What People Magazine is Reading This Week (May 2nd Issue)

For those Kindle readers who, like me, read for entertainment, scanning the book reviews in People magazine is good way to check out new people-related books - celebrity bios, popular novels, absorbing nonfiction - just hitting bookstore shelves. Featured in the May 2nd issue of People:

No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, by Melissa Fay Greene. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print Length: 368 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (19 reviews). People's slant: "...shows what it means to knit together a family that 'steers by the light...of what feels right and true.'" Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.16. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, 'among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to sixty-nine children in eighteenth-century Russia.'
Greene is best known for her books on the civil rights movement and the African HIV/AIDS pandemic... But Melissa and her husband have also pursued a more private vocation: parenthood. 'We so loved raising our four children by birth, we didn’t want to stop. When the clock started to run down on the home team, we brought in ringers.' When the number of children hit nine, Greene took a break from reporting. She trained her journalist’s eye upon events at home. A celebration of parenthood - No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a loving portrait of a unique twenty first-century family as it wobbles between disaster and joy." - Amazon.

Mentioned Briefly:

Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses, by Claudia Sternbauch. Unbridled Books, 2011. Print Length: 224 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99; Paperback $10.17. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Connected autobiographical essays woven around the theme of kissing... Although the reality of kissing serves as the connecting thread, each essay is grounded in one of a wide variety of complementary topics, such as the first love as an adolescent, best friends, parents, sisters, birthdays, tennis, summer camp, air travel, marriage, divorce, cancer, rape and death - among others. Sternbach has carefully considered how to make a life story interesting through unusual yet approachable formatting, and she throws humor, sarcasm and self-deprecation into the mix... A memorable, laugh-out-loud, cry-out-loud essay collection for both genders and all ages." - Kirkus Reviews.

Bad Dog: A Love Story, by Martin Kihn. Pantheon, 2011. Print Length: 224 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (21 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $16.29. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Meet Hola. She’s a nightmare, but it’s not her fault if she tackles strangers and chews on furniture, or if she runs after buses and fried chicken containers and drug dealers. Hola may be the most beautiful Bernese mountain dog in the world, but she’s never been trained. Hola’s supposed master, Marty, is a high-functioning alcoholic. A TV writer turned management consultant, Marty’s in debt and out of shape; he’s about to lose his job, and one day he emerges from a haze of peach-flavored vodka to find he’s on the verge of losing his wife, Gloria, too, if he can’t get his life - and his dog - under control. Desperately trying to save his marriage, Marty throws himself headlong into the world of competitive dog training. Unfortunately, he knows even less than Hola, the only dog ever to be expelled from her puppy preschool twice. Somehow, together, they need to get through the American Kennel Club’s rigorous Canine Good Citizen test. Of course, Hola first needs to learn how to sit." - from the hardcover edition.

Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail, by Caitlin Kelly. Portfolio, 2011. Print Length: MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 3 stars (13 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.13. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"After losing her job as a journalist and the security of a good salary, Caitlin Kelly was hard up for cash. When she saw that The North Face - an upscale outdoor clothing company - was hiring at her local mall, she went for an interview almost on a whim. Suddenly she found herself, middle-aged and mid-career, thrown headfirst into the bizarre alternate reality of the American mall..." - Amazon.

A Famous Dog's Life: The Story of Gidget, America's Most Beloved Chihuahua, by Sue Chipperton and Rennie Dyball. NAL, 2011. Print Length: 288 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99; Paperback $9.01. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Her name was Gidget. To the world, she was the Taco Bell dog. This is the extraordinary story of an irresistible pup's life, and that of her devoted trainer, Sue Chipperton. It is not only the story of an adorable television star, but also that of Sue's successful training techniques, and her fascinating stories of working with both human and animal stars, like Mooni, Gidget's Chihuahua roommate and the eventual star of Legally Blonde." - Amazon.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.


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Intriguing Time Travel Novels for Kindle Readers

What if you could go backward in time and experience daily life in the slums of ancient Rome or in London during the Blitz? Or forward in time to see what has become of our civilization one hundred or one thousand years from now? Would you step on board the time machine? What effect, if any, would your actions in the past have on the future?

Many novelists have explored the theme of time travel - from H. G Wells in The Time Machine and Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to more recent efforts like the chilling Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.

Here are a few critically-acclaimed time travel novels available in Kindle editions:

Replay by Ken Grimwood. Avon, 2010. Print Length: 320 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (391 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Jeff Winston, forty-three, didn't know he was a replayer until he died and woke up twenty-five years younger in his college dorm room; he lived another life. And died again. And lived again and died again - in a continuous twenty-five-year cycle - each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, remedy past mistakes, or make a fortune in the stock market. A novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time..." - Amazon.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Bantam, 2009. Print Length: 512 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (279 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In 2057, the fearsome, slave-driving Lady Schrapnell has lent her authority and her money to developing time travel so that she can rebuild Old Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by Nazi bombs in 1940. After too many recent missions, operative Ned Henry is timelagged and in need of a complete rest. But Lady Schrapnell has another vital task for poor Ned: to locate a grotesque Victorian artifact known as the bishop's bird stump. A chronological complication that Ned is only dimly aware of, though, has arisen and must be fixed before history is changed. So a bewildered Ned finds himself in Oxford in 1889, wearing boating clothes, accompanied by a mountain of luggage, a regal cat in a box, and no idea what he's supposed to do next..." - Kirkus Reviews.

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler. Beacon Press, 2004. Print Length: 287 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (231 reviews). Kindle edition $4.95. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous..." - Publisher.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Dell, 2004. Print Length: 896 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (1855 reviews). Kindle edition $8.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon - when she innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach - an 'outlander' - in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of our Lord...1743. Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire's destiny in soon inextricably intertwined with Clan MacKenzie and the forbidden Castle Leoch. She is catapulted without warning into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life...and shatter her heart." - Amazon.

Time for the Stars by Robert A. Heinlein. Tor Books, 2010. Print Length: 256 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (15 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Travel to other planets is a reality, and with overpopulation stretching the resources of Earth, the necessity to find habitable worlds is growing ever more urgent. With no time to wait years for communication between slower-than-light spaceships and home, the Long Range Foundation explores an unlikely solution - human telepathy. Identical twins Tom and Pat are enlisted to be the human radios that will keep the ships in contact with Earth, but one of them has to stay behind while the other explores the depths of space..." - Amazon.

Lightning by Dean Koontz. Berkley, 2003. Print Length: 384 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (320 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Laura Shane leads a troubled life: she is orphaned, nearly molested twice and loses one of her closest friends in a tragic accident, all before her 13th birthday. Even worse events would have befallen Laura if not for the mysterious guardian angel who periodically appears with a bolt of lightning to miraculously rescue her. The 'angel,' Stefan, is in fact a time traveler who rides the 'lightning road' through time to follow Laura throughout her adult life; unfortunately, Stefan himself is being chased through time by a pack of equally mysterious villains..." - Publishers Weekly.

