New Nonfiction for the Kindle: Science (31 Dec 09)

"It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young." - Konrad Lorenz.

Scientists read PDFs, we're told, but those of us who read for pleasure like to dip into science nonfiction now and then to keep up with what's happening in world scientists are still uncovering. New on the Kindle popular science shelves:

Warped Passages, by Lisa Randall. PHYSICS/COSMOLOGY. HarperCollins. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (152 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Randall, a professor of physics at Harvard, offers a tour of current questions in particle physics, string theory, and cosmology, paying particular attention to the thesis that more physical dimensions exist than are usually acknowledged. Writing for a general audience, Randall is patient and kind: she encourages readers to skip around in the text, corrals mathematical equations in an appendix at the back, and starts off each chapter with an allegorical story, in a manner recalling the work of George Gamow." - The New Yorker.

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, by Chad Orzel. PHYSICS. Scribner. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When physics professor Chad Orzel went to the pound to adopt a dog, he never imagined Emmy. She wasn't just a friendly mutt who needed a home; she was a talking dog with an active interest in what her new owner did for a living and how it could work for her. Soon Emmy was trying to use the strange ideas of quantum mechanics for the really important things in her life: chasing critters, getting treats, and going for walks. She peppered Chad with questions: Could she use quantum tunneling to get through the neighbor's fence and chase bunnies? What about quantum teleportation to catch squirrels before they climb out of reach? Where are all the universes in which Chad drops steak on the floor? And what about the bunnies made of cheese that ought to be appearing out of nothing in the backyard? With great humor and clarity, Chad Orzel explains to Emmy, and to human readers, just what quantum mechanics is and how it works - and why, although you can't use it to catch squirrels or eat steak, it's still bizarre, amazing, and important to every dog and human." - Amazon.

Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande. MEDICINE. Metropolitan Books. Amazon customer rating: no reviews yet. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies - neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from homeland security to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds..." - Amazon.

Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King, by Brad Matsen. OCEANOGRAPHY. Pantheon. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...With the cooperation of many of Jacques Cousteau’s collaborators, friends, and family, Brad Matsen gives us the first full picture of this remarkable life. Here is Cousteau working for the French resistance during World War II (for which he received France’s Croix de Guerre); developing - and risking his life to test - the regulator that made scuba diving possible; running the world’s largest scuba equipment manufacturing firm; becoming a legendary catalyst of the worldwide environmental movement; starring in The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and in hundreds of documentaries; and publishing more than fifty books. And here is the widowed Cousteau marrying his longtime mistress - forty years his junior and the mother of two of his children - kindling a bitter family feud that continues to this day..." - from the hardcover edition.

Physics for Future Presidents, by Richard A Muller. PHYSICS. W. W. Norton. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (60 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Learn the science behind the headlines - the tools of terrorists, the dangers of nuclear power, and the reality of global warming. We live in complicated, dangerous times. They are also hyper-technical times. As citizens who will elect future presidents of the most powerful and influential country in the world, we need to know - truly understand, not just rely on television's talking heads - if Iran's nascent nuclear capability is a genuine threat to the West, if biochemical weapons are likely to be developed by terrorists, if there are viable alternatives to fossil fuels that should be nurtured and supported by the government, if nuclear power should be encouraged, and if global warming is actually happening. This book is written in everyday, nontechnical language on the science behind the concerns that our nation faces in the immediate future." - Amazon.


see more dog and puppy pictures

Kindle Genre Watch (29 Dec 09)

Genre fiction - as opposed to nonfiction, graphic novels and picture books - lends itself to enjoyable Kindle reading because when you pick up a book of fiction you don't necessarily expect it to be illustrated. Authors of mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, romance novels and westerns paint word pictures and their readers use their own imagination to picture the scene of the crime or the stare of a vampire or the track of an alien space craft hurtling towards earth.

Now you can spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the Kindle Storeso you don't have to. Recent genre fiction releases include:

FANTASY

The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks. Orbit. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
Includes (in reading order) The Way of Shadows, Shadow's Edge and Beyond the Shadows. See also the review of Way of Shadows at SFFWORLD.COM.
"For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art - and he is the city's most accomplished artist. For Azoth, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he's grown up in the slums, and learned to judge people quickly - and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint. But to be accepted, Azoth must turn his back on his old life and embrace a new identity and name. As Kylar Stern, he must learn to navigate the assassins' world of dangerous politics and strange magics - and cultivate a flair for death." - Amazon.

Hallowed Circle by Linda Robertson. Pocket. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"And you think beauty pageants are scary... Persephone Alcmedi has been persuaded to compete for the position of High Priestess of the Cleveland, Ohio coven - now that the former priestess Vivian Diamond has strangely gone missing. Unfortunately, there are a few small problems with the idea. Not only does Seph know rather more about Vivian's disappearance than the other witches realize, but the epic struggle she's just survived has left her with some highly unusual powers - ones that could be dangerous to reveal. Despite her reluctance, she agrees to participate, if only to prevent snooty Hunter Hopewell, an obnoxious but talented witch, from ending up in the winner's circle. Can Seph hide her secrets - including her connection to the master vampire-wizard Menessos - from the terrifyingly wise judges? Plus, there's her rock'n'roll werewolf boyfriend, Johnny, and some angry fairies to deal with..."- www.juno-books.com.

MYSTERIES/THRILLERS

Trial by Fire: A Novel of Suspense by J. A. Jance. Touchstone. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In the heat of the Arizona desert, a raging fire pushes temperatures to a deadly degree, and one woman is left to burn. Pulled naked and barely breathing from the fire, the victim has no idea who she is, let alone who would do this to her - or why. ... Sister Anselm has devoted her life to working as an advocate for unidentified patients. To her burn patient, she is a savior. But to this Jane Doe's would-be killer, Sister Anselm's efforts pose a serious threat. Ali Reynolds is on the scene as the new media relations consultant for the Yavapai County Police Department, keeping reporters at bay and circumventing questions about arson and a link to a domestic terrorist group called Earth Liberation Front. But her job quickly becomes much more. As Ali struggles to help Sister Anselm uncover the helpless woman's identity, they realize that by locating the missing relatives they may be exposing the victim once more to a remorseless killer..." - books.simonandschuster.com.

Under the Dome by Stephen King. Scribner. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. Reading tips: You might want to print out the color map of Chester's Mill from the Amazon web site and bookmark the list of characters in the front of the Kindle edition.
"In 2002 Stephen King announced that he'd given up writing. Yes, and the Queen of England said she'd had it with servants and fancy carriages and was off to do volunteer work in Somalia... You can't write 2,000 words a day for more than three decades and suddenly stop. Because, as King knows perfectly well, you don't give up writing; writing gives up you, but only when it's good and done with you. And writing isn't done with King, not by a long shot. Here we are, several years after this putative abdication, with a novel that comes thumping in at more than 1,000 pages...." - Graham Joyce for washingtonpost.com.
"On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as 'the dome' comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when - or if - it will go away." - Amazon.

Sookie Stackhouse "Boxed" Set by Charlaine Harris. Ace. Kindle edition $28.80. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
You've seen the series (HBO's True Blood) now read the books it's based on. This is an omnibus edition of the first eight books in The Southern Vampire series, now popularly known as the Sookie Stackhouse series after the main character, plucky Louisiana cocktail waitress and telepath Sookie Stackhouse. The 9th book in the series - Dead and Gone - is available separately. Dead in the Family, the 10th book in the series, is slated for publication in May of 2010.

ROMANCE

Secrets of the Tudor Court: Between Two Queens by Kate Emerson. Pocket. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Pretty, flirtatious, and ambitious. Nan Bassett hopes that an appointment at the court of King Henry VIII will bring her a grand marriage. But soon after she becomes a maid of honor to Queen Jane, the queen dies in childbirth. As the court plunges into mourning, Nan sets her sights on the greatest match in the land...for the king has noticed her. After all, it wouldn't be the first time King Henry has chosen to wed a maid of honor. And in newly Protestant England, where plots to restore the old religion abound, Nan may be the only one who can reassure a suspicious king of her family's loyalty... Based on the life of the real Anne Bassett and her family, and drawing extensively from letters and diaries of the time, Between Two Queens is an enthralling picture of the dangers and delights of England's most passionate era.

At the Duke's Pleasure by Tracy Anne Warren. HarperCollins. Kindle edition $5.59. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"All the Byrons are just as 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know' as their famous non-relation ... but now the time has come for the eldest son to marry ... Edward Byron, Duke of Clybourne, has everything a man in Society needs - except a wife. Duty requires he wed, so he decides that a long-standing arranged marriage will do nicely. He knows his bride is beautiful, biddable, and bright enough to run his household and nursery. He expects his betrothed, Lady Claire Marsden, will be thrilled with his decision - unfortunately, she's not! Claire has longed for Edward since she was sixteen, but how can he expect her to agree to his proposal when he barely knows her and doesn't love her? Nothing will convince her to accept a loveless marriage. And so she begins a battle of outrageous resistance, forcing Edward to learn that he must lose his heart in order to win his bride." - Amazon.

The Crossroads Cafe by Deborah Smith. BelleBooks. Kindle edition $0.00. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Cathy Deen is Hollywood's 'it girl' until a paparazzi car chase ends in a car fire that horrifically scars Cathy, ending her glamorous life. News of the accident soon reaches her hometown in the mountains of North Carolina, where Cathy's cousin, Crossroads Café proprietress Delta Whittlespoon, sees the news on CNN and resolves to get in touch with Cathy. She enlists the help of Thomas Mitternich, a new addition to the Crossroads community who appeared in town four years ago to drink himself through the grief of losing his wife and son in 9/11..." - Publishers Weekly.

Shades of Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novel by Lara Adrian. Dell. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Something inhuman is stalking the frigid Alaskan wilds, leaving unspeakable carnage in its wake. For bush pilot Alexandra Maguire, the killings stir memories of a horrific event she witnessed as a child and evoke in her the inexplicable sense of otherness she has long felt within herself but never fully understood ... until a darkly seductive stranger with secrets of his own enters her world. Sent from Boston on a mission to investigate the savage attacks and stop the slaughter, vampire warrior Kade has his own reasons for returning to the frigid, forbidding place of his birth. Haunted by a secret shame, Kade soon realizes the stunning truth of the threat he faces - a threat that will jeopardize the fragile bond he has formed with the courageous, determined young woman who arouses his deepest passions and most primal hungers..." - from the paperback edition.

Forbidden Falls by Robyn Carr. Mira. Kindle edition $5.76. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Virgin River is abuzz with the news that a stranger bought the town's abandoned church on eBay. The buyer, a young widowed reverend, is a little like the building itself: in need of some loving care. Noah Kincaid arrives ready to roll up his sleeves and revitalize his new purchase, but he's going to need some help. An ad in the local paper brings an improbable candidate his way. 'Pastor's assistant' is not a phrase that springs to mind when Noah meets brassy, beautiful Alicia Baldwin. With her colorful clothes and even more colorful past, Alicia needs a respectable job so she can regain custody of her children. Noah can't help but admire her spunk and determination, and she may just be the breath of fresh air he needs..." - Amazon.

SCIENCE FICTION

Starfist: Double Jeopardy by David Sherman and Dan Cragg. Del Rey. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"The Confederation has finally disclosed the existence of Skinks, fierce aliens bent on wiping out humankind, and announced its plan to find and destroy their home world. While the rest of the universe grapples with the news, the Skink-savvy Marines of the Confederation's Thirty-fourth Fleet Initial Strike Team (FIST) have their own take on the situation. Though they're no longer in danger of being exiled to a ghastly netherworld for spilling the beans about the deadly aliens, the men still can't transfer out of the unit where they've been confined since they first laid eyes on the Skinks. The reason is obvious: Who else but the legendary Thirty-fourth FIST has the skills and experience to spearhead the invasion of the Skinks' home world?" -www.randomhouse.com/delrey/.

Hidden Empire by Orson Scott Card. Book 2 in the Empire Series, following Empire. Tor. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...Averell Torrent has become President of the United States, with enormous political and popular support and, if people only realized it, a tight grip on the reins of both political parties. He has launched America into a get-tough, this-world-is-our-empire foreign policy stance. But Captain Bartholomew Coleman, known as Cole to his friends and enemies alike, sees the danger Torrent poses to American democracy and the potential disasters involved in his foreign military adventures. Cole quickly runs afoul of Torrent; on the run, he and a few friends and allies seek proof he of how Torrent orchestrated the political takeover that included assassinating a President and nearly starting a civil war." - Publisher.

The Ultimate Science Fiction Collection: Volume 1 to 3 (80+ Books). Douglas Editions. Kindle edition $1.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Thousands of pages and dozens of books/stories make up this large Kindle collection with active table of contents. Authors Include: John W. Campbell, Tom Godwin, Andre Alice Norton, H. Beam Piper, Mack Reynolds, E.E. Smith, Mary Shelley, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs

WESTERNS

The Lost Band by Don Coldsmith. Book 26 in the Spanish Bit series - a series of 29 novels about the Native Americans of the Great Plains before the coming of Europeans. Bantam. Kindle edition $6.00. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"For the Forest Band of the People, summer is a peaceful time of hunting and gathering. But when a band of Shaved-heads brutally attack, the People's women and children are carried off into slavery. Most accept their fate, but one of the captives, the courageous widow White Moon, vows to keep the traditions of the band alive until the day the survivors can be reunited with the People. Her dream will inspire many of her tribe as they struggle to preserve their culture: a young hunter and his loyal wife, a troubled warrior on a vision quest, an aged storyteller, a wily trader - until at last the special child is born who is destined to lead the Forest Band back to its rightful place in the Great Council of the People." - Amazon.

Sidewinder by Jory Sherman. Berkley. Kindle edition $4.79. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Bitten by a rattlesnake, Brad Storm was saved by a Hopi medicine man who nicknamed him Sidewinder - and like his namesake, he strikes hard and fast, leaving dead outlaws in his wake." - Amazon.

Rifle Pass by Max Brand. Leisure. Kindle edition $4.79. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"An aging sheriff has to face a wayward son who's taken to the outlaw trail."


see more dog and puppy pictures

The Kindle Reads Entertainment Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2009 (Nonfiction)

In a year-end double issue Entertainment Weekly lists its picks for the ten best fiction and ten best nonfiction books of 2009. Seven of the ten nonfiction titles are available in Kindle editions. Nonfiction picks include:


Lit: A Memoir, by Mary Karr. HarperCollins. EW's slant: "...fascinating autobiography." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (60 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood. Cherry, her account of her adolescence, 'continued to set the literary standard for making the personal universal' (Entertainment Weekly). Now Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness-and to her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in 'The Mental Marriott,' with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, 'Give me chastity, Lord-but not yet!' has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity." - Amazon.

Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey. Knopf. EW's slant: "...addictively readable." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (22 reviews). Kindle edition $19.25. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Cheever’s was a soul in conflict: he was a proud Yankee who flaunted his lineage while deploring the provincialism of his Quincy, Massachusetts, family circle; a high-school dropout who published his first story at eighteen; a pioneer of suburban realist fiction who continually pushed the boundaries of realism; a dire alcoholic who recovered to write the great novel Falconer; a secret bisexual who struggled with his longings and his fierce homophobia in a revolving door of self-loathing and hedonism. We see a man who concealed his anxieties behind the mask of a genial Westchester squire - a paterfamilias in Brooks Brothers clothes whose world was peopled by legendary writers and beautiful women (Malcolm Cowley, Saul Bellow, William Maxwell, Hope Lange, and John Updike, among them); whose groundbreaking work landed him on the covers of Time and Newsweek; a man whose demons and desperation were never quite vanquished by the joy he found in his work. ...a luminous biography, a revelation of a writer of timeless fiction and of the man behind the page." - from the hardcover edition.

Columbine, by Dave Cullen. Twelve. EW's slant: "...from the very first searing page, I found myself unable to put it down." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (208 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In this remarkable account of the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School shooting, journalist Cullen not only dispels several of the prevailing myths about the event but tackles the hardest question of all: why did it happen? Drawing on extensive interviews, police reports and his own reporting, Cullen meticulously pieces together what happened when 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 13 people before turning their guns on themselves." - Publishers Weekly.

The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks, by Robin Romm. Scribner. EW's slant: "...Romm's sheer firepower sets her apart." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (42 reviews). Kindle edition $8.42. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Robin Romm is no stranger to documenting loss, as her two collections of short fiction attest. Although she didn't set out to document the last weeks of her mother's life for publication, The Mercy Papers distills the emotion of those earlier stories of loss into one highly personal episode. Romm is an adept guide who doesn't hesitate to expose the raw nerve. Her memoir treads a fine line - there is an intense intimacy that can leave the outsider overwhelmed and a bit cold, but there is also a powerful, empowering familiarity to readers who have experienced similar pain and loss." - Bookmarks Magazine.

Open: An Autobiography, by Andre Agassi. Knopf. EW's slant: "...surprisingly candid memoir." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (176 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...Although dozens of champions have chattered away to ghostwriters, their memoirs have generally remained silent about the game's seamy realities... So it's both astonishing and a pleasure to report that Andre Agassi ... has produced an honest, substantive, insightful autobiography. True to the genre of jock hagiography, it has its share of stock footage - total recall of famous matches, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and an upbeat ending. But the bulk of this extraordinary book vividly recounts a lost childhood, a Dickensian adolescence and a chaotic struggle in adulthood to establish an identity that doesn't depend on alcohol, drugs or the machinations of PR." - Michael Mewshaw for The Washington Post.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann. Doubleday. EW's slant: "...meticulously retraces the path of the failed expedition...as he attempts to solve the mystery of Fawcett's fate." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (224 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In 1925, renowned British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a much publicized search to find the city of Z, site of an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed. Fawcett, along with his grown son Jack, never returned, but that didn't stop countless others, including actors, college professors and well-funded explorers from venturing into the jungle to find Fawcett or the city. Among the wannabe explorers is Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker, who has bad eyes and a worse sense of direction..." - Publishers Weekly.

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America, by Timothy Egan. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. EW's slant: "Historical journalism at its very best." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 (53 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men - college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps - to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen..." - Amazon.

Not yet available for Kindle readers: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, A New Literary History of America, and R. Crumb's graphical depiction of The Book of Genesis.


moar funny pictures

The Kindle Reads Entertainment Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2009 (Fiction)

In their year-end double issue Entertainment Weekly lists its picks for the ten best fiction and ten best nonfiction book of 2009. Nine of the ten are available in Kindle editions, the lone holdout being the graphic novel Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli.
Fiction picks include:

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. Putnam. EW's slant: "book clubs...have swooned over this bighearted story..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (1,290 reviews). Kindle edition $8.55. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk." - Amazon.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin. Norton. EW's slant: "haunting collection." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (79 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Because of Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Rohinton Mistry, to mention just a few of the most prominent authors, American readers have long been able to enjoy one terrific Indian novel after another. But Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is likely to be the first widely read book by a Pakistani writer. Mueenuddin spent his early childhood in Pakistan, then lived in the United States - he attended Dartmouth and Yale - and has since returned to his father's homeland, where he and his wife now manage a farm in Khanpur. These connected stories show us what life is like for both the rich and the desperately poor in Mueenuddin's country, and the result is a kind of miniaturized Pakistani human comedy." - Michael Dirda for The Washington Post.

This is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper. Dutton. EW's slant: "...magnificently funny family saga." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (109 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Judd Foxman is oscillating between a sea of self-pity and a 'snake pit of fury and resentment' in the aftermath of the explosion of his marriage, which ended 'the way these things do: with paramedics and cheesecake.' Foxman is jobless (after finding his wife in bed with his boss) and renting out the basement of a 'crappy house' when he is called home to sit shiva for his father - who, incidentally, was an atheist. This of course means seven days in his parent's house with his exquisitely dysfunctional family... Tropper is wickedly funny, a master of the cutting one-liner that makes you both cringe and crack up. But what elevates his novels and makes him a truly splendid writer is his ability to create fantastically flawed, real characters who stay with you long after the book is over." - Daphne Durham for Amazon.

Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. Random House. EW's slant: "...brings 1970s New York City to life on the page." Amazon customer rating:4 stars (96 reviews). Kindle edition $6.75. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"It's August of 1974, a summer 'hot and serious and full of death and betrayal,' and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives - a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later..." - Mari Malcolm for Amazon.

Blame, by Michelle Huneven. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. EW's slant: "delicately crafted study of guilt and redemption." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (48 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Patsy MacLemoore, a history professor in her late twenties with a brand-new Ph.D. from Berkeley and a wild streak, wakes up in jail - yet again - after another epic alcoholic blackout. 'Okay, what'd I do?' she asks her lawyer and jailers. 'I really don't remember.' She adds, jokingly: 'Did I kill someone?' In fact, two Jehovah's Witnesses, a mother and daughter, are dead, run over in Patsy's driveway. Patsy, who was driving with a revoked license, will spend the rest of her life in prison, getting sober, finding a new community (and a husband) in AA - trying to atone for this unpardonable act. Then, decades later, another unimaginable piece of information turns up..." - Amazon.

Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro. Knopf. EW's slant: Munro's story collections always dazzle." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers - the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three children from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fashion. Other stories uncover the 'deep-holes' in a marriage, the unsuspected cruelty of children, and how a boy’s disfigured face provides both the good things in his life and the bad...
With clarity and ease, Alice Munro once again renders complex, difficult events and emotions into stories that shed light on the unpredictable ways in which men and women accommodate and often transcend what happens in their lives." - Amazon.

Sing Them Home, by Stephanie Kallos. Atlantic Monthly Press. EW's slant: "fantastical story...muscular prose." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (70 reviews). Kindle edition $9.15. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...a moving portrait of three siblings who have lived in the shadow of unresolved grief since their mother’s disappearance when they were children. Everyone in Emlyn Springs knows the story of Hope Jones, the physician’s wife whose big dreams for their tiny town were lost along with her in the tornado of 1978. For Hope’s three young children, the stability of life with their preoccupied father, and with Viney, their mother’s spitfire best friend, is no match for Hope’s absence. Larken, the eldest, is now an art history professor who seeks in food an answer to a less tangible hunger; Gaelan, the son, is a telegenic weatherman who devotes his life to predicting the unpredictable; and the youngest, Bonnie, is a self-proclaimed archivist who combs roadsides for clues to her mother’s legacy... When they’re summoned home after their father’s death, each sibling is forced to revisit the childhood tragedy that has defined their lives." - Amazon.

A Monster's Notes, by Laurie Sheck. Knopf. EW's slant: "...an electrifying literary triumph." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $15.84. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"What if Mary Shelley had not invented Frankenstein’s monster but had met him when she was a girl of eight, sitting by her mother’s grave, and he came to her unbidden? What if their secret bond left her forever changed, obsessed with the strange being whom she had discovered at a time of need? What if he were still alive in the twenty-first century? This bold, genre-defying book brings us the 'monster' in his own words. He recalls how he was 'made' and how Victor Frankenstein abandoned him. He ponders the tragic tale of the Shelleys and the intertwining of his life with that of Mary (whose fictionalized letters salt the narrative, along with those of her nineteenth-century intimates) in this riveting mix of fact and poetic license." - Amazon.

Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon. Ballantine Books. EW's slant: "...finely honed novel about the dangers - and consequences - of reinventing yourself." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (95 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways... Longing to get on with his life, Miles Cheshire nevertheless can’t stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal... A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher... My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous... an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored." - Amazon.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Books They're Talking About: Kindle Books in the Media (22 Dec 09)

Media interviews are a popular way for authors to introduce new books they hope will catch the viewer's eye and open their pocketbooks. Here's a selection of forthcoming Kindle books by writers scheduled for interviews on TV and radio programs. Books are arranged in chronological order by the date of the scheduled interview.

ON NPR'S DIANE REHM SHOW (22 DEC 09):
America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story, by Bruce Feiler. HarperCollins. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The pilgrims quoted his story. Franklin and Jefferson proposed he appear on the U.S. seal. Washington and Lincoln were called his incarnations. The Statue of Liberty and Superman were molded in his image. Martin Luther King, Jr., invoked him the night before he died. Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama cited him as inspiration. For four hundred years, one figure inspired more Americans than any other. His name is Moses. In this groundbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler travels through touchstones in American history and traces the biblical prophet's influence from the Mayflower through today." - Amazon.

ON OPRAH (22 DEC 09):
Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin. HarperCollins. Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...In this eagerly anticipated memoir, Palin paints an intimate portrait of growing up in the wilds of Alaska; meeting her lifelong love; her decision to enter politics; the importance of faith and family; and the unique joys and trials of life as a high-profile working mother..." - Amazon.

ON ABC'S 20/20 (29 DEC 09):
The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis. Norton. Kindle edition $8.37. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. The film version, starring Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw in the leading roles, is now playing in theaters.
"The Blind Side tells the inspirational story of Michael Oher, a homeless black teen taken under the wing of the Touhys, a wealthy white Memphis family. Oher’s size and speed on the football field bring him accolades. But learning the game’s strategy and making it as a student take the help of his new family, coaches, and tutor." - books.wwnorton.com.

ON NBC'S TODAY SHOW (04 JAN 10):
Money 911: Your Most Pressing Money Questions Answered, Your Money Emergencies Solved, by Jean Chatzky. HarperCollins. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In this invaluable guidebook, financial expert Jean Chatzky provides answers to today's most pressing financial questions and concerns, including:How do I get out of debt? How do I avoid foreclosure? How do I set up a monthly budget? How can I improve my credit score? How do I get my health insurance to pay a claim? What should I do when I lose a parent? With Money 911, you can prepare for retirement, buy or sell a home, pick up the pieces of your personal finances, and get back on your feet - and stay there!" - Amazon.

ON OPRAH (08 JAN 10):
Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal, by Julie Metz. Hyperion. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Julie Metz's life changes forever on one ordinary January afternoon when her husband, Henry, collapses on the kitchen floor and dies in her arms. Suddenly, this mother of a six-year-old is the young widow in a bucolic small town. And this is only the beginning. Seven months after Henry's death, just when Julie thinks she is emerging from the worst of it, comes the rest of it: She discovers that what had appeared to be the reality of her marriage was but a half-truth. Henry had hidden another life from her. ...For Julie, the only thing to do was to get at the real truth - to strip away the veneer of 'perfection' that was her life and confront each of the women beneath the veneer." - Amazon.

ON NPR'S DIANE REHM SHOW (05 JAN 09):
China's Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a New Society, by John Naisbitt and Doris Naisbitt. HarperCollins. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A groundbreaking look at a new social-political model on the rise. John and Doris Naisbitt, longtime China observers, provide an in-depth study of the fundamental changes in China's social, political, and economic life, and their impact on the West. With extraordinary access, and using the same techniques behind John Naisbitt's international bestseller Megatrends, the Naisbitts have traveled the country, interviewing journalists, entrepreneurs, academics, politicians, artists, dissidents, and expatriates. With the help of twenty-eight staff members of the Naisbitt China Institute in Tianjin, they have monitored local newspapers in all of China's provinces to identify the evolving perspectives and deep forces underlying China's transformation. Their research reveals that China is not only undergoing fundamental changes but also creating an entirely new social and economic model..." - Amazon.

Kindle E-Books on the Cheap: A Weekly Selection (20 Dec 2009)

Once you've purchased an Amazon Kindle e-book reader, the wonderful world of public domain, Creative Commons and free e-book promotions opens up to you. This regular Kindle Reader feature points you to a few of the most interesting new free (or very cheap) e-books available for download from the web.

Free e-book selections for this week include classic mysteries by Dorothy Sayers and Rose Macaulay, a modern Southern Gothic novel, science fiction by Murray Leinster and P. Tylee and two travel narratives - one from a 14th century traveler said to have been the first European travel writer and the other a description of John Muir's travels in Alaska in the late 19th century by Samuel Hall Young, Muir's companion on many of his expeditions.

The Man with Copper Fingers, by Dorothy Sayers. MYSTERY. Download site: MobileRead. Format: PRC for Kindle. Price: Free.
"From the short story collection, Lord Peter Views the Body (1928). A short story featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and sinister goings-on in a sculptor’s studio." - Patricia for MobileRead.

Mystery at Geneva, by Rose Macaulay. MYSTERY. Download site: MobilRead. Format: PRC for Kindle. Price: Free.
"This is a mystery, set at the League of Nations in Geneva, at some point in the 1920s. Delegates vanish unexpectedly. What has become of the abducted diplomats? Henry, a journalist for the ‘British Bolshevist’ is determined to find out. There’s quite an unexpected twist towards the end." - Patricia for MobileRead.

Dirty Little Angels, by Chris Tusa. NOVEL. Download site: Feedbooks. Format: Mobipocket/Kindle. Price: Free. Please note that this book is also available in a $12.44 paperback edition on Amazon.
"Set in the slums of New Orleans, among clusters of crack houses and abandoned buildings, Dirty Little Angels is the story of sixteen year old Hailey Trosclair. When the Trosclair family suffers a string of financial hardships and a miscarriage, Hailey finds herself looking to God to save her family. When her prayers go unanswered, Hailey puts her faith in Moses Watkins, a failed preacher and ex-con. Fascinated by Moses's lopsided view of religion, Hailey, and her brother Cyrus, begin spending time down at an abandoned bank that Moses plans to convert into a drive-through church. Gradually, though, Moses's twisted religious beliefs become increasingly more violent, and Hailey and Cyrus soon find themselves trapped in a world of danger and fear from which there may be no escape." - Feedbooks.

Operation Terror, by Murray Leinster. SCIENCE FICTION. Download site: MobileRead. Format: PRC for Kindle. Price: Free.
"An unidentified space ship lands in a Colorado lake. Equipped with a paralyzing ray weapon, the creatures begin taking human prisoners. A loan land surveyor and a journalist are trapped inside the Army cordon, which is helpless against the mysterious enemy. Can they stop the aliens before it is too late?" - mtravellerh for MobileRead.

Freedom Incorporated, by P. Tylee. SCIENCE FICTION. Download site: MobileRead. Format: PRC for Kindle. Price: Free.
"Corporations control the world, portal technology allows instantaneous travel, and the ultimate in branded living has arrived: microchip implants for all. But the new era, while peaceful on the surface, comes with a staggering price – individual freedom – and not everyone is willing to pay. Jennifer Cameron is the leader of a secret activist cell and hopes to restore personal freedom by destroying the network of spy computers. Dan Sutherland can’t let that happen..."

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. TRAVEL NARRATIVE. Download site: Feedbooks. Format: Mobipocket/Kindle. Price: Free. Also available for free download from Amazon where you'll find some illuminating customer reviews underlining this book's historical importance.
"By the standards of the 14th century, the writing style of the man who called himself Sir John Mandeville is so informal as to be nearly chummy: 'He who wants to pass over the sea to Jerusalem, may go by many ways, both by sea and by land depending on the countries he comes from; many ways come to a single end. But do not think I shall tell of all the towns and cities and castles that men shall go by, for then I must make too long a tale of it.' Historians remain skeptical as to whether the author really did journey to the Holy Land and Egypt, or hire himself out as a soldier to the Great Khan of China. Whatever the case, it is indisputable that he is one of the first modern travel writers, as we have come to know the genre, and that his book was considered authoritative in matters geographical throughout Europe - consulted by Leonardo da Vinci and Christopher Columbus alike." - Feedbooks.
See also Giles Milton's introduction to Mandeville, The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, the World's Greatest Traveller.

Alaska Days with John Muir, by Samual Hall Young. TRAVEL NARRATIVE. Download site: Manybooks. Format: Kindle. Price: Free.
"In this fascinating account of John Muir's travels in Alaska from 1879 to 1880, we are brought into an intimate acquaintance with this great interpreter of Nature by one who was his companion on many expeditions." - Manybooks.

A Week of Entertainment: Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly 18 Dec 09

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the December 18th issue include:


Food Rules: An Eater's Manual, by Michael Pollan. Riverhead. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...omnivorous ombudsman, playing intermediary between us and our food, Pollan is a temperate voice located somewhere between Jonathan Safran Foer and Julia Child." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $8.80. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Michael Pollan, our nation's most trusted resource for food-related issues, offers this indispensible guide for anyone concerned about health and food. Simple, sensible, and easy to use, Food Rules. is a set of memorable rules for eating wisely, many drawn from a variety of ethnic or cultural traditions. Whether at the supermarket or an all-you-can-eat-buffet, this handy, pocket-size resource is the perfect guide for anyone who would like to become more mindful of the food we eat." - Amazon.

Too Much Money, by Dominick Dunne. Publisher. NOVEL. EW's slant: "Sadly, Dunne's writing isn't nearly as rich and elegant as his subjects." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $13.69. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"The last two years have been monstrously unpleasant for high-society journalist Gus Bailey. His propensity for gossip has finally gotten him into trouble - $11 million worth. His problems begin when he falls hook, line, and sinker for a fake story from an unreliable source and repeats it on a radio program. As a result of his flip comments, Gus becomes embroiled in a nasty slander suit brought by Kyle Cramden, the powerful congressman he accuses of being involved in the mysterious disappearance of a young woman, and he fears it could mean the end of him. The stress of the lawsuit makes it difficult for Gus to focus on the novel he has been contracted to write, which is based on the suspicious death of billionaire Konstantin Zacharias... Dominick Dunne revives the world he first introduced in his mega-bestselling novel People Like Us, and he brings readers up to date on favorite characters such as Ruby and Elias Renthal, Lil Altemus, and, of course, the beloved Gus Bailey." - Amazon.
$9.99 or less alternative: Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments, Dunne's reportage of high-profile crimes and trials of the rich and famous, including the trials of O. J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow, the Menendez brothers and the murderer of Dunne's own daughter.

Nanny Returns, by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus. Atria. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...The authors' breezy wit...carries an often cartoonish plot." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Yes, the Nanny returns! Is she as captivating as she was in The Nanny Diaries? Yes, she is - after a bit of a slow start. The authors devote some pages to getting the reader back into the world of Nan, who worked as a nanny to the überwealthy Mrs. X, a negligent mother to little Grayer and a miserable boss to Nan. Fast-forward ten years: Nan married her 'Harvard Hottie,' Ryan, and traveled the world with him. Now back in New York City, Nan crosses paths by chance with Grayer, 16, drunk, and in trouble. He's trying to take care of his younger brother, Stilton, with no help (and plenty of hindrance) from his mess of a mother. There's a vicious divorce, a possible life-threatening illness, and an abundance of simple neglect. Nan again is tossed into an emotional situation with Grayer's family. The 33-year-old Nan can be more than a nanny to the X boys. But should she?" - Beth Gibbs for Library Journal.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Kindle Genre Watch (16 Dec 09)

Genre fiction - as opposed to nonfiction, graphic novels and picture books - lends itself to enjoyable Kindle reading because when you pick up a book of fiction you don't necessarily expect it to be illustrated. Authors of mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, romance novels and westerns paint word pictures and their readers use their own imagination to picture the scene of the crime or the stare of a vampire or the track of an alien space craft hurtling towards earth.

Now you can spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the Kindle Storeso you don't have to. Recent genre fiction releases include:

FANTASY

Three Days to Dead by Kelly Meding. Dell. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"When Evangeline Stone wakes up naked and bruised on a cold slab at the morgue - in a stranger’s body, with no memory of who she is and how she got there - her troubles are only just beginning. Before that night she and the two other members of her Triad were the city’s star bounty hunters, mercilessly cleansing the city of the murderous creatures living in the shadows, from vampires to shape-shifters to trolls. Then something terrible happened that not only cost all three of them their lives but also convinced the city’s other Hunters that Evy was a traitor - and she can’t even remember what it was. Now she’s a fugitive..." - Amazon.

Midnight Girl by Will Shetterly. Self-published. Kindle edition $3.95. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. Please note that a free version (text or PDF only) of this book is available at Scribd.com.
"Your dad used to be the spooky-mysteries TV show host Professor Midnight. Your grandmother lives in the basement and only comes upstairs after dark. Your mom died when you were a baby, and nobody will tell you about her. Oh, and you have two birthdays, both on Halloween. And that's the part of your life that's normal. But with this birthday, everything is going to change."

The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan. Book three in Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Tor. Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
The Dragon Reborn - the leader long prophesied who will save the world, but in the saving destroy it; the savior who will run mad and kill all those dearest to him - is on the run from his destiny. Able to touch the One Power, but unable to control it, and with no one to teach him how - for no man has done it in three thousand years - Rand al'Thor knows only that he must face the Dark One.

Flesh Circus by Lilith Saintcrow. Book four of the Jill Kismet series that began with The Night Shift. Orbit. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The Cirque de Charnu has come. They will clean out the demons and the suicides, and move on. As long as they stay within the rules, Jill Kismet can't deny them entry. But she can watch - and if they step out of line, she'll send them packing. When Cirque performers start dying grotesquely, Kismet has to find out why, or the fragile truce won't hold and her entire city will become a carnival of horror. She also has to play the resident hellbreed power against the Cirque to keep them in line, and find out why ordinary people are needing exorcisms. And then there's the murdered voodoo practitioners, and the zombies." - Publisher.

De Bello Lemures, Or The Roman War Against the Zombies of Amorica by Lucius Artorius Castus. Historic Classics. Kindle edition $0.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A recovered Latin text tells the story of a struggle between Roman legionaries and the undead in 185 AD. Lucius Artorius Castus leads an expedition to Gaul to defeat a rebellion against the rule of the Emperor Commodus - and gets more than he bargained for when his enemies rise from the dead to fight again. The power of the zombie horde is amplified by the Babel of Ancient Rome's religions and superstitions, and the terror the undead bring in their wake foreshadows the incipient medieval darkness already creeping into the world at the end of Rome's Antonine age. Richly annotated, this mashup of survival horror and alternate history takes the reader on a bracing journey into one of ancient Rome's dark corners." - Amazon.

MYSTERIES/THRILLERS

U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton. Putnam. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"It's April, 1988, a month before Kinsey Millhone's thirty-eighth birthday, and she's alone in her office doing paperwork when a young man arrives unannounced. He has a preppy air about him and looks as if he'd be carded if he tried to buy booze, but Michael Sutton is twenty-seven, an unemployed college dropout. Twenty-one years earlier, a four-year-old girl disappeared. A recent reference to her kidnapping has triggered a flood of memories. Sutton now believes he stumbled on her lonely burial when he was six years old. He wants Kinsey's help in locating the child's remains and finding the men who killed her. It's a long shot but he's willing to pay cash up front, and Kinsey agrees to give him one day. As her investigation unfolds, she discovers Michael Sutton has an uneasy relationship with the truth..." - Amazon.

The Paris Vendetta by Steve Berry. Ballantine Books. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone isn't looking for trouble when it comes knocking at his Copenhagen bookshop. Actually, it breaks and enters in the form of an American Secret Service agent with a pair of assassins on his heels. Malone has his doubts about the anxious young man, but narrowly surviving a ferocious firefight convinces him to follow his unexpected new ally. Their first stop is the secluded estate of Malone's good friend, Henrik Thorvaldsen. The wily Danish tycoon has uncovered the insidious plans of the Paris Club, a cabal of multimillionaires bent on manipulating the global economy. Only by matching wits with a terrorist-for-hire, foiling a catastrophic attack, and plunging into a desperate hunt for Napoleon's legendary lost treasure can Malone hope to avert international financial anarchy... Starting in Denmark, moving to England, and ending up in the storied streets and cathedrals of Paris, Malone plays a breathless game of duplicity and death, all to claim a prize of untold value. But at what cost?" - Amazon.

Hollywood Moon by Joseph Wambaugh. Little, Brown and Company. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Joseph Wambaugh's best book yet. Hollywood Moon is full of hilarious anecdotes that ring absolutely true, and the 'through-story' about the Odd Couple computer thieves and the crazed stalker is especially strong. Most of all, I was deeply moved by the story of Dana Vaughn and Hollywood Nate. Re-encountering Nate and the surfer dudes and Compassionate Charley is like coming back to crazy but wonderful old friends. This book also made me eager to find a midget. And bowl with him." - Stephen King.

ROMANCE

Angels at Christmas by Debbie Macomber. Mira. Kindle edition $5.76. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Every Christmas, three lovable angels visit Earth. Once a year, Shirley, Goodness and Mercy are allowed to intervene (or, more accurately, interfere!) in human affairs. Despite their frequent misadventures and the chaos they often cause, things always seem to turn out right... This Christmas, join Those Christmas Angels as they respond to Anne Fletcher's prayer request. She wants her son, Roy, to meet a special woman - and the angels contrive to throw Julie Wilcott in his path (literally!)." - Amazon.

Fairy Tale Weddings by Debbie Macomber. Mira. Kindle edition $5.76. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Thorndike Prince - handsome, levelheaded, successful - is a high-ranking New York City executive. Cindy Territo is the janitor who cleans his office after hours. There's no reason they'd ever meet, no reason he'd even notice her - until, on a whim and a dare, Cindy crashes his company's Christmas ball. She dances with her Prince and then, like a proper Cinderella, flees at midnight, leaving her heart behind... Beautiful inside and out, New York socialite Judy Lovin values family over fortune and fame. So when her father's business collapses and his most powerful enemy offers to help - in exchange for Judy's company - she agrees to join John McFarland on his remote Caribbean island. It isn't long before she discovers that John's far from the beast he seems to be!" - Amazon.

High-Powered, Hot-Blooded by Susan Mallery. Silhouette. Kindle edition $3.40. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A powerful businessman, Duncan didn't like ultimatums, unless he was making them. But the board demanded his public image change. When he encountered sweet kindergarten teacher Annie McCoy, he knew she'd make him look like a perfect angel, though it would take some devilish manipulation. Once he had Annie playing his pretend mistress, Duncan needed to make her his real-life lover. Could a grouchy CEO cultivate the charm necessary to win the woman he'd almost destroyed?" - Amazon.

The Bargain Bride by Barbara Metzger. Signet. Kindle edition $5.59. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Viscount Kendall West Westmoreland and Persephone Penny Goldthwaite finally and reluctantly wed after a 13-year engagement engineered by Penny's family. When West is delayed while traveling, Penny must take up all the duties of a newly minted viscountess; protect West's careless wastrel brother from her own swindling stepbrother; fend off West's jealous and wealthy former lover and plan a grand ball even as she wonders whether her husband will return home in time to attend." - Publishers Weekly.

SCIENCE FICTION

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Bantam. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel... Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It's part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier. But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right - not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself." - paperback edition.

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. Orbit. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
Published originally in 1987, this was Banks' first science fiction novel. "The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks. Orbit. Kindle edition $9.35. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game...a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death." - Amazon.

WESTERNS

Longarm and the Arizona Assassin by Tabor Evans. (Longarm, 373) Jove. Kindle edition $4.79. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When a beautiful Indian woman drops into Deputy Marshal Custis Long's arms with a bullet hole in her head, he vows to find her murderer, no matter where he has to go - or who he has to shoot." - Amazon.

Texas Trackdown by Jon Sharpe. (The Trailsman, 338). Signet. Kindle edition $4.70. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Skye Fargo knows how the Comanche think, and how they fight on the warpath. They've taken a young girl from her family on the Texas frontier, and the Trailsman is going after her. But the deadly quarry he's chasing down has nothing on the deadly hunters who are chasing him." - Amazon.

Savagery of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone. Publisher. Kindle edition $3.83. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Santa Clara, Colorado, is 24 hours by train from the land where Smoke Jensen found peace and prosperity on his Sugarloaf Ranch. But somehow, Smoke can't stay away from Santa Clara - and from an evil cattle baron hiding a murderous past. For Smoke, it starts at a high-class auction for a pureblood Hereford bull. Smoke wins the bidding - and earns the hatred of Pogue Quentin, Santa Clara's leading citizen and a man living on bloodshed and lies. Then Smoke's friend Pearlie drifts to Santa Clara. And when Pearlie runs afoul of Quentin, all hell will break loose. Now Smoke Jensen is heading to Santa Clara to face a man who already wants him dead - but Pogue Quentin never met anything like the fire of a mountain man." - Amazon.

Texas Blood Feud by Dusty Richards. Pinnacle Books. Kindle edition $3.83. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The Byrnes family came to Texas and carved out a place on the land. Three generations who paid in blood and treasure. Children carried off by Comanche. A brother lost to war. Lives shattered. Chet Byrnes was trying to hold the ranch together through one more winter for one more cattle drive when he hanged three horse thieves this side of the Red River--and a blood feud erupted... A family wants revenge - no matter how just the hangings were. Author of over 85 novels, Dusty Richards is the only author to win two Spur awards in one year (2007), one for his novel The Horse Creek Incident and another for his short story Comanche Moon.

Books They're Talking About: Kindle Books in the Media (14 Dec 09)

Media interviews are a popular way for writers to introduce new books they hope will catch the viewer's eye and open their pocketbooks. Here's a selection of forthcoming Kindle books by authors scheduled for interviews on TV and radio programs. Books are arranged in chronological order by the date of the scheduled interview.

ON COMEDY CENTRAL'S COLBERT REPORT (14 DEC 09):

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. Little, Brown and Company. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. A happy neighbor has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Drs. Christakis and Fowler, which have repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. In Connected, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm - that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more...Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, is a professor at Harvard University with joint appointments in the Departments of Health Care Policy, Sociology, and Medicine, and in 2009 was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. James H. Fowler, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, in the Department of Political Science and The Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems, and was named one of the 'most inspiring scientists' by the San Diego Science Festival." - Amazon.

ON NBC'S TODAY SHOW (15 DEC 09):

Nanny Returns, by Emma Mclaughlin and Nicola Kraus. Atria. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Yes, the Nanny returns! Is she as captivating as she was in The Nanny Diaries? Yes, she is - after a bit of a slow start. The authors devote some pages to getting the reader back into the world of Nan, who worked as a nanny to the überwealthy Mrs. X, a negligent mother to little Grayer and a miserable boss to Nan. Fast-forward ten years: Nan married her 'Harvard Hottie,' Ryan, and traveled the world with him. Now back in New York City, Nan crosses paths by chance with Grayer, 16, drunk, and in trouble. He's trying to take care of his younger brother, Stilton, with no help (and plenty of hindrance) from his mess of a mother. There's a vicious divorce, a possible life-threatening illness, and an abundance of simple neglect. Nan again is tossed into an emotional situation with Grayer's family. The 33-year-old Nan can be more than a nanny to the X boys. But should she?" - Beth Gibbs for Library Journal.

ON ABC'S GOOD MORNING AMERICA (16 DEC 09):

SuperFreakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. HarperCollins. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary? How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa? What's the best way to catch a terrorist? Did TV cause a rise in crime? Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness? Can eating kangaroo save the planet?" - Amazon.

ON NPR'S ON POINT (21 DEC 09):

Charles Dickens, by Michael Slater. Yale University Press. Kindle edition $19.25. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"There is no shortage of doorstop biographies of Charles Dickens (1812–1870). This latest one by Slater, a Dickens scholar and professor emeritus at the University of London, bears an easy, fluid familiarity with the subject at hand. Scholars will appreciate the ingenuity with which the art was chosen. Above all, as the subtitle indicates, this work showcases the contours of Dickens's crammed life with the focus on his writings. And for these reasons, this biography will have primarily an academic appeal. But Slater superbly showcases Dickens's fascination with London life as it developed during his early teenage years; how the stage beckoned a man who was temperamentally a great parodist; why social issues and a refusal to kowtow to authority came to dominate the author's aesthetic families. But it was his startling affair with young actress Ellen (Nelly) Lawless Ternan, a story concealed until the 1930s, which defined Dickens's later life as much as his punishing reading tours did." - Publishers Weekly. Note to Kindle readers: The hardcover edition includes 60 black-and-white illustrations and 16 pages of color illustrations, something you might want to take into consideration when deciding which edition to purchase, especially given the high price of the Kindle edition.

ON OPRAH (22 DEC 09):

Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin. HarperCollins. Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...In this eagerly anticipated memoir, Palin paints an intimate portrait of growing up in the wilds of Alaska; meeting her lifelong love; her decision to enter politics; the importance of faith and family; and the unique joys and trials of life as a high-profile working mother..." - Amazon.

The Kindle Reads Bookmarks Best Books of 2009 (Part 3)

In its November/December 2009 issue, Bookmarks Magazinelooks back at the magazine's favorite books of 2009. This year Kindle readers will be pleased to learn that 53 of the 58 titles are available in Kindle editions.

Here's a rundown of all 58 (the 5 NOT available for the Kindle are listed last). Given the length of the list, I've divided the post into three consecutive parts.

SCIENCE FICTION (continued)

42. Cyberabad Days: Return to the India of 2047 by Ian McDonald. Pyr. Kindle edition $9.59. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...a triumphant return to the India of 2047, a new, muscular superpower of one and a half billion people in an age of artificial intelligences, climate-change induced drought, water-wars, strange new genders, genetically improved children that age at half the rate of baseline humanity, and a population where males outnumber females four to one. India herself has fractured into a dozen states from Kerala to the headwaters of the Ganges in the Himalayas. Cyberabad Days is a collection of seven stories, one Hugo nominee and one Hugo winner among them, as well as a thirty-one-thousand word original novella. ...sure to be one of the most talked about books of the year." - Amazon.

GENERAL

43. The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller. Little, Brown and Company. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In a braided narrative Miller weaves together details about the life of C. S. Lewis, her personal journey with his books, and astute observations about how children and adults read... Anyone who believes in the power of literature will want to savor The Magician's Book. In the end you feel as if you have had a stimulating literary conversation with a group of very smart and savvy friends." - Anita Silvey, author of 100 Best Books for Children.

44. Columbine by Dave Cullen. Twelve. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In this remarkable account of the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School shooting, journalist Cullen not only dispels several of the prevailing myths about the event but tackles the hardest question of all: why did it happen? Drawing on extensive interviews, police reports and his own reporting, Cullen meticulously pieces together what happened when 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 13 people before turning their guns on themselves... Cullen expertly balances the psychological analysis - enhanced by several of the nation's leading experts on psychopathology - with an examination of the shooting's effects on survivors, victims' families and the Columbine community." - Publishers Weekly.

45. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Knopf. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population..." - Amazon.

BIOGRAPHY

46. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham. Random House. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Every so often a terrific biography comes along that shines a new light on a familiar figure in American history. So it was with David McCullough and John Adams, so it was with Walter Isaacson and Benjamin Franklin, so it is with Jon Meacham and Andrew Jackson. A master storyteller, Meacham interweaves the lives of Jackson and the members of his inner circle to create a highly original book." - Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

47. A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor by Dana Canedy. Crown. Kindle edition $9.92. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In 2005, First Sergeant Charles Monroe King began to write what would become a two-hundred-page journal for his son in case he did not make it home from the war in Iraq. Charles King, forty-eight, was killed on October 14, 2006, when an improvised explosive device detonated under his Humvee on an isolated road near Baghdad. His son, Jordan, was seven months old. A Journal for Jordan is a mother’s letter to her son - fierce in its honesty - about the father he lost before he could even speak. It is also a father’s advice and prayers for the son he will never know....this is the story of Dana and Charles together - two seemingly mismatched souls who loved each other deeply. She was a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor for the New York Times who struggled with her weight. He was a decorated military officer with a sculpted body who got his news from television. She was impatient, brash, and cynical about love. He was excruciatingly shy and stubborn, and put his military service before anything else. In these pages, we relive with Dana the slow unfolding of their love, their decision to become a family, the chilling news that Charles has been deployed to Iraq, and the birth of their son." - Amazon.

48. Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir by Diana Athill. Norton. Kindle edition $14.97. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When it comes to facing old age, writes Athill, 'there are no lessons to be learnt, no discoveries to be made, no solutions to offer.' As the acclaimed British memoirist (who wrote about her experiences as a book editor in Stet) pushes past 90, she realizes that 'there is not much on record on falling away' and resolves to set down some of her observations." - Publishers Weekly.

49. A. Lincoln by Ronald C. White, Jr. Random House. Kindle edition $18.48. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Having given us two masterful studies of Lincoln's eloquence, Ronald C. White now delivers a riveting biography. This page-turner narrates all the major events of Lincoln's public career, including his military decision-making, but it does much more. No other book has so completely captured the elusive temperament of the man - his humility and confidence, heart and intellect, religious spirit and secular sensibility. If you thought you knew Lincoln already, you'll know him better after reading this patient, probing work. A portrait for the ages." - Richard Wightman Fox, Professor of History, University of Southern California


HISTORY

50. With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain by Michael Korda. HarperCollins. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Michael Korda's brilliant work of history takes the reader back to the summer of 1940, when fewer than three thousand young fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force - often no more than nine hundred on any given day - stood between Hitler and the victory that seemed almost within his grasp. Korda re-creates the intensity of combat in 'the long, delirious, burning blue' of the sky above southern England, and at the same time - perhaps for the first time - traces the entire complex web of political, diplomatic, scientific, industrial, and human decisions during the 1930s that led inexorably to the world's first, greatest, and most decisive air battle." - Amazon.

51. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann. Doubleday. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In 1925, renowned British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a much publicized search to find the city of Z, site of an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed. Fawcett, along with his grown son Jack, never returned, but that didn't stop countless others, including actors, college professors and well-funded explorers from venturing into the jungle to find Fawcett or the city. Among the wannabe explorers is Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker, who has bad eyes and a worse sense of direction..." - Publishers Weekly.

52. The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels by Janet Soskice. Knopf. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In 1892, two sisters, identical twins from Scotland, made one of one of most important scriptural discoveries of modern times. Combing the library of St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, they found a neglected palimpsest: beneath an unpreposessing life of female saints, they detected what remains to this day among the earliest known copies of the Gospels, a version in ancient Syriac, the language spoken by Jesus. The Sisters of Sinai is the enthralling account of how two ladies in middle age and without university degrees uncovered and translated this text, bringing a great biblical treasure to world attention...Janet Soskice takes us, via the lives of Agnes and Margaret Smith, on a quintessentially Victorian adventure. It is partly a physical journey: when Westerners generally feared to tread in the region, the sisters Smith traversed the Middle East, sleeping in tents, enduring temperamental camels and unscrupulous dragomen, and facing uncertain welcome from monks deceived by earlier travellers. It is also a journey of the mind..." - Amazon.

SCIENCE

53. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror Science by Richard Holmes. Pantheon. Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"I am a Richard Holmes addict. He is an incomparable biographer, but in The Age of Wonder, he rises to new heights and becomes the biographer not of a single figure, but of an entire unique period, when artist and scientist could share common aims and ambitions and a common language - and together create a 'romantic,' humanist science. We are once again on the brink of such an age, when science and art will come together in new and powerful ways. For this we could have no better model than the lives of William and Caroline Herschel and Humphry Davy, whose dedication and scientific inventiveness were combined with a deep sense of wonder and poetry in the universe..." - Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia.

NOT YET AVAILABLE FOR KINDLE

54. The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans. Penguin Press. Hardcover edition $26.40.
"Evans receives a hero’s welcome in the press as he lays his final World War II tome, a towering, somber achievement of scholarship and narrative, to rest. As in the preceding volumes, Evans judiciously employs first-hand sources, measured judgments, and impeccable research to craft what most reviewers hail as the definitive work on the Third Reich of our generation." - Bookmarks Magazine.

55. Love and Summer: A Novel by William Trevor. Viking Adult. Hardcover edition $17.13.
"Years ago, Miss Connulty's dragon of a mother forced her into lifelong atonement after she was abandoned by her lover. Now, in the mid-1950s, middle-aged and forever marked for spinsterhood in her small Irish town, she is intent on protecting Ellie Dillahan, the naïve young wife of an older farmer. A foundling raised by nuns, Ellie was sent to housekeep for the widowed farmer, and she is content until her dormant emotions are awakened by a charming but feckless bachelor, Florian Kilderry, who has plans to soon leave Ireland..." - Publishers Weekly.

56. Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman. Viking Juvenile. Hardcover edition $13.59.
"In this Asian-inspired fantasy world, political power belongs to the emperor, but also to the Dragoneyes: men who harness the power of the 12 energy dragons named for animals from the Chinese zodiac. Each year, a new one comes to power, and the dragon itself chooses a new apprentice from a pool of 12-year-old boys. Physically lame Eon is thought least likely to be chosen and also has a secret: Eon is truly Eona, a 16-year-old girl..." - Megan Honig for School Library Journal.

57. 2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolaño. Picador. Paperback edition $12.24.
"Three academics on the trail of a reclusive German author; a New York reporter on his first Mexican assignment; a widowed philosopher; a police detective in love with an elusive older woman - these are among the searchers drawn to the border city of Santa Teresa, where over the course of a decade hundreds of women have disappeared." - Amazon.

58. The Family Man by Elinor Lipman. Houghton Mifflin. Hardcover edition $16.50.
"A hysterical phone call from his ex-wife and a familiar face in a photograph upend Henry Archer’s well-ordered life. They bring him back into contact with the child he adored, a short-term stepdaughter from a misbegotten marriage long ago. Henry is a lawyer, an old-fashioned man, gay, successful, lonely. Thalia is now twenty-nine, an actresshopeful, estranged from her newly widowed crackpot mother - Denise, Henry’s ex. Hoping it will lead to better things for her career, Thalia agrees to pose as the girlfriend of a former sitcom star and current horror-movie luminary who is down on his romantic luck. When Thalia and her complicated social life move into the basement of Henry’s Upper West Side townhouse, she finds a champion in her long-lost father..." - Amazon.