FREE (and bargain) books for the Kindle - July 2011

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Know What You Don't Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen by Michael A. Roberto

Product Description:

In Know What You Don’t Know, best-selling author Michael Roberto shows leaders how to go beyond mere “problem solving” to uncover and address emerging problems while they’re still manageable—before they mushroom into disaster! Roberto first identifies the diverse, sometimes surprising reasons why problems typically fester in the shadows, ignored and unaddressed. Next, he systematically introduces seven powerful solutions. You’ll discover how to become a business “anthropologist,” observing how your employees, customers, and suppliers actually behave, not just how they’re “supposed” to behave. Roberto shows how and when to circumvent your gatekeepers to see crucial raw data...how to “connect the dots” among issues that seem unrelated, but are really signs of a deeper pattern...how to promote candor among front-line employees...encourage “useful” mistakes, and more. Along the way, Roberto offers powerful insights for overcoming the “isolation trap” so many senior executives face: the trap that can keep you assuming everything is fine, while your company’s problems are spiraling out of control!

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Powering the Future: A Scientist's Guide to Energy Independence by Daniel B. Botkin

Description
The future of civilization depends upon the continuous availability of sufficient energy. But we’re approaching the practical limits of some of the energy sources we depend upon most. What should be done? Few issues are as controversial. In Powering the Future, a leading scientist cuts through the controversy, presenting the facts about our energy needs, desires, and supplies and the environmental and human effects of obtaining and using energy.

Dr. Daniel B. Botkin objectively assesses the true prospects, limitations, costs, risks, dangers, and tradeoffs associated with every leading and emerging source of energy, including oil, natural gas, coal, hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, solar, ocean power, and biofuels. Next, Botkin addresses the energy distribution system, outlining how it currently works, identifying its inefficiencies, and reviewing options for improving it.

Finally, Botkin turns to solutions, offering a realistic, scientifically and economically viable path to a sustainable, energy-independent future: one that can improve the quality of life for Americans and for people around the world.

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Germs, Genes, & Civilization: How Epidemics Shaped Who We Are Today (Ft Press Science Series) by David P. Clark

Product Description

The Stunning Hidden Interconnections Between Microbes and Humanity

AD 452: Attila the Hun stands ready to sack Rome. No one can stop him--but he walks away. A miracle? No...dysentery. Microbes saved the Roman Empire. Nearly a millennium later, the microbes of the Black Death ended the Middle Ages, making possible the Renaissance, western democracy, and the scientific revolution. Soon after, microbes ravaged the Americas, paving the way for their European conquest.

Again and again, microbes have shaped our health, our genetics, our history, our culture, our politics, even our religion and ethics. This book reveals much that scientists and cultural historians have learned about the pervasive interconnections between infectious microbes and humans. It also considers what our ongoing fundamental relationship with infectious microbes might mean for the future of the human species.

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Hostage in Havana ($9.99 Kindle), the first in the new Cuban Trilogy by Noel Hynd, is free at Barnes & Noble, courtesy of Christian publisher Zondervan. It is already showing in the free searches at Amazon, so it should drop in price there later today for US customers (it's already free for those in the UK, but not those in Europe.

Book Description
From bestselling ABA author Noel Hynd comes this new series set against the backdrop of Havana, an explosive capital city of faded charm locked in the past and torn by political intrigue.U.S. Treasury Agent Alexandra LaDuca leaves her Manhattan home on an illegal mission to Cuba that could cost her everything. Accompanying her is the attractive but dangerous Paul Guarneri, a Cuban-born exile who lives in the gray areas of the law. Together, they plunge into subterfuge and danger. Without the support of the United States, Alex must navigate Cuban police, saboteurs, pro-Castro security forces, and an assassin who follows her from New York. Bullets fly as allies become traitors and enemies become unexpected friends. Alex, recovering from the tragic loss of her fiance a year before, reexamines faith and new love while taking readers on a fast-paced adventure. Readers of general market thrillers, such as John le Carre, David Baldacci, and Joel Rosenberg, will eagerly anticipate this first installment.


Click HERE to get the free book from B&N.

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FYI, new Kindle game app:

Snap Sudoku #1 (A Puzzle Collection) by Puzzazz ($0.99)

Product Description
Are you looking for Sudoku puzzles you can solve in a snap? If so, this collection of carefully constructed and calibrated super easy Sudoku puzzles is right for you.

These 33 super easy puzzles are the easiest Sudoku puzzles that Puzzazz offers, and are designed to be simple, elegant, and enjoyable. You will appreciate features like in-cell notes that help make solving these puzzles as easy as it is on paper. You can move to another puzzle at any time without losing the progress on your current puzzle, and come back to that puzzle whenever you like. Snap Sudoku puzzles are specially designed to give you a quick and fun challenge, but if you're having trouble, you can always get a hint any time you need one.

If you're looking for an easy introduction to Sudoku, or just looking for quick, fun puzzles to solve, try Snap Sudoku today!

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Karen Chance's Cassie Palmer Series bundle is $7.51 (pre-order). This is a four book bundle and contains the entire series except for the very latest title, Hunt the Moon, which was released last month. If you like paranormal/time-traveling romance/female lead books at all, then you need to read this series. The only ones exempt from the recommendation to buy the bundle are those, like me, who already have the entire series in your ebook library, already. It isn't like Penguin to price their bundles this low, so grab it before they come to their senses.

Book Description
Clairvoyant Cassandra Palmer's magical powers are a mixed blessing-she may be able to contact spirits but sometimes this can be a whole lot more trouble than it's worth. Battling with vampires, feys and mages who all seek supremacy, Cassie must use her powers wisely in order to save herself - and the world. The Cassie Palmer Series includes Touch the Dark, Claimed by Shadow, Embrace the Night and Curse the Dawn.

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There are 12 newly released titles from Elizabeth Peters with Robinson as publisher. These are all currently priced at $4.44, which is nearly half off what Hachette has been charging.

Book List

1. Crocodile on the Sandbank (Amelia Peabody 01)
2. Lion in the Valley (Amelia Peabody 04)
3. The Deeds of the Disturber (Amelia Peabody 05)
4. Hippopotamus Pool (Amelia Peabody 08)
5. The Ape Who Guards the Balance (Amelia Peabody 10)
6. The Falcon at the Portal (Amelia Peabody 11)
7. The Golden One (Amelia Peabody 14)
8. Guardian of the Horizon (Amelia Peabody 16)
9. Borrower of the Night (Vicky Bliss Mysteries 1)
10. Street of the Five Moons (Vicky Bliss Mysteries 2)
11. Silhouette in Scarlet (Vicky Bliss Mysteries 3)
12. Night Train to Memphis (Vicky Bliss Mysteries 5)

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Benny and Shrimp, by Katarina Mazetti, is on sale for Australian readers only - you guys get it for 48 cents! The edition in the US is still $11.99.

Book Description
Why is it so impossible to get a relationship to work between two mature single people, driven by an enormous longing and loudly ticking biological clocks? Especially when they are struck by a totally unexpected passion when they first meet… In alternate chapters, Benny and “Shrimp” tell the story of a love that started by mistake in a village cemetery, a love that should not really be as complicated as it seems. She is a childless young widow with a sharp intellect and a home so tidy that even her jam jars are in alphabetical order. He is a gentle, overworked milk farmer, a reluctant loner, who fears becoming the village’s Old Bachelor. The attraction between them is powerful. But how will she learn to accept that he falls asleep at the opera and has a house full of his mother’s embroidered wall hangings, and how could he ever feel at home in her minimalist apartment, bare as a dentist’s waiting room? In Benny and Shrimp, Katarina Mazetti brilliantly captures the intensity of an unexpected love affair, and the heartbreaking inevitability with which life tends to get in the way.

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Both titles in the Hazel Micallef Mystery series by Inger Ash Wolfe are currently marked down to $2.99.

The Calling
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef has lived all her days in the small town of Port Dundas, Ontario and is now making her way toward retirement with something less than grace. Hobbled by a bad back and a dependence on painkillers, and feeling blindsided by divorce after nearly four decades of marriage, sixty-one-year-old Hazel has only the constructive criticism of her mother (the former mayor) and her own sharp tongue to buoy her. But when a terminally ill woman is gruesomely murdered in her own home, Hazel and her understaffed department must spring to life. And as one terminally ill victim after another is found, Hazel finds herself tracking a truly terrifying serial killer while everything around her spins out of control.

Through the cacophony of her bickering staff, her unsupportive superiors, a clamoring press, the town's rumor mill, and her own nagging doubts, Hazel can sense the dead trying to call out. Will she hear them before it's too late?

The Taken
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is having a bad year. After major back surgery, she moves into her ex-husband’s home to be cared for by his new wife. As if that weren’t enough to cope with, her octogenarian mother is insisting that Hazel end her dependence on painkillers—an insistence that takes the form of secretly flushing Hazel’s stash down the toilet.

It’s almost a relief when Hazel gets a call about a body found in one of the lakes near Port Dundas. But what raises the hair on the back of her neck is that the local paper has just published the first installment of a serialized story featuring such a scenario. Even before they head out to the lake, she and Detective Constable James Wingate know they are being played. But who is pulling their strings and why are not clear, nor is what they find at the lake at all what they expected. This is no simple drowning accident or even a straightforward murder. It’s Micallef herself who is snared, caught up in a cryptic game being played by a maven of the art of deception.

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Alice Duncan has released several backlist titles in her Daisy Gumm Majesty series, starting with Strong Spirits, currently marked down to 99 cents, followed by Fine Spirits and High Spirits, at the same price, and Hungry Spirits at $2.99. The next title in the series is only up as a hardcover pre-order, so far, but it will be interesting to see if she managed to retain digital rights to it, as well.

Book Description
Welcome to sunny Pasadena, California, just a stone's throw from Hollywood. The twenties are in full roar, Prohibition isn't stopping anybody . . . and Daisy Gumm Majesty is getting by the best way she knows how--catering to the rich and famous as a medium who put the "con" in conjurer.

But a girl's gotta make a living! If there's one thing I've learned in this life it's that most rich people have more money than sense. My career as a "spiritualist" started the day I pretended Aunt Vi's Ouija board was talking to me and everyone believed it, especially Vi's employer, wealthy old Mrs. Kincaid. Some folks may disapprove, but the way I see it, I'm just dishing out hope to people who need it. Is that so wrong?

According to Detective Sam Rotondo, it is--and now he's blackmailed me into spying on the Kincaids for him. I don't know what he hopes to find out. Any fool could see what's going on in that house: who's in love, who's in trouble, and who's in need of a swift kick in the pants. And if Sam weren't the most irritating, hard-headed man this side of the Pacific, why, I'd give him a private reading--and tell him the spirits have a whole lot more in store for him.

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Afterthoughts ($0.99 pre-order) is just one of the many Lawrence Block titles that are currently marked down in the Kindle store to under $5 (must under $4 and nearly half under $3), only one of which is officially a part of the Big Deal sale and most of which are now published by Open Road and usually sell in the $10-$15 range.

Book Description
A collection of afterwords from Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block’s most acclaimed works

In a career spanning more than fifty years, Lawrence Block has produced over one hundred books, ranging in genre from hard-boiled detective stories to pseudonymous erotica. Collected here for the first time are more than forty-five afterwords from the works that made him a master of modern fiction.

Each afterword is an insightful reflection on the experiences that have brought Block’s fiction to life, from the lessons he learned as a reader at a literary agency to the unlikely—and semi-autobiographical—origins of the acclaimed Matthew Scudder series. Witty and inspiring, Afterthoughts is a must-read for Block fans and mystery lovers alike.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

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Free indie books:

The White Shadow Saga: The Stolen Moon of Londor by A. P. Stephens (White Wolf Press, LLC)

Product Description
The era of peace among the elves, men, and dwarves comes to an end when one of Londor's twin moons disappears from the heavens...Without the moon's balancing effect, evil forces grow bold, and warfare, sickness, and chaos threaten life itself.

Hearing the prayers of desperation that ride on the violent winds, the ancient wizard Randor Miithra, servant to the elf-gods, takes it upon himself to mend the world he has sworn to protect. The task will not be an easy one, though, for the wizard, too, has begun to feel the effects of the world's imbalance. As Randor struggles to maintain some semblance of his powers, he meets a secretive band of colorful characters from all walks of life, drawn together by a common goal: to find the stolen moon, whatever the cost. It does not take Randor and his motley company long to see that someone or something does not want the moon returned to the heavens.

The road is perilous...the stakes have never been greater...will they find victory…or will they only find their deaths?

Priscilla the Great by Sybil Nelson (Little Prince Publishing)

Product Description
Meet Priscilla Sumner, an ordinary seventh grader with extraordinary gifts. As if middle school isn’t hard enough, not only does Priscilla have to fight pimples and bullies, but genetically enhanced assassins trying to kill her and her family. Armed with wit, strength, and a genius best friend, Priscilla must defeat the Selliwood Institute, an organization dead set on turning children into killing machines.

Add an older brother annoyingly obsessed with Christina Aguilera, mischievous baby twin brothers who could scare the sin off of Satan, and parents more puzzling than a Rubik’s cube in the Bermuda triangle and expect a smoking page-turner!

This award-winning novel is currently being pitched to Disney, ABC Family, and Nickelodeon as a major motion picture.

Love In Bloom by Karen Rose Smith

Product Description
Dr. Paige Conrad needs Clay Reynolds' help. However, he can't give it because she and the rest of the town of Langley, Maryland, might discover his secret. Clay has no memory of the first twenty-five years of his life. The past and his father's rejection is behind him. Digging it up brings back nightmare he has fought for ten years to control.
After spending three years in underdeveloped countries following her parents' vision of healing, Paige has come to Langley to gain perspective on her life and help an old friend with his medical practice. Learning Clay was involved in a rock climbing accident and went through the rehabilitation process, she wants him to share his experience with a trouble teenager to give the boy hope.
Paige and Clay are inexorably drawn to each other. But can Clay trust Paige and share his secret? Can Paige dare to follow her own dreams.
Love In Bloom was first published with Meteor/Kismet.

Beyond All Price by Carolyn Poling Schriber (Katzenhaus Books)

Product Description
Beyond All Price is a historical novel, based on the real life story of Nellie M. Chase, a Union nurse during America’s Civil War. She had eloped at the age of nineteen with a man she later discovered was a "drunk, a gambler, a liar, a forger, and a thief." She was strong enough to escape from that potentially abusive relationship and resourceful enough to find a job as wardrobe mistress for a theater. The woman with whom she shared a single room in a squalid tenement took an overdose of opium in an effort to escape a life of prostitution. Nellie joined the Union Army, because life in the midst of a war seemed safer than the one she had been living.
She found a home with the 100th Pennsylvania Regiment, a band of volunteers whose nickname was “The Roundhead Regiment” because of their strong religious beliefs. She believed so passionately in her country’s cause that she displayed a soldier’s bravery. Her skill and compassion led one of her patients to write, “Even here, amid the roar and carnage, was found a woman with the soul to dare danger; the heart to sympathize with the battle-stricken; sense, skill, and experience to make her a treasure beyond all price.”
She was equally at home managing a southern plantation full of abandoned slaves, a battlefield operating station, or a 600-bed military hospital. But after the war, her deep-seated need to dedicate her life to a worthy cause continued to drive her efforts until she faced an enemy more lethal than war.

Thunder Valley (Thunder Valley Trilogy) by Thomas Kelly

Product Description
Thunder Valley is a story about five friends that take an annual camping trip. Love and lust lead to confusion and conflict. All the emotions that can tear lives apart or cement them for eternity are experienced in this thriller/mystery. Best friends become bitter enemies, new friends become lovers and lovers become something unexpected in five short days. Thunder Valley is the first completed novel in a trilogy.
Thunder Valley is a little known campground in Northern Minnesota. Rico, Julie, Conner, Dave and Sam take their annual summer trip. The five friends wonder why such a nice campground is so unknown. On the first day of the trip Rico meets the girl of his dreams; Sunny is sexy, smart, and sweet. Rico quickly forms a bond with Sunny. However, behind Sunny is a darkness that will test Rico and put him in the middle of a love triangle with Julie, his best friends’ girlfriend. Thunder Valley is a love story that will tear friendships apart and bring new loves to the brink of insanity.

Flowers over the Wall by Karolee Grim

Product Description
Being thin will not make you happy.You will still have the anxiety you have always had about your weight. However, instead of worrying about being overweight, you will be anxious about gaining it back.Your thoughts will still be obsessed with fat, calories, etc., and You will still yearn for and desire food. Flowers over the wall uses the Bible to show you why you keep failing to lose weight.

Sapphire of the Fairies (Sword of Heavens #1) by Richard S. Tuttle (KBS)

Product Description
The sky is dark. Neither the sun nor the moon have been seen in decades. The land is fruitless, and the seas are barren. No law exists, only the rule of might is exerted over a hapless people by those who can wield it. In a land of darkness and despair, there is one shining light, an ancient prophecy that foretells of the coming king and his companion, the vanquisher of evil.Sapphire of the Fairies is the first of seven volumes of the epic fantasy series Sword of Heavens. Explore a vast continent where elves, dwarves, unicorns, fairies, demons, dragons, and man all exist. Sapphire of the Fairies begins the saga of five humans on the verge of adulthood. Living in a land where no one can be trusted, these five adventurers must restore the magical Sword of Heavens and defeat the Evil One, an evil sorcery whose minions roam the world in an attempt to defeat the ancient prophecy.Discover a world of magic and intrigue created by Richard S. Tuttle, called "one of this century's leading authors of innovative fantasy tales." Volume 1 of Sword of Heavens

The Gift of Fury (The Count Albritton Series) by Richard Jackson

Product Description
Enter the world of Count Albritton. It is a world where magic and the supernatural are very real. Creatures of legend, sorcerers and other powers walk among us. As a paranormal investigator, Count helps people with supernatural problems the authorities are either unwilling or unable to deal with. It's dangerous work. Luckily he has Kara, a beautiful guardian angel to help him.

Over the years, magic has grown weaker as mankind has made more and more technological advances. Many things that were possible in the past are no longer possible or easier to accomplish using technology. One man seeks to change all of that. He plans to bring back the golden age of magic. To do so, means sacrificing the technology that mankind depends upon and unleashing horrors best left forgotten.

Count isn't about to let that happen. Even with the help of his friends, it’s a fight he isn’t sure he can win.

This edition was released on June 26, 2011 to fix a number of errors found within the book. It is is approximately 180 pages (68,000 words) long and includes a bonus short story called The Path Taken.

Free short stories:

Scavenger Hunt (Zombie Kids Series Short Story #1) by Danielle Bourdon

Simian's Lair (A Tale From The Land of Verne) by David H. Burton (Stonehenge Press)

Dorrin's End by Sandra Miller

The Pick-Up by William Butler

Runner (The Runners Book One) by Logan Rutherford

Pig Man by Dan Dillard

After Sunset by Amanda Young

Marked: City of the Damned Book 1 by Everly Drummond

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More free indies:

Amaury's Hellion (Scanguards Vampires #2) by Tina Folsom

Product Description
Vampire Amaury LeSang is cursed to feel everybody's emotions like a permanent migraine. The only way to alleviate the pain is through sex. When he meets the feisty human woman Nina, a cure for his ailment seems within reach: in her presence all pain vanishes.

Unfortunately, Nina is out to kill him because she believes he's involved in her brother's death. And she would succeed if only Amaury's bad boy charm didn't play havoc with her hormones and catapulted her into his arms and his bed every time she was near him.

As every kiss brings them physically closer, danger is lurking and threatens to destroy the little trust they have in each other.

Surrender at Dawn by Laura Griffin

Product Description
Former Navy SEAL Jack Brenner knows he's in trouble the minute Charlotte Whiteside steps into a seedy Thai bar and asks him to help rescue her brother, who is being held hostage on a nearby island. Jack doesn't want to get tangled up in Charlotte's problems or anyone else's, but an obligation to a SEAL teammate prompts him to get involved. They embark on a nighttime mission that turns out to be more dangerous--and passionate--than either of them ever imagined. (short story, about 20 pages, plus book excerpt)


About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author LAURA GRIFFIN started her career in journalism before venturing into the world of romantic suspense. Her books have won numerous awards, including a 2010 RITA (Whisper of Warning) and a 2010 Daphne du Maurier Award (Untraceable). Her debut novel, One Last Breath, won the Booksellers Best Award for romantic suspense. Laura currently lives in Austin, where she is working on the next book in her popular Tracers series. Visit her at lauragriffin.com or facebook.com/LauraGriffinAuthor.

[Boston]

Read this a few years back and remember it as one of those books that stuck with me for a long time. A powerful, sad and beautiful rendering of a friendship - its ups and downs. While some had issues with the author's flawed portrayal of her deceased friend, I thought in doing so, she was able to convey the passion and devotion Lucy inspired.

Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett $3.99

http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Beauty-e...1652500&sr=1-1

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First Frost by Jennifer Estep (Kensington Books)

Product Description
I am Gwen Frost, and I have a Gypsy gift. It’s called psychometry – that's a fancy way of saying that I see images in my head and get flashes of other people’s memories off almost everything I touch, even guys.
My gift makes me kind of nosy. Okay, okay, maybe a lot nosy--to the point of obsession sometimes. I want to know everything about everyone around me. But even I don't want to know the secrets my friend Paige is hiding or the terrible loss that will send me to a new school – Mythos Academy, where the teachers aren't preparing us for the SATs, but to battle Reapers of Chaos. Now I have no friends and no idea how my gift fits in with all these warrior whiz kids. The only thing I do know is that my life is never, ever going to be the same. . .

"Touch of Frost is an intriguing start to an exciting new series!" —Award-winning author Jeri Smith-Ready

Jennifer Estep is a full-time author, constantly prowling the streets of her imagination in search of her next fantasy idea. Jennifer writes the Mythos Academy young adult urban fantasy series for Kensington and the Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series for Pocket Books. She is also the author of the Bigtime paranormal romance series.

Jennifer is a mem*ber of Romance Writers of America, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and other writing groups. Jennifer's books have been featured in Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, Southern Living, and a variety of other publications.