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

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Gods and Kings: Chronicles of the Kings #1 by Lynn Austin (Bethany House Publishers)

Product Description
Gods and Kings is the story of King Hezekiah, heir to the throne of King David. When his evil father plots to sacrifice him, Hezekiah's mother, Abijah, searches frantically for a way to save him. But only two men can help her, and neither of them seems trustworthy. In a time and place engulfed by violence, treachery, and infidelity to Yahweh, Abijah and her son must discover the one true Source of strength if they are to save themselves and their country. Book 1 of Chronicles of the Kings.

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FYI, new Kindle app:

Mahjong Butterfly (A Game for Kindle) by Namco Networks America ($2.99)

Product Description
Mahjong Butterfly is a Mahjong tile matching game with a strategic goal larger than just clearing the board.

You goal is to collect caterpillars and help them transform into beautiful butterflies. To accomplish this, you must match the correct kinds of tiles to get caterpillars, and then continue making the right matches to feed your caterpillars and help them grow.

To help you achieve this goal, Mahjong Butterfly offers you the ability to take and hold a tile in reserve, allowing you access to a previously inaccessible tile without having to remove a valuable piece you want to play later. As you collect butterflies through the 47 different games, you gain more entries in your collection of butterflies; a nice reference that shows you more about the butterflies you've raised.

If you are ready for a more engaging Mahjong experience, then take some time to play with butterflies!

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Thirteen books, all by Stuart MacBride, free to pre-order on Kindle, but only for those in Australia (so far, although I suspect this is all a pricing error).

Twelve Days of Winter: Crime at Christmas

Book Description
A collection of interlinked tales of crime and retribution laced with dark humour, set around the festive season – from the No. 1 bestseller Stuart MacBrideThieves, drug dealers, lap-dancers, gangsters and even the odd good guy populate these twelve tales exploring the seedier side of life in North East Scotland.

These twelve appear to be the individual stories from the above collection:

1. A Partridge in a Pear Tree
2. Turtle Doves
3. French Hens
4. Calling Birds
5. Gold Rings
6. Geese A Laying
7. Swans A Swimming
8. Maids A Milking
9. Ladies Dancing
10. Lords A Leaping
11. Pipers Piping
12. Drummers Drumming

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FYI, new Kindle app:

Day Planner & Calendar (Organize Events and Tasks with Kindle) by Magellan Interactive ($0.99)

Product Description
Day Planner and Calendar is a personal planner that can track just about any scheduled event you could possibly plan for.

The Day Planner & Calendar lets you create scheduled events for meetings, anniversaries, vacations, or any other event you care to track. Each entry supports a location, start and stop information, personal notes, and an option to create an all-day event. You can even select one of over 50 fun icons to help you identify your event in the calendar.

To help you remember important events, Day Planner and Calendar lets you create recurring events every few days, or every week, month or year. Four views help you track your events: A year view, month view, day view, and an agenda view which gives you a compact list of your scheduled events.

Day Planner and Calendar also includes a Task List to help you manage non-event obligations such as shopping lists, to-do lists and even notes to yourself. Simple navigation and a check box for completion make this feature a hit for grocery lists and other tasks.

If you are looking for an easy way to enter your commitments and see your calendar at a glance, Day Planner and Calendar is for you.

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FYI, currently just free for those in the UK

Praise Jerusalem! by Augusta Trobaugh (Bell Bridge Books) (Amazon Main, Amazon UK)

Product Description
Fans of southern novels that explore the complex relationships between white families and their black hired help will find a compelling story about race relations in PRAISE JERUSALEM. Amelia, an aging Georgia matron forced by money woes to move in with two other women--outlandishly preachy Maybelline and take-no-nonsense Mamie, who is black--begins to confront her childhood memories of the black women who worked for her family. Their lives, both tragic and yet sublimely proud, haunt Amelia even now, as she searches for a way to make peace with the sorrows she innocently observed.PRAISE JERUSALEM is a rare mix of poignant drama but also wry humor. Both the elder Amelia and her childhood self are primly rebellious and irrepressible; Amelia's sharp eye for petty human foibles never fails her.

