Find eBook Readers Blog   Reading in the Digital Age

First of all, there are some new freebies in the Kindle Store and elsewhere:

Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Throughout the Ages by Leland Gregory (4 stars/16 reviews) Nonfiction.

The Unsuspecting Mage (The Morcyth Saga) by Brian S. Pratt (3 stars/55 reviews) Fantasy.   Also free at Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

Slow Ride: A Rough Riders story by Lorelei James (4 stars/3 reviews) Romance.   Also free at Barnes & Noble.

Invisible (Ivy Malone Mystery Series #1) by Lorena McCourtney (4 1/2 stars/17 reviews) Mystery.

Child of the Northern Spring by Persia Woolley (3 1/2 stars/3 reviews) Authurian fantasy.  Also free at Barnes & Noble.

Crossing the Line by Stephen Jay Schwartz (not yet rated) pre-order; due Dec 7, 2010.  Short story, crime fiction.

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For a limited time Barnes & Noble is offering Birth of an Empire, the first book in Conn Iggulden’s historical fiction series about Genghis Khan for $1.99.  At the Kindle Store Birth of an Empire (4 1/2 stars/84 reviews) is an even better deal at $1.59.  The story:

Genghis Khan was born Temujin, the son of a khan, raised in a clan of hunters migrating across the rugged steppe. Shaped by abandonment and betrayal, Temujin endured, driven by a singular fury: to survive in the face of death, to kill before being killed, and to conquer enemies who could come without warning from beyond the horizon.

Through a series of courageous raids, Temujin’s legend grew until he was chasing a vision: to unite many tribes into one, to make the earth tremble under the hoofbeats of a thousand warhorses, to subject all nations and empires to his will.

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The Scotiabank Giller Prize, or Giller Prize, is a yearly literary prize awarded to Canadian authors of novels and short stories.  The winner of the Giller Prize this year is The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud.  Good luck finding this in a hardcover edition as it was printed by artisan press Gaspereau Press, which only printed 800 copies last year.  The Sentimentalistsebook appears to be available exclusively at Kobo for $14.95 CAD, and unfortunately appears to be available only to Canadian readers for now.  I’m really tired of regional digital book rights.

Amazon may have the pbookin stock at some point for the US.  If you are interested in reading this on the Kindle you could click on the Tell the Publisher link — if there are enough requests it might happen.  The story does look interesting.

The story:

Johanna Skibsrud’s debut novel connects the flooding of an Ontario town, the Vietnam War, a trailer in North Dakota and an unfinished boat in Maine. Parsing family history, worn childhood memories, and the palimpsest of old misunderstandings, Skibsrud’s narrator maps her father’s past.

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Some paid reads that are at the Kindle Store (and elsewhere):

Time in a Bottle by Christopher Divver (5 stars/12 reviews) $0.99.

A single glass of whiskey was all it took for Mark Willis to fall back into the hellish pit of alcoholism and the dark, foreboding nightmare that became his life after his girlfriend, Monica, was murdered. She walked down the long hard road of recovery and found her salvation in the hearts and minds of those afflicted as she had once been and where she met Mark and guided him to sobriety, loving him and then trusting him enough to divulge the terrible secrets of her family’s past. But that all ended on a crisp autumn morning in a familiar place with an old friend in his hand.

Audra Schaeffer, a wealthy, powerful pharmaceutical executive is Monica’s half-sister who harbors a secret of abuse, a secret that only she, her father and now Mark know. A secret so devastating that if revealed would ruin her and her father, Senator Robert Schaeffer, and the dozen or so participants in the brutal games that took place in the basement of the Schaeffer estate. When the police reveal to Mark that Monica’s death may not have been an accident, he reveals to them the only person he knows who may want to harm Monica and why.

Time in a Bottle reveals the struggle of a man drowning his sorrows and once again his life one glass at a time while his friends struggle to save him and the police struggle to find Monica’s killers before they get to Mark; the only other person who knows the Schaeffer’s terrible secret.

No Good Deed by Mary McDonald (4 1/2 stars/30 reviews) $0.99. 

