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

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Bargain book:

The Secret History of Moscow (a modern day fairytale) by Ekaterina Sedia is $2.39 (US Kindle store)

Synopsis

Every city contains secret places. Moscow in the tumultuous 1990s is no different, its citizens seeking safety in a world below the streets — a dark, cavernous world of magic, weeping trees, and albino jackdaws, where exiled pagan deities and faery-tale creatures whisper strange tales to those who would listen. Galina is a young woman caught, like her contemporaries, in the seeming lawlessness of the new Russia.

In the midst of this chaos, her sister Maria turns into a jackdaw and flies away — prompting Galina to join Yakov, a policeman investigating a rash of recent disappearances. Their search will take them to the underground realm of hidden truths and archetypes, to find themselves caught between reality and myth, past and present, honor and betrayal … the secret history of Moscow.

“A lovely, disconcerting book that does for Moscow what I hope my own Neverwhere may have done to London.”—Neil Gaiman

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Bargain book:

Maynard and Jennica: A Novel by Rudolph Delson is $1.87 at the US Kindle store (B&N has it listed at $9.99)

Product Description:

A wildly original debut, Maynard and Jennica is both a hilarious urban comedy and a captivating love story. In the summer of 2000, while riding the uptown number 6 train, the musician/filmmaker Maynard Gogarty first encounters the beautiful Jennica Green.Though their initial meeting is brief, when fate next brings them together a romance ensues, and as with most things in life, everyone has an opinion.

Delson tells the story of this improbable love affair through the voices of Maynard and Jennica, along with their family, friends, and assorted characters (among them two attorneys, three journalists, and a rap star) pulled into their dizzying orbit. He brings to life a pair of lovers who are flawed, complex, at once eccentric and deeply familiar—and in whose story we continue to feel invested long after we’ve turned the last page.

In the words of Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, “this book is the reason we should all read first novels.”

[chamekke]

Originally Posted by greencat

With the opening of the Amazon.de Kindle store has come the opportunity for free books. Now my German is a little rusty so hopefully I've got this right.

You can browse a complete list of Kindle free books here:
http://www.amazon.de/gp/search?node=...iscounterde-21

*snippety*

Wow, that is really nice of you to share. I can't read German, but I'll bet this will be much appreciated by those who can. Vielen Dank!

[koland]

The Shepherd ($3.19 US), by Ethan Cross, is now free on the Kindle for UK customers (but only in the US store), joining the giveaway on it that B&N has been doing for over two weeks (although B&N's sale is for US customers). This one is published by Fiction Studio, headed by Lou Aronica, which is one of the newer (8 years old), smaller publishers that works with lesser known authors (but makes sure that what they put out gets the same vetting and editing that they would get at one of the bigger publishers, if only the bigger publishers were willing to take chances on completely unknown authors). So far, it has very good reviews (4.7 out of 5 with 21 reviews and none below 3 stars) and it is likely worth watching for to see if the US Kindle price drops (in the meantime, you can always report the lower price at B&N, to see if that rushes things along).

Book Description
Marcus Williams and Francis Ackerman Jr. both have a talent for hurting people. Marcus, a former New York City homicide detective, uses his abilities to protect others, while Ackerman uses his gifts to inflict pain and suffering. When both men become unwilling pawns in a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of our government, Marcus finds himself in a deadly game of cat and mouse trapped between a twisted psychopath and a vigilante with seemingly unlimited resources. Aided by a rogue FBI agent and the vigilante's beautiful daughter -a woman with whom he's quickly falling in love- Marcus must expose the deadly political conspiracy and confront his past while hunting down one of the most cunning and ruthless killers in the world.

[koland]

The Strange Case of Finley Jayne ($2.39 Kindle), by Kady Cross, is a free pre-order from B&N currently. This is (yet another) short story/prequel for her Steampunk Chronicles series, the first of which, The Girl in the Steel Corset, will release next month.

Book Description
Finley Jayne knows she's not 'normal'. Normal girls don't lose time, or have something inside them that makes them capable of remarkably violent things. Her behavior has already cost her one job, so when she's offered the lofty position of companion to Phoebe, a debutante recently engaged to Lord Vincent, she accepts, despite having no experience. Lord Vincent is a man of science with his automatons and inventions, but Finley is suspicious of his motives where Phoebe is concerned. She will do anything to protect her new friend, but what she discovers is even more monstrous than anything she could have imagined…

[koland]

Blindsided, by Tolman Farrah Geffs, author of The Unsung Patriots, is available free on Kindle and as a PDF direct from the author.

Book Description
Iran will soon possess nuclear weapons. Considering that an estimated 12 million illegal aliens are within our borders and that narcotics are brought in by the tons, nuclear weapons can also be smuggled in. But sometimes the event that has not occurred is most telling. Each day brings more reports of suicide bombings in the Middle East; however, no Islamic religious or political leaders have martyred themselves. Obviously, they are in no great rush to meet Allah and thus face this dilemma: Should Iran use their nuclear arsenal, they will be annihilated by our multiple hydrogen-bomb armed ICBMs. Tragically, there is a solution to their dilemma: Used as energy sources, rather than weapons, nuclear devices can create man-made acts of God.

The public misunderstands nuclear weapons. Conventional explosives, such as gunpowder and dynamite, produce high temperature and pressure gases upon detonation. The nuclear reaction does not. It is the conversion of matter into energy. By converting about 1/4 of an ounce of plutonium 239 into energy, the Nagasaki bomb produced a yield equal to 40 million pounds of TNT. Used as energy sources, nuclear devices can create five different events that we may mistakenly deem to have been “acts of God”. The United States could suffer unparalleled carnage without our realizing that we are under attack. The details are provided in the following revised Epilogue to The Unsung Patriots. Unfortunately, a quirk of human nature favors the adversaries. We humans do not take threats seriously until after they have occurred. There is a regrettably true adage: The generals always prepared to fight the last war. Our current adversaries are very intelligent and will surely strike in new ways for which they believe we have not prepared. It is my objective that simulations be conducted to either verify or disprove the threats delineated in the Epilogue. If the threats are validated, our adversaries must be dissuaded in advance.

Click HERE to get the book as a free PDF.

[sean_oshea]

Pumpkin Jack Skull and Other Tales of Terror, by Jacob Drake, is always free at Smashwords. This is a collection of short stories in the horror genre. Most of them are spine-tingling, goosebump-producing tales and all are excellent and well worth the read.

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The Shepherd by Ethan Cross is now free at the US Kindle store!

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Baby, I'm Yours by Stephanie Bond is now free at the US Kindle store

Product Description

Emory Maxwell has come home to the small town of Sweetness, Georgia, with one goal in mind—to get his childhood sweetheart Shelby Moon to marry him. They've been in love with the second grade, but Shelby's father is determined to keep his daughter in Sweetness, not moving around the country as a soldier's wife. No matter what she chooses, Shelby knows she'll hurt one of the men she loves.

But when a tornado rips through town, will she and Emory lose their chance to be together forever?

Get ready to fall in love with the town of Sweetness, Georgia, in this prequel to Stephanie Bond's Southern Roads trilogy.

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Bargain book:

Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance, a historical thriller by Sara Poole, is $2.99 at the US Kindle store (originally $9.99)

Synopsis

In the simmering hot summer of 1492, a monstrous evil is stirring within the Eternal City of Rome. The brutal murder of an alchemist sets off a desperate race to uncover the plot that threatens to extinguish the light of the Renaissance and plunge Europe back into medieval darkness.

Determined to avenge the killing of her father, Francesca Giordano defies all convention to claim for herself the position of poisoner serving Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, head of the most notorious and dangerous family in Italy. She becomes the confidante of Lucrezia Borgia and the lover of Cesare Borgia. At the same time, she is drawn to the young renegade monk who yearns to save her life and her soul.

Navigating a web of treachery and deceit, Francesca pursues her father’s killer from the depths of Rome’s Jewish ghetto to the heights of the Vatican itself. In so doing, she sets the stage for the ultimate confrontation with ancient forces that will seek to use her darkest desires to achieve their own catastrophic ends.

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Bargain book:

A Cold Day in Paradise (Alex McKnight Series #1) by Steve Hamilton is $2.99 at the US Kindle store (originally $7.99)

Synopsis

Winner of the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin's Press Award for Best First Private Eye Novel of 1997, then the 1999 Shamus and Edgar awards

Other than the bullet lodged less than a centimeter from his heart, former Detroit police officer Alex McKnight thought he had put the nightmare of his partner’s death and his own near-fatal injury behind him. After all, Maximilian Rose, convicted of the crimes, has been locked in the state pen for years. But in the small town of Paradise, Michigan, where McKnight has traded his badge for a cozy cabin in the woods, a murderer with Rose’s unmistakable trademarks appears to be back to his killing ways. With Rose locked away, McKnight can’t understand who else would know the intimate details of the old murders — not to mention the signature blood-red rose left on his doorstep. And it seems like it’ll be a frozen day in Hell before McKnight can unravel the cold truth from a deadly deception in a town that’s anything but Paradise.

