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

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Laws of Magic Sampler 1 - 6 by Michael Pryor

Product Description
There’s a magical and political storm brewing – and Aubrey Fitzwilliam is making sure he’s right in the centre of it. Set in a world similar to Edwardian Britain, just before World War I, this fantasy series is full of magic, manners, conspiracy and intrigue, politics and personal trial – not to mention good old-fashioned fun. The Laws of Magic stars Aubrey Fitzwilliam, the son of a prominent ex-prime minister. He's brilliant at magic, but he's still stuck at school. At least he has his best friend, George, there to back him up. George would follow Aubrey anywhere - and with Aubrey's talent for thinking up impulsive and daring schemes that will get them both in trouble, that's no easy thing to do. From golems to top-secret submersibles, soul stealers to ghosts, The Laws of Magic is a cracking good read. Discover the magic in this free sampler that gives you chapters from each of the six books, so no matter where you’re up to in the series, you can find out what’s coming next for Aubrey and his friends.

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2009: A Book of Grace-Filled Days, by Alice Camille, is free in the Kindle store, courtesy of Loyola Press. Just ignore the year in the title, this is a full year of daily Scripture readings and meditations.

Book Description
Get your daily Scripture and inspiration from 2009: A Book of Grace-Filled Days.

In 2009: A Book of Grace-Filled Days, well-known author Alice Camille provides daily Scripture readings and meditation following the lectionary readings of the church year. The book serves as a portal to God's loving, grace-filled presence in the midst of our busy lives. Each page lists the daily Scripture readings from the Mass, a quotation from the readings, and a brief reflection to spur meditation, prayer, and self examination. The book fosters a practice of reflecting on daily Scripture, meditating, and attaining a sense of spiritual calm where God is at the center.

2009: A Book of Grace-Filled Days begins with the start of the church year in Advent 2008 and continues through the calendar year 2009. The daily Scripture readings and meditations take note of major feast days, especially significant saints' commemorations, solemnities, and holidays.

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FYI, There's also a free 2010: A Book of Grace-Filled Days by Alice Camille

Book Description
This annually popular book of daily meditations and Scripture readings that follow the lectionary readings of the Church year is a portal to God’s loving, grace-filled presence in the midst of our busy lives. Each page lists the Scripture readings from the Mass for that day, a quotation from the readings, and a brief reflection
to spur meditation, prayer, and self-examination.
2010: A Book of Grace-Filled Days begins with the start of the Church year in Advent 2009 and continues through the calendar year 2010. The readings and meditations take note of major feast days, especially significant saints’ commemorations, solemnities, and holidays.

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Just FYI, new Kindle app:

Doodle Fit (A Spatial Thinking Game) by Gamelion Studios ($1.99)

Product Description
Doodle Fit is a spatial skills game in which you need to fit a set of blocks into a given shape.

Select and move blocks of varying shapes and sizes into position in search of the layout that covers the whole shape. A level is complete when all blocks have been used and there is no more empty space in the shape.

Some puzzles have more than one solution, and some only have one. There is a Beginner's Pack to help you get started, but if you need a hint you can get one. Use your hints wisely; you earn one hint for every two solutions you find, and you may need to stock up on hints for the more difficult puzzles.

There are over 250 puzzles in nine themed puzzle packs like Winter Pack and Nature Pack. Each of the puzzles has a creative shape such as 'Old Ship', 'Alien', and 'Fox'. The more difficult puzzle packs are unlocked when all the puzzles in the previous pack are solved.

If you liked Tangrams or Tetris, you'll certainly love Doodle Fit!

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FYI, currently just free for those in the UK:

The Man of Their Lives by Françoise Bourdin (Publishers Square) (Amazon Main, Amazon UK)

Product Description
A forty-something widower and a young divorcée decide to give love a second chance--but will their respective families and obligations keep them apart? When Louis, a seductive forty-something musician searching for true love, meets France, a young divorcée who immediately falls in love with him, everything seems simple. However, although Louis Neville is a widower, he still has to contend with his son Frédéric, a troubled adolescent, and his own twin sister Alix, who, not content with simply attempting to run her brother's career, also tries to meddle in his private life. What's more, France happens to be Frédéric's French professor and the mother of a boy he hates--inevitably, things quickly become problematic for Louis and France. It will take all of France's stubbornness and a little help from fate to allow her to finally win over the love of her life.

With characteristic ease, Françoise Bourdin explores two very timely themes: the difficulties of starting over at age forty and the day-to-day worries that arise from joining two separate families.

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Sylvester: or The Wicked Uncle by Georgette Heyer (pricing mistake?)

Product Description
This is Heyer's only romance novel to feature a female writer in the Regency world where a young lady didn't usually have those aspirations.

Sylvester, Duke of Salford, falls in love with a feisty young lady who wants nothing to do with him and aspires to be a writer-in fact she has written a scandalous novel that portrays him as the villain. Then a ballroom encounter launches a real scandal...

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Additional bargain Kindle app ($0.99):

Scripps Spelling Bee: Word Games (A Word Game for Kindle) by THQ

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Now free for US Kindle:

The Man of Their Lives by Françoise Bourdin (Publishers Square)

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Clear Blue Sky by F. P. Lione (Revell)

Product Description
It's the beginning of a gorgeous September in the City that Never Sleeps. Summer may be officially over, but Labor Day Weekend means ethnic festivals and dancing the streets and lots of overtime for police officer Tony Cavalucci. When crowd control gets unusually dangerous, Tony starts to wonder why he even does this kind of work. And going home doesn't bring him any more respect. His neurotic and dramatic family disapproves of both Tony's fiancé and his new-found faith.

All this foreshadows what's about to come to the people of New York on September 11, 2001. Normal day-to-day events and fantastic weather lead up to the most difficult day in the city's history. Now Tony finds himself in brand new territory. As he fights to survive and help others survive as well, Tony learns all over what faith means, what family means, and what life itself means. The author of this highly compelling novel is an ex-cop who survived the World Trade Center rescue efforts. Consequently, the storytelling throughout the book rings with authenticity. All of this makes for a fast-paced and deeply moving page-turner that is at times funny, at times horrible, and always full of humanity, compassion, and the presence of God. The Liones offer their very best work in Clear Blue Sky.

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Escape from the World Trade Center by Leslie Haskin (Bethany House)

Product Description
A 9/11 Survivor’s True Story

This is the riveting account of Leslie Haskin’s escape from the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The former insurance executive shares what she saw and endured as she struggled down 36 floors in a doomed and dying building and away from a life focused on perks, prestige, and power.

“For those of us who want an inside peek at God’s compassionate presence in the midst of inscrutable tragedy, this book is as close an experience of ‘being there’ as we are likely to get.” —Paula Rinehart, author and counselor

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Free from Safari Books Online (OReilly Media):

JavaScript Bibliography by Editors of Safari Books Online

Product Description
After the browser became a worldwide instrument to access the World Wide Web, there was a need for a language that could be interpreted by the web browser that could make pages interactive. This need was fulfilled by a new programming language written by Brendan Eich, called JavaScript. Later, officially named as ECMAScript, JavaScript is a powerful loosely typed and prototype-based dynamic scripting language. It's an object-oriented programming language as well as a functional language, since its functions are first-class objects. JavaScript was initially adopted solely to make pages interactive, but it became a popular programming language with the rise of DOM Scripting and AJAX. Dealing with the DOM (model representing a web page) and with AJAX is a challenge given all the different browsers implementations. To cope with this issue, developers started implementing JavaScript libraries and frameworks and the popularity of JavaScript increased incredibly.Today, desktop and mobile web applications contain a fair amount of scripts, so writing good JavaScript code is vital for the success of a web application. JavaScript is also now used on the server as well as the client-side.We have chosen a selection of the most useful books for JavaScript development in this bibliography. You can learn how to start programming with JavaScript and you can dig into most advanced topics such as performance, design patterns and best practices. You can find reference books on the most popular JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, YUI, Mootols, Dojo and ExtJS and how to enhance the user experience through DOM Scripting and AJAX. If you are writing mobile apps, you will want to read how to create applications with web technologies.

iOS Development Bibliography by Editors of Safari Books Online

Product Description
Since the release of the iOS SDK in 2008, there have been over 425,000 apps in the App Store. The developers of these apps are the ones responsible for the rapid innovation in the mobile space. It's this innovation that makes the future of iOS extremely exciting.The iOS SDK originally allowed Objective-C developers to create applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Developers took advantage of hardware features such as location, the accelerometer, camera, bluetooth, multi-touch, and so on, which led to many new innovative mobile apps. iOS developers were then introduced to a new form factor and all new possibilities with the release of the iPad in 2010.The upcoming release of iOS 5 brings over 1,500 new APIs for developers. There's iCloud, which will allow developers to sync documents and data to your user's computers automatically. AirPlay will allow iOS devices to enhance the application experience by using the Apple TV or other AirPlay compatible devices. You can pipe audio or video to the Apple TV or enhance the experience on your device by using the Apple TV to output to a second screen. Apple may one day allow developers to create applications specifically for the Apple TV.With the release of Mac OS X Lion we've seen how Apple is moving parts of iOS to the desktop. The new application launcher, Launchpad, for example, is copied over from iOS. There's also more support for multi-touch gestures on the desktop with Lion.It's only been three years since the release of the iOS SDK. As the number of iOS developers grow, so will the number of exciting new apps and possibilities. It'll be interesting to look back on iOS in another three years.

Android Development Bibliography by Editors of Safari Books Online

Product Description
Android is a top open source project that powers millions of mobile devices. But, it all started back in 2005, when a small startup called Android, Inc. was acquired by Google. With the acquisition of Android Inc, Google entered the mobile space. Later in 2007, together with other major companies, Google created the Open Handset Alliance consortium with the goal of promoting Android as a standard for mobile platforms. Today Android has taken the mobile industry by surprise with major 3rd-party handset manufacturers and network operators around the world embracing Android. In addition, the Android ecoystem and developer community, both key elements of Android's success, are very strong. In fact, a recent study indicates that Android devices are being sold at the rate of 350,000 a day.Safari Books Online provides full access to all of the resources in this bibliography. A subscription to our "cloud library" gives you unlimited use of more than 16,000 books and videos. For a free trial, go to http://safaribooksonline.com/oscon11.The future of Android looks bright. From smartphones to tablets to TVs, to home appliances and Machine-to-Machine (M2M), expect Android to power all of these, while grabbing a large segment of the mobile and embedded market. You can expect Android to enter emerging markets such as Africa via low-cost, Android-powered handsets, extending the reach and business opportunities to all Android developers.We have chosen a selection of popular books in this bibliography that span the spectrum of Android topics. We cover Android core application concepts, such as getting you up to speed with the Android SDK, using Eclipse, and creating your first Android application. We also cover how to use JavaScript, CSS3 and HTML5 to create mobile web applications that tap into native Android functionality. Finally, for those ready to take on more advanced topics, we cover 2D and 3D gaming and communications, and using the Native Development Kit to tap into existing C and C++ programs. We even cover making money selling your applications. For these topics and more, dive into the this bibliography and join the Android movement.

Java Bibliography by Editors of Safari Books Online

Product Description
In the early 1990s, a team of developers at Sun Microsystems, led by James Gosling, designed and implemented a new computer language: Java. The language was object oriented, was compiled into an intermediate form called Java Bytecode, and those bytecode instructions were run on a virtual machine called the Java VM. Java, at the time, was a revolution in itself. It quickly became the language of a new generation of software developers who were writing small applications for the web, server applications for the enterprise, and even desktop applications. Today many new languages compile into Java bytecode and are run on top of the Java VM such as Scala, Groovy and Clojure, as well as variants of Python, Ruby, and Erlang. Java is also the language used to write programs for many of the world's mobile devices, including Android. If you're interested in Android development, there is also a bibliography specific to that platform. Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in January of 2010 and became the owner of the Java technology. So far, this has not changed how Java has been positioned in the market.Open source software projects have used Java extensively to create some of the world's most popular software libraries. These libraries have likely been one of the driving forces behind the creation of many of the JVM based language ports. Of course, people have to learn about how to use these libraries and languages, so the books written about Java are also varied in nature. There are a great many excellent learning reference books, class library reference books, and books on enterprise and web development. There are books that cover the Java Virtual Machine based languages mentioned earlier. The Spring Framework is a highly popular, open source, modular, infinitely configurable framework written in Java that is also covered well by technical book writers. Many games are written in Java, and we've included a few books on Game programming. If you are writing web services, you'll want to read about Service Oriented Architecture as well as storing and retrieving data using one of the many Java persistence frameworks.This bibliography covers the entire Java language, spanning from introductory to advanced topics. We hope you enjoy them and use them to your advantage.

Python Bibliography by Editors of Safari Books Online

Product Description
Twenty years ago, Guido van Rossum was hard at work on the first release of Python. A lot has changed in those twenty years. Many of the programming languages that were contemporaries of Python have started showing their age. Meanwhile, there have been no shortages of new programming languages, yet Python continues to hold up well. Its emphasis on clean syntax, and its melding of object-oriented and functional programming elements, put it years ahead of the other popular languages from the 1990s.The story of Python is not only about it being ahead of its time in terms of syntax and features. It is also about its open development and the community around it. Its value as a scripting language is well known, and it ships with many operating systems. For years Python has been one of the P’s in the LAMP stack used for numerous web applications. Indeed, Python’s popularity with web developers has lead to a multitude of web application frameworks written in Python: Django, TurboGears, Pylons, CherryPy, and so on.Even with technology's fast-moving pace, Python remains on the cutting edge. NoSQL data stores have become increasingly popular, and you can find first class support for using Python with any of these technologies. This is just further evidence of the continued popularity of Python and the vibrant community around it. This bibliography contains a wide selection of books about Python. These range from various introductory to advanced books. Of course, web development is covered, but you might be surprised to see the wide variety of other types of development that are done using Python.Whether you are working on machine learning or just hacking in your spare time, Python has something for you.

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For those who may have missed getting Zendegi by Greg Egan for free before, it's currently just $0.01.

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For Jack Reacher fans, a novelette of Jack as a teen, for $1.99 "Second Son"

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FYI, two new Kindle apps:

POGO Hearts, Spades and More! (5 Card Games for Kindle) by Electronic Arts Inc ($3.99)

Product Description
Play 5 popular card games: Hearts, Spades, Euchre, Gin and Canasta.

In Hearts, the object is to win as few points-paying hearts as possible or to win all of the points-paying cards at once. The winner is the one who finishes with the fewest points at the end of the game. In Spades, the object is to bid and win a specific number of hands, by playing the highest card by round or by playing the highest spade. The team that bids and wins the most hands, wins the game. In Euchre, the object is for you and your partner to get as many tricks per round as possible. You get tricks by having the highest trump card or highest suited card if no trump card is played. The team that scores 10 points first wins. The goal of Gin is to make sets of cards, based on runs in suit or matching rank. The player who can make the most matches earliest typically wins. In Canasta, you make sets of up to seven cards. The player who first makes sets of all his cards will make the most points and typically wins.

Learn and master each game through in-depth tutorials with rules and tips on how to improve your play and track your stats across all 5 games.

What game are you going to play first?

TakeNote (A Note Taking Tool for Kindle) by IzzyLabs ($0.99)

Product Description
TakeNote is a tool for Kindle that lets you jot down whatever is on your mind quickly and easily.

TakeNote is designed to make note taking quick and easy. For example, as soon as TakeNote opens, you can start taking notes right away without having to press any buttons to begin. You can capture a phone number or address, add to a daily diary, take some meeting notes, and even save a shopping list while on the go.

For easy access, your notes are listed in your notebook in chronological order. You can add, edit, or delete them as you see fit. While navigating a note, you can quickly jump to the top or bottom if needed. Help pages are available from anywhere in the title.

TakeNote lets you jot down what you are thinking right now.

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Cybill Disobedience by Cybill Shepherd and Aimee Lee Ball (River Siren Productions, Inc.)

Product Description
'How I survived beauty pageants, Elvis, sex, Bruce Willis, lies, marriage, motherhood, Hollywood, and the irrepressible urge to say what you think.'

From wholesome beauty queen to saucy cover girl, from heartbreaking movie star (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, TAXI DRIVER) to one of television's most loved comediennes (MOONLIGHTING, CYBILL), Cybill Shepherd is renowned as sassy, shocking and sexy. In CYBILL DISOBEDIENCE, she opens her heart with the wit and honesty of a star who's seen and knows it all.