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

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RV Cooking Cookbook (Gooseberry Patch Classics) by Gooseberry Patch

Product Description
Get a taste of Gooseberry Patch in this collection of over 20 favorite road-trip recipes! In Gooseberry Patch RV Cooking you'll find delicious dishes for coast-to-coast dining that are easy to fix in your RV's kitchen. Enjoy Cape Cod Clam Chowder for a simple lunch and One-Pot Spaghetti for supper, with Mozzarella & Ripe Tomato Salad to savor the bounty of a local farmers' market. Gather new friends for Omelets in a Bag or Midwestern Shredded Chicken sandwiches...sit down together for a chat over coffee and a slice of No-Bother, No-Bake Cheesecake!

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Trade the Trader: Know Your Competition and Find Your Edge for Profitable Trading by Quint Tatro

Product Description
Have you realized yet that when you trade you are not just trading stocks? You’re trading against expert traders who care about only one thing: taking your money. Most traders fail miserably because they never grasp this #1 reality of trading. Successful trading takes much more than just opening an online account and learning a few basic technical analysis patterns.



In Trade the Trader, top trader and hedge fund manager Quint Tatro shows you how to build a solid strategy to win consistently in the extremely competitive world of trading, where sometimes you can’t just trade the stocks before you, but you must trade the trader who’s trading against you. You’ll master the real psychology and gamesmanship of trading and learn how to outsmart your competition at every step--from choosing target investments to knowing when to move.
Know your adversaries: “smart” money and “dumb”
Beating the fools, surviving the geniuses
Get beyond the basics with charts and patterns
What amateur chart readers know--and how to play several moves ahead of them
Plan your trade; trade your plan
Optimize your entire trade, from entry point through exit strategy
Be ready if you’re wrong
Implement the disciplined stop system that’s crucial to consistent success
Master the fine art of taking profits
Expect gains, realize them, and keep them

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Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success by Ken Blanchard and Colleen Barrett

Product Description
For decades, Southwest has been the airline industry’s shining performer: the company of choice for travelers, employers, and investors alike. Why? Southwest’s leaders know how to lead with love. As Southwest’s President, Colleen Barrett proved that leading with love is the non-stop route to outstanding business performance. Lead with LUV is an extraordinary, wide-ranging conversation between Barrett and Ken Blanchard, the legendary author of The One Minute Manager. Together, they reveal why leading with love is the most powerful way to lead, how to make it work wherever you are, and how it can help you achieve truly amazing results.

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Buy--DON'T Hold: Investing with ETFs Using Relative Strength to Increase Returns with Less Risk by Leslie N. Masonson

Product Description
Why Buy-and-Hold Doesn’t Work Anymore—and What to Do Instead!



Every few years, like clockwork, devastating bear markets decimate buy-and-hold portfolios. In the last decade, they’ve wiped out 50% of investor portfolio values...not once, but twice. Millions of investors have been forced to delay retirement, postpone funding college education for their children and grandchildren, and defer life’s many joys. You can’t afford to be invested during these inevitable, massive declines—and you don’t have to be.



In Buy—DON’T Hold, financial consultant Leslie N. Masonson introduces an easy-to-use investing strategy that delivers better returns with less risk than buy-and-hold.



Masonson shows you how to regain control over your portfolios using low-cost, diverse ETFs selected with his unique Stock Market Dashboard. You’ll learn how to reliably identify market bottoms and tops, so you know exactly when to get in and out. When it’s time to buy, Masonson helps you choose the most suitable ETF market segments with the maximum profit opportunity. He spells out exactly when you need to sell, as well, to protect your hard-earned cash.



Whether you’re a conservative, moderate, or aggressive investor, Masonson presents specific investing approaches customized for you—so you can meet your goals in bull and bear markets alike.

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Bright Young Things with Bonus Material by Anna Godbersen (pre-order)

Product Description
For a limited time, the first book in New York Times bestselling author Anna Godbersen’s epic new series Bright Young Things is available for free. Also includes an excerpt from the forthcoming sequel Beautiful Days and fashion tips on how to achieve the perfect flapper look.