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Bargain book:

Glimmerglass (Faeriewalker Series #1), a YA fantasy novel by Jenna Black, is $2.99 at the US Kindle store (originally $9.99)

*The prequel story Remedial Magic is free for download

Synopsis

It’s all she’s ever wanted to be, but it couldn’t be further from her grasp…

Dana Hathaway doesn’t know it yet, but she’s in big trouble. When her alcoholic mom shows up at her voice recital drunk, again, Dana decides she’s had enough and runs away to find her mysterious father in Avalon: the only place on Earth where the regular, everyday world and the captivating, magical world of Faerie intersect. But from the moment Dana sets foot in Avalon, everything goes wrong, for it turns out she isn't just an ordinary teenage girl—she's a Faeriewalker, a rare individual who can travel between both worlds, and the only person who can bring magic into the human world and technology into Faerie.

Soon, Dana finds herself tangled up in a cutthroat game of Fae politics. Someone's trying to kill her, and everyone seems to want something from her, from her newfound friends and family to Ethan, the hot Fae guy Dana figures she’ll never have a chance with… until she does. Caught between two worlds, Dana isn’t sure where she’ll ever fit in and who can be trusted, not to mention if her world will ever be normal again…

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Free Kindle game app:

Dots and Boxes (A Free Game for Kindle) by Amazon Digital Services

Product Description

The classic game of Dots and Boxes comes to Kindle!

In Dots and Boxes, you are presented with a set of dots in a 5x5 grid. One by one, each player must fill in a horizontal or vertical line between two dots. The player that completes a box by filling in the fourth side captures that box. Completing a box allows a player to immediately make another move. When all 16 boxes are claimed, the player with the most boxes wins.

Play against Kindle at Easy, Medium or Hard difficulty levels. You can also play against another person in Pass 'n' Play mode and select whether a match requires 2, 3 or 4 wins to complete. Dots and Boxes comes with tips and instructions to help you if you get stuck, and also tracks your best scores, wins, and ties for each difficulty level.

Enjoy Dots and Boxes on Kindle today!

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Bargain book (YA SciFi Adventure):

The Comet's Curse (Galahad Series #1) by Dom Testa is $2.99 at the US Kindle store

Product Description

251 teens are sent into space to save mankind. Will they succeed?

When the tail of the comet Bhaktul flicks through the Earth’s atmosphere, deadly particles are left in its wake. Suddenly, mankind is confronted with a virus that devastates the adult population. Only those under the age of eighteen seem to be immune. Desperate to save humanity, a renowned scientist proposes a bold plan: to create a ship that will carry a crew of 251 teenagers to a home in a distant solar system. Two years later, the Galahad and its crew—none over the age of sixteen—is launched.

Two years of training have prepared the crew for the challenges of space travel. But soon after departing Earth, they discover that a saboteur is hiding on the Galahad! Faced with escalating acts of vandalism and terrorized by threatening messages, sixteen-year-old Triana Martell and her council soon realize that the stowaway will do anything to ensure that the Galahad never reaches its destination. The teens must find a way to neutralize their enemy. For if their mission fails, it will mean the end of the human race….

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Bargain book (Historical Fiction)

Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato is $2.99 at the US Kindle store

Product Description

In this internationally bestselling debut, a heartbroken woman embarks on a grand exploration of life and love as a glassblower in the city of her ancestors, Venice, and learns that the past may not be as clear as blown glass.

Venice, 1681. Glassblowing is the lifeblood of the Republic, and Venetian mirrors are more precious than gold. Jealously guarded by the murderous Council of Ten, the glassblowers of Murano are virtually imprisoned on their island in the lagoon. But the greatest of the artists, Corradino Manin, sells his methods and his soul to the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, to protect his secret daughter. In the present day his descendant, Leonora Manin, leaves an unhappy life in London to begin a new one as a glassblower in Venice. As she finds new life and love in her adoptive city, her fate becomes inextricably linked with that of her ancestor and the treacherous secrets of his life begin to come to light.