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FYI, new Kindle app:

Address Book (Your Contacts on Kindle) by 7 Dragons ($0.99)

Product Description
Use your Kindle as your address book with Address Book by 7 Dragons.

You can add up to 1,000 contacts in Address Book, and you can even import them from Outlook, Yahoo Mail, GMail or any source that supports VCF 3.0 format (VCard 3.0 format). You can organize your contacts into groups, and pick contacts to mark as 'Favorite' contacts. In addition to a search tool, Address Book provides a First Name Flipbook, a Last Name Flipbook to make finding any contact quick and easy.

You can make backups, and there is an automatic weekly backup to help you save your data. Address Book can export your contacts in VCF 3.0 format so you can load them into Outlook, Yahoo, Google and other VCF 3.0 compatible tools.

Address Book is your complete Address Book solution on the Kindle.

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Bismarck : A Life by Jonathan Steinberg from Oxford University Press, USA ($1.49) is the Kindle Deal of the Day (Sept 22) *Wait for price to reflect discount before 1-clicking

Product Description

This riveting, New York Times bestselling biography illuminates the life of Otto von Bismarck, the statesman who unified Germany but who also embodied everything brutal and ruthless about Prussian culture.

Jonathan Steinberg draws heavily on contemporary writings, allowing Bismarck's friends and foes to tell the story. What rises from these pages is a complex giant of a man: a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox, a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears, a convert to an extreme form of evangelical Protestantism who secularized schools and introduced civil divorce. Bismarck may have been in sheer ability the most intelligent man to direct a great state in modern times. His brilliance and insight dazzled his contemporaries. But all agreed there was also something demonic, diabolical, overwhelming, beyond human attributes, in Bismarck's personality. He was a kind of malign genius who, behind the various postures, concealed an ice-cold contempt for his fellow human beings and a drive to control and rule them. As one contemporary noted: "the Bismarck regime was a constant orgy of scorn and abuse of mankind, collectively and individually."

In this comprehensive and expansive biography--a brilliant study in power--Jonathan Steinberg brings Bismarck to life, revealing the stark contrast between the "Iron Chancellor's" unmatched political skills and his profoundly flawed human character.

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Now free for the US:

Praise Jerusalem! by Augusta Trobaugh (Bell Bridge Books)

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Building Data Science Teams by DJ Patil (OReilly Media)

Product Description
As data science evolves to become a business necessity, the importance of assembling a strong and innovative data teams grows. In this in-depth report, data scientist DJ Patil explains the skills, perspectives, tools and processes that position data science teams for success.

Topics include: What it means to be "data driven." The unique roles of data scientists. The four essential qualities of data scientists. Patil's first-hand experience building the LinkedIn data science team.

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The World Before Her by Deborah Weisgall is $1.41 (still $9.99 at B&N) from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Product Description

Marian Evans—who writes under the pen name George Eliot—has come to Venice on her honeymoon. It is 1880 and she is newly married to John Cross, twenty years her junior. She has come to this city of canals and bridges to start again, to forget the death of her longtime partner, George Henry Lewes—with whom she shared twenty five years of happiness and art. In this new marriage, in this intensely romantic place, can she give herself the happy ending that she provided for Middlemarch’s Dorothea Brooke?

A century later, sculptor Caroline Spingold takes us to Venice again. Scarred by her father’s abandonment just after she and her parents spent a summer in the city, Caroline vowed never to return. But now her powerful, wealthy older husband has brought her back against her will, to celebrate their tenth anniversary.

Told in alternating chapters subtly linked by themes of art, love, and the challenges of marriage, The World Before Her tells of two women, their surprising similarities, and the reckoning Venice will force them to make with their desire, their memories, and their very selves.

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Free from indies/backlist books:

The Zen Experience by Thomas Hoover (Penguin)

Product Description

(New American Library,1980)
“The best history of Zen ever written.”
Library Journal

Beginning with Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism it shows Zen as it was created by the personalities, perceptions, and actions of its masters over the centuries.

