Showing posts with label Craft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Craft. Show all posts

Monday, November 3, 2014

Today's Kindle Daily Deals: a romantic thriller, a Pride & Prejudice spin off, a true story about yacht racing, a sci-fi collection and a craft book for kids!



Here's today's Kindle Daily Deal, available for $1.99!

Because She Loves Me, by Mark Edwards.

A gripping tale of jealousy, obsession and murder, from the No.1 Bestselling author of The Magpies.
When Andrew Sumner meets beautiful, edgy Charlie, he is certain his run of bad luck has finally come to an end.

But as the two of them embark on an intense affair, Andrew wonders if his grasp on reality is slipping. Items go missing in his apartment. Somebody appears to be following him. And as misfortune and tragedy strike his friends and loved ones, Andrew is forced to confront the frightening truth...

Is Charlie really the girl of his dreams – or the woman of his nightmares?

352 pages, with a 4.2-star rating from 106 reviews



Here's today's Daily Romance Deal, available for $1.99!

The Forgotten Sister: Mary Bennet's Pride and Prejudice, by Jennifer Paynter.

The third Bennet sister, Mary, steps into the spotlight in this graceful retelling of Pride and Prejudice.

As a middle child flanked by two pairs of closely bonded sisters, marginalized by her mother, and ridiculed by her father, Mary Bennet feels isolated within her own family. She retreats to her room to read and play the pianoforte and, when obliged to mix in society, finds it safer to quote platitudes from books rather than express her real opinions. She also finds it safer to befriend those who are socially “beneath” her. When wealthy Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley glide into her sisters’ lives, Mary becomes infatuated with an impoverished young musician, the son of her old wet-nurse, who plays the fiddle at the Meryton assemblies.

It is only after her sisters tease her about her “beau with the bow” that Mary is forced to examine her real feelings and confront her own brand of pride and prejudice.

An elegant accompaniment to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, The Forgotten Sister plucks the neglected Mary from obscurity and beautifully reveals her hopes and dreams.



440 pages, with a 4.1-star rating from 292 reviews



Here's today's Daily Non-Fiction Deal, available for $1.99!

The Proving Ground, by G. Bruce Knecht.

In this 10th Anniversary edition, with a new afterword from the author, G. Bruce Knecht tells the harrowing story of a world-renowned sailing race gone fatally bad.

On December 26, 1998, 115 sailboats crossed the starting line of the famous Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. The 630-nautical-mile contest is among the most difficult races in the world, a test of strength and endurance like few others. But no one could have foreseen the tragedy that would befall the competitors, who sailed into a massive storm that tore apart the fleet with hurricane-force winds and eighty-foot waves. What began as a race for glory rapidly became a fight for survival. In this gripping insider’s account, award-winning writer G. Bruce Knecht focuses on three yachts and their crews, weaving together an extraordinary story with vivid detail, outsized personalities, and high drama. Most importantly, he offers a glimpse into how people with very different backgrounds responded to something bigger than they were—and how it changed them forever. Hailed as “harrowing” by the New York Times, “pulse-pounding” by People magazine, and “the Perfect Storm of blue-water sailboat racing” by Walter Cronkite, The Proving Ground is a true-to-life adventure tale as thrilling as any work of fiction.
In The Proving Ground, journalist and lifelong sailor G. Bruce Knecht tells the staggering story of the 54th Sydney to Hobart yacht race--an annual event that is always an extreme test of courage and skill in some of the world's most treacherous seas, but which in 1998 would become the most disastrous race in modern yachting history.

Although he was already fifty feet from the boat, Brownie didn't have any trouble spotting Glyn. He looked small, and utterly helpless.... Glyn was already having a hard time keeping his head out of the water, and everyone quickly reached the same unthinkable conclusion--Glynn was going to die and there was nothing to do but watch.... Steve Kulmar was more shaken than anyone. When he first came on deck, he believed Glyn was looking directly back at him.
Of the 115 boats that started under clear skies in Sydney, just 43 would finish. Six sailors lost their lives, and a further 55 were plucked from the storm after the fleet had been decimated by unforecast hurricane winds and 80-foot-high waves.