The year is 1929. New York is ruled by the Bright Young Things: flappers and socialites seeking thrills and chasing dreams in the anything-goes era of the Roaring Twenties.

Letty Larkspur and Cordelia Grey escaped their small Midwestern town for New York's glittering metropolis. All Letty wants is to see her name in lights, but she quickly discovers Manhattan is filled with pretty girls who will do anything to be a star. . . .

Cordelia is searching for the father she's never known, a man as infamous for his wild parties as he is for his shadowy schemes. Overnight, she enters a world more thrilling and glamorous than she ever could have imagined—and more dangerous. It's a life anyone would kill for . . . and someone will.

The only person Cordelia can trust is ¬Astrid Donal, a flapper who seems to have it all: money, looks, and the love of Cordelia's brother, Charlie. But Astrid's perfect veneer hides a score of family secrets.

Across the vast lawns of Long Island, in the ¬illicit speakeasies of Manhattan, and on the blindingly lit stages of Broadway, the three girls' fortunes will rise and fall—together and apart. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Luxe comes an epic new series set in the dizzying last summer of the Jazz Age.

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FYI, currently just free for those in Europe

Zarrella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas by Dan Zarrella (The Domino Project) (Amazon Main, Amazon DE)

Product Description
Product Description
Want to learn how to maximize social media? When to do it, what words to use, who to tweet at? Look no further than Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design and Engineering of Contagious Ideas. Social media master Dan Zarrella has amassed years of experience helping people negotiate the often mystical place of social media marketing. Now, he has condensed those well-tried ideas into this concise and conversational book. Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness demystifies and deconstructs how social media works, who it benefits and why we all depend upon it to help our good ideas spread.
About the Author
Dan Zarrella is an award-winning social media scientist at HubSpot. He has a background in web development and combines his programming capabilities with a passion for social marketing to study social media behavior from a data-backed position and teach marketers scientifically grounded best practices.

ETA: also free for those in the UK:

Zarrella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas by Dan Zarrella (The Domino Project) (Amazon Main, Amazon UK)

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Free from indies:

MachoPoni: A Prance with Death (Poniworld Chronicles #1) by Lotus Rose (Death Pout)

Product Description
In this "children's book for adults," MachoPoni has no choice but to enter the Dark Kingdom, where the undead ponies roam. He must rescue Dust, the poni he loves from the dark princess's castle, using wit, creativity and his magic bouncy blue ball to survive. A twisted parody of My Little Pony, The Care Bears, and other 80's staples. Warning: contains gore and mild sexual content.

The Z Word (Apocalypse Babes) by Bella Street

Product Description
It's been said that a sure sign of the coming apocalypse is an 80s roller skate disco movie coming to DVD (with special features). In the science-fiction novel series Apocalypse Babes, a stylish group of twenty-something friends are torn from the Babylonian arms of 2006 West Hollywood and flung nearly thirty years into the past. It might be because one of them purchased the taboo film in a nostalgic moment, setting off a chain of events more disturbing than a roller skating conga line. They wake up in an apocalyptic but strangely familiar landscape, complete with a hidden mountain compound and retro survivalists, hinting at hidden and retro secrets they must face if they want to survive.

Book One of Apocalypse Babes, The Z Word, follows Seffy Carter and
her longtime friends Gareth, Addison and Lani. The four besties share a past dysfunctional and dark enough to keep them bound together under do-over identities. But rends develop in their relationships from the flesh-eating
pressures of ending up in 1980, in a Montana desert, surrounded by
zombies wearing dated disco duds.

Vultures in the Playground by A. Sparrow

Product Description
Name: Archie Parsons. Occupation: Malaria consultant. Hobbies: Mosquito husbandry. Boulder climbing. Long walks at sunset in failed states.
That last item nearly gets Archie killed when he is mugged fresh off a plane in Monrovia,Liberia. He is lucky to limit the damage to a scalp contusion and a stolen passport.
Turns out, these weren’t run-of-the-mill thugs. They work for a powerful and shadowy industrial consortium. Their goals: murder and identity theft. They seek Archie’s visas and connections to lubricate a killing spree of obstructive politicians and activists. These executions are to be conducted by their lead assassin – a man named Black.
During a second attempt involving Black himself, Archie’s would-be killer is accidentally killed by a freak accident in an airport washroom. But the consortium assumes that their man prevailed. He’s Agent Black, after all.
They blindly shuttle Archie around West Africa, providing tickets and weapons and intelligence via briefcases left in luxury hotel suites. For a time he plays along, exploiting his mistaken identity to warn intended targets of their peril.
When the consortium discovers their error, they dispatch Black’s East African counterpart, a man named White, to set things right. Archie finds himself pitted against the most brutal corporate assassin on the African continent. The State Department won’t help him because he’s officially deceased and some of their people are consortium plants. The only person who comes to his aide is his cat-sitter Melissa, a young woman whose shadowy past makes her much more formidable than she seems.

Traveling Bug by Edna Curry

Product Description
What REALLY happened behind the scenes when a computer virus crashed computers from coast to coast, hitting the headlines? Jeff helps his father solve a software pirating problem, but will he lose his heart as the price?
Travel agent Diane is thrilled to help Jeff lead a computer company’s VIP group to Puerto Vallarta, but finds herself embroiled in way more than she bargained for as they try to solve this mystery.

Finding Grace by Sarah Pawley

Product Description
Grace is seventeen. She is bold, intelligent...and unmarried. In the eyes of her family and her mountain born neighbors, she is hopelessly willful. But she is determined to forge her own path, come what may. When her parents try to force her hand in marriage, she flees, seeking out her brother and his wife, who once watched over her. Settling down with them, she finds a new life...and possible romance with a handsome neighbor. But the past will come back to haunt her, possibly destroying the happiness she has worked so hard to find.

The Devil's Lover: The Wish by Dahlia Lu

Product Description
A Paranormal Romance.

Lucifer, Sovereign of Hell, was awakened ahead of his time by the blood of a teenage girl. To satisfy his curiosity, he revived her from her untimely death and granted her a final wish worth dying for.

Shadow Games by Doug Welch

Product Description
The novel Shadow Games occurs in and near Jamestown, Kentucky, a rural town in the heart of the state. Beneath the small town backdrop, danger lurks for Paris and Alexandra Fox, identical twins. The sudden death of their parents in a suspicious accident has brought with it some painful revelations.
The first is that the person who they called mother is not their birth mother, and therefore they possess an unknown genetic inheritance. The second is that their father held a dangerous secret, one that caused their parent's death, and it looks like the Fox twins may be next.
To complicate matters, they meet two wonderful people, Elizabeth and Caesar Rowan, brother and sister, who may be the soul mates they have always desired. However, their attraction poses a danger for the Rowans and a vulnerability for themselves.
A race of people called Shadows who have the natural ability to hide in plain sight, want their father's secret and are willing to kill for it. They need to learn how to use their innate talents and the secret holds the key. Unfortunately the twins can't find it, and the Shadows are drawing closer. The twins must discover the the secret, protect the Rowans, and find the ability and the courage to confront the Shadow people. Their lives and the lives of the ones they love depend upon it.

The Ultimate Choice by Lisa C Hinsley

Product Description
In a dystopian near-future, overpopulation has led to a government dedicated to reducing citizen numbers. Suicide is legalised, food is rationed, and reproduction forbidden without permission.

Cassie O’Neil broke the law, she had sex before marriage. She is sentenced to die on the game show, The Ultimate Choice, but when a contestant collapses Cassie takes her chance and runs. Staying alive is hard with no ration card or place to hide. But she is a woman who refuses to die.

Shaun Horrigan, AMAZON VINE VOICE and TOP 500 REVIEWER, said of The Ultimate Choice: Set in a near future dystopian vision of England where population growth has run out of control, people are starving and food is rationed, this is a very thought provoking novel. Suicide is legalised and in fact encouraged, police patrols search for homeless people at night and get paid a bonus based on how many they euthanise, only those licensed to do so can have children and government propaganda keeps everyone naïve and ignorant of the real scale of the problems.