The X President by Philip Baruth. Bantam, 2003. Print Length: 384 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (22 reviews). Kindle edition $8.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The year: 2055. Sal Hayden is writing the biography of a 109-year-old former U.S. president known as BC. Meanwhile, the U.S. is taking a pummeling in the Tobacco Wars, a massive international conflict that resulted from antitobacco legislation BC signed when he was president in the 1990s. When Sal is recruited by the government to participate in an audacious plan to rewrite history so that the Tobacco Wars never happened, she finds herself on a journey so fantastic she would never have imagined it possible. At its heart, this is a novel about American politics, but it's also a story about the nature of history: just because an event has already taken place, does that mean we can't change what happened?" - David Pitt for Booklist.

Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson. Tor Books, 2008. Print Length: 320 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (67 reviews). Kindle edition $6.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Matheson's classic novel tells the moving, romantic story of a modern man whose love for a woman he has never met draws him back in time to a luxury hotel in San Diego in 1896, where he finds his soul mate in the form of a celebrated actress of the previous century. Somewhere in Time won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the 1979 movie version, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, remains a cult classic whose fans continue to hold yearly conventions to this day." - Publisher.

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Fawcett, 2010. Print Length: 384 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (100 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Connie Ramos, a woman in her mid-thirties, has been declared insane. But Connie is overwhelmingly sane, merely tuned to the future, and able to communicate with the year 2137. As her doctors persuade her to agree to an operation, Connie struggles to force herself to listen to the future and its lessons for today..." - from the paperback edition.

The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century edited by Harry Turtledove with Martin H. Greenberg. Del Rey, 2004. Print Length: 448 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (17 reviews). Kindle edition $13.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
Stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon, R. A. Lafferty, Jack Dann, Poul Anderson, L. Sprague de Camp, Joe Haldeman, John Kessel, Nancy Kress, Henry Kuttner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Larry Niven, Charles Sheffield, Robert Silverberg, and Connie Willis.


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A Week of Entertainment: Kindle Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly's April 22nd-29th Issue

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the April 22nd-29th special double issue include:

The Tragedy of Arthur, by Arthur Phillips. Random House, 2011. Print length: 384 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...both a literary mystery and a surprisingly effective critique of the Bard." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (16 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $16.12. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...an emotional and elaborately constructed tour de force from bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Arthur Phillips... Its doomed hero is Arthur Phillips, a young man struggling with a larger-than-life father, a con artist who works wonders of deception but is a most unreliable parent. Arthur is raised in an enchanted world of smoke and mirrors where the only unshifting truth is his father’s and his beloved twin sister’s deep and abiding love for the works of William Shakespeare - a love so pervasive that Arthur becomes a writer in a misguided bid for their approval and affection. Years later, Arthur’s father, imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life, shares with Arthur a treasure he’s kept secret for half a century: a previously unknown play by Shakespeare, titled The Tragedy of Arthur. But Arthur and his sister also inherit their father’s mission: to see the play published and acknowledged as the Bard’s last great gift to humanity. Unless it’s their father’s last great con..." - Amazon.

The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace. Little, Brown and Company, 2011. Print length: 496 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...brilliant and bizarre, another dispatch from Wallace's overstuffed, troubled, and endlessly fascinating brain." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.39. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has. The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts..." - Amazon.

My New American Life, by Francine Prose. Harper Collins, 2011. Print length: 320 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "Though satirical fiction can often leave a sour aftertaste, her deft comic touch rarely falters." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $16.11. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Lula is a 26-year-old Albanian working an undemanding au pair gig in New Jersey. Her employer, Stanley, is a forlorn Wall Street exec recently abandoned by his mentally disturbed wife. He asks only that Lula see to the simple needs of his son, Zeke, a disaffected high school senior. Soon, Stanley and one of his friends, a high-profile immigration lawyer, are taken with the tale-telling, mildly exotic Lula (who speaks English flawlessly) and get to work on securing her citizenship. Lula's gig is cushy if dull, a condition relieved when three Albanian criminals, led by the charming Alvo, arrive at Stanley's house with a quiet demand that Lula harbor a (Chekhovian) gun for them..." - Publishers Weekly.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends, by Rob Lowe. Henry Holt and Co. Print length: 320 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "...affable and surprisingly smart, but often just a little too slick for his own good." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.94. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A teen idol at fifteen, an international icon and founder of the Brat Pack at twenty, and one of Hollywood's top stars to this day, Rob Lowe chronicles his experiences as a painfully misunderstood child actor in Ohio uprooted to the wild counterculture of mid-seventies Malibu, where he embarked on his unrelenting pursuit of a career in Hollywood. Never mean-spirited or salacious, Lowe delivers unexpected glimpses into his successes, disappointments, relationships, and one-of-a-kind encounters with people who shaped our world over the last twenty-five years..." - Amazon.

Mentioned Briefly:

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy. Free Press, 2011. Print length: 320 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Paperback $11.20. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Roy's impressive American debut covers multiple generations of an Indian family from the turn of the 20th century to India's partition. Three distinct sections revolve around Amulya, who runs an herbal medicine and fragrance business; his mentally ill wife, Kananbala, who spies on the goings-on of her English neighbors from the room Amulya keeps her locked in; their sons, Kamal and Nirmal; their wives; Nirmal's daughter Bakul, whose mother died in childbirth; and finally Mukunda, an orphan that Amulya helps support..." - Publishers Weekly.

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, by Nathaniel Philbrick. Viking, 2010. Print length: 496 p. NONFICTION. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (127 reviews). Kindle edition $14.99; Hardcover $17.85; Paperback $11.42. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In his tightly structured narrative, Nathaniel Philbrick brilliantly sketches the two larger-than-life antagonists: Sitting Bull, whose charisma and political savvy earned him the position of leader of the Plains Indians, and George Armstrong Custer, one of the Union's greatest cavalry officers and a man with a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage. Philbrick reminds readers that the Battle of the Little Bighorn was also, even in victory, the last stand for the Sioux and Cheyenne Indian nations. Throughout, Philbrick beautifully evokes the history and geography of the Great Plains with his characteristic grace and sense of drama. The Last Stand is a mesmerizing account of the archetypal story of the American West, one that continues to haunt our collective imagination." - Amazon.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.

Kindle Genre Watch: New in Romance & Western Fiction

Spend less time searching for new fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. Recent genre fiction releases in romance and western fiction include:

Romance

My One and Only by Kristan Higgins. HQN Books, 2011. Print length: 384 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (49 reviews). Kindle edition $5.38; Paperback $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Divorce attorney Harper James can't catch a break. Bad enough that she runs into her ex-hubby, Nick, at her sister's destination wedding, but now, by a cruel twist of fate, she's being forced to make a cross-country road trip with him. And her almost-fiancé back at home is not likely to be sympathetic. Harper can't help that Nick has come blazing back into her life in all of his frustratingly appealing, gorgeous architect glory..." - Amazon.

