Displaying articles for: March 2010
A couple of years back – before the film adaptation of The Lightning Thief ascended to the heights of Olympus – we asked Rick Riordan which of his own characters he would most like to be. He responded:
“I most relate to Chiron, the immortal trainer of heroes. And no, not just because Pierce Brosnan is taking that role in the movie. Like me, Chiron is first and foremost a teacher. His job is to train heroes, not to be the hero himself. I would be comfortable in that role. In my years in the classroom, I always enjoyed helping students discover their talents, and maybe find skills they didn't even know they had. Making someone who is a reluctant reader into a lover of books may not seem as exciting as teaching a demigod to fight hydras, but in my perspective, it's just as important!”
Rick’s incredible series, and the fact that they’re among our bestselling eBooks, are testament to his uncanny ability to motivate kids to read.
Can you believe this is the 25th book in Kellerman’s bestselling and psychologically thrilling Alex Delaware series?!? Kellerman, a trained psychologist himself, has been publishing books since 1985 and, year in and year out, his books just keep getting better!
When a woman is found dead and a DVD -- detailing her horrific kidnapping and torture at the possible hands of her fellow teachers – is discovered near her body, detective Milo Sturgis calls on Dr. Delaware; the only person who can possibly connect the chilling dots and solve what appears to be an unsolvable case.
Kellerman told us that the Coen brothers' Fargo “is the perfect movie -- mordant, fast-moving, richly characterized, well-structured.” An astute and apt description if there ever was one and, come to think of it, the perfect summation of Kellerman’s own body of work!
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Lionel Shriver is a master of treading a terrain that most authors fear to roam -- the delicate and easily broken family circle. With books like her award-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin, in which a mother struggles to make sense of her mass murdering son, or The Post-Birthday World, where a woman contemplates what effects a wayward kiss will have on her long standing relationship, Shriver introduces us to characters and situations that certainly make us uncomfortable, but she does it with such beautifully written prose (and wit!), that we eagerly turn the pages.
In her latest work, So Much for That, Shriver takes a long, hard look at the ever so timely subject of American health care. Shep Knacker (if there’s a greater name in modern fiction, please tell me!) wants to retire. He’s banked enough for him and his wife, Glynis, to live the lush life in a tropical Third World country, but Glynis has just been diagnosed with cancer. Stuck staying at home to facilitate Glynis’ treatments and hemorrhaging money due to his insufficient insurance coverage, Shep must decide on the promise of the future or a past he’s built his entire life around.
This week’s More In Store features an exclusive essay from Shriver -- an accomplished journalist in her own right -- on the current state of health care in America and the true price we are all paying for it.
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Pinter’s been called “a wizard at punching out page-turning action” and The Hunters doesn’t disappoint!
Download the novella now for free!
Jump head first into the world of Henry Parker; an ace newspaper reporter who's not only chasing down a lead on a breaking story, but drawing a bead on two desperate and extremely dangerous killers who are hunting the streets of New York City. Pinter’s protagonist is one of the most uniquely drawn characters to emerge on the thriller scene in years and The Hunters pits him up against a deadline he literally can't afford to miss!
This free download includes a note from Pinter as well an exclusive excerpt from his most recent book, The Darkness.
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The famed jeweler, Harry Winston was the last private owner of the Hope Diamond – a stone as renowned for its blue brilliance as it is for its purported curse. Winston dismissed the curse as pure invention and, in borrowing his name, Weisberger has proven that her third book is a certifiable charm!
Meet Adriana, Leigh, and Emmy; three successful NYC women on the brink of their transformative 30th birthdays. When Emmy (a serial monogamist, who has just been dumped -- for a personal trainer! -- by her long standing boyfriend) and Adriana (a gorgeous man-eater, who is beginning to doubt her wanton ways) vow to take on the other’s personality, sparkling scenes ensue! Leigh, a high powered editor with a perfect man, cheers her friends on as her seemingly ideal life unravels around her.
In a marketplace crowded with Sex in the City wannabes, Lauren Weisberger’s Chasing Harry Winston is a true diamond in the rough! Download it now for $3.12 -- a 60% savings!
Also available in eBook:
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The film adaptation of The Last Song doesn’t hit the big screen for another week, which gives you just enough time to read the book first! Download it now for $4.99 – a 66% savings!