Diary of a Vampeen by Christin Lovell

Product Description
Imagine living a human charade for fifteen years and never knowing it. Imagine being provided less than a week to learn and accept your family’s true heritage before it overtook you. Alexa Jackson, Lexi, is abruptly thrown onto this roller coaster and quickly learns that she can’t change fate, regardless of how many lifetimes she is given. She will be transformed into a vampeen on her sixteenth birthday, she will be called upon to fulfill a greater destiny within the dangerous world of vampires, and she will have to risk heartbreak and rejection if she ever wants a chance at love with Kellan, whether she likes it or not.

THE JYNX by Kenneth C. Crowe

Product Description
THE JYNX is a novel of clamming, art, Swiftboat politics, and revenge in the age of Karl Rove. The protagonist of THE JYNX is a clammer, barely surviving in a dying industry, whose dream is to become a successful wood sculptor. A political operative, who is being stalked by a crazed Vietnam War veteran, hires the clammer/sculptor to protect her while she writes a book in an isolated cottage on a Long Island estate. She is the protagonist’s inspiration for The Jynx, a sculpture which advances his career and turns her into a vengeful enemy. The story takes place in the first nine months of 2006.

The Price of Life by T.M. Nienaber

Product Description
In this book a politician comes to a necromancer for the ability to make a campaign promise no one can match, in the middle of a war the ability to raise soldiers from the dead in unresistable. But as their partnership continues the two fail to see eye to eye and eventually go to war with each other. The necromancer's army of the undead goes against the politician's well trained military for a civil war like no one has ever seen before. While all this is going on we also discover a small compound creating a society all their own, recreating Victorian England as a backdrop for a murder game and a fake vampire.

Vindicator by Denney Clements and Robin Clements

Product Description
Wichita’s struggling newspaper, the Examiner, sends veteran reporter Joe Emery to Colorado. The dam at the Herman Gunderson Reservoir, 60 miles west of the state line, has collapsed, sending billions of gallons of water coursing downstream into Kansas and killing three people. What at first seems a gut-wrenching natural disaster story, however, quickly becomes something far more sinister.
First, the Kansas governor, Mabel Hodge, bullies her way into a press conference aimed at explaining the disaster. She tells reporters that the collapse of the dam is a blessing for water-starved Kansas farmers and ranchers. These tasteless remarks are apparently intended to shore up Hodge’s candidacy for re-election. Election Day is two weeks away and her Republican challenger is ahead in the polls.
Then, a rival reporter for an upstart Internet news service reveals upstages Hodge. He suggests that the FBI’s official cover story for the disaster, that it is an ‘act of God,’ is a sham. He asserts that the dam was sabotaged and demands that the lead investigator for the FBI confirm it. Instead, the investigator shuts the press conference down.
Thrust into what could be the best story of his life, Emery, an old-school ink-stained wretch, learns that the feds not only lied about the cause of the disaster but also have detained three terrorism suspects – members of a radical environmentalist group. With the help of Carol, the lovely embattled sister of one of the detainees, Emery learns that the feds have the wrong people in custody – and know it.
Emery’s story on their deception quickly goes viral, humiliating the FBI. He’s ready to dig deeper for the truth but the Examiner orders him back to Wichita. During the trip home, he survives an attempt on his life. Two days later, the newspaper lays him off, citing declining profits as the reason. Off the story and stripped of his hard-earned identity, he sinks into despondency.
But with Carol’s encouragement, Emery shakes off his funk and starts The Vindicator, a public-affairs blog. He’s back on the story, navigating a treacherous political environment, uncertain who he can trust, trying to fend off goons sent to stop him. He soon learns that telling the story could carry a terrible cost to the people he loves, and that it may already be too late to back off.

Zombie Sun: The Zombie in the Oval Office by Steven Mohan Jr.

Product Description
Any spec ops mission is bound to be a dangerous and nasty affair—but this one is RIDICULOUS. Not only does the President of the United States send Commander Achilles Black’s ghost team to a dying world, but he forces Black to take along a senior political advisor. But that’s only the beginning of Black’s problems.

Because something is killing off his troops.

And the revelation that he’s up against ZOMBIES won’t be the worst surprise that Black encounters.

This short story also includes a FREE excerpt of the first four chapters of the exciting short novel, ZOMBIE SUN: THE DARKNESS BETWEEN WORLDS.

Fans of 28 DAYS LATER, LEGEND, and LOST will enjoy the fast-moving series ZOMBIE SUN.

Novellas/Short stories:

The Sway of Disaster by Mikael Aizen

Hell by Randy Noble

Lord of the Trash by Sarah MacManus

OtherWhere: The Crazies by Garry Grierson

Where Sheep May Safely Graze by Roger Parkinson

Black Man Telling Tales by Barry Davis

Occam's Razor: A Short Story by John Brinling

The Robbery: A Short Story by John Brinling

A Twisted Bard's Tale (An Erotic Lesbian Short) by Selena Kitt

The Artisan by H. Bradley Stucki

If I Had A Car by Ted Summerfield

For Crying Out Loud by Severin Rossetti

Diary of a Dead Muse by Benjamin Goshko

The Twin by Dan Barbier

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FYI, new game apps for the Kindle:

Doodle for Kindle (Line Drawing on Kindle) by 16 Hands $0.99

Product Description
A great drawing tool for kids, Doodle makes creating line art easy and fun.

We know how much kids like to take a break and draw every once in a while, and Doodle for Kindle helps kids create line drawings as simple or as complex as their imagination allows. Your kids can use the 5-way or keyboard to start drawing on Kindle right away, and they can use drawing features that include a press-and-hold to draw mode, a continuous mode in which they can press once to start drawing, and press again to stop, or use a step mode which lets them draw short, precise segments with each press. It's easy for them to change segment lengths, save their drawings, change drawing speeds, and choose between black on white drawings or white on black drawings.

Doodle comes with drawing samples that include an elegant swan, the Mona Lisa, a mouse, and the Seattle skyline. Don't worry about the samples being drawn over. Your child can save the drawings with their changes or reset them back to their original state.

Have fun watching your kids create their own works of art, or even enjoy the fun of doodling on Kindle yourself! Get Doodle today.

Diamond Crosswords - 50 Easy Puzzles (A Word Puzzle for Kindle) by Puzux $0.99

Product Description
Diamond Crosswords, 50 Easy Puzzles, is a unique twist on the classic crossword puzzle.

Diamond Crosswords combines the fun of classic crossword puzzles with a unique, diamond-shape design. Each puzzle is smaller than a traditional crossword and features everyday vocabulary words. You can navigate clues and change the solving direction - Across or Down - using quick keyboard shortcuts, and an indicator will always show you which clue you're working on and in what direction. You can also zoom in or out to increase or decrease the puzzle grid size to fit your preference, as well as check for errors, reveal a letter, or get a puzzle completely solved if you're stuck. Designed by professional puzzle writers and developers Myles Mellor, Bob Williams, and David L. Hoyt, Diamond Crosswords is sure to be enjoyed by crossword lovers.

Try Diamond Crosswords on Kindle today!

Diamond Crosswords - 50 Challenging Puzzles (A Word Game for Kindle) by Puzux $0.99

Product Description
Diamond Crosswords, 50 Challenging Puzzles, is a unique twist on the classic crossword puzzle.

Diamond Crosswords combines the fun of classic crossword puzzles with a unique, diamond-shape design. Each puzzle is smaller than a traditional crossword and features everyday vocabulary words. You can navigate clues and change the solving direction - Across or Down - using quick keyboard shortcuts, and an indicator will always show you which clue you're working on and in what direction. You can also zoom in or out to increase or decrease the puzzle grid size to fit your preference, as well as check for errors, reveal a letter, or get a puzzle completely solved if you're stuck. Designed by professional puzzle writers and developers Myles Mellor, Bob Williams, and David L. Hoyt, Diamond Crosswords is sure to be enjoyed by crossword lovers.

Try Diamond Crosswords on Kindle today!

*There's two other just released Diamond Crossword puzzles:

Diamond Crosswords - 200 Easy Puzzles (A Word Puzzle for Kindle) by Puzux $3.99

Diamond Crosswords - 200 Challenging Puzzles (A Word Game for Kindle) by Puzux $3.99

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Some bargain Kurt Vonnegut books for $3.99 (Rosettabooks)

Player Piano

Product Description
PLAYER PIANO (1952), Vonnegut's first novel, embeds and foreshadows themes which were to be parsed and dramatized for half a century to come. His future society - a marginal extrapolation, Vonnegut wrote, of the situation he observed as an employee of General Electric in which machines were replacing people increasingly and without any regard for their fate - is mechanistic and cruel, indifferent to human consequence, almost in a state of merriment as human wreckage accumulates. Paul Proteus, the novel's protagonist, is an engineer at Ilium Works and first observes with horror and then struggles to reverse the displacement of human labor by machines. Ilium Works and Paul's struggles are a deliberately cartoon version of labor's historic struggle in the first half of the twentieth century to give dignity and purpose to workers, a struggle that became increasingly ugly in the face of the implacability of technological overkill. The novel embodies all of Vonenegut's concerns and what he takes to be the great dilemma of the technologically overpowered century: the spiritual needs of the population in no way serve the economies of technology and post-technology. Vonnegut finds grotesque comedy through his cartoon version of society but the comedy only overlies tragedy and the novel becomes an appalling tragedy disguised in the trappings of goofiness, a device which Vonnegut used repeatedly. Not published - at Vonnegut's insistence - as science fiction, the novel was nonetheless recognized and praised by the science fiction community which understood it far better than a more general readership, a dilemma which Vonnegut resentfully faced throughout his career. Bernard Wolfe's dystopian LIMBO and PLAYER PIANO were published in the same year to roughly similar receptions; two "outsiders" had apotheosized technophobia as forcefully as any writer within the field. Throughout his career, Vonnegut was forced to struggle with his ambivalence about science fiction and his own equivocal relationship with its readers. A player piano, of course, is a mechanized device which simulates performance long after the actual performer is dead.

The Sirens of Titan

Product Description
This improvisational tour de force - THE SIRENS OF TITAN (1959), Vonnegut's second novel -was on the Hugo final ballot with Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and lost in what Harlan Ellison has called a monumental injustice. A picaresque which almost cannot be synopsized, an interplanetary Candide (lacking perhaps Voltaire's utter bitterness),THE SIRENS OF TITAN follows Malachi Constant, a feckless but goodhearted millionaire, through the spaces of the solar system on his search for the meaning of existence. Constant is aided by another tycoon, Winston Rumfoord, who with the help of aliens has discovered the fundamental meaning of life (the retrieval of an alien artifact with an inscribed message of greetings). With the help of Salo, an alien robot and the overseeing alien race, the Tralmafordorians (who are also prominent in SLAUGTERHOUSE-FIVE), Constant attempts to find some cosmic sense and order in the face of universal malevolence. Constant and Rumfoord deal with the metaphysics of "chrono-synclastic infundibula", they deal with the interference of the Tralmafadorians; the novel is pervaded by a goofy, episodic charm which barely shields the readers (or the characters) from the sense of a large and indifferent universe. All of Vonnegut's themes and obsessions, further developed or recycled in later work are evident here in a novel slightly more hopeful than most of his canon. It is suggested that ultimately Constant learns only that it is impossible to learn, that fate (and the Tralmafodorians) are impenetrable. On the basis of this novel Vonnegut was wholly claimed by the science fiction community (as the Hugo nomination demonstrated) but he did not reciprocate, feeling from the outset that to be identified as a science fiction writer could only limit his audience and trivialize his themes. His recurring character, the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout (prominent in SLAUGHERHOUSE-FIVE) was for Vonnegut a worst case version of the writer he didn’t wish to become.

Breakfast of Champions

Product Description
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation. The core of the novel is Kilgore Trout, a familiar character very deliberately modeled on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985), a fact which Vonnegut conceded frequently in interviews and which was based upon his own occasional relationship with Sturgeon. Here Kilgore Trout is an itinerant wandering from one science fiction convention to another; he intersects with the protagonist, Dwayne Hoover (one of Vonnegut's typically boosterish, lost and stupid mid-American characters) and their intersection is the excuse for the evocation of many others, familiar and unfamiliar, dredged from Vonnegut's gallery. The central issue is concerned with intersecting and apposite views of reality, and much of the narrative is filtered through Trout who is neither certifiably insane nor a visionary writer but can pass for either depending upon Dwayne Hoover's (and Vonnegut's) view of the situation. America, when this novel was published, was in the throes of Nixon, Watergate and the unraveling of our intervention in Vietnam; the nation was beginning to fragment ideologically and geographically and Vonnegut sought to cram all of this dysfunction (and a goofy, desperate kind of hope, the irrational comfort given to its fans by the genre of science fiction) into a sprawling narrative whose sense, if any, is situational, not conceptual. Reviews were polarized; the novel was celebrated for its bizarre aspects, became the basis of a Bruce Willis movie adaptation whose reviews were not nearly so polarized. (Most critics hated it.) This novel in its freewheeling and deliberately fragmented sequentiality may be the quintessential Vonnegut novel, not necessarily his best, but the work which most truly embodies the range of his talent, cartooned alienation and despair.

Cat's Cradle

Product Description
CAT’S CRADLE (1963) - Vonnegut's most ambitious novel, which put into the language terms like "wampeter", "kerass" and "granfalloon" as well as a structured religion, Boskonism - was submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for a Master's Degree in anthropology, and in its sprawling compass and almost uncontrolled (and uncontrollable) invention, may be Vonnegut's best novel. Written contemporaneously with the Cuban missile crisis and countenancing a version of a world in the grasp of magnified human stupidity, the novel is centered on Felix Hoenikker, a chemical scientist reminiscent of Robert Oppenheimer...except that Oppenheimer was destroyed by his conscience and Hoenikker, delighting in the disastrous chemicals he has invented, has no conscience at all. Hoenikker's "Ice 9" has the potential to convert all liquid to inert ice and thus destroy human existence; he is exiled to a remote island where Boskonism has enlisted all of its inhabitants and where religion and technology collaborate, with the help of a large cast of characters, to destroy civilization. Vonnegut's compassion and despair are expressed here through his grotesque elaboration of character and situation and also through his created religion which like Flannery O'Connor's "Church Without Christ" (in WISE BLOOD) acts to serve its adherents by removing them from individual responsibility. Vonnegut had always been taken seriously by science fiction readers and critics (a reception which indeed made him uncomfortable) but it was with CAT’S CRADLE that he began to be found and appreciated by a more general audience. His own ambivalence toward science, science fiction, religion and religious comfort comes through in every scene of this novel.

Slaughterhouse Five

Product Description
Adapted for a magnificent George Roy Hill film three years later (perhaps the only film adaptation of a masterpiece which exceeds its source), SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (1969) is the now famous parable of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran and POW who has in the later stage of his life become "unstuck in time" and who experiences at will (or unwillingly) all known events of his chronology out of order and sometimes simultaneously. Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralmafadorians who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence). The "unstuck" nature of Pilgrim's experience may constitute an early novelistic use of what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; then again Pilgrim's aliens may be as "real" as Dresden is real to him. Struggling to find some purpose, order or meaning to his existence and humanity's, Pilgrim meets the beauteous and mysterious Montana Wildhack (certainly the author's best character name), has a child with her and drifts on some supernal plane, finally, in which Kilgore Trout, the Tralmafadorians, Montana Wildhack and the ruins of Dresden do not merge but rather disperse through all planes of existence. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE was hugely successful, brought Vonnegut an enormous audience, was a finalist for the National Book Award and a bestseller. It remains four decades later as timeless and shattering a war fiction as CATCH-22 with which it stands as the two signal novels of their riotous and furious decade.

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now free for those in the US:

Zarrella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas by Dan Zarrella (The Domino Project)

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Okay, there's a total of 14 Kurt Vonnegut books that are now $3.99 for the US Kindle-> Amazon link

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Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell is $2.99 (US Store)

Product Description
In her fourth book, LIPSTICK JUNGLE, best-selling author Candace Bushnell re-creates a real-life world as compelling and fascinating as Sex and the City. In LIPSTICK JUNGLE, high fashion meets the powerful women who actually wear it.

Victory Ford -- single, beautiful, creative and unconventional -- has worked for years to create her own independent fashion house. But when her company goes into a tailspin, Victory falls into the arms of the ruthless cosmetics baron, Lyne Bennett. As she struggles to keep her company afloat, she learns crucial lessons about what she really wants from a relationship.

One of the most powerful women in publishing, Nico O'Neilly seems to have it all -- a stellar career, a well-respected husband, and an eight-year-old daughter whom she adores. But at forty-three, Nico finds that this isn't enough. Her secret ambition is to become the first female CEO of Splatch-Verner (the multimedia company that owns her magazine), but if she's going to achieve her goal, she needs to start acting now.

Wendy Healy, President of Parador Pictures, has chutzpah to spare. It’s propelled her to the very top of the cutthroat movie business, yet as she tries to bring her most important movie to the screen, her drive is not enough to save her. Selden Rose, the president of MovieTime, is secretly lobbying to oust Wendy and take over Parador; meanwhile, her twelve-year-marriage to her metrosexual househusband is falling apart. One has to go--and in a series of unconventional plot twists, Wendy finds a startling answer.

Following these determined but likeable leading ladies through the ups and downs of their careers, their marriages and their affairs, Candace Bushnell shows us how three strong women stay at the top of their fields in the toughest town in the world.

About the Author
Candace Bushnell is the author of three bestsellers, Sex and the City, Four Blondes, and Trading Up. She has been a columnist for the New York Observer and a contributing editor to Vogue. She lives in New York City.

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Jigsaw Words (A Free Word Game for Kindle) by Amazon Digital Services

Product Description
Jigsaw Words is a word game that challenges you to combine groups of letters into words that match the clues given.

In each Jigsaw Words puzzle, you start with a set of 10 clues. You also have a set of randomly arranged puzzle pieces with letters on them. Your goal is to solve the clues in the puzzle by arranging the puzzle pieces so that the letters form the word that matches each clue. Start with the easiest clues first. As you use each puzzle piece, it is removed from play, making it easier to find the more difficult matches. You can also shuffle the grid of puzzle pieces at any time for a different perspective.

Jigsaw Words has 100 puzzles and each puzzle has 10 clues to solve. The puzzles are organized into 10 themed categories like Holidays and Animals, and you can use the theme to help you solve the clues.

If you enjoy working with words and patterns, try Jigsaw Words and test your ability to build words today!

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FYI, Free again but currently just for those in the UK:

Gone to Green (Green (Abingdon Press)) by Judy Christie (Amazon Main, Amazon UK)

Product Description
In Gone to Green, Lois goes from being a corporate journalist at a large paper in the Midwest to the owner of The Green News-Item, a small twice-weekly newspaper in rural North Louisiana. The paper was an unexpected inheritance from a close colleague, and Lois must keep it for at least a year, bringing a host of challenges, lessons, and blessings into her life.When Lois pulls into Green on New Year’s Day, she expects a charming little town full of smiling people. She quickly realizes her mistake. After settling into a loaned house out on Route 2, she finds herself battling town prejudices and inner doubts and making friends with the most surprising people: troubled teenager Katy, good-looking catfish farmer Chris, wise and feisty Aunt Helen, and a female African-American physician named Kevin.Whether fighting a greedy, deceitful politician or rescuing a dog she fears, Lois notices the headlines in her life have definitely improved. She learns how to provide small-town news in a big-hearted way and realizes that life is full of newsworthy moments. When she encounters racial prejudice and financial corruption, Lois also discovers more about the goodness of real people and the importance of being part of a community.While secretly preparing the paper for a sale, Lois begins to realize that God might indeed have a plan for her life and that perhaps the allure of city life and career ambition are not what she wants after all.

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Now free again for US Kindle

Gone to Green (Green (Abingdon Press)) by Judy Christie