Shiver of Fear by Roxanne St. Claire. Hachette Book Group, 2011. Print length: 400 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (16 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99; Paperback $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is volume two in St. Claire's romantic suspense series The Guardian Angelinos. The first volume - also available in a Kindle edition - is Edge of Sight.
"Burned by a failed marriage, former FBI agent Marc Rossi wants back in the investigation game with no emotional strings attached. Taking an assignment for his enterprising Angelino cousins, he heads to Northern Ireland to pry a key piece of evidence from a missing socialite - any way he can. But when the ice queen turns out to be warm, beautiful, and on a secret mission of her own, the job becomes a passionate reminder of what happens when duty and desire mix. The daughter of an infamous fugitive, Devyn Sterling has survived betrayal only to find that her mother has mysteriously disappeared. When her search uncovers secrets, lies, and threats, Devyn and Marc must trust each other when every instinct says they can't..." - Amazon.

The Knitting Diaries by Christina Skye, Susan Mallery and Debbie Macomber. Mira, 2011. Print length: 352 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (7 reviews). Kindle edition $5.38; Paperback $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"...three yarns related to a passion for knitting and accompanied by appropriate knitting patterns. In "The Twenty-First Wish," 10-year-old knitter Ellen yearns for her birth father to marry her adoptive mother. For Robyn in "Coming Unraveled," knitting had been a way of life until she pursued her dream of starring on Broadway. After the dream fades, Robyn's return to her grandma's home and knitting store puts her on a new path toward the handsome and enigmatic T.J. In "Return to Summer Island," a car accident badly damages Caro's hand and arm. As she recovers, she finds solace in knitting and unexpected romance with a charismatic Marine about to deploy to Afghanistan." - Publishers Weekly.

Taken by the Prince by Christina Dodd. Penguin Publishing, 2011. Print length: 400 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (20 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99; Paperback $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Raul Lawrence, the rightful heir to the Moricadian throne, is distracted from his covert revolutionary activities by Victoria Cardiff, a traveling governess, who recognizes him from a childhood encounter. Afraid that she will betray him, he kidnaps her. The sparks of their romance flicker against a backdrop of revolution, as Victoria slowly yields to Raul's caresses and the de Guignards decide to put a stop to his ambitious activities." - Publishers Weekly.

The Goodbye Quilt by Susan Wiggs. Mira, 2011. Print length: 400 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $8.59; Hardcover $11.29. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Linda Davis's local fabric shop is a place where women gather to share their creations: quilts commemorating important events in their lives. Wedding quilts, baby quilts, memorial quilts - each is bound tight with dreams, hopes and yearnings. Now, as her only child readies for college, Linda is torn between excitement for Molly and heartache for herself. Who will she be when she is no longer needed in her role as mom? What will become of her days? Of her marriage? Mother and daughter decide to share one last adventure together - a cross-country road trip to move Molly into her dorm. As they wend their way through the heart of the country, Linda stitches together the scraps that make up Molly's young life..." - Amazon.

The Sweetest Thing by Jill Shalvis. Forever, 2011. Print length: 400 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (17 reviews). Kindle edition $7.99; Paperback $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Tara has a thousand good reasons not to return to the little coastal town of Lucky Harbor, Washington. Yet with her life doing a major crash-and-burn, anywhere away from her unfulfilled dreams and sexy ex-husband will do. As Tara helps her two sisters get their newly renovated inn up and running, she finally has a chance to get things under control and come up with a new plan for her life. But a certain tanned, green-eyed sailor has his own ideas, such as keeping Tara hot, bothered...and in his bed. And when her ex wants Tara back, three is a crowd she can't control - especially when her deepest secret reappears out of the blue. Now Tara must confront her past and discover what she really wants..." - Amazon.

Westerns

Caleb's Price by Troy D. Smith. Western Trail Blazer, 2011. Print length: 206 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $4.99; Paperback $10.95. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Joey, a nine-year-old orphan, leads a lonely existence. His uncle and aunt have an impending range war on their hands and don't take much notice of him. Then a mysterious stranger named Caleb enters his life. Caleb, a gunman who is in turn tender and brutal, has a deadly secret.. Will he save the downtrodden settlers, or destroy them? Joey's life will never be the same. And what will be the price to Caleb?" - Amazon.

West Texas Kill by Johnny D. Boggs. Pinnacle Books, 2011. Print length: 344 p. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $4.08; Paperback $6.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Between the Pecos River and Rio Grande, a vast, harsh land was ruled by Texas Rangers Captain Hector Savage. Savage's motive wasn't duty - but money. He has turned this desolate place into a bloodied, terrorized kingdom. Now, a protogé of Savage, Sergeant Dave Chance, has come with a prisoner - a big-talking murderer in his own right - shackled at his side. A decent, honest Ranger, Chance cannot stand idly by while Savage runs roughshod over West Texas. Yet to save a traumatized people, he must turn his prisoner loose and give him a gun. Only their combined firepower can penetrate Savage's fortress and kill him. That is, if they don't kill each other first..." - http://www.johnnydboggs.com/

Powder River (The Life and Times of Jeston Nash) by Ralph Cotton. Publisher. Print length: 354 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $5.99; Paperback $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
First published in 1995 and now available in a Kindle edition.
"In Powder River, outlaw Jeston Nash - the look-alike cousin of Jesse James and horseman for the infamous James-Younger Gang - and his partner, Quiet Jack Smith, find themselves entangled in the onrush of historical events leading up to the Powder River Indian War. Attracted by rumors and the profits of war, a strange assortment of characters - outlaws, loose women, lawmen, bounty hunters, preachers, and Washington attachés - lay in wait like vultures to pick the bones of the mighty Sioux Nation as it reels on the verge of extinction. In Old West Tradition, Powder River is a richly woven earth colored tapestry that brings together the best and worst of our Western Heritage." - Amazon.

MacCallister: The Eagles Legacy by William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone. Pinnacle Books, 2011. Print length: 352 p. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $4.58; Paperback $6.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"The Scottish Highlands, 1885. Two men, brandishing knives, attack a young woman outside a pub. Duff MacAllister steps in and saves her - killing one of the assailants. Big mistake. The attacker was the sheriff's son, and now MacAllister is marked for death. His only hope: America. Here, in the sprawling land of dreams, Duff hopes to start a new life with his American cousins. Unfortunately, the sheriff's deputies are tracking him down - with nine of the deadliest cutthroats money can buy. Blazing a trail of blood and bullets all the way to the Rockies, Duff has to kill his enemies one by one - or die trying. But this time, Duff is not alone. He has a new ally by his side. A living legend of frontier justice. His cousin, the gunslinger known as Falcon MacAllister..." - Amazon.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.