Mark Taylor, a photographer in Chicago, discovers first hand that no good deed goes unpunished when the old camera he found during a freelance job in an Afghanistan bazaar gives him more than great photos. It triggers dreams of disasters. Tragedies that happen exactly as he envisions them. He learns that not only can he see the future, he can change it. Then the unthinkable happened and everyone ignored his frantic warnings. Thousands die. Suddenly, the Feds are pounding on his door and the name they have for Mark isn’t urban hero. It’s enemy combatant. And, it means they can do anything they want to him. Anything at all.

Gone, Baby, Gone with Bonus Content by Dennis Lehane (4 1/2 stars/148 reviews) $1.99.  Lehane’s latest book, Moonlight Mile, follows the events of Gone, Baby, Gone and could be viewed as a sequel.

Fleeing Famous (SpellBound Cafe) by Laura Freed and Moxie Baker (5 stars/8 reviews) $0.99.

Fleeing Famous, loosely based on true events, is the story of how one woman finds her destiny (and assorted muffins, cakes, and pies) on the road she takes to avoid it. Moxie Baker (not her real name) is the daughter of VFFP (Very Famous F***ing Parents). Moxie longs to escape the celebrity shenanigans of her Oscar winning mother, Rockstar father, and spoiled wanna- be reality star sister, Harper. When Moxie accidentally finds herself in Sugar Hollow Harbor, a sleepy town that promises on the Welcome Sign: “You’ll find sweetness in our shadows,” she decides to reinvent herself. Ah – but the truth, and Moxie’s sister, threatens to expose Moxie and unravel her new, delicious life.

Fleeing Famous launches the Spellbound Café fiction series: Stories about the magic of food, the power of friendship, and the mysticism of fortunate events.

The Haircut, a New Year’s Tale by Donna Callea (4 1/2 stars/13 reviews) $0.99.

Two days after Christmas, 1948, in a city that could be New York, a young woman prepares to get a life-altering haircut. She’s a princess, a post-war refugee, from an Eastern European principality that no longer exists. And she’s being forced by her guardians– her nefarious aunt and uncle– to marry an obscenely rich industrialist who’s got something of a hair fetish. The man, it seems, is aroused only by her amazingly long, glorious hair. So to save herself, she decides to get it all cut off. But she doesn’t count on falling in love with the handsome young barber who refuses, at first, to do her bidding. Nor does the barber count on becoming entranced by the strangest customer he’s ever encountered. Even after the severely shorn former princess is beaten beyond recognition for her act of rebellion, the barber, a widower still grieving for his late wife, finds her irresistible. Add to the mix Misha, an angel from the Old Country whose specialty is New Year’s Eve. Ultimately, "The Haircut" is a story that weaves whimsy with romance, plus more serious themes, as it underscores the timelessness and hope of the season in which it’s set.

New Coastal Times by Donna Callea (4 1/2 stars/18 reviews) $2.39.

As Hurricane Walter, the worst hurricane ever recorded (at least so far), reshapes the overdeveloped East Central Florida coast, swallows condos up whole, and ushers in a world-wide disaster-filled era spurred by global warming, Mia Gionfreddo Fine crouches in the crumbling newsroom of the (let’s face it) crummy newspaper she works for, listening to the publisher sing Broadway show tunes.

Set in the near future (maybe tomorrow), NEW COASTAL TIMES is a seriocomic romp through a not-so-brave new world where religious fanatics wait for Jesus in the Okefenokee Swamp, martial law rules in the still existing cities, the government sets up free-love communes for displaced youth, and a group of intrepid travelers—including former so-so reporter Mia, her adorable dedicated doctor husband, his avuncular tenor mentor, a good-hearted baritone pimp, and the show-tune-singing publisher (an aging soprano) make their way from Florida to New York in the New Coastal Times Performing Arts Center van. Because, when you get right down to it, there really is no place like home.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Free ebooks for Kindle & other ereaders – 4/26/2011
• Free ebooks for the Kindle & other ereaders – 4/2/2011
• Free Kindle books – 3/25/2011
• Free ebooks for Kindle & other ereaders – 3/19/2011
• Free ebooks for Kindle & other ereaders – 3/13/2011