Speaking of firsts; Nicholas Sparks actually wrote the screenplay – with Miley Cyrus in mind as the lead – before he finished the book.
Her parents’ ugly divorce has left Veronica “Ronnie” Miller insolent, rebellious, and in danger of forfeiting a bright future. Reluctantly pressured into spending the summer with her father in a small Southern beach community, Ronnie slowly comes to terms with her embittered feelings and begins to embrace the recuperative powers of love.
Sparks comments on his website that he feels The Last Song “will be a novel that readers will remember for a long time after the final page is turned” and if our customers’ reviews – which include words like “unforgettable” and “amazing” – are any indication, he’s absolutely right!
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Carl Hiaasen called Christopher Moore, “a very sick man, in the very best sense of that word” and it’s Moore’s words -- his sick sense of humor -- that just may have you laughing to death.
Bite Me, the third book in Moore’s campy vampire series, follows the macabre minion, Abby Normal, in her hilarious attempts in hunting down a fanged feline who is terrorizing San Francisco. Like its predecessors, Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck, Bite Me reads like a Stephenie Meyer book on five hits of Acid!
When we asked Chris to name a few of his favorite books, he gave a shout out to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy, saying that Adams’ book “was just outright, laugh-out-loud funny. Wildly so. It did something I hadn't seen done before successfully: it made science fiction funny by recognizing the conventions and turning them on their ears.”
If you’ve read Moore, you know that he has his own unique way of upending the conventional and if you haven’t read Moore, what on earth are you waiting for?
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Speaking of vino, nothing goes better with your favorite vintage than your favorite book and no one knows this better than Kevin Zraly -- world-renowned expert and the founder of the Windows on the World Wine School. This week, as part of our More In Store program, download Zraly’s exclusive essay on which wine pairs best with Joshua Ferris’ new novel, The Unnamed.
Ferris’ debut, Then We Came to the End, not only won our Discover Great New Writers Award, it was hailed as “a masterwork of pitch and tone” making him the ideal author to raise a toast to!
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Download – for free! -- the first book in the NY Times bestselling series that’s been hailed as a “demon-kicking extravaganza” with “one of urban fantasy’s most charming witches”
The heir apparent to Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison went for the jugular when she introduced Rachel Morgan, the sexy, supernatural bounty hunter with a price on her own head!
Harrison lists Anne McCaffrey as one of her favorite authors and cites Dragonsong as her “entry drug” into McCaffrey’s world. Well, if you’re going to pick up an addiction to Kim Harrison (and you should!), there’s no better bridge to full blown dependency than Dead Witch Walking.
Note: this free edition contains an excerpt from Harrison's latest book, Black Magic Sanction.
FREE DOWNLOAD NO LONGER AVAILABLE
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Jodi Picoult once told us that Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is among her favorite books because it set “the gold standard for unreliable narrators.”
Emily and Chris are star-crossed, teenage lovers who seem to have it all, but when Emily is found murdered and Chris is caught holding the smoking gun, a black hole of doubt and despair opens in their quiet New England town. Chris claims that Emily's death was a suicide pact gone awry, but is he to be believed?
Picoult is a master of mining the moral and psychological issues that splinter the modern American family and The Pact, a suburban Shakespearean tragedy, is one of her finest works.
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Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was one of the biggest hitting and bestselling books of last year. The brain-devouring, bonnet-crunching parody not only revolutionized the mashup genre, it turned the world of Jane Austen and all its gentrified sensibilities on its collective head.
So it’s not surprising that Grahame-Smith’s latest work, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is steadily scaling our bestseller list.
While we all remember the Gettysburg Address-giving Lincoln, did you know that the Great Emancipator also freed the heads of the undead by severing them from their bodies?
In a Morning Media Menu interview last week, Grahame-Smith talked about the amazing response he’s gotten to his books and how they’ve actually inspired people to pick up the original sources. “If they are done well,” he says, “almost respectfully -- if you're trying very hard to adhere to the themes and the style that you're mashing-up -- they do bring people into the tent."
Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” and Seth Grahame-Smith certainly adheres to that maxim with his unified vision of classics and caricature.
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Great news for John Grisham fans -- Random House has just released his full canon in the digital format!