Books They're Talking About: Kindle Books in the Media

Media interviews are a popular way for writers to introduce new books they hope will catch the viewer's eye and generate interest in their work. 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 NPR's All Things Considered (17 April 2011):

The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs, by Jim Rasenberger. Scribner, 2011. Print Length: 352 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (7 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $21.12. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"The U.S.-backed military invasion of Cuba in 1961 remains one of the most ill-fated blunders in American history, with echoes of the event reverberating even today. Despite the Kennedy administration’s initial public insistence that the United States had nothing to do with the invasion, it soon became clear that the complex operation had been planned and approved by the best and brightest minds at the highest reaches of Washington, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President John F. Kennedy himself. Now, journalist Jim Rasenberger takes a closer look at this darkly fascinating incident in American history. At the heart of the crisis stood President Kennedy, and Rasenberger traces what Kennedy knew, thought, and said as events unfolded. Written with elegant clarity and narrative verve, The Brilliant Disaster is the most complete account of this event to date, providing not only a fast-paced chronicle of the disaster but an analysis of how it occurred - a question as relevant today as then - and how it profoundly altered the course of modern American history." - Amazon.

On CBS's 60 Minutes (17 April 2011):

Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft, by Paul Allen. Penguin Publishing, 2011. Print Length: 365 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $14.99; Hardcover $15.21. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In 2007 and 2008, Time named Paul Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft, one of the hundred most influential people in the world. Since he made his fortune, his impact has been felt in science, technology, business, medicine, sports, music, and philanthropy. In 2009 Allen discovered that he had lymphoma, lending urgency to his desire to share his story for the first time. In this long-awaited memoir, Allen explains how he has solved problems, what he's learned from his many endeavors - both the triumphs and the failures - and his compelling vision for the future..." - Amazon.

On ABC's Good Morning America (18 April 2011):

Guilt by Association, by Marcia Clark. Mulholland Books, 2011. Print Length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (7 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $16.05. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Clark, lead prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson trial, pairs her knowledge of the L.A. judicial scene with a surprising flair for fiction in a remarkably accomplished debut novel. L.A. prosecutor Rachel Knight is stunned when her office soul-mate, Jake Pahlmeyer, is found shot to death in a sleazy motel along with a 17-year-old boy, raising ugly suspicions that she doesn't want to acknowledge. Given Jake's top case to work - the rape of the teenage daughter of one of the DA's prominent contributors - Rachel is warned by her boss to leave her colleague's death alone... Clark offers a real page-turner here, with smart, fast-moving prose; a skillfully constructed plot; and a protagonist well worth knowing..." - Michele Leber for Booklist.

On CNN's Piers Morgan (18 April 2011):

I'm Over All That And Other Confessions, by Shirley MacLaine. Atria, 2011. Print Length: 224 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (7 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; $12.64. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"At a certain time in life, we all come to realize what is truly important to us and what just doesn’t matter. For Shirley MacLaine, that time is now. In this wise, witty, and fearless collection of small observations and big-picture questions, she shares with readers all those things that she is over dealing with in life, in love, at home, and in the larger world...as well as the things she will never get over, no matter how long she lives. Along the way, she recalls stories of some of the true greats she has known - Alfred Hitchcock, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, the two Jacks (Lemmon and Nicholson) - and ruminates on the state of Hollywood past and present. She recollects her relationships and romances with politicians (including two prime ministers), scientists, journalists, and costars..." - Amazon.

On Oprah (20 April 2011):

Peace and Plenty: Finding Your Path to Financial Serenity, by Sarah Ban Breathnach. Grand Central Publishing, 2010. Print Length: 448 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (38 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $14.04. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"When money is plentiful, this is a man's world. When money is scarce, it is a woman's world. Unearthed in a 1932 Ladies Home Journal, this quote is the call to arms that begins Peace and Plenty, Sarah Ban Breathnach's answer to the world's - and her own personal - financial crisis. As only Ban Breathnach can, she culls together this compendium of advice, deeply personal anecdotes, and excerpts from magazines, books, and newspapers - particularly those of the Great Depression - to inspire readers who are mired in today's financial difficulties..." - Amazon.

On NBC's Today Show (20 April 2011):

Sweet Jiminy, by Kristin Gore. Hyperion, 2011. Print Length: 240 p. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $14.40. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"In the throes of a quarter-life crisis, Jiminy Davis abruptly quits law school and flees Chicago for her grandmother Willa’s farm in rural Mississippi. In search of peace and quiet, Jiminy instead stumbles upon more trouble and turmoil than she could have imagined. She is shocked to discover that there was once another Jiminy - the daughter of her grandmother’ s longtime housekeeper, Lyn - who was murdered along with Lyn’s husband four decades earlier in a civil rights–era hate crime. With the help of Lyn’ s nephew, Bo, Jiminy sets out to solve the cold case, to the dismay of those who would prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. Beautifully written, and with a sure grip on the tensions and social mores of small towns in the South..." - Amazon.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.


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What People Magazine is Reading This Week (April 25th Issue)

For those Kindle readers who, like me, read for entertainment, scanning the book reviews in People magazine is good way to check out new people-related books - celebrity bios, popular novels, absorbing nonfiction - just hitting bookstore shelves. Featured in the April 25th issue of People:

She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems, by Caroline Kennedy. Hyperion, 2011. Print Length: 352 p. POETRY. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (3 reviews). People's slant: "As they always have, poems help her through." Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $14.50. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...Caroline Kennedy has once again marshaled the gifts of our greatest poets to pay a very personal tribute to the human experience, this time to the complex and fascinating subject of womanhood. Inspired by her own reflections on more than fifty years of life as a young girl, a woman, a wife, and a mother, She Walks in Beauty draws on poetry’s eloquent wisdom to ponder the many joys and challenges of being a woman. Kennedy has divided the collection into sections that signify to her the most notable milestones, passages, and universal experiences in a woman’ s life, and she begins each of these sections with an introduction in which she explores and celebrates the most important elements of life’s journey. The collection includes works by Elizabeth Bishop, Sharon Olds, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda, W. H. Auden, Adrienne Rich, Sandra Cisneros, Anne Sexton, W. S. Merwin, Dorothy Parker, Queen Elizabeth I, Lucille Clifton, Naomi Shahib Nye, and W. B. Yeats.

Swim Back to Me, by Ann Packer. Knopf, 2011. Print Length: 240 p. SHORT STORY COLLECTION. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (13 reviews). People's slant: "Anyone intrigued by the ways we both fail and save one another will find ample food for thought here." Kindle edition $12.99; $13.95. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...a collection of burnished, emotionally searing stories, framed by two unforgettable linked narratives that express the transformation of a single family over the course of a lifetime. A wife struggles to make sense of her husband’s sudden disappearance. A mother mourns her teenage son through the music collection he left behind. A woman shepherds her estranged parents through her brother’s wedding and reflects on the year her family collapsed. A young man comes to grips with the joy - and vulnerability - of fatherhood. And, in the masterly opening novella, two teenagers from very different families forge a sustaining friendship, only to discover the disruptive and unsettling power of sex. Ann Packer is one of our most talented archivists of family life... With Swim Back to Me, she delivers shimmering psychological precision, unfailing intelligence, and page-turning drama: her most enticing work yet." - from the hardcover edition.

Touch, by Alexi Zentner. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Print Length: 264 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (5 reviews). People's slant: "breathtaking debut...haunting prose..." Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $16.47. Text-to-Speech:

"In Sawgamet, a north woods boomtown gone bust, the cold of winter breaks the glass of the schoolhouse thermometer, and the dangers of working in the cuts are overshadowed by the mysteries and magic lurking in the woods. Stephen, a pastor, is at home on the eve of his mother's funeral, thirty years after the mythic summer his grandfather returned to the town in search of his beloved but long-dead wife. And like his grandfather, Stephen is forced to confront the losses of his past." - from the publisher.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.

Genre Watch: New Mysteries and Thrillers for the Kindle

Spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. Recent genre fiction releases in mystery and suspense fiction include:

Drawing Conclusions: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011. Print Length: 256 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (10 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $13.04. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

This is Leon's twentieth novel to feature Venetian police Commissario Guido Brunetti. The first in the series, Death at La Fenice, is not yet available in a Kindle edition, but many of the other Brunetti titles are - including Blood from a Stone for $4.80.

"Late one night, Brunetti is called away from dinner to investigate the death of a widow in her modest apartment. Though there are some signs of a struggle, the medical examiner rules that she died of a heart attack. It seems there is nothing for Brunetti to investigate. But he can’t shake the feeling that something or someone may have triggered her heart attack, that perhaps the woman was threatened. Conversations with the woman’s son, her upstairs neighbor, and the nun in charge of the old-age home where she volunteered, do little to satisfy Brunetti’s nagging curiosity. With the help of Inspector Vianello and the ever-resourceful Signorina Elettra, perhaps Brunetti can get to the truth and find some measure of justice. Insightful and emotionally powerful, Drawing Conclusions reaffirms Donna Leon’s status as one of the masters of literary crime fiction." - Amazon.

Bless the Bride by Rhys Bowen. Minotaur Books, 2011. Print Length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $14.21. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Just weeks before she is to marry New York police captain Daniel Sullivan in 1903, private investigator Molly Murphy leaves the sewing of her trousseau in the capable hands of her future mother-in-law (who bemoans Molly's woeful stitchery skills) and takes on one last case, having promised Daniel she'd stop working once they've wed. Powerful Chinatown businessman Lee Sing Tai hires Molly to find his missing bride, a commission she is loath to fulfill upon learning that the bride is actually a concubine obtained from China solely to give Lee (whose holdings include brothels and opium dens) a son and heir. When Lee is found dead after a fall from his rooftop, Molly is relieved of her obligation. But when the death is ruled a murder, initially raising the possibility of tong wars, the bride - being sheltered by Molly - becomes a prime suspect." - Michele Leber for Booklist.

This is Bowen's tenth offering in the Molly Murphy series. It takes place in turn-of-the-century New York where Molly, a recent Irish immigrant, is attempting to get started in the very unusual - for a woman of that time - private investigator business. The first book in the series is Murphy's Law.

Heart of Ice by Lis Wiehl and April Henry. Thomas Nelson, 2011. Print Length: 336 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (22 reviews). Kindle edition $12.46; Hardcover $13.84. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Elizabeth Avery is a stunningly beautiful woman. But her perfectly managed exterior hides the ice cold heart of a killer. She ingeniously manipulates everyone who crosses her path to do exactly as she wishes - from crime reporter Cassidy Shaw, who thinks Elizabeth is her new best friend, to a shy young man Elizabeth persuades to kill for her. As Elizabeth leaves a trail of bodies in her wake, Federal prosecutor Allison Pierce and FBI agent Nicole Hedges must piece together clues from seemingly unrelated crimes. Can they stop her before she reaches her unthinkable, ultimate end-game?" - Amazon.

Save Me by Lisa Scottoline. St. Martin's Press, 2011. Print Length: 384 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (7 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.73. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...an explosion rips through the nearly empty cafeteria of Reesburgh (Pa.) Elementary School. Lunch mother Rose McKenna leads two girls to safety before racing to rescue her own daughter, Melly, but Rose soon learns that she may face both civil and criminal charges for her heroics because one of the girls she saved was seriously injured in the resulting fire that killed three school staff members. The tension rises as the united front presented by Rose and her lawyer husband, Leo Ingrassia, begins to disintegrate in the face of media demands, legal maneuverings, and social pressures... Scottoline melds it all into a satisfying nail-biting thriller sure to please her growing audience." - Publishers Weekly.

The Cat, The Lady and the Liar by Leann Sweeney. Penguin Publishing, 2011. Print Length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $6.99; Paperback $6.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Cat quilter Jillian Hart finds a gorgeous stray cat belonging to the fabulously wealthy Ritaestelle Longworth, who believes she's being drugged. Before Jillian can get to those charges, a body turns up in the lake - and her cat Chablis finds Ritaestelle nearby. Can Jillian's cats aid her in solving a mystery with decades old roots?" - Amazon.

This is Leann Sweeney's third Cat in Trouble cozy mystery, following The Cat, The Quilt and The Corpse and The Cat, The Professor and the Poison.

Treason at Lisson Grove: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel by Anne Perry. Ballantine Books, 2011. Print Length: 320 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $13.96. Text-to-Speech: Blank.
"The man who lies bleeding to death in a London brickyard is no ordinary drifter but a secret informant prepared to divulge details of a potentially devastating international plot against the British government. Special Branch officer Thomas Pitt, hastening to rendezvous with him, arrives a second too late, preceded by a knife-wielding assassin. As the mortally wounded man’s life slips away, so too does the information Pitt desperately needs. The killer in turn flees on an erratic course that leads Pitt in wild pursuit, from London’s cobblestone streets to picturesque St. Malo on the French coast. Meanwhile, Pitt’s supervisor, the formidable Victor Narraway, finds himself accused of embezzling government funds. With Pitt incommunicado in France, Narraway turns to Pitt’s clever wife, Charlotte, for help..." - Amazon.

This is the twentieth title in Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. You will find more information about the series and a complete list of all the titles in the series at the author's website.

One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming. Minotaur Books, 2011. Print Length: 336 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (23 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $13.15. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"On a warm September evening in the Millers Kill community center, five veterans sit down in rickety chairs to try to make sense of their experiences in Iraq. What they will find is murder, conspiracy, and the unbreakable ties that bind them to one another and their small Adirondack town. The Rev. Clare Fergusson wants to forget the things she saw as a combat helicopter pilot and concentrate on her relationship with Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne. MP Eric McCrea needs to control the explosive anger threatening his job as a police officer. Will Ellis, high school track star, faces the reality of life as a double amputee. Orthopedist Trip Stillman is denying the extent of his traumatic brain injury. And bookkeeper Tally McNabb wrestles with guilt over the in-country affair that may derail her marriage. But coming home is harder than it looks. One vet will struggle with drugs and alcohol. One will lose his family and friends. One will die..." - Amazon.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.


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New in Nonfiction for the Kindle

What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best non-fiction is also creative. - Tracy Kidder.

Nonfiction encompasses a wealth of reading possibilities - history, essays, memoirs, scientific research, travel guides, cookbooks - essentially everything that is based on fact, real events and real people. Recent nonfiction titles for the Kindle that you might have missed:

Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid, by Wendy Williams. Abrams Image, 2011. Print Length: 224 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (12 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $14.93. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Kraken is the traditional name for gigantic sea monsters, and this book introduces one of the most charismatic, enigmatic, and curious inhabitants of the sea: the squid. The pages take the reader on a wild narrative ride through the world of squid science and adventure, along the way addressing some riddles about what intelligence is, and what monsters lie in the deep. In addition to squid, both giant and otherwise, Kraken examines other equally enthralling cephalopods, including the octopus and the cuttlefish, and explores their otherworldly abilities, such as camouflage and bioluminescence. Accessible and entertaining, Kraken is also the first substantial volume on the subject in more than a decade and a must for fans of popular science." - Amazon.

The Eichmann Trial, by Deborah E. Lipstadt. Random House, 2011. Print Length: 272 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (13 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.87. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an Israeli court electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice, and the international media coverage of the trial itself, was a watershed moment in how the civilized world in general and Holocaust survivors in particular found the means to deal with the legacy of genocide on a scale that had never been seen before. Award-winning historian Deborah E. Lipstadt gives us an overview of the trial and analyzes the dramatic effect that the survivors’ courtroom testimony - which was itself not without controversy - had on a world that had until then regularly commemorated the Holocaust but never fully understood what the millions who died and the hundreds of thousands who managed to survive had actually experienced." - Amazon.

The Foremost Good Fortune, by Susan Conley. Knopf, 2011. Print Length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (26 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $16.95. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"...luminous memoir of moving her family from Portland, Maine, to Beijing on the eve of the 2008 Olympics. Conley's husband had accepted a dream job in Beijing, and they had decided to say 'yes to all the unknowns that will now rain down on us' including common difficulties faced by many families moving to a new city: a new school for her two young sons, finding new friends, and adjusting to a new apartment all compounded by the intensity of learning a difficult new language and adapting to a new culture. Conley's writing is at once spare and strong, and her description of having to present an unflappable front to her children while being hit 'with a rolling wave of homesickness' pulls the reader into her world like a close friend. As Conley starts to hit her stride in her adopted city, she discovers lumps in her breast and finds herself on a different kind of journey..." - Publishers Weekly.

I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World, by James Geary. Harper Collins, 2011. Print Length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (7 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $12.37. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"From President Obama's political rhetoric to the housing bubble bust, James Geary proves in this fascinating and entertaining book that every aspect of our experience is molded by metaphor. It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! This is one of Shakespeare's most famous lines and one of the most well-known metaphors in literature. But metaphor is much more than a mere literary device employed by love-struck poets when they refer to their girlfriends as interstellar masses of incandescent gas. It is also intensely yet inconspicuously present in everything from ordinary conversation and commercial messaging to news reports and political speeches. Metaphor is at work in all fields of human endeavor, including economics, business, science, and psychology... This book will open your eyes to the secret life of metaphor and its role in swinging elections, moving markets, and powerfully influencing daily life." - Amazon.

Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat, by David Dosa. Hyperion, 2010. Print Length: 240 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (159 reviews). Kindle edition $7.15; Paperback $7.94. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"When Oscar arrived at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island he was a cute little guy with attitude. He loved to stretch out in a puddle of sunlight and chase his tail until he was dizzy. Occasionally he consented to a scratch behind the ears, but only when it suited him. In other words, he was a typical cat. Or so it seemed. It wasn't long before Oscar had created something of a stir. Apparently, this ordinary cat possesses an extraordinary gift: he knows instinctively when the end of life is near. Oscar is a welcome distraction for the residents of Steere House, many of whom are living with Alzheimer's. But he never spends much time with them - until they are in their last hours. Then, as if this were his job, Oscar strides purposely into a patient's room, curls up on the bed, and begins his vigil. Making Rounds with Oscar is the story of an unusual cat, the patients he serves, their caregivers, and of one doctor who learned how to listen." - Amazon.

Scalper: Inside the World of a Professional Ticket Broker, by Clancy Martin and Hank Clinton. Amazon Single (24 pages). Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $1.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Career scalper 'Sunshine' lets authors Clancy Martin and Hank Chilton tag along for a busy weekend of events in the Bay Area, including a Giants' playoff game, Cal-Berkeley and Stanford football games, home games for both the Raiders and the 49ers, the San Francisco Air Show, Van Morrison and O.A.R. concerts, and an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in San Jose. While online services like Craig's List, StubHub, and Razorgator have changed the secondary ticket market forever, lifers like Sunshine maintain decades' worth of parking-lot wisdom and memorable anecdotes. For readers, the ticket buyer's tips alone merit the cost of admission." - Jason Kirk for Amazon.com Review.

This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, by Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin. Wiley, 2011. Print Length: 336 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $9.35; Hardcover $15.44. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"No other conflict in the world has dragged on longer, engendered more bitterness or defied more attempts at resolution than the battle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Over the past decade, Greg Myre covered this conflict for the New York Times, and his wife Jennifer Griffin covered it for Fox News, and they arrived at the same surprising conclusion: the conflict cannot be solved anytime soon. The couple takes us to the heart of the conflict, where few writers have gone before. They delve into the thinking that motivates some Palestinians to be suicide bombers and other Palestinians to work as informants for Israel's security forces. Myre and Griffin travel to isolated West Bank outposts where Israeli settlers vow never to relinquish the land, and accompany Israeli troops as they stage midnight raids in militant strongholds. Having also spent two decades chasing wars across Africa, Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East, the authors are students of modern, asymmetrical warfare that has become the norm in today's conflicts. They draw on this experience to offer lessons crucial to understanding the Israeli-Palestinian fighting, and other wars as well." - from the inside flap of hardcover edition.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.