Knecht's style is novelistic, though measured, with a strong journalistic sensibility marshaling what must have been at times appallingly poignant eyewitness testimony into a coherent account of the disaster. His intended focus is beyond the headlines, and by concentrating on the experiences of a handful of individual crews, The Proving Ground succeeds in conveying the agonies of their desperate, sometimes futile struggles to survive--and offers some insight into what drew them to the sea in the first place, and why so many of the survivors have felt compelled to face it again. --Alex Hankin, Amazon.co.uk



292 pages, with a 4.4-star rating from 111 reviews



Here's today's Daily Science Fiction/Fantasy Deal, available for $1.99!

Punktown, by Jeffrey Thomas.

Considered by many critics and readers as one of the new classics of SF collections, now reissued by DarkFuse for Kindle.

In the city they call Punktown, on a planet where a hundred sentient species collide, you can become a creator of clones. You can become a piece of performance art. You might even become a library of sorrows...

Table Of Contents:

The Reflections Of Ghosts
Pink Pills
The Flaying Season
Union Dick
Wakizashi
Dissecting The Soul
Precious Metal
Sisters Of No Mercy
Heart for Heart’s Sake
The Ballad Of Moosecock Lip
Face
The Pressman
The Palace Of Nothingness
The Rusted Gates Of Heaven
Immolation
Unlimited Daylight
The Library Of Sorrows
Nom de Guerre
The Color Shrain

Like Ray Bradbury, Jeffrey Thomas writes dark science fiction at the border of horror, and like Bradbury's collection, The Martian Chronicles, Thomas's Punktown uses a shared setting to tell very different stories of very different characters, both human and alien. The Martian Chronicles follows the rise and fall of the human colonization of Mars, while Punktown's nine stories (seven previously unpublished) follow a more subtle arc, examining the course of human development, from destructive youth through the dangers of parenthood and career to late adulthood, when losses and the weight of memories bring their own horrors. As The Martian Chronicles uses the future to consider mid-American, midcentury concerns, Punktown uses the future to reflect a fin-de-siècle present shaped by brutally rapid change, by rampant abuse, by the dehumanizing acts of governments and corporations, and by serial-killer epidemics and schoolroom massacres. But in the end, Punktown little resembles The Martian Chronicles. And, though it is not in the same league as Bradbury's classic, Punktown demonstrates that Thomas is a rising talent of considerable power and imagination.

In "The Reflections of Ghosts," an artist clones himself to make art for sadistic patrons, until he finds himself trapped in the ultimate self-absorption. The shadows of Poe and Lovecraft lie subtly over "The Palace of Nothingness," a mysterious, abandoned factory that may not be empty after all. And a chip-implanted detective who can forget nothing must examine mass-murder scenes in "The Library of Sorrows." --Cynthia Ward

224 pages, with a 4.8-star rating from 16 reviews



Here's today's Daily Youth Deal, available for $0.99!

Snowflakes for all Seasons: 72 Fold & Cut Paper Snowflakes, by Cindy Higham.

Snowflakes You Can Make is the best snowflake book ever created! Why make boring old, everyday cut-out snowflakes when you can customize them for any special situation? This craft book is perfect for kids of all ages, and will turn anyone into a snowflake pro. There are snowflake patterns for Valentines Day hearts, St. Patrick's Day shamrocks, birds and flowers for spring, the Liberty bell for Independence Day, leaves for fall, spiders and pumpkins for Halloween, pilgrims for Thanksgiving, Christmas trees, bells, and candles for Christmas, plus lots of fun "traditional" snowflakes (snowflakes that look like, well…snowflakes!) and more.

Perfect for scrapbooking, Snowflakes You Can Make is a crafter's dream, and no classroom should be without a copy. The book contains 64 full size patterns, instructions for folding, cutting and decorating your snowflakes, and a complete index.

After spending years showing people how to make paper snowflakes and copying hundreds of patterns for them, Cindy Higham decided to put her patterns in a book for everyone to enjoy. She lives in Utah with her family.

80 pages, with a 4.3-star rating from 33 reviews



Happy Reading!

Betsy

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Today's Kindle Daily Deals: A creepy tale, a romantic thriller, a craft book, speculative science fiction and a fantasy for young adults.



Here's today's Kindle Daily Deal, available for $1.99!

Bedbugs, by Ben H. Winters.

FOR RENT: Top two floors of beautifully renovated brownstone, 1300 sq. ft., 2BR 2BA, eat-in kitchen, one block to parks and playgrounds. No broker’s fee.

Susan and Alex Wendt have found their dream apartment.

Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric. And the elderly handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the basement. But the rent is so low, it’s too good to pass up.

Big mistake. Susan soon discovers that her new home is crawling with bedbugs . . . or is it? She awakens every morning with fresh bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter Emma has a single welt. An exterminator searches the property and turns up nothing. The landlady insists her building is clean. Susan fears she’s going mad—until a more sinister explanation presents itself: she may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from Hell.


From the Trade Paperback edition.
FOR RENT: Top two floors of beautifully renovated brownstone, 1300 sq. ft., 2BR 2BA, eat-in kitchen, one block to parks and playgrounds. No broker’s fee.

Susan and Alex Wendt have found their dream apartment.

Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric. And the elderly handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the basement. But the rent is so low, it’s too good to pass up.

Big mistake. Susan soon discovers that her new home is crawling with bedbugs . . . or is it? She awakens every morning with fresh bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter Emma has a single welt. An exterminator searches the property and turns up nothing. The landlady insists her building is clean. Susan fears she’s going mad—until a more sinister explanation presents itself: she may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from Hell.



Amazon Exclusive: Q&A with Ben H. Winters


Q: You tackled sea monsters in the New York Times best seller Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters. What made you turn to bedbugs?
Ben H. Winters: The monsters in Sea Monsters are very big and very over-the top: giant super-intelligent lobsters, an island that comes to life, that sort of thing. Silly, campy, fun. In
BEDBUGS I challenged myself to create a different kind of monster: serious, dark and deadly, and drawn from reality.
Q: BEDBUGS is told from the perspective of Susan Wendt--a former lawyer turned artist and stay-at-home mom. As a man, was it difficult to write in a woman's voice?
BHW: It was hard, although I would argue that gender is a very small part of what makes us who we are. In other words, it was challenging to get inside Susan's head mainly because I'm not a lawyer, a painter, or a stay-at-home parent, not necessarily because I'm not a woman. The hardest thing was writing in the voice of any kind of person, man or woman, being driven slowly insane by malevolent supernatural bugs.
Q: It is obvious that you have done your homework on bedbugs. What was one of the most surprising facts that you learned about these nasty pests?
BHW: It's pretty horrifying once you start to grasp how long they can stay alive without a host, and also how rapidly and exponentially they reproduce.
But the nastiest fact is something called traumatic insemination. Seriously. Just look it up.
Q: In BEDBUGS, you make many references to Rosemary's Baby. What is it about Rosemary's Baby that inspired you?
BHW: Ira Levin was a master of turning the screw: he slowly, slowly ratchets up poor Rosemary's sense that something is not right about her home, her marriage, her baby. It's so effective because Levin keeps us in her point of view the entire time, so first of all we come to love her, but also we live with her suspicion and her fear and her terror. That seemed like exactly the right way to frame a novel about a peril as creepy and paranoia-inducing as bedbugs.
Q: Lou the handyman and Andrea the landlord are an odd pair of keepers of this idyllic brownstone--how do their characters drive the story forward?
BHW: Well, I'm just honoring my genre, you know. Slightly off-kilter, slightly menacing older people are a staple of slow-burn horror novels: when you've got weird old people in a weird old house, you just know there's something going on.
Q: BEDBUGS is both a mystery and psychological thriller--how do you get inside the head of readers to scare them?
BHW: My goal was to firmly ground the story in the realistic, day-to-day lives of the characters, stuff like grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, taking the kid to the playground, marital squabbles and make-up sex. With just occasional notes of what's to come: a smear of blood here, an unexpected noise there, an unnamed sense of melancholy and dread. Again, it's something you find in books like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, even The Amityville Horror. There's this careful creation of a realistic, familiar world before the darkness begins to seep in.
Q: BEDBUGS is both a mystery and psychological thriller--how do you get inside the head of readers to scare them?
BHW: My goal was to firmly ground the story in the realistic, day-to-day lives of the characters, stuff like grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, taking the kid to the playground, marital squabbles and make-up sex. With just occasional notes of what's to come: a smear of blood here, an unexpected noise there, an unnamed sense of melancholy and dread. Again, it's something you find in books like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, even The Amityville Horror. There's this careful creation of a realistic, familiar world before the darkness begins to seep in.
Q: In BEDBUGS, Brooklyn is a character in itself--why did you choose Brooklyn Heights as your setting?
BHW: I lived in that area for many years, around the corner from Brooklyn Heights in the neighborhood called Downtown Brooklyn. I find that whole section of the city to be so physically beautiful, and the energy to be so interesting. It's full of weirdos, hipsters, old people, young professionals, city workers, and people of literally every race and religion. And it's definitely a landing pad for couples like the Wendts: smart, ambitious young couples, balancing creative energy, ambition, and little kids.
Q: You're the author of an Edgar-nominated children's novel and a New York Times best-selling adult novel. Is there a difference in how you approach writing each genre?
BHW: Obviously, the differences are legion in terms of tone, vocabulary, and content. But there are nuts-and-bolts things you want to do right, no matter who the audience is: you want a solid structure, a careful building of tension, and interesting characters that a reader will care about.
Q: Bedbugs seem to be everywhere! Do you have any personal experiences with bedbugs that informed the novel?
BHW: No, thank God. I know nobody wants them, but after doing all the reading and video-clip watching I did for this book, I really don't want them. Once, when I was seven, I had lice. Here's hoping that's as close as I'll ever get.
Q: When Susan went to set up a play date for her daughter, a neighbor commented that she saw an exterminator at her brownstone and could not risk exposing her family to bedbugs. How have bedbugs made dwellers pariah amongst their neighbors?
BHW: There are all sorts of household pests--rats, roaches, termites, etc.--but there seems to be something about bedbugs that deeply disturbs people in a particularly unsettling way. As a society, we are just extra freaked out by these pernicious little bloodsuckers. So nobody wants to be the person who gave someone else bedbugs, and that leads to a lot of fear, secret shame, and paranoia. All of which, I felt, were rich themes for a novel of supernatural terror.
Q: What are you working on now? Can you share a little about that with us?
BHW: Oh, dear. Good question. I am currently hard at work on a mystery novel, and outlining a new and extremely silly novel for young readers. Also, my daughter is pressuring me pretty hard to write something about princesses, so we'll see where that goes.

260 pages, with a 3.8-star rating from 100 reviews



Here's today's Daily Romance Deal, available for $1.99!

Fear For Me: A Novel of the Bayou Butcher, by Cynthia Eden.

She’s the obsession two men share: one wants her love, the other wants her life.
A shared passion for justice first brought Baton Rouge district attorney Lauren Chandler and US marshal Anthony Ross together—when each played their part in bringing down the infamous Bayou Butcher. The sparks flying between the two made it clear they weren’t just a legal dream team. Then desire had to make way for duty, and what they had was done. But it would never be over.
Five years later, it’s none other than the Butcher who gets things started again, when his shocking jailbreak reunites the lawyer and the lawman…and reignites their love. But this time, the pair is in danger of being permanently parted—by a killer with revenge on his mind, and Lauren on the top of his list. As a new wave of terror sweeps through the streets and swamps of Baton Rouge, one man will pit his boundless passion against another’s relentless hate, for the life of the woman who obsesses them both.


356 pages, with a 4.3-star rating from 371 reviews



Here's today's Daily Non-Fiction Deal, available for $2.99!

The Granny Square Book, by Margaret Hubert.


Granny squares are to crochet what pieced squares are to quilting. They originated with pioneer women using up precious scraps of yarn to make blankets for their families, and over the years, many recognized, named patterns have been handed down from one generation to the next. Beyond this treasury of 75 different granny square motifs, Margaret Hubert shows the evolution of the granny square, how it can be used and interpreted in different ways with different yarns, and how today's crocheter can design her own projects using the granny squares of her choice with the yarn choices of today. Just as Margaret learned from her grandmother and mother and then passed the skill down to her daughter and granddaughter, each generation finds new uses and artistic ways to interpret granny squares.

178 pages, with a 4.8-star rating from 160 reviews



Here's today's Daily Science Fiction/Fantasy Deal, available for $1.99!

MetaGame, by Sam Landstrom.

Speculative science fiction at its finest, MetaGame by Sam Landstrom is a ‘future gamers’ field guide and a philosophical cyberpunk adventure. In this original and disturbingly irreverent prospective world, gaming is more than a diversion—and gamers are, literally, in it for life. The OverSoul, an enigmatic, unifying force, offers winners points that add up to currency. Reigning champs are given the gift of immortality—while losers are condemned to aging and death. D_Light is one of the best players in his Family and will do anything to win, even if it means committing murder. When he’s invited to a MetaGame—an exclusive, high-stakes competition—he jumps at the chance. But after the first quest, D_Light’s overly ambitious ways brand him a renegade. With a warped sense of freewill that is needed to prevail, D_Light must either kill someone he’s grown to love—or lose everything.

Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Sam Landstrom

Question: MetaGame takes place in a futuristic world where biotech, nanotech, gaming, and "religion" merge to blur the lines between fantasy and reality. How did you dream up the story line?
Sam Landstrom: Funny you should say "dream," because that’s literally how it started. One night I had a vivid dream in which I was a devil in a ghetto apartment complex and was being hunted by the police. The whole idea took off from there. Gradually, I built a world around that single scene. For months, I fleshed out the world in a private blog with over 60 posts with titles like "Fashion," "Economics," "Religion," "Lingo," "Work," etc. I continually worked to hook these together logically, keeping in mind that one aspect of this futuristic society would influence the others. Once I felt I had a reasonable world, I hung a plot outline on it (including my dream scene). As I wrote the book, the world continued to evolve; in fact, the present book has only a slight resemblance to those early blog posts I created two years ago.
Question: You’ve previously worked in a lab programming robots to help sequence the human genome. Did this experience and background knowledge play a role in the story?
Sam Landstrom: At a high level, yes. Back in the lab, before I got interested in software, I wanted to be a genetic engineer. I felt then, as I do now, that biotechnology will eventually become ubiquitous in our lives and so I wanted to help design that future. At the same time, I wondered what exactly that future would look like. To me, being able to engineer the living is an incredibly powerful technology that can do wonderful things for humanity, but, at the same time, elicits in me a primal dread... just the sort of stew I like for fiction! Obviously, I’m not the only one with such an outlook, since biotech is a sci-fi staple.
I don’t include lab techniques or techs from that job because they would be far obsolete in the future. Heck, they’re completely obsolete now, and it’s only been 10 years! Given this, the technology I wrote about is a wild extrapolation, an entertaining guess, really. About all I tried to convey in the book from my time at the lab, in a literal sense, was the genuine passion and intelligence I observed in those who work in this field.
Question: What research did you do while writing MetaGame?
Sam Landstrom: Most of the research I did was related to confirming that the future technologies presented in the book are even theoretically possible and how they might be implemented. For example, how can a machine read and write to a person’s mind? With difficulty, as it turns out! Luckily for my readers, I only used this research to color my descriptions and confine the scope of these future technologies, not to provide in-depth specifications. Thanks to this balance, I think MetaGame gets to stay in the hard sci-fi category while remaining, first and foremost, an entertaining book.
Question: What authors or books have influenced your writing?
Sam Landstrom: Lucky for me, the public school system forced me to read 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451. These books were more about sociology and philosophy than technology, and they taught me that sci-fi did not necessarily require aliens or spaceships.
In addition to these stand-alone books, I really enjoyed the Dune series by Frank Herbert because he built up a fully realized universe that included components of religion, politics, economics, and even ecology. Dune had a big influence on MetaGame.
I have heard from several readers that MetaGame shares elements with Neal Stephenson’s work. This might not be a coincidence since I read The Diamond Age and Snow Crash before writing MetaGame. Good stuff.
Question: MetaGame fits solidly in the sci-fi/cyberpunk genre, but also weaves in philosophy and thriller writing. Have you considered trying your hand at other genres in the future?
Sam Landstrom: Yes, in fact I’m writing a fantasy novel now. Magic, monsters, infinite dimensions, a high school kegger.. You get the idea--not hard sci-fi, but entertaining and, hopefully, a bit thought provoking.
Question: Have you always wanted to write? What other careers have you pursued?
Sam Landstrom: I’ve wanted to write off and on over the years. When I was really young (like 8-9 years old) I pumped out books; however, these quick reads emphasized pictures over writing. The art sported a lot of guns blazing, swords swinging, blood spraying, heads flying through the air, etc. I went to a hippie school that wasn’t big into formal education. I remember my older cousin reading one of my books, after which he told me, "You need to start a sentence with a capital letter and end with a period." First of all, I didn’t know what he was talking about and second, who cares? I didn’t understand why he wasn’t praising me for the awesome action scenes. I mean, you just didn’t see that kind of stuff in books I found in the library, much less at school! I like to think my writing has improved since those days, although my grammar could still use some work. Thank God for good editors.
As an adult, I’ve had many different career interests I considered pursuing, including underwater archaeology and neurology. When I started college, I actually went in with the intention of becoming a doctor, but quickly discovered I was more into the science of medicine than the actual application of it, hence the degree in molecular biology. Aside from working in software (my current career) and in biotech, I spent a lot of time on the water as a deck hand, first on a passenger ferry, and then on a small cruise ship in Alaska. I was really considering a life at sea. However, it turns out I was ill suited to the regimen of a sailor’s job. Captains were not impressed with what I thought were creative solutions to problems, nor with me setting my own priorities.
Question: What's next for you?
Sam Landstrom: I’m sort of writing three books at once--the fantasy novel I mentioned earlier, as well as a prequel and sequel to MetaGame. I’ve made the most progress on the fantasy, so that’s what I’ll likely finish first. On the side, I also started developing a smart-phone application that is a virtual boyfriend for young women. I hope to make him handsome and charming, even as he speaks in a computer-generated Stephen Hawking voice. I’ve heard you can get a long way with flattery, so I’m hoping a phone can successfully use the same strategy. I’m not sure when I’ll finish that, if ever. By the way, I’d make a virtual girlfriend too, but giving men what they want through a phone (or any media) is too easy.


424 pages, with a 4.2-star rating from 236 reviews



Here's today's Daily Youth Deal, available for $1.99!

Scorched, by Mari Mancusi.

Save the Dragon. Destroy the World.
Trinity Foxx is used to her grandfather's crazy stories, so she doesn't believe the latest treasure he brought home to their failing West Texas museum is a real dragon's egg. Not until Connor Jacks, a dragon hunter from the future, tells Trinity that the world is about to be wiped out by a fiery dragon war—unless they find a way to stop it.
Save the Dragon. Save the World
But Connor's not the only one after the egg. His twin brother Caleb believes dragons have the power to save mankind and must be protected. Caleb has seen too many dragons destroyed in the war-scorched future—he'll do whatever it takes to save this one.
With a host of enemies hot on her heels, Trinity must decide who to believe. Connor the brave solider? Caleb the cocky rebel? Or the baby dragon that's starting to whisper to her...saying they are destined? The fate of the world may depend on her choice.
"Tense and action-packed. It's a brave new world, and I reveled in every page."—Sophie Jordan, New York Times bestselling author of Firelight
"A smoking triptych of time traveling, dubious double-crossing and enough dragons to sate the hungriest of gamers and fantasy fiends."—Kirkus

353 pages, with a 4.2-star rating from 69 reviews



Happy Reading!

Betsy

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Kindle Daily Deals: Women's fiction, romance, a memoir, fantasy and crafts!

Today's Daily Deals include women's fiction, romance, a memoir of Tokyo, fantasy and a crafts book for kids.

Here's today's Kindle Daily Deal, available for $1.99!

The Best of Us: A Novel, by Sarah Pekkanen.

An all-expense-paid week at a luxury villa in Jamaica—it’s the invitation of a lifetime for a group of old college friends. All four women are desperate not just for a reunion, but for an escape: Tina is drowning under the demands of mothering four young children. Allie is shattered by the news that a genetic illness runs in her family. Savannah is carrying the secret of her husband’s infidelity. And, finally, there’s Pauline, who spares no expense to throw her wealthy husband an unforgettable thirty-fifth birthday celebration, hoping it will gloss over the cracks already splitting apart their new marriage.

Languid hours on a private beach, gourmet dinners, and late nights of drinking kick off an idyllic week for the women and their husbands. But as a powerful hurricane bears down on the island, turmoil swirls inside the villa, forcing each of the women to reevaluate everything she knows about her friends—and herself.

Guest Review of “Best of Us” By Jennifer Weiner

Jennifer Weiner
Old college friends, reuniting to celebrate a birthday of the geeky guy down the hall who’s now a billionaire. A gorgeous villa in a tropical paradise. A weekend getaway where the private jet whisks you off to the private beach, and a private chef prepares gourmet feasts. Add a trunk-load of secrets, old resentments, clandestine kisses – not to mention enough booze to float a cruise ship – and you’ve got the ingredients for a beach read with humor and heart.

Fifteen years ago, Tina, Allie and Savannah were friends at the University of Virginia, and Dwight Glass, “thin and awkward as a praying mantis,” was their brainy, socially awkward friend.
Now Dwight’s made a fortune from the dot-com he founded, is married to pretty Pauline, who does volunteer work and has turned trying to get pregnant into a full-time job. Tina Antonelli is a stay-at-home mom, happily married, if a little overwhelmed by the mechanics of managing four children: “the enormous jumble of dirty laundry on the basement floor, the egg-encrusted dishes littering the kitchen sink, the new stain on the rug, which already resembled a Rorschach test.” Allie Reed, Tina’s best friend from college, a girl who read to the blind, “loaned out her class notes to anyone who asked…smiled at everyone she passed on the street,” and dragged Dwight into some semblance of a social life, is a social worker. She works part-time, enjoys her two daughters…and if she and her architect husband “had sex a bit less often these days, if all of their activities seemed to revolve around the girls – well, wasn’t that to be expected when you had young kids?”

Savannah McGrivey, a glamorous real-estate agent with a gym-toned body and a flashy wardrobe, has it all – except for a husband. After putting Gary through medical school, he’s dumped her for a nurse. “She’d been so proud when he could officially add the initials M.D. after his name, feeling as though it was their shared triumph. How ironic that an anesthesiologist had caused her the most pain she’d ever felt in her entire life.” When an Internet date goes disastrously bad, Savannah decides to join her friends and their spouses in Jamaica, without telling them that Gary’s jumped ship.

These women might have been cardboard-thin clichés – the burdened mother, the good girl, the cougar, the trophy wife. But with Pekkanen’s sharp eye for detail, and her generosity toward her flawed-but-trying cast of characters, the ladies of The Best of Us emerge as full-bodied and believable, with more dimensions than you’d expect. Pauline’s arc, in particular, is surprising and heartbreaking, as Pekkanen peels back the layers to show why social-climbing Pauline is so obsessed with security, financial and otherwise, and to show us the depths of Dwight’s love. The dialogue will ring true to any reader who’s ever wondered about the road not taken, or found herself in the breakdown lane of the road she did take. “Want to know the first thought that pops into my mind almost every morning after opening my eyes?” Tina asks. “I start anticipating being able to go to bed at night. I’m just so tired all the time.

You won’t always like the women – Tina can be a martyr, Savannah can be a handful, and Pauline’s high-handed tone with her staff will grate on anyone who’s ever toiled in the service sector – but watching them reveal their true selves during a long weekend in Paradise is a wonderful escape, and a chance to vacation vicariously. You may not spend your spring break flying in a private jet, or get a chance to vacation with your BFFs in a posh villa that sits on a bluff overlooking a white-sand beach, enjoying jaunts on helicopters or a chartered catamaran (or, in Savannah’s case, the attention of the catamaran’s hunky first mate)…but The Best of Us is surely the next best thing.

357 pages, with a 3.9-star rating from 164 reviews



Here's today's Daily Romance Deal, available for $0.99!

Send Me No Flowers, by Trish Jensen.

When she was known as an overweight kid from a “loony” family, he often rescued her from bullies. Now she’s come back home all grownup and gorgeous, and he’s the one who will need rescuing.

Sheriff Rob Townsend of Daredevil, South Carolina remembers Jenny Creighton as the girl mean kids called “Jumbo Jenny.” He was compelled to protect her on more than one occasion, a brand of heroic kindness Jenny never forgot. Jenny’s returned to the small town to claim an inheritance and open a flower shop. On the inside, however, she’s still the chubby girl who doesn’t want anyone to remember her humiliating past.

Rob has turned into a hunk with a painful history of his own—one that makes him the biggest heartbreaker south of the Mason-Dixon line. When he becomes her best customer—buying flowers as goodbye gifts for a growing line-up of ex-girlfriends—the women in Daredevil begin to run from Jenny and her kiss-goodbye bouquets. How can she build a business when all the single gals in town are scared to see her on their doorsteps? And what are the secrets behind her childhood hero’s love-’em-and-leave-’em lifestyle?
Trish Jensen is the bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. Visit her at www.TrishJensen.com

162 pages, with a 4.2-star rating from 24 reviews




Here's today's Daily Non-Fiction Deal, available for $1.99!

Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries, by Tim Anderson.

Everyone wants to escape their boring, stagnant lives full of inertia and regret. But so few people actually have the bravery to run – run away from everything and selflessly seek out personal fulfillment on the other side of the world where they don’t understand anything and won’t be expected to. The world is full of cowards. Tim Anderson was pushing thirty and working a string of dead-end jobs when he made the spontaneous decision to pack his bags and move to Japan. It was a gutsy move, especially for a tall, white, gay Southerner who didn’t speak a lick of Japanese. But his life desperately needed a shot of adrenaline, and what better way to get one than to leave behind his boyfriend, his cat, and his Siouxsie and the Banshees box set to move to “a tiny, overcrowded island heaving with clever, sensibly proportioned people who make him look fat”? In Tokyo, Tim became a “gaijin,” an outsider whose stumbling progression through Japanese culture is minutely chronicled in these sixteen hilarious stories. Despite the steep learning curve and the seemingly constant humiliation, the gaijin from North Carolina gradually begins to find his way. Whether playing drums on the fly in an otherwise all-Japanese noise band or attempting to keep his English classroom clean when it’s invaded by an older female student with a dirty mind, Tim comes to realize that living a meaningful life is about expecting the unexpected...right when he least expects it.

294 pages, with a 4.9-star rating from 174 reviews



Here's today's Daily Science Fiction/Fantasy Deal, available for $1.99!

The Sentinel Mage, by Emily Gee.

"Dark and compelling. Emily Gee is a storyteller to watch." -- Nalini Singh, New York Times best-selling author

In a distant corner of the Seven Kingdoms, an ancient curse festers and grows, consuming everything in its path. Only one man can break it: Harkeld of Osgaard, a prince with mage's blood in his veins. But Prince Harkeld has a bounty on his head--and assassins at his heels.

Her magic may be the only thing that can save a prince--and the Seven Kingdoms. In a distant corner of the Seven Kingdoms, an ancient curse festers and grows, consuming everything in its path. Only one man can break it: Harkeld of Osgaard, a prince with mage's blood in his veins. But Prince Harkeld has a bounty on his head--and assassins at his heels. Innis is a gifted shapeshifter. Now she must do the forbidden: become a man. She must stand at Prince Harkeld's side as his armsman, protecting and deceiving him. But the deserts of Masse are more dangerous than the assassins hunting the prince. The curse has woken deadly creatures, and the magic Prince Harkeld loathes may be the only thing standing between him and death.

"Her haunting prose reads like Hans Christian Andersen for twenty-first century adults." -- Mindy Klasky, author of The Glasswrights series

Books in the Cursed Kingdoms Trilogy:

1. The Sentinel Mage
2. The Fire Prince
3. The Blood Curse

512 pages, with a 3.8-star rating from 23 reviews



Here's today's Daily Youth Deal, available for $1.99!

Loom Magic Xtreme!: 25 Spectacular, Never-Before-Seen Designs for Rainbows of Fun, by John McCann.

From the authors of the instant bestseller Loom Magic! comes a second amazing project book with twenty-five totally new and extreme designs! Rainbow Looms are taking the world by storm, with devotees of all ages accessorizing their wrists, backpacks, and rooms with fun and creative projects.

These super imaginative, out-of-this-world projects will take your rubber band loom projects to the next level. Here are kid-tested step-by-step instructions and bright color photographs to show you how to make the coolest rubber band projects out there, including:

Twisty headband
Bouquet of flowers
Octopus
Decorated ponytail holder
Fashion jewelry stand
Glow-in-the-dark stars
Zipper decoration
Hockey stick
Bloodshot eyeballs
Black bat
And many more!

128 pages, with a 3.9-star rating from 25 reviews



Happy Reading!

Betsy

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Kindle Fire Free App of the Day: Clobbr and Bonus App:

Today's Free App of the Day is Clobbr
Originally $0.99


This is a three star game. I played through several levels and decided I didn't care. Maybe it was because I hadn't had any coffee yet. You have to line up arrows to create a path for the ball to move through and you have to uncover at least one, max of three cheeses as the ball moves. It devolves to just trial and error at fairly quickly, and you only have 20 seconds no matter how difficult the level. Five reviews are four stars or higher, the other five are three star. No one star reviews yet. It's meh enough that I have an alternate app today.

5 of 10 reviews are four stars and above.

So we have a bonus pick: StitchCounter.


I was browsing through various craft apps and found this one for the knitters, crocheters and maybe counted crossstitch and needlepointers? I don't do any of those, but I know we have members who do.

From the product page:

Stitch Counter Track your progress with this flexible 1-touch counter. Add multiple counters with custom colors and labels for those advanced projects. 15 of 18 reviews are four stars and above.


These apps are compatible with the original Fire and with my Fire HDXs. To tell if an app works for your Fire HD or other Android device registered to your Amazon account, click on the above link and look on the right side of the web page.  Amazon will tell you if it will work with your registered device.

Have fun!

Also check out the other digital deals from Amazon, including great deals on MP3s and videos: