Kindle First

[JSWolf]

The Good Samaritan is being released in May 2018 and it's not available via Kindle Unlimited.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing I think is very wrong is one of the books for December is under the subject of Woman's Fiction. That's just wrong. You don't find books under Men's Fiction. That's just sexist.

I like when I see a Woman's Fiction book choice. I consider it a warning label so I won't mistakenly pick it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I like when I see a Woman's Fiction book choice. I consider it a warning label so I won't mistakenly pick it.

Then I want Man's Fiction. It has to have lots of explosions and car chases.

[Wearever]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The Good Samaritan is being released in May 2018 and it's not available via Kindle Unlimited.

Nope not even a home page for this book anymore, when I checked it in my Devices and Content page. Now I really wonder what happened to this book too ? I can read the book in my library though. So it hasn't disappeared all together.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Wearever

Nope not even a home page for this book anymore, when I checked it in my Devices and Content page. Now I really wonder what happened to this book too ? I can read the book in my library though. So it hasn't disappeared all together.

No, it hasn't disappeared from my content either. And it's in my Audible library, where I downloaded the audiobook only yesterday; however, Audible no longer has a page for it at all. I find the whole thing totally confusing.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing I think is very wrong is one of the books for December is under the subject of Woman's Fiction. That's just wrong. You don't find books under Men's Fiction. That's just sexist.

I don't see any of the December selections listed as Women's Fiction.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I don't see any of the December selections listed as Women's Fiction.

He probably means Halsey Street. It lists Women's Fiction in the details on the books page...

#182 in Books > Literature & Fiction > African American > Women's Fiction
#478 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Domestic Life
#545 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Then I want Man's Fiction. It has to have lots of explosions and car chases.

sword fights, and spaceships are good too!

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Then I want Man's Fiction. It has to have lots of explosions and car chases.

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

sword fights, and spaceships are good too!

So basically, James Bond novels?

[badgoodDeb]

Jack Reacher would probably do, too! Hope it doesn't wreck them, that I like them too.

[Manabi]

I ended up going with A River in Darkness, and this is a reminder that you only have two days left to make a choice if you haven't already.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Manabi

I ended up going with A River in Darkness, and this is a reminder that you only have two days left to make a choice if you haven't already.

I did too. A pretty depressing read. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, but highly informative.

[Catlady]

I got Only the Rain, mainly because I've heard of--though not read--the author. I was tempted by Daughters of the Night Sky but finally decided against it.

[Manabi]

Amazon has slightly changed the Kindle First program and renamed it to Amazon First Reads. You can still pick one free Kindle ebook each month, but now you can also buy hardcovers of each book for $9.99. Editor's notes are much more extensive now, but not as prominent. They're no longer on the book pages, but only a hover link on the main selection page. I'll still include them below for easier viewing.

This month's Amazon First Reads selections are out, they are:

Tips for Living by Renee Shafransky [Genre: Psychological Fiction]

On the day Nora discovered that her husband, Hugh, had gotten another woman pregnant, she made a vow: I will come back to life no matter how long it takes…

It’s taken Nora three years. With the help of her best friend, she fled New York City for a small resort town, snagged a job as the advice columnist for the local paper, and is cautiously letting a new man into her life. But when Hugh and his perfect new family move into a house nearby, Nora backslides. Coping with jealousy, humiliation, and resentment again is as hard as she feared. It’s harder still when Hugh and his wife are shot to death in their home.

If only Nora could account for the night of the murders. Unfortunately, her memories have gone as dark as her fantasies of revenge. But Nora’s not the only one with a reason to kill—and as prime suspect in the crime, she’d better be able to prove it.

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

For an editor, there is nothing quite like the joy of discovering an exciting new novelist. Renée Shafransky is a rare find. A screenwriter-slash-therapist, she knows how to tell a story and can back it up with real emotion. Renée has crafted a suspenseful and engrossing tale about a woman—not unlike herself or the women she’s treated over the years—and the lengths she will go to for a new start.