A Week of Entertainment: Kindle Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly's April 15th Issue

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the April 15th issue include:

Bossypants, by Tina Fey. Reagan Arthur Books, 2011. Print length: 272 p. ESSAYS. EW's slant: "...genially jumbled memoir-esque collection of riffs, essays, laundry lists, true stories, fantasy scenarios, SNL script excerpts, and embarrassing photos...the literary equivalent of a satisfying night of sketch comedy." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (67 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $13.97. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"...short, messy, and impossibly funny (an apt description of the comedian herself). From her humble roots growing up in Pennsylvania to her days doing amateur improv in Chicago to her early sketches on Saturday Night Live, Fey gives us a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain of modern comedy with equal doses of wit, candor, and self-deprecation. Some of the funniest chapters feature the differences between male and female comedy writers ('men urinate in cups'), her cruise ship honeymoon ('it’s very Poseidon Adventure'), and advice about breastfeeding ('I had an obligation to my child to pretend to try'). But the chaos of Fey’s life is best detailed when she’s dividing her efforts equally between rehearsing her Sarah Palin impression, trying to get Oprah to appear on 30 Rock, and planning her daughter’s Peter Pan-themed birthday..." - Kevin Nguyen for Amazon.com Review.

Reading My Father, by Alexandra Styron. Scribner, 2011. Print length: 288 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "...eloquent prose and fluid structure suggest his talent may be hereditary." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $13.75. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"As renowned writer William Styron’s youngest child, Alexandra was often left alone with her hard-drinking and intimidating father and bore the brunt of his mercurial temperament, literary obsession, and casual psychological cruelty. The older she got, the more painfully aware she became of the deep divide between his private torments and star-studded social life as the feted author of The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) and Sophie's Choice (1979)... Alexandra’s blend of memoir and biography and forthright inquiry into her father’s inevitable date with madness tells for the first time the full story of her father’s creative triumphs and anguished failure to complete another novel before his death in 2006. Readers passionate about American literature will be fascinated by Alexandra’s insightful tales about her complicated father and his circle, which included Peter Matthiessen, Norman Mailer, and Arthur Miller." - Donna Seaman for Booklist.

The Best Advice I Ever Got, by Katie Couric. Random House, 2011. Print length: 288 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "Just in time for high school and college graduation season...". Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.52. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"What was the tipping point for Malcolm Gladwell? What unscripted event made Meryl Streep who she is? How did Mario Batali cook up his recipe for success? In this inspiration-packed book, Katie Couric reports from the front lines of the worlds of politics, entertainment, sports, philanthropy, the arts, and business - distilling the ingenious, hard-won insights of leaders and visionaries, who tell us all how to take chances, follow our passions, cope with criticism, and, perhaps most important, commit to something greater than ourselves. Along the way, Couric reflects on the good advice - and the missteps - that have guided her from her early days as a desk assistant at ABC to her groundbreaking role as the first female anchor of the CBS Evening News." - from the hardcover edition.

Blind Sight, by Meg Howrey. Pantheon, 2011. Print length: 304 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...a refreshingly uncynical take on the messiness of family relationships." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.70. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"This spellbinding story introduces the unforgettable seventeen-year-old narrator, Luke Prescott, who has been brought up in a bohemian matriarchy by his divorced New Age mother, a religious grandmother, and two precocious half-sisters. Having spent a short lifetime swinging agreeably between the poles of Eastern mysticism and New England Puritanism, Luke is fascinated by the new fields of brain science and believes in having evidence for his beliefs. 'Without evidence,' he declares, 'you just have hope, which is nice, but not reliable.' Luke is writing his college applications when his father - a famous television star whom he never knew - calls and invites him to Los Angeles for the summer..." - from the hardcover edition.

News From the World, by Paula Fox. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Print length: 224 p. COLLECTION. EW's slant: "...an intriguing odds-and-ends portfolio of personal essays and fiction." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99; $15.80. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"This complete gathering of Paula Fox's short works spans forty-five illustrious years of her career, from 1965 to 2010. There are perfectly turned stories (two of which - Grace and The Broad Estates of Death - won the O. Henry Prize) in which characters unexpectedly find themselves at a crossroads and struggle to connect with others. There is memoir - a genre where Fox's honesty, grace, and perception set her apart - in which Fox revisits childhood ideas about art and reality, life in New York in the 1960s, and her relationship with her husband's family. And there are essays - pointed, funny, relentlessly persuasive pieces on such topics as censorship and the corruption of language." - Amazon.

One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing, by Diane Ackerman. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Print length: 336 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "...the end is a triumph, and their indomitable romance one to envy." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.74. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Everyone who cherishes the gift of language will cherish Diane Ackerman's narrative masterpiece, an exquisitely written love story and medical miracle story, one that combines science, inspiration, wisdom, and heart. One day Ackerman's husband, Paul West, an exceptionally gifted wordsmith and intellectual, suffered a terrible stroke. When he regained awareness he was afflicted with aphasia - loss of language - and could utter only a single syllable: 'mem.' The standard therapies yielded little result but frustration. Diane soon found, however, that by harnessing their deep knowledge of each other and her scientific understanding of language and the brain she could guide Paul back to the world of words. This triumphant book is both a humane and revealing addition to the medical literature on stroke and aphasia and an exquisitely written love story..." - Amazon.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.

Take Me Out to the Kindle: New Baseball Books for Kindle Readers

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field? - Jim Bouton.

Now that the Major League baseball season is once again under way, Kindle-owning baseball fans can easily read about their favorite sport between innings by carrying their baseball library with them. OK, I imagine most fans would prefer reading any place BUT during the game. I know I would. Step up to the plate with these recent baseball titles for the Kindle:

56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports, by Kostya Kennedy. Sports Illustrated, 2011. Print Length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $14.82; Hardcover $17.44. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Seventy baseball seasons ago, on a May afternoon at Yankee Stadium, Joe DiMaggio lined a hard single to left field. It was the quiet beginning to the most resonant baseball achievement of all time. Starting that day, the vaunted Yankee center fielder kept on hitting-at least one hit in game after game after game. In the summer of 1941, as Nazi forces moved relentlessly across Europe and young American men were drafted by the millions, it seemed only a matter of time before the U.S. went to war. The nation was apprehensive. Yet for two months in that tense summer, America was captivated by DiMaggio's astonishing hitting streak. In 56, Kostya Kennedy tells the remarkable story of how the streak found its way into countless lives, from the Italian kitchens of Newark to the playgrounds of Queens to the San Francisco streets of North Beach; from the Oval Office of FDR to the Upper West Side apartment where Joe's first wife, Dorothy, the movie starlet, was expecting a child..." - Amazon.

A Band of Misfits: Tales of the 2010 San Francisco Giants, by Andrew Baggarly. Triumph Books, 2011. Print Length: 316 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (13 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $13.57. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The 2010 San Francisco Giants were the most unlikely World Series champions of all time. Sure, they had some quality pitchers, but the Giants roster consisted of a rag-tag group of castoffs, oddballs, rookies, and old-timers who seemed a lot more entertaining off the field than on it. After 53 years of futility, San Francisco was hungry for a baseball championship...but the 2010 Giants? Then, as the season waned, some type of magic descended on the Bay Area and enveloped the club, leading them to the most miraculous of championships. How the Giants came together as a team and shocked the country all the while, doing things in their own offbeat fashion is one of baseball s all-time great stories. ...Andrew Baggarly, longtime Giants beat writer for the San Jose Mercury News, shines a light on the colorful characters...who became stars during San Francisco's crazy ride to the top..." - Amazon.

Knuckler: My Life with Baseball's Most Confounding Pitch, by Tim Wakefield, with Tony Massarotti. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Print Length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $14.30; Hardcover $16.80. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"At forty-four years old, Tim Wakefield is the longest-serving member of one of baseball’s most popular franchises. He is close to eclipsing the winning records of two of the greatest pitchers to have played the game, yet few realize the full measure of his success. That his career can be characterized by such words as dependability and consistency defies all odds because he has achieved this with baseball’s most mercurial weapon - the knuckleball. Knuckler is the story of how a struggling position player bet his future on a fickle pitch that would define his career. The pitch may drive hitters crazy, but how does the pitcher stay sane?" ...A remarkable story of one player’s success despite being the exception to every rule..." - Amazon.

Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, by John Thorn. Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print Length: 320 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.97. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again. Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Forget Alexander Joy Cartwright and the New York Knickerbockers. Instead, meet Daniel Lucius Adams, William Rufus Wheaton, and Louis Fenn Wadsworth, each of whom has a stronger claim to baseball paternity than Doubleday or Cartwright. But did baseball even have a father - or did it just evolve from other bat-and-ball games? John Thorn, baseball’s preeminent historian, examines the creation story of the game and finds it all to be a gigantic lie, not only the Doubleday legend, so long recognized with a wink and a nudge. From its earliest days baseball was a vehicle for gambling (much like cricket, a far more popular game in early America), a proxy form of class warfare, infused with racism as was the larger society, invigorated if ultimately corrupted by gamblers, hustlers, and shady entrepreneurs. Thorn traces the rise of the New York version of the game over other variations popular in Massachusetts and Philadelphia. He shows how the sport’s increasing popularity in the early decades of the nineteenth century mirrored the migration of young men from farms and small towns to cities, especially New York. No matter how much you know about the history of baseball, you will find something new in every chapter..." - Amazon.

The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches, by Zack Hample. Anchor, 2011. Print Length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Paperback $10.16. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"The holy grail, the fountain of youth, the golden fleece, and the baseball: rarely do objects inspire such madness. The Baseball is a salute to the ball, filled with insider trivia, anecdotes, and generations of ball-induced insanity. Which Hall of Famer once caught a ball dropped from an airplane? Why do balls get stamped with invisible ink? What’s the best ticket to buy for catching a foul ball? Which part of the ball once came from dog food companies? How could a 10,000-year-old glacier help a pitcher grip the ball? In this enlightening, entertaining, and often wildly funny book, Zack Hample shares ballpark legends and lore, details the evolution of the ball, and offers up his secret methods for snagging your own from major league games." - from the Trade Paperback edition.

Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games, by A. Bartlett Giamatti. Bloomsbury, 2011. Reprint edition. Print Length: 128 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $10.94. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A philosophical musing on sports and play, this wholly inspiring and utterly charming reissue of Bart Giamatti's long-out-of-print final book...puts baseball in the context of American life and leisure. Giamatti begins with the conviction that our use of free time tells us something about who we are. He explores the concepts of leisure, American-style. And in baseball, the quintessential American game, he finds its ultimate expression. 'Sports and leisure are our reiteration of the hunger for paradise - for freedom untrammeled.' Filled with pithy truths about such resonant subjects as ritual, self-betterment, faith, home, and community, Take Time for Paradise gives us much more than just baseball. These final, eloquent thoughts of 'the philosopher king of baseball' (Seattle Weekly) are a joyful, reverent celebration of the sport Giamatti loved and the country that created it. A. Bartlett Giamatti served as commissioner of Major League Baseball from April 1, 1989, until his death on September 1, 1989." - Amazon.


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History Thru the Lens of Fiction: New Historical Novels for the Kindle

Blending historical fact with fiction, a novel set in other times and places can transport you into the past more convincingly than a dry historical treatise - and entertain you in the bargain. What I look for in historical fiction are books by authors who, after reading the histories and doing the research, create stories based in the past that include characters I want to know better and a plot that keeps me turning pages - books like Peter Ackroyd's The Clerkenwell Tales, Bernard Cornwell's The Last Kingdom, and Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth.

Now you can spend less time searching and more time reading as I watch for new historical fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. New on the historical fiction shelves:

Pacific Glory by P. T. Deutermann. St. Martin's Press, 2011. Print Length: 336 p. TIME FRAME: World War II, Pacific Theater. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (5 reviews).Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.15. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Savo Island, Midway, and the Battle of Samar, three of the defining naval battles of WWII in the Pacific, will draw history buffs to this riveting novel. It’s largely the story of Annapolis friends Marsh Vincent, who barely survives the Savo debacle, and Mick McCarty, whose dive bombing at Midway sinks a Japanese aircraft carrier that helped devastate Pearl Harbor, and Glory Hawthorne, a woman both love who has become a navy nurse. Having seen the savagery of naval war, Marsh fears he may not have the courage to face it again. Mick, an Annapolis football hero, has problems with alcohol and authority. He fears that he may be grounded. Ultimately, both are off Samar when a small group of tiny escort carriers and destroyers finds itself facing an overwhelming force of cruisers—and the Yamato, the largest battleship ever built..." - Thomas Gaughan for Booklist.

To Defy a King by Elizabeth Chadwick. Sourcebooks Landmark, 2011. Print Length: 544 p. TIME FRAME: England during the Middle Ages. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (16 reviews). Kindle edition $9.58; Paperback $10.08. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Mahelt 'Matty' Marshal, the daughter of legendary British knight William Marshal, becomes a bride at 14. Though the marriage, to Hugh Bigod, future earl of Norfolk, is arranged, Matty is open to it and embraces the passion that eventually comes. She bears Bigod four children and enjoys a peaceful life until tyrannical King John takes her paternal family hostage, first her brother Will, heir to the earldom of Pembroke, then her brother Richard, and finally her father, who has openly opposed the king's greed and land-grabbing. Matty's determination to save her father and brothers while also standing by her husband and keeping her new family safe creates both conflict and, ultimately, joyