It is once again that time of year. Resolutions have been made and the shine has worn off of the new year. Many of us are yet again fighting our own personal Battle of the Bulges. After a particularly festive holiday season, I looked down and realized that my feet were fighting for visibility beneath an expanding waistline. Exercise isn’t the issue as much as diet with me – chasing after newly mobile infants is GREAT exercise. Keeping track of what I eat, when and the impact on my overall plan and waistline is a lot easier since I started using  Lose It! by FitNow, Inc. The app is clean and thoughtfully designed. As a first-time user, I was set up with a free account on the tracking website and was entering my data in just a couple of minutes. Finding common foods in the catalog was easy, and defining my customized food and exercise information was simple and straightforward. The ability to share my progress with friends and family via Facebook and Twitter means my full support network kicks in when I skip a workout or cheat on my diet. Whether you are just starting a fitness regime or need to keep track of a highly detailed schedule, you can’t go wrong with Lose It!

"An author who can bring historical happenings so vitally back to life and made all the more impressive by being historically accurate in every respect."
- Times of London

Few historical periods were as drama-packed as the lead-up to World War II. In today’s Free Fridays selection, Winston's War: A Novel of Conspiracy, author Michael Dobbs recreates the rise of Winston Churchill as his country faced its biggest challenge ever.

While Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain clung to appeasement as the country’s only hope for peace, Churchill was among the brave dissenters who saw the true danger lurking in Hitler’s Germany. Dodd’s impeccably-researched novel follows Churchill’s brave campaign to change the minds and hearts of his countrymen, and face one of history’s greatest foes head on. The result is, “an intriguing tale of espionage and treason…this is a work to enthrall," (Daily Mail).

Once you’ve been entertained and informed by Winston’s War, sate your appetite for more historical fiction with Dodd’s other fascinating books: Churchill’s Hour, Churchill’s Triumph and Never Surrender.

Free Fridays Recommends

Each week, we ask our featured author to recommend a book or author that you may want to check out. Today, however, Michael's editor at Sourcebooks, Shana Drehs, Editorial Manager,is stepping in to offer one of her favorite historical novels.

I’m a big fan of Howard Fast’s The Immigrants. Growing up in the Midwest, my knowledge of American history on the west coast was somewhat lacking, to say the least. The Immigrants brings to life the vibrant and diverse mix of cultures that converged on San Francisco at the start of the 20^th century. Fast juxtaposes the freedom offered to self-made men in the quickly developing new frontier with the jarring discrimination and prejudice against Asian-American immigrants. I just love The Immigrants and if you’re looking for great historical fiction, Fast is second to none.

NOOK owners: go to shop and search for “Michael Dobbs” to download his evocative historical novels.

While everyone else is fixated on the meteorological prognostications of Punxsutawney Phil and his rodent brethren today, my memory strays to the unparalleled Bill Murray film Groundhog Day. The always-reliable Murray is at his cantankerously charming best playing a local weatherman who wakes up day after day, doomed to relive the day before. In his case, tomorrow never comes.

Last year, our blogger Paul Goat Allen introduced a fun list of Groundhog Day reads—books that you’ve read many times, and still can’t get enough of. A devoted science fiction and fantasy reader, Paul’s entries unsurprisingly included Dune and Treason, among others. This year, I’m adding my own addition, and I hope you’ll share some Groundhog Day books of your own.

My pick:

With such melancholy subject matter, it’s a bit surprising that I keep finding myself drawn to Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea . When a theater director retires to a seaside cottage, he quickly embroils himself in a real-life drama of Shakespearean proportions. As he single-mindedly pursues a married former flame, without regard for propriety or common sense, you both empathize and despise his single-minded mission. 

Please add your Groundhog Day reads to the comments below, and share on Twitter, using #groundhogdaybook as well! 

A free sample excerpt from The Sea, The Sea is available for download on the product page now.

NOOK owners: go to shop and search for “Iris Murdoch” to download her many award-winning novels.

Our newest Spotlight author—P.B. Ryan—will have historical mystery readers hitting the ‘buy’ button as soon as they read this post. The first book in her Nell Sweeney Mysteries series, Still Life With Murder, is now available for just $0.99.

Like the irresistible television series Downton Abbey, Still Life with Murder offers an insider’s look at a high society family and the domestic servants who work for them. Protagonist Nell Sweeny is a poor Irish immigrant who lands a coveted job as a governess for the wealthy Hewitt family in 1860s Boston. When one of the Hewitt sons—whom the family thought had been killed in the Civil War—turns up in prison, accused of murder, Nell quickly realizes that money and status can’t insulate you from life’s troubles. Now Nell’s distraught employer implores her to use her connections to the Boston underworld to help prove her son’s innocent, before the young man is marched to the gallows. Nell’s resourcefulness and plucky resolve make for an irresistible mystery with wonderful historical detail.

Once you’ve devoured Ryan’s charming first book, you’ll be ready to move right on to the rest. Find out more about her five additional Nell Sweeney books, including the newest—A Bucket of Ashes—here.

A free sample excerpt from this book is available for download on the product page now!

NOOK owners: go to shop and search for “P.B. Ryan” to download her irresistible mysteries.

In addition to today’s New Release Tuesdays news, we’re also excited to announce the re-launch of our B&N Recommends program. Titles selected for the B&N Recommends program are the books our booksellers can’t stop talking about. Thought-provoking and uniquely engaging, B&N Recommends selections are chosen for sheer reading pleasure and their perfect fit as book club picks. Past B&N Recommends titles include The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls, and  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson among many other reader favorites.

The newest B&N Recommends title is one of our best yet—William Landay’s outstanding, genre-busting, page-turning, conversation-starting novel, Defending Jacob. Family loyalties go on trial in Landay’s gripping new novel, our first B&N Recommends selection for the new year. What would you do if your child was accused of murder?

You can learn more about Defending Jacob and explore the full list of past BN Recommends titles here.

A free sample excerpt from this book is available for download on the product page now!

NOOK owners: go to shop and search for “William Landay” to download the newest B&N Recommends selection.

Could it possibly be time for New Release Tuesdays again? 2012 is flying by! This week’s crop brings us a highly-anticipated novella for House of Night fanatics, a powerful story from bestselling novelist Kristin Hannah and a high-speed, internationally-bestselling techno thriller.

Fans of Kristin & PC Cast’s mega-bestselling House of Night series have been awaiting their latest novella, Lenobia's Vow, with barely-concealed glee. Travel back to Evreux, France, 1788, and learn the fascinating history behind House of Night protagonist Zoey’s favorite professor: the mysterious Lenobia.

In her bestselling novels Kristin Hannah has plumbed the depths of friendship, the loyalty of sisters, and the secrets mothers keep. Now, in her most emotionally powerful story yet, Home Front, she explores the intimate landscape of a troubled marriage with this provocative and timely portrait of a husband and wife, in love and at war. 

At the nexus of high finance and sophisticated computer programming, a terrifying future may be unfolding even now in Robert Harris’s The Fear Index.

 
Dr. Alex Hoffmann’s name is carefully guarded from the general public, but within the secretive inner circles of the ultra-rich he is a legend. He has developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that predicts movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy. His hedge fund, based in Geneva, makes billions. But one morning before dawn, a sinister intruder breaches the elaborate security of his lakeside mansion, and so begins a waking nightmare of paranoia and violence as Hoffmann attempts, with increasing desperation, to discover who is trying to destroy him.

For a full list of today’s new releases, visit the New Release Tuesdays page here.

Free sample excerpts from these books are available for download on their product pages now!

NOOK owners: go to shop and search by author name to download these highly-anticipated new releases.

Word games are one my favorite genres of mobile app. They are quick, satisfying and when done well stretch my brain in odd directions. This week, our friends at Concrete Software published a game that is fun, innovative and deceptively simple enough to steal entire afternoons of my time. Wordsplosion for the Barnes & Noble NOOK family of devices combines the strategy and thoughtfulness of hangman with the ticking clock and sense of urgency of the best action games. Guessing the words is simple enough until the game moves a little bit faster and the words get a little more challenging. Thankfully, skilled gameplay will let you earn letters that will help you through the tightest spots. This game is beautiful and expertly crafted – from the audio to the smooth controls and maddening word choices, it will keep you challenged for a few minutes or as long as you and your word recognition skills let you survive. Avoiding the explosion will take all the dedication, recall and vocabulary skills you can muster. For one of the single best mobile word games available today, grab Wordsplosion now! But you have to have a NOOK Color™ or NOOK Tablet™ - for now, this gem is only available as a NOOK App!

“Fischer provides readers with some laugh-out-loud moments and an interesting twist on zombie mythology.” – Kirkus Reviews

High School is hard enough for your average kid, but for newly-zombified Maddy Swift, the challenges are a little...stiffer. In today’s Free Fridays selection, Zombies Don't Cry, author Rusty Fischer offers a fun, fresh take on the popular zombie fiction trope.

Unlike the brainless (and brain-hungry) zombies of popular imagination, Maddy is a compassionate (but still brain-hungry) member of the living dead. In an interesting twist, Fischer’s zombies fall into two camps—good zombies like Maddy and her friends, and bad “Zerker” zombies. When Maddy finds that two of her classmates fall into the latter group, the usual challenges of teenage life fall by the wayside. Now she and her friends must try to get through school passing as ‘normal,’ while saving her unsuspecting classmates from the lurking Zerkers.

Rusty Fischer's next paranormal adventure, Vamplayers, is available for pre-order now.

Free Fridays Recommends

Each week, we ask our featured author to recommend a book or author that you may want to check out. Since authors are such passionate readers themselves, we thought you might like to find out what they love to read, too! Here’s what Rusty recommends:

Johnny Gruesome by Gregory Lamberson has a little bit of everything: humor, gore, a strong anti-hero you hate to love, an ode to the classic car horror flick Christine and straight up, 200% revenge served cold. In short, for a horror-loving child of the 80s like me, it was the perfect combination!

NOOK owners: go to shop and search for “Rusty Fischer” to download today's Free Fridays selection.

Author Bernard Cornwell is revered for his impeccably researched and richly detailed historical novels. His Warlord Trilogy of King Arthur books are now available for NOOK, offering Cornwell fans a chance to explore yet another beloved series. In today's guest blog post, Cornwell explains why the character of King Arthur - a popular and elusive historical figure - inspired him to write this epic series, of which he says, "I have to confess that of all the books I have written these three are my favourites.”

There have been stories about ‘King’ Arthur for fifteen hundred years. In the earliest stories, curiously, he is depicted as a villain, a would-be rapist and a thief, but over the years he changed into the model king, the creator of the Round Table and leader of its chivalrous company. Did he even exist? I am convinced he was the leader of the British forces that defeated the Saxon invaders at the battle of Mount Badon in the early 6th Century AD. A churchman called Gildas wrote about the battle not long after it was fought, but he never named the British leader, though he does say that the battle was the last time that the native Britons defeated the hated invaders and that, for a generation afterwards, the British enjoyed a respite from Saxon attacks.

We would now call those native Britons the Welsh. Arthur was no English hero, indeed he was probably one of the fiercest enemies the English ever faced. The English, of course, being the descendants of the Angles and Saxons who were conquering Britain. So why did this victory make Arthur famous (if indeed he was the man who won it)? I think the story of Arthur is the tale of a golden age.  In later years, as the British lost their land to the English, they remembered that last great hero who had defeated the Saxons, and in the tale’s retelling those lost days became ever more golden and ever more perfect. In time a hundred other stories would be attached to that tale. Merlin, Guinevere and Lancelot arrived, and the warlord Arthur was turned into a saintly hero for all time. In the three Arthurian books I tried to recreate the cruel times in which Arthur lived and to suggest just how a savage dark-ages warlord became a universal symbol of hope.

Free sample excerpts from these books are available for download on the product pages now!

NOOK owners: go to shop and search for “Bernard Cornwell” to download his fascinating historical novels.

Thanks to our Spotlight program, we recently introduced many new readers to the hilarious and talented Tim Dorsey—Florida Roadkill was a great entrée to Dorsey’s madcap Serge Storms series.

Now Dorsey is back with another one-of-a-kind Serge Storms adventure: Pineapple Grenade. The off-kilter vigilante Serge Storms has landed in Miami with a  new plan: become a spy. Sure, he’s not affiliated with any official organization, but Serge has never lacked in chutzpah, and when it comes to international intrigue, sometimes that’s all you need. As always, Dorsey includes a healthy helping of the absurd—from shark corpses in the middle of downtown Miami, to a mysterious mushroom cloud behind the airport—in this latest laugh-out-loud book from the “undisputed king of the comic crime novel” (Providence Journal).

A free sample excerpt from this book is available for download on the product page now!

NOOK owners: go to shop and search for “Tim Dorsey” to download his hilarious series.