Grisham wrote his first book, A Time to Kill, in 1988 and The Firm would follow, establishing his role as the king of the legal thrillers. Not one to rest on his laurels, Grisham has also written several well received novels -- Bleachers and A Painted House -- as well as An Innocent Man, a nonfiction account of small-town justice gone terribly awry. His latest book, Ford County, is a collection of short stories that brings the reader full circle back to the Mississippi locale where A Time to Kill took place.
In our exclusive interview with Grisham he told us, "I think where I am real good is putting a story together -- putting a plot together -- and being able to hook the reader fairly early on in an engaging story, and make the pages turn."
His legion of fans couldn't agree more!
Download the John Grisham catalog.
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Rebecca Skloot's flawless biography, which is sure to be one of the most talked about books of the year (and deservedly so!), tells the regenerative tale of a forgotten woman, who died young, had her cells unknowingly appropriated by science, and is now rightly "immortalized" by Skloot as being solely responsible for saving the lives of countless people.
The work week's just about over and what better way is there to spend your time off than with a sizzling read? How about spending it without spending a dime?
Taylor's given Dominic an offer that he simply can't resist; a week of sun, fun and unbridled passion with no strings attached. Well, there is one string; Taylor wants Dominic to father her child.
Will the trade winds blow their "procreation vacation" into a lasting love affair?
More Romantic Freebies:
Linda Goodnight's A Very Special Delivery
Elizabeth Rolls' His Lady Mistress
Linda Warren's Once a Cowboy
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Download the first book in the widely popular No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series for $1.99 -- a savings of 85%!
Perhaps you're one of the tens of thousands of people who tuned into Katie Couric's interview with bestselling author Kathryn Stockett or maybe you've read some of the glowing reviews of her bestselling novel, The Help -- The Washington Post called it "a page-turner that brings new resonance to the moral issues involved, [Stockett] spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide."
In our exclusive interview with Clive Cussler he told us "I started writing when my wife, Barbara, got a night job for the local police station as a clerk. At night after putting the kids to bed, I had hardly anything to do and no one to talk to. So out of solitude I decided to write a book."
That was in 1965 and, nearly half a century later, the techno-thriller master is still pumping them out!
The Silent Sea, the seventh volume in the Oregon Files series, is an action-packed, nautical yarn -- that only Cussler could spin -- and the "cliffhanger ending will leave fans panting for more." (Publisher's Weekly).
Other eBook Releases:
From now until April 7th, stop by your local Barnes & Noble, where you'll find some mind altering deals on all things Alice!
We're offering the beautiful, leatherbound keepsake edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Other Stories for 50% off the retail price of $19.98. Oh, and by other stories, we mean everything that Lewis Carroll ever published in book form!
If digital is your cup of tea, and you're a nook owner, download the Sterling Unabridged Classic Edition of Alice's Adventures -- for free!
Speaking of nook, we have an original essay from Melanie Benjamin, the author of Alice I have Been. Benjamin's novelization of the life and times of Carroll's muse, Alice Liddell, is being hailed as a "finely wrought portrait...that seamlessly blends fact with fiction."
Remember, these exclusive store offers are only available until April 7th, so run -- don't tumble -- down the rabbit hole to a B&N near you.
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In a recent book clubs chat with mega-selling author Laurell K. Hamilton, our SciFi & Paranormal expert, Paul Goat Allen, had the following to say to her:
"For almost the last two decades, reading science fiction and fantasy – and especially paranormal fantasy – has been my life. And during that time, I’ve seen a phenomenal transformation – revolution – in genre fiction. Across all genres – SF, fantasy, romance, mystery, horror, etc. – the relatively well-defined boundaries between genres have been steadily blurring into nonexistence. Today, in 2010, there are literally hundreds of new releases on the shelves that are impossible to categorize – they’re a blend, an amalgam, a fusion of genre elements. And I attribute this historic evolution, in large part, to YOU – and Anita Blake!"
We're currently offering, Guilty Pleasures, the first book in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series for $3.99 -- a 42% savings!
Download and read the book that Charlaine Harris, the creator of Sookie Stackhouse, says, "sets the tone for the whole bestselling line.... Laurell's trademark recklessness, imagination, and storytelling grip you by the scruff of the neck and never let you go."
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