a server will spit in food, and, no, that's not really decaf you're getting-and how most people in this business are in a constant state of waiting to do something else.

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Herbert's Wormhole by Peter Nelson ($1.99 - Kindle)

Product Description
Herbert Slewg and his hapless, video game–addicted neighbor Alex Filby have stumbled upon what Einstein could only theorize about: a wormhole through the space/time continuum. They travel 100 years into the future of their no-longer-boring town and are mistaken for alien slayers . . . in a world run by a benevolent alien race with cheerful Australian accents and uncomfortably fake facial hair. Herbert, Alex, and their mutual crush, Sammi Clementine, century-hop across time in order to outwit a disgruntled “G’Dalien. By foiling his evil plot, they save the planet and become 22nd-century hometown heroes in this smart-alecky (but friendly), inventive, wry, and very visual creation.

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The Contender by Robert Lipsyte ($2.99 - Kindle)

Product Description
Before you can be a champion, you have to be a contender.

Alfred Brooks is scared. He's a highschool dropout and his grocery store job is leading nowhere. His best friend is sinking further and further into drug addiction. Some street kids are after him for something he didn't even do. So Alfred begins going to Donatelli's Gym, a boxing club in Harlem that has trained champions. There he learns it's the effort, not the win, that makes the man -- that last desperate struggle to get back on your feet when you thought you were down for the count.

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Deadline by Chris Crutcher ($2.99 - Kindle)

Product Description

Ben Wolf has big things planned for his senior year. Had big things planned. Now what he has is some very bad news and only one year left to make his mark on the world.

How can a pint-sized, smart-ass seventeen-year-old do anything significant in the nowheresville of Trout, Idaho?

First, Ben makes sure that no one else knows what is going on—not his superstar quarterback brother, Cody, not his parents, not his coach, no one. Next, he decides to become the best 127-pound football player Trout High has ever seen; to give his close-minded civics teacher a daily migraine; and to help the local drunk clean up his act.

And then there's Dallas Suzuki. Amazingly perfect, fascinating Dallas Suzuki, who may or may not give Ben the time of day. Really, she's first on the list.

Living with a secret isn't easy, though, and Ben's resolve begins to crumble . . . especially when he realizes that he isn't the only person in Trout with secrets.

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Perfect Princess: A Princess Diaries Book by Meg Cabot and Chesley Mclaren ($3.99 - Kindle)

Product Description

Sleeping Beauty, Victoria, Cleopatra, Snow White, Elizabeth, Pocahontas, Mia Thermopolis: all princesses

Do YOU have what it takes to be a princess? princess mia will help you find out

Best-selling Princess Diaries author Meg Cabot and acclaimed fashion artist Chesley McLaren team up again to display this clever royal roster of princesses of the world. Big or small, old or new, fact or fiction, our favorite princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo (aka Mia) will point out why these princesses rule, and how any girl can too!

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How to Be Popular by Meg Cabot ($3.99 - Kindle)

Product Description

Do you want to be popular? Everyone wants to be popular—or at least, Stephanie Landry does. Steph's been the least popular girl in her class since a certain cherry Super Big Gulp catastrophe five years earlier.

Does being popular matter? It matters very much—to Steph. That's why this year, she has a plan to get in with the It Crowd in no time flat. She's got a secret weapon: an old book called—what else?—How to Be Popular.

What does it take to be popular? All Steph has to do is follow the instructions in The Book, and soon she'll be partying with the It Crowd (including school quarterback Mark Finley) instead of sitting on The Hill Saturday nights, stargazing with her nerdy best pal Becca, and even nerdier Jason (now kind of hot, but still), whose passion for astronomy Steph once shared.

Who needs red dwarves when you're invited to the hottest parties in town? But don't forget the most important thing about popularity! It's easy to become popular. What isn't so easy? Staying that way.

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Some new bargains from HarperCollins:

I Am Not Myself These Days (P.S.) by Josh Kilmer-Purcell ($0.99)

Product Description
Recipient of Elle‘s Readers’ Prize 2006

I Am Not Myself These Days follows a glittering journey through Manhattan's dark underbelly -- a shocking and surreal world where alter egos reign and subsist (barely) on dark wit and chemicals...a tragic romantic comedy where one begins by rooting for the survival of the relationship and ends by hoping someone simply survives. Kilmer-Purcell is a terrifically gifted new literary voice who straddles the divide between absurdity and normalcy, and stitches them together with surprising humor and lonely poignancy. As Booklist raved "as tart and funny as a Noel Coward play, for Kilmer-Purcell is especially good at dialogue, and, as in Coward's best plays, under the comedy lies the sad truth that even at our best, we are all weak, fallible fools. Again and again in this rich, adventure-filled book, Kilmer-Purcell illustrates the truth of Blake's proverb, 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.'"

Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes ($1.99)

Product Description
The fast lane is much too slow for Rachel Walsh. And Manhattan is the perfect place for a young Irish female to overdo everything. But Rachel's love of a good time is about to land her in the emergency room. It will also cost her a job and the boyfriend she adores.

When her loving family hustles her back home and checks her into Ireland's answer to the Betty Ford Clinic, Rachel is hopeful. Perhaps it will be lovely—spa treatments, celebrities, that kind of thing. Instead, she finds a lot of group therapy, which leads her, against her will, to some important self-knowledge. She will also find something that all women like herself fear: a man who might actually be good for her.

Angels by Marian Keyes ($3.99)

Product Description
After catching her husband having an affair and being fired from her job, Maggie Walsh suddenly finds her perfectly organized existence has become a perfect mess. She decides, for the first time in her life, to do something daring -- and flees to her best friend, Emily, in the faraway wonderland of Los Angeles. In this mecca of tanned, beautiful bodies, unsvelte, uncool Maggie is decidedly a fish out of water. Yet, overnight, she's mixing with film folk, pitching scripts, even experimenting with sex -- and discovering that the end of a marriage is not the end of the world.

[apesmom]

Bad Marie: A Novel - Marcy Dermansky $0.99

Dermansky follows her lauded debut, Twins, with a trite tail about an ex-con's unlikely re-entry to the world. After serving six years for harboring a fugitive--her bank robber boyfriend--30-year-old Marie is released and misses the decisionless ease of prison life. She finds work as a live-in nanny (nothing like a felon watching your pride and joy) for two-and-a-half-year-old Caitlin, the daughter of her childhood best friend, Ellen, with whom she has a rocky, competitive relationship. In a hard-to-believe coincidence, Ellen is married to the French author, Benoît Doniel, whose book Marie read repeatedly while in prison, and soon enough, Benoît and Marie kick off an affair and decide to run away to Paris together with Caitlin. But when Benoît's true colors are displayed before even landing in the City of Lights (thanks to another unbelievable coincidence), Marie finds herself taking on the role of a single mother in a strange land, though her travails never really impede on her relatively charmed streak. It's off-putting how heavily the plot relies on implausible twists, and Marie is too sketchily drawn to carry the full weight of the story.

86'd - Dan Fante $0.99

From Publishers Weekly
Fante continues to follow in the literary footsteps of his famous father, John Fante (Ask the Dust), with another bruising autobiographical novel about his alter ego, Bruno Dante. When the publication of his short story collection is delayed indefinitely, Dante reluctantly returns to his previous career of L.A. limo driver. His boss, however, first insists that he sober up. He does, and launches into a downward cycle of recovery and inebriation. During his descent, he meets an obnoxious Hollywood producer interested in an adaptation of one of Dante's stories and an Old Hollywood matriarch who might be the key to his salvation. Fante puts Dante though many harrowing moments—waking from a blackout with a gash in his neck; having a spurned lover superglue his penis to his thigh. Like his late father, Fante views life in unsparing fashion, but he seems a little too enamored of his alter ego's downhill trajectory while offering very little insight into the source of Dante's personal demons. The result is a novel that disappointingly titillates more than it illuminates. (Oct.)

Diary of a Very Bad Year: Interviews with an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager - Keith Gessen $0.99

From Publishers Weekly
Expanding on a 2007 interview in the literary magazine n+1, editor and interviewer Gessen draws together two years' worth of interviews with a despairing anonymous hedge fund manager. HFM, as Gessen calls him, didn't go to business school or major in economics, but has been working successfully in hedge funds for over a decade. With some context provided by Gessen, HFM schools readers in the stories behind the death of Bear Stearns, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the plunging dollar, the bailouts, the Madoff scandal, and, finally, the upswing. Though it's interesting to have a personal take on the tumultuous past two years—and HFM ends the interviews when the stress finally drives him to take a semisabbatical—the decision to tell this story in an interview format is tricky and ultimately unsuccessful; the choppy transcription format distances readers from the ideas at hand, and the points lose their punch. Fans of the original article will find this expansion compelling, but other readers curious about the factors behind the crash will do better elsewhere. (July)

A Common Pornography: A Memoir - Kevin Sampsell $0.99

From Publishers Weekly
A memoir in collage form, this frank but fragmented narrative chronicles the author's early life in the Pacific Northwest. Told in a series of small pieces, some less than a quarter of a page long, Sampsell follows a stream-of-consciousness series of memories centering loosely around a collection of family secrets unearthed after his father's funeral. Replicating the effects of memory, Sampsell's chronicle begins piecemeal and becomes more detailed as it goes, emphasizing the unfiltered honesty of the story and his efforts to tell it. Though it can be frustrating waiting for the pieces to add up, there's enough bathos, dysfunctional family antics and coming-of-age adventures-naked photoshoots, psychiatric hospitalizations, late-night donut shops and the tri-city New Wave scene-to keep readers turning pages. Sampsell's eye for detail and deadpan delivery envliven a dark personal history with bathos and a powerful desire for understanding.

Down and Out on Murder Mile - Tony O'neill $0.99

From Publishers Weekly
Novelist O'Neill (Digging the Vein), a recovered heroin addict and lapsed rocker, draws on his experiences for this fast-paced, compulsively readable (if occasionally self-indulgent) portrait of a young would-be rocker junkie. After most of his belongings are repossessed (or sold for drug money) and his wife Susan admits to embezzling thousands of dollars from her company to support their habit, the unnamed narrator and his wife flee Los Angeles for his former home in England. There, he tries frantically to plug back into the London drug and music scenes and struggles to get clean. Fighting violent withdrawal symptoms, living in squalor on London's infamous Clapton Road (aka Murder Mile) and grappling with a sadistic and controlling rehab doctor, O'Neill's antihero paints a grim, bloody picture of compulsive self-destruction. As veteran of half a dozen bands (including the Brian Jonestown Massacre), O'Neill gives himself too much space to voice his professional grievances, and there's a tendency to name-drop. Still, the novel's consistent tone of urgency and desperation creates a gritty world of its own that compels despite its flaws. (Nov.)

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Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour by Rachel Shukert ($0.99)

Product Description
When she lands a coveted nonpaying, nonspeaking role in a play going on a European tour, Rachel Shukert—with a brand-new degree in acting from NYU and no money—finally scores her big break. And, after a fluke at customs in Vienna, she gets her golden ticket: an unstamped passport, giving her free rein to “find herself” on a grand tour of Europe. Traveling from Vienna to Zurich to Amsterdam, Rachel bounces through complicated relationships, drunken mishaps, miscommunication, and the reality-adjusting culture shock that every twentysomething faces when sent off to negotiate "the real world"—whatever that may be.

Kapitoil: A Novel (P.S.) by Teddy Wayne ($0.99)

Product Description:

"Sometimes you do not truly observe something until you study it in reverse," writes Karim Issar upon arrival to New York City from Qatar in 1999. Fluent in numbers, logic, and business jargon yet often baffled by human connection, the young financial wizard soon creates a computer program named Kapitoil that predicts oil futures and reaps record profits for his company.

At first an introspective loner adrift in New York's social scenes, he anchors himself to his legendary boss Derek Schrub and Rebecca, a sensitive, disillusioned colleague who may understand him better than he does himself. Her influence, and his father's disapproval of Karim's Americanization, cause him to question the moral implications of Kapitoil, moving him toward a decision that will determine his future, his firm's, and to whom—and where—his loyalties lie.

Celebrity Chekhov (P.S.) by Ben Greenman ($0.99)

Product Description
Q: What do Tiger, Paris, Lindsay, Alec, and Oprah have in common with the enduring characters of Anton Chekhov?

A: Love, loss, pride, yearning, heartbreak, renewal, transcendence: the very stuff of life.

The immortal stories of Anton Chekhov have long entranced readers with their insights into the universal truths of human behavior . . . but you've never read them quite like this.
Former friends Nicole and Paris exchange prickly pleasantries in "Tall and Short."
Talk-show host Dave narrowly averts another potential domestic crisis in "A Transgression."
Reality star Kim shares her newfound notoriety with Khloe and Kourtney in "Joy."
In a witty, graceful, and revelatory feat of literary reinvention, acclaimed novelist and humorist Ben Greenman takes nineteen of Chekhov's greatest stories and recasts them with some of the best-known luminaries of our time—with eye-opening, and oddly ennobling, results.

[wyndslash]

yay! "I Am Not Myself These Days" has been on my wishlist for a long time good thing i still have a bit of money

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Town House (P.S.) by Tish Cohen ($0.99)

Product Description
Jack Madigan is, by many accounts, blessed. He can still effortlessly turn a pretty head. And thanks to his legendary rock star father, he lives an enviable existence in a once-glorious, now-crumbling Boston town house with his teenage son, Harlan. But there is one tiny drawback: Jack is an agoraphobe. As long as his dad's admittedly dwindling royalties keep rolling in, Jack's condition isn't a problem. But then the money runs out . . . and all hell breaks loose.

The bank is foreclosing. Jack's ex is threatening to take Harlan to California. And Lucinda, the little girl next door, won't stay out of his kitchen . . . or his life. To save his sanity, Jack's path is clear, albeit impossible—he must outwit the bank's adorably determined real estate agent, win back his house, keep his son at home, and, finally, with Lucinda's help, find a way back to the world outside his door.

Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude by Neal Pollack ($0.99)

Product Description
The hilarious true account of an overweight, balding, skeptical guy's unexpected transformation into a healthy, blissful yoga fiend.

Neal Pollack was out of shape. The hair on his head was thinning and the hair on his face was pretentious—traits a New York Times critic gleefully pointed out while panning his second book. Combined with the predestined failure of his punk rock band, it was almost too much for Pollack to bear. He was willing to try anything to get his life back on track . . . even yoga.

While struggling to master difficult poses without kicking other yogis in the face, Pollack actually, remarkably, began to feel better, both in body and mind. Soon he found himself immersed in the "weird and circuslike" world of yoga. He participated in a 24-hour yogathon, attended yoga conferences and Asian retreats, went to yoga rock shows, started getting regular assignments for Yoga Journal magazine, and, finally, began teaching yoga classes himself.

Stretch mercilessly lampoons the bizarre, omnipresent culture of yoga, but it's also a story of profound personal transformation. Pollack started off mocking yoga. Now he's become one of its most enthusiastic proponents.

The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (P.S.) by Jessica Anya Blau ($0.99)

Product Description
Fourteen-year-old Jamie will never forget the summer of 1976. It's the summer when she has her first boyfriend, cute surfer Flip Jenkins; it's the summer when her two best friends get serious about sex, cigarettes, and tanning; it's the summer when her parents throw, yes, naked swim parties, leaving Jamie flushed with embarrassment. And it's the summer that forever changes the way Jamie sees the things that matter: family, friendship, love, and herself.

Who by Fire (P.S.) by Diana Spechler ($0.99)

Product Description
Bits and Ash were children when the kidnapping of their younger sister, Alena—an incident for which Ash blames himself—caused an irreparable family rift. Thirteen years later, Ash is living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel, cutting himself off from his mother, Ellie, and his wild-child sister, Bits. But soon he may have to face them again; Alena's remains have finally been uncovered. Now Bits is traveling across the world in a bold and desperate attempt to bring her brother home and salvage what's left of their family.

Sharp and captivating, Who by Fire deftly explores what happens when people try to rescue one another.

Everything Is Wrong with Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong by Jason Mulgrew ($0.99)

Product Description
A memoir of startling insight, divine comedy, and irreversible, unconscionable stupidity

Fans of Jason Mulgrew's wildly popular blog know that everything really is wrong with him. The product of a raucous, not-just-semi-but-fully-dysfunctional Philadelphia family, Jason has seen it all—from Little League games of unspeakable horror to citywide parades ending in stab wounds; from hard-partying longshoremen fathers to feathered-hair, no-nonsense, kindhearted mothers; and from conscience-crippling Catholic dogmas to the equally confounding religion of women. With chapter titles like "My Bird: Inadequacy and Redemption" (no, he is not referring to a parakeet) and "On the Relationship Between Genetics and Hustling," Everything Is Wrong with Me proves that, as Jason puts it, "writing is a fantastical exercise in manic depression"—but he never fails to ensure that laughter is part of the routine.

With echoes of Jean Shepherd transplanted to Philly in the eighties and nineties, this book is a must-read for every person who looks back wistfully on his or her childhood and family and wonders, "What were we thinking?"

Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way: A Novel (P.S.) by Bryan Charles ($0.99)

Product Description
A wise, bighearted, and hilarious look at one teenager's life by a remarkable new voice in contemporary fiction

It's 1992, and as Vim Sweeney deals with the recent end of his high school career and the uncertainty of his future, America shares his angst. In Seattle, Kurt Cobain reeks of teen spirit. In Washington, George Bush (the first one) has just finished rattling his saber at Saddam Hussein. And in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Vim is trying to put off adulthood and all that comes with it, whatever that is, for as long as he can. He's already juggling guitars, girls, and a long-absent biological father who's suddenly making noise about Wanting to Be Involved. And he still can't convince his friends why local schoolboy hero Derek Jeter is bound for obscurity.

Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way traces Vim's stumble toward adulthood as he comes to terms with his parents, balances friendships and infatuation with varying levels of success, and accepts that the things he thought would last forever probably won't. Generous in spirit and laugh-out-loud funny, here is a novel that introduces a tremendous new talent and deftly captures the alternately amusing and harrowing process of holding on until you find your way.

Postcards from a Dead Girl: A Novel (P.S.) by Kirk Farber ($0.99)

Product Description
Sid is going crazy . . .

A telemarketer at a travel agency, Sid is becoming unhinged and superneurotic. Lately he's been obsessed with car washes and mud baths. His hypochondria is driving his doctor sister mad. And it's all because of his ex-girlfriend, Zoe, who's sending him postcards from her European adventure, one that they were supposed to take together. It's all quite upsetting.

A fact-finding tour of local post offices—and a new friendship with postman Gerald—followed by a solo European jaunt will do little to ease his anxiety. A long talk with his mother's spirit in a wine bottle doesn't help either. But what he really needs are a few more tentative dates with the chatty Candyce. Sid needs to get over Zoe and find love again—even though Zoe, apparently, has no inclination to be gotten over.

Wonderfully poignant, funny, odd, and more than a bit macabre, Postcards from a Dead Girl marks the emergence of a truly gifted and original literary voice.

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It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me by Ariel Leve ($0.99)

Product Description
Meet Ariel. Her glass is half empty . . . and leaking.

If someone tells her everything will be okay, she asks: How do you know? If there's a wrong thing to say, she'll say it. If there's a downside to see, she'll see it. She lives in a permanent fear of what's to come. But at least she's prepared.

In these witty and entertaining tales from the front lines of woe, Ariel highlights the humor in our everyday anxieties and delivers insight that will ring hilariously true if you are inclined to view the world through gray-tinted glasses.

So whether you've been dumped by the love of your life, lost your job to the guy in the cubicle next to you, said the wrong thing at the party, or weren't invited to the party at all, Ariel is here to remind you that it could be worse, you could be her.

The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen ($0.99)

Product Description
Are you ready to meet the average American male?

[apesmom]

More progress for HarperCollins in figuring out this ebook thing. They are actually doing a little self promotion on their Facebook page for the latest sale. Sure makes it easier than having to search for the bargains.

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Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen (reduced to $2.99)

Product Description
The highly acclaimed and provocatively rendered story of a young postulant's claim to divine possession and religious ecstasy.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by arcadata

Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen (reduced to $2.99)

Oh, thanks for this one! Got it at BN.