Gradual and sudden enlightenment, shock enlightenment, the koan, the migration of Zen to Japan. With anecdote and memorable quotation, this long-needed work restores Zen to its living, human form.

The Wall by Kanmi Iyanda (MyAppitude)

Product Description

Sometimes in life, all we want to do is navigate our journey the simple way. At least this is the intention until we begin to interact with our parents, siblings, friends and the world at large. This is when the real living begins….

The Wall is the story of a young man constantly striving to be a better person in what he deems a chronically cynical and unloving world. Constantly irritated and eternally damaged, he struggles against the unpredictable tides of life. Will the all-embracing memories of his mother’s love bring him back to the right side or will the resulting demons from his father’s deeds constrain him to a narrow, myopic and dark ending?

Faced with the impossible realities that continue to hold him down, he tries everything from therapy to the love of an unattainable stranger, all the time meandering through the imagined maze of his dramatic life. As he approaches the crucial watershed of his life, he realizes he has two choices; wither and slowly come to an ignoble end or power through and break down the wall in his way. Told through his own words, the story follows him from the idyllic hometown of Bakers Heath to the heady heights of the neighboring Providence City.

In the midst of the battle for sanity, George Williams finally decides to be the master of his own fortune, reshuffling the cards he was dealt and propelling himself to his desired destiny. To his great satisfaction, he was becoming a man - million miles from the monstrosity that his father was…..or was he?

SHADOWS BEYOND THE FLAMES AND OTHER STORIES by J.M. TRESAUGUE (BEAR LORD PUBLISHING)

Product Description

Somewhere in the depths within us all we possess good & evil, honorable & shameful, ugly and beautiful. J.M. Tresaugue’s “Shadows Beyond the Flames and Other Stories” proves just that. Within each of us we have the power to do great good, and in the blink of an eye we can turn into a depraved, immoral human being. You find variations of these human characteristics within the contents of stories such as “The Manual” and “Sometimes Always”. However, within “Graphic Burn” we are given a glimpse of what being a better person truly means. There are stories that grip us, stories that shake us to our cores, and stories that inspire. The stories contained within this volume touch on a little of everything; from the macabre, to the hopeful, but mainly the darkness within us. You won’t be disappointed with the variety of science fiction, horror, fantasy, strange, unusual, and revenge thrown in for good measure in “Shadows Beyond the Flames and Other Stories.”

Pretense for Murder by Karen L. Abrahamson (Twisted Root Publishing )

Product Description

A dead girl, an empty phone booth where one shouldn’t be and a school full of suspects with too many unusual powers.
When student, Vallon Drake discovers the dead body of a girl and a British phone booth standing outside the American Geological Survey Preparatory Academy, she knows someone with special power committed the murder. Heck, her school exists to teach students with the talent to rewrite the landscape as future special agents. But while Vallon wants to solve the crime, everyone else wants to cover it up. Trust Vallon to break the rules to take the investigation on—even when the cost of doing so might be her life.

Pencils Make Good Darts by Dan Balman

Product Description

Humorous and poignant, serious and funny (exactly what you get when a middle age man with the mind of a child less mature than his own children writes about life), Pencils Make Good Darts is a collection of short nonfiction essays that are well suited for reading on the toilet or before you go to bed and will either make you hate the author for wasting your time or laugh and cry like you are young again.

Wrapped in a Rainbow by Delyse Rodrigues-Trink

Product Description

What would you do? Would you drop everything and take a chance? Life presents to Kristy a fabulous once in a lifetime opportunity to work in the Bahamas. If she decides to go for it, will it meet, exceed, or fall short of her expectations?
Handsome Dave is wary and jaded about women. He likes his life in the beautiful Bahamas where his romantic encounters are fast and fleeting. Gorgeous Kristy catches his eye but refuses to play by those rules. In fact she has studiously avoided men like him! David is intrigued by her resistance and so relentless in his pursuit, that much to her astonishment, Kristy finds herself agreeing to go out with him.
They end up having a sensational first date, but then it all turns to shambles. Could it be that David isn’t everything he appears to be? Could it be that Kristy isn’t everything David assumes her to be?

A New Pet in the Family by John H. Carroll and Claudia Mendoza (Bookata, LLC)

Product Description

Between the arrival ("A New Pet in the Family") and the passing away ("We have such a great time together") of a pet, Bookata's compilation cover the whole cycle of family-child-pet dynamic by introducing elements from the child environment into the story, creating a unique, personalized book.

Aimed for readers age five to ten, Bookata’s books allow the users (parents and children alike) to change in a few minutes the whole content, from illustrations to text.

The Shakespeare Manuscript by Stewart Buettner (Performance Arts Press)

Product Description

Not one of Shakespeare’s plays exists in manuscript form until a failing bookseller discovers a long-lost, early version of HAMLET. In an attempt to trace the puzzling manuscript's origins, its new owner finds he can’t trust the identity of play’s author and soon has doubts about his own. But by then, the race to stage the new HAMLET is on, taking a toll on everyone involved. In the end, the new play leaves audience and actors alike wondering about the unexpected and moving consequences of the play they’ve just experienced.

The Written (Emaneska Series) by Ben Galley (BenGalley.com)

Product Description

His name is Farden. They whisper that he’s dangerous. Dangerous is only the half of it.

Something has gone missing from the libraries of Arfell. Something very old, and something very powerful. Five scholars are now dead, a country is once again on the brink of war, and the magick council is running out of time and options. Entangled in a web of lies and politics and dragged halfway across icy Emaneska and back, Farden must unearth a secret even he doesn’t want to know, a secret that will shake the foundations of his world. Dragons, drugs, magick, death, and the deepest of betrayals await.

Breathtakingly vast, chillingly dark, brooding and dangerous, The Written will leave you impatiently waiting for the next adventure…

Welcome to Emaneska.

THE WRITTEN is the first book in the thrilling and fast-paced Emaneska Series and the debut book of Ben Galley, a young upcoming author from the UK. The eagerly-awaited sequel and second in the series, PALE KINGS, is due for release in 2012. If you would like to know more about either of these books, or more about Ben, then you can find it all at www.bengalley.com

Lux 1.1 Seeds by Jalex Hansen (BenGalley.com)

Product Description

In a crumbling America where teenagers are hunted and contained, a small group of rebels rises up to fight a desperate battle against a power greater than themselves.

Lissa isn’t your average seventeen year old to begin with. Raised in a hidden lab, she has been genetically manipulated and given the Lux Marker, an adaptation that allows her to control energy and matter. And she isn’t the only one.

Connor has everything a man could want, and he would trade it all in a heartbeat. At least that’s what he thinks until he does just that, giving himself over to the wrong side in return for what he thinks is freedom.

Hikari never wanted to be part of the system, but she never expected to be on the run from it, either. When she discovers her congressman father is taking part in a plot to kill innocent people, she pulls a team together from the geek squad at her high school in order to break into his office. However, once they hack into his top secret files, they get way more than they bargained for.

Now, as America falls and everything they know and love is destroyed, they will have to build an army to fight for what remains…

Because time is running out.

The Ultimate Real Estate Investing Blueprint: How to Quit Your Job in 19 Weeks or Less by Sean Terry (eBookIt.com)

Product Description

Discover how to quit your job in 19 weeks or less by flipping properties in your spare time even if you have NO cash, NO credit and have never bought a house before. In this book you find the key to unlocking a huge vault full of money. This key will allow you to quickly and easily flip houses in your spare time banking you $5,000 to $20,000 per deal. The beauty about this business is you don't need any money AND no one will ever ask you for you SSN to pull credit.

Short stories:

Ghost Plane and Other Disturbing Tales by Suzanne Tyrpak and Scott Nicholson

Cage Life by Karin Cox and Michele Perry

Order of 5ive: Season 1 Episode 0 by 711 Press

Lighthorse Magic and Other Stories by Lindsay Edmunds

Romancing Snow White: A Prince Charmaine Story by Karen Kiefer

Miracle, Texas by DeAnna Knippling

Prime Pickings (An Eater Short) by Richard Raley

Without A Word by C. Kevin Provance (Provance Publishing)

Ink by Mark Graham

The Prisoner's Hat by Tarrin P. Lupo

Marcus In Iraq by Sonia Rumzi

Smite Me, Oh Dark One by Steve Thomas

Bi-Quinary Rescue by Gerald Weinberg

Dead Men Don't Cry: A Short Story by Nancy Fulda

Just Play the Game by Amber D. Sistla and Certo Xornal

Favored Son: A Short Novelette by Joshua Scribner

The Rich Man by Miroslav Halás and Miroslav Halás Jr.

Sunda Cloud (K-Cycle Series) by Kat Duncan

One Step Closer by Iain Rowan

Where is Paradise? by Aliya Anjum and Alia Anjum (Kolachi Publishers)

Cigs, Bolan & Strange Men With Guns (Prequel #1) (Assassination Series) by Gayle Ramage

Meet the Madfeet (Fiction Friday) by Michael Jasper

Natural Order (Fiction Friday) by Michael Jasper

Skidmark and Mudbeam (Fiction Friday) by Michael Jasper

The Last Hero by Ben S. Dobson

Travelling light by Vickie Johnstone

#baphomet: a short story by Marcin Wrona

Left Behind by Dave Freer

The Necessity of Man by Tarrin P. Lupo

The Elements of Love by Stuart Wakefield

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Grid Detective (A Free Game for Kindle) by Amazon Digital Services

Product Description
Do you have what it takes to crack the case? Grid Detective brings classic logic puzzles to your Kindle.

Test your deduction skills as you try to solve 30 puzzles of varying difficulty. Each Grid Detective Case File starts with a brief story that describes your objective. Based on the information in the story and 6 clues, your job is to figure out which of the dozens of possible outcomes is the correct one. Using the process of elimination and deductive reasoning, you'll deduce the correct relationship between items. For example: if A=B and A is not equal to C, then B is not equal to C. If you can find the unique solution that matches the facts, you've solved the mystery!

If you have ever done a puzzle like this on paper, you know how difficult and frustrating it can be to fix mistakes. Grid Detective makes it easy to solve these classic puzzles with features that let you delete mistaken deductions cleanly and quickly, highlight related cells on the grid and auto-populate relevant cells when you make a deduction. A detailed tutorial and plenty of hints make it possible for everyone to enjoy testing their logical thinking against even the hardest Case File.

Crack the case today with Grid Detective!

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New discounts from Macmillian (US Kindle):

A Beautiful Blue Death (Charles Lenox Mysteries) by Charles Finch (Macmillan) is $2.99 at the US Kindle store

Product Description
On any given day in London, all Charles Lenox, Victorian gentleman and armchair explorer, wants to do is relax in his private study with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. But when his lifelong friend Lady Jane asks for his help, Lenox cannot resist another chance to unravel a mystery, even if it means trudging through the snow to her townhouse next door.

One of Jane’s former servants, Prudence Smith, is dead – an apparent suicide. But Lenox suspects something far more sinister: murder, by a rare and deadly poison. The house where the girl worked is full of suspects, and though Prudence dabbled with the hearts of more than a few men, Lenox is baffled by an elusive lack of motive in the girl’s death.

When another body turns up during the London season’s most fashionable ball, Lenox must untangle a web of loyalties and animosities. Was it jealousy that killed Prudence? Or was it something else entirely, something that Lenox alone can uncover before the killer strikes again – disturbingly close to home?

Hell's Bay (Thorn Mysteries) by James W. Hall (Macmillan) is $2.99 at the US Kindle store

Product Description
Bestselling author and “master of suspense” (The New York Times Book Review) James W. Hall combines the haunting atmosphere of Deliverance with the sheer terror of Cape Fear in his most ambitious thriller to date.

IN THE DEEP, DARK MANGROVE SWAMPS

Wealthy Florida matron Abigail Bates is on a canoe trip down a backwater river when suddenly, from out of nowhere, she is held underwater to drown by a strange and merciless killer…

DANGER LIES BENEATH THE SURFACE

Thorn is aboard a houseboat in Hell’s Bay when he is confronted by Abigail’s son and alluring granddaughter. Thorn soon learns that they are his long-lost relatives—and that he is about to inherit a great fortune. He’s also about to find out that being a member of the Bates family comes with a price…

AND A KILLER HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT

As he searches for clues about Abigail’s murder, Thorn’s houseboat becomes a precarious island of safety as he and the others find themselves hunted by an invisible enemy. For someone out there knows much more about the Bates family’s dark past than Thorn does. Someone who has lived a lifetime in their shadow—and has seen the damage their wealth and influence has caused. Someone who is determined to exact revenge on the family… no matter what the cost.

Suspense and Sensibility or, First Impressions Revisited by Carrie Bebris (Macmillan) is $2.99 at the US Kindle store

Product Description
Fresh from the curious and unsettling matter of Caroline Bingley (as related in Pride and Prescience), Mr. and Mrs. Darcy have every intention of enjoying their still newlywed status at Pemberly until they are confronted with another mysterious situation, ... one of

Suspense and Sensibility

Elizabeth Darcy and her beloved husband Fitzwilliam are taking on the responsibility of finding a suitable suitor for Elizabeth's younger sister Kitty, thereby assuring her a proper place in society.

The angels smile on the young and a perfect match is found, and wedding plans are soon under way. Suddenly a change in personality occurs in Kitty's soon to be model husband-a change so striking as to jeopardize not just the Darcys' social standing, but their lives as well.

A mysterious mirror, an insidious reprobate from the past, and matters far beyond the social circles around Pemberly all come into play in a dangerous puzzle, where the consequences may be the exchange of a soul for a soul.

Once again the Darcys take center stage as the Regency era's answer to The Thin Man's Nick and Nora, searching for truth between tea times, amid the social whirl of Jane Austen's England.

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Listen To Your Heart by Fern Michaels from Zebra Books ($0.99) is the Kindle Deal of the Day (Sept 23) *Wait for price to reflect discount before 1-clicking

Product Description

New York Times bestselling author Fern Michaels has captivated readers worldwide with her heart-stirring stories of love and family, friendship and renewal. With Listen to Your Heart, she spins the unforgettable tale of a young woman who might be falling for a match made in heaven...

Listen To Your Heart

With her beloved mother gone, her twin sister about to be married, and no hint of Mr. Right on the horizon, Josie Dupré is lonesome. Luckily, she has her booming New Orleans catering business to keep her busy, and her fluffy white dog, Rosie, to keep her company...until an obnoxious Boxer brazenly captures Rosie's undying devotion. Even worse, the budding romance puts Josie in close proximity to the dog's owner--sexy, love 'em and leave 'em Cajun playboy, Paul Brouillette.

Paul's all for l'amour, but ever since he came into Josie's life, strange things have been happening. She hears music that isn't there, and she smells her mother's favorite cologne in an empty room. Maybe her mom's trying to send her a message...something about finding love where you least expect it...and listening to your heart.

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A Visit From Sir Nicholas (Effington Family) by Victoria Alexander (HarperCollins) is $0.99 at the US Kindle store

Product Description
Everyone knows that an Effington always gets her way ... but this time it's not going to be easy!

Lady Elizabeth Effington simply could not suitably feel the joy of the Christmas season. Ten years had passed since she had boldly declared her love for Sir Nicholas Collingsworth. He rebuffed her and set out to seek his fortunes, while Elizabeth was left a woman scorned. Now, she discovers in horror that the inheritance she's managed beautifully was never hers to control. No, power over her finances lay in the hands of the last man she ever wants to see again: Nicholas!

But running Elizabeth's life isn't part of Nick's plans. He's intrigued when he discovers that the frivolous and flighty girl he once knew has turned into a beautiful and capable woman. Nick vows to woo -- and win -- her, and while she seems unmoved by his fervent seduction, he swears he will not rest until she accepts that most precious gift of all -- the gift of love.