Nora Glasser is the smart, funny, damaged, supremely human, and somewhat unreliable narrator of this novel. After her very public and sordid divorce from a famous painter, Nora thinks she’s finally moved on with her life, but her marriage comes back to haunt her when her ex, Hugh, and his wife, Helene, move to Pequod—Nora’s postdivorce sanctuary city.

It’s perfectly normal for Nora to fantasize about making Hugh’s and Helene’s lives miserable. They are fair game after they shattered Nora’s life. And, really, who hasn’t harbored revenge fantasies at some point? But surely Nora never wanted to see them brutally murdered. Or did she?

I predict that in the hands of a truly gifted storyteller like Renée, you will be left guessing the answer to that question until the very last page. — Liz Pearsons, Editor

As Good as True by Cheryl Reid [Genre: Historical Fiction]

A powerful and haunting novel of a woman’s broken past and the painful choices she must make to keep her family and her home.

August 1956. After a night of rage and terror, Anna Nassad wakes to find her abusive husband dead and instinctively hides her bruises and her relief. As the daughter of Syrian immigrants living in segregated Alabama, Anna has never belonged, and now her world is about to erupt.

Days before, Anna set in motion an explosive chain of events by allowing the first black postman to deliver the mail to her house. But it’s her impulsive act of inviting him inside for a glass of water that raises doubts about Anna’s role in her husband’s death.

As threats and suspicions arise in the angry community, Anna must confront her secrets in the face of devastating turmoil and reconcile her anguished relationship with her daughter. Will she discover the strength to fight for those she loves most, even if it means losing all she’s ever known?

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

To my mind, offering the mailman a cold glass of water on a sweltering day is a simple, neighborly act of kindness. But in Cheryl Reid’s heart-wrenching novel set in segregated Riverton, Alabama, it’s much, much more than that. It’s a deed that spurs a violent chain of events, tearing a family apart and further provoking a bitterly divided town.

Everyone refuses to accept mail from Orlando Washington, the first black man to deliver mail. Everyone except for Anna Nassad. On his first day Anna allows him to deliver her mail and, adding fuel to the fire, invites him in for a glass of water. An outsider herself, trapped in a suffocating, abusive marriage, Anna knows that her kind gesture is fraught with danger—that the neighbors are watching and she’ll likely incite even more rage in her husband. But she has never belonged, not as an immigrant’s child growing up on the black side of town, or as the wife of a grocer on the white side of town. Opening her door to the postman is an opportunity to possibly right some wrongs, a small act of rebellion.

I’d like to think that these sorts of events could only have happened many generations ago. But As Good As True takes place in the 1950s, not so far in the past. With grace and compassion, Cheryl Reid has crafted a tightly coiled, bruising novel that shows how much has (and hasn’t) changed in our world and how precarious the balance remains. — Jodi Warshaw, Editor

Punishment (Detective Barnes Series) by Scott J. Holliday [Genre: Thriller]

Do you want to know what it’s like to die, to kill, to really fear for your life? Then get hooked…

Detroit-based homicide detective John Barnes has seen it all—literally. Thanks to a technologically advanced machine, detectives have access to the memories of the living, the dying, and the recently dead. But extracting victims’ experiences firsthand and personally reliving everything up to the final, brutal moments of their lives—the sights, the sounds, the scents, the pain—is also the punishment reserved for the criminals themselves.

Barnes has had enough. Enough of the memories that aren’t his. Enough of the horror. Enough of the voices inside his head that were never meant to take root…until a masked serial killer known as Calavera strikes a little too close to home.

Now, with Calavera on the loose, Barnes is ready to reconnect, risking his life—and his sanity. Because in the mind of this serial killer, there is one secret even Barnes has yet to see…

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

I had a familiar moment last night: lying awake, unable to sleep, remembering something I wished I could forget. Torturing yourself is a miserable way to spend the wee hours of the morning. But in Punishment, a mystery in the style of Philip K. Dick, homicide detective John Barnes doesn’t just have to face his own memories and demons; he also has to face those of the victims whose crimes he is trying to solve. And they never seem to quiet.

In a near-future Detroit, the best way to solve murder cases is for detectives to hook into a machine that allows them to experience the victims’ memories moments before their deaths. But there’s one problem: once you invite someone else’s consciousness in, it never really leaves. John Barnes has used the machine dozens of times, and the masked serial killer knows it—he’s embedded special messages just for John.

However, the machine is not only used for solving crimes. It is also how society punishes criminals, forcing them to relive the final moments of their victims on repeat.

Scott J. Holliday creates a narrative that is at once futuristic and grounded in its human subjects. John is complex—haunted by his childhood and punishing himself for a lifetime of choices.

At the end of the novel, I couldn’t help but ask which is worse: the punishment we assign ourselves or the one assigned to us by society and authority figures? Punishment is an engaging and deft mystery that leaves you guessing who committed the crimes and also questioning what it means to be punished. — Jessica Tribble, Editor

Not Perfect: A Novel by Elizabeth LaBan [Genre: Contemporary Fiction]

From Elizabeth LaBan, the acclaimed author of The Restaurant Critic’s Wife, comes a captivating and very funny novel about a wife and mother’s fall from grace, and why keeping up appearances is not her biggest secret.

Tabitha Brewer wakes up one morning to find her husband gone, leaving her no way to support herself and their two children, never mind their upscale Philadelphia lifestyle. She’d confess her situation to her friends—if it wasn’t for those dreadful words of warning in his goodbye note: “I’ll tell them what you did.”

Instead, she does her best to keep up appearances, even as months pass and she can barely put food on the table—much less replace a light bulb. While she looks for a job, she lives in fear that someone will see her stuffing toilet paper into her handbag or pinching basil from a neighbor’s window box.

Soon, blindsided by catastrophe, surprised by romance, and stunned by the kindness of a stranger, Tabitha realizes she can’t keep her secrets forever. Sooner or later, someone is bound to figure out that her life is far from perfect.

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

I’m a frugal person. I can’t stand to throw anything out. Much to my family’s annoyance I’ll use a bar of soap until it’s wafer thin, I’ll cut the end of the toothpaste tube to get the last bit onto my toothbrush, and God forbid anyone tosses a heel of bread—I could make croutons from that!

Tabitha, our scrappy heroine in Not Perfect, isn’t necessarily frugal by nature—or at least she doesn’t start out that way. She’s lived an affluent life with her husband and kids in Philadelphia, wearing cashmere, eating fancy cheese, and drinking fine wine. It’s not until, with little explanation, her husband leaves her and she finds herself without any money that she learns how to scrape by on very little. At first she gets creative—limiting her lipstick reapplication, “borrowing” condiments from restaurants, and hoarding paper products. But as she becomes more desperate, she realizes that none of these small acts will save her family. Rationing lipstick is just a form of magical thinking.

She needs to admit that she’s in trouble—and she would, if her husband hadn’t put a very pointed threat in the note he left behind. It turns out Tabitha may be at fault for a terrible tragedy. Her husband is the one person who knows the truth, and she’s petrified that she’ll be found out. The guilt is destroying her. It’s only when she meets a very sympathetic (and also guilty) soul that she realizes she has to face up to her past in order to secure a future for herself and her family.

Ultimately, Tabitha learns that being honest and making do with less leads to a richer life. I cheered her on every step of the way. And, as a bonus, I picked up a few more tips from Tabitha on how to economize. Now if you’ll please excuse me, I have some used tinfoil to fold for later use, and those old towels aren’t going to rip themselves into washcloths. — Jodi Warshaw, Editor

Twist of Faith by Ellen J. Green [Genre: Mystery]

When family secrets are unearthed, a woman’s past can become a dangerous place to hide…

After the death of her adoptive mother, Ava Saunders comes upon a peculiar photograph, sealed and hidden away in a crawl space. The photo shows a shuttered, ramshackle house on top of a steep hill. On the back, a puzzling inscription: Destiny calls us.

Ava is certain that it’s a clue to her elusive past. Twenty-three years ago, she’d been found wrapped in a yellow blanket in the narthex of the Holy Saviour Catholic Church—and rescued—or so she’d been told. Her mother claimed there was no more to the story, so the questions of her abandonment were left unanswered. For Ava, now is the time to find the roots of her mother’s lies. It begins with the house itself—once the scene of a brutal double murder.

When Ava enlists the help of the two people closest to her, a police detective and her best friend, she fears that investigating her past could be a fatal mistake. Someone is following them there. And what’s been buried in Ava’s nightmares isn’t just a crime. It’s a holy conspiracy.

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

As a child, I spent a lot of time in my grandparents’ home. It felt so large and mysterious, seemingly filled with hidden treasures in the many rooms, alcoves, closets, and cubbies. In Ellen J. Green’s haunting new novel, the home of Ava Saunders’s late mother has a similar allure.

Like the sprawling, dusty Victorian house—filled with trick panels and closets—Ava’s past is shrouded in untold secrets and bitterly guarded truths. Who was her birth mother, and what happened to her? Why was baby Ava left alone in the sanctuary of a Catholic church? I felt as though I were right beside Ava as she digs through the house, searching for answers.

Her family’s history of revenge and betrayals slowly unravels as she unearths more evidence, starting with the mysterious Polaroids. The snapshots convey a small—but vivid—part of Ava’s background. The images were captured by a murderer, but it’s not until Ava pieces them together that she understands the scope of her mother’s story. And eventually, her own.

In this twisted novel, nothing is as it seems. If you are anything like me, you will binge-read this engrossing book in one night, and perhaps look in your parents’ closets the next time you visit. You may find a few secrets, but hopefully no skeletons. Literal or otherwise. — Liz Pearsons, Editor

The Birdwoman's Palate by Laksmi Pamuntjak (Author), Tiffany Tsao (Translator) [Genre: Literary Fiction]

In this exhilarating culinary novel, a woman’s road trip through Indonesia becomes a discovery of friendship, self, and other rare delicacies.

Aruna is an epidemiologist dedicated to food and avian politics. One is heaven, the other earth. The two passions blend in unexpected ways when Aruna is asked to research a handful of isolated bird flu cases reported across Indonesia. While it’s put a crimp in her aunt’s West Java farm, and made her own confit de canard highly questionable, the investigation does provide an irresistible opportunity.

It’s the perfect excuse to get away from corrupt and corrosive Jakarta and explore the spices of the far-flung regions of the islands with her three friends: a celebrity chef, a globe-trotting “foodist,” and her coworker Farish.

From Medan to Surabaya, Palembang to Pontianak, Aruna and her friends have their fill of local cuisine. With every delicious dish, she discovers there’s so much more to food, politics, and friendship. Now, this liberating new perspective on her country—and on her life—will push her to pursue the things she’s only dreamed of doing.

Editor Notes:

Spoiler:

Food is a window to the soul, and award-winning Indonesian author Laksmi Pamuntjak’s prose is as delicious as the dishes she describes. As Aruna, our frank and funny protagonist, discovers new flavors that awaken unknown truths within her, this lush and nourishing novel invites readers into Indonesia’s diverse mosaic of cuisines and cultures.

I connected immediately with Aruna, a hardworking epidemiologist with a passion for food’s pleasures and a mission to protect people from its dangers. The stress of her work is wearing on her, and she jumps at the chance for a little adventure as she visits several small towns, investigating potential cases of bird flu. She livens things up for herself by inviting two close friends along for the ride (and the food): opinionated spiky-haired celebrity-chef Bono, and privileged, glamorous femme fatale Nadezhda. Things may not go exactly as planned, but breaking bread with good friends and seeing the world from a fresh perspective can provide just the life-altering experience Aruna needs.

Like Eat, Pray, Love and Without Reservations, The Birdwoman’s Palate offers generous portions of armchair travel and self-reflection, inspiring journeys both inward and outward. — Gabriella Page-Fort, Editor

[GlenBarrington]

None of them sound that good to me . . . Besides, my "To be read" list is so long as it is, that skipping a month or two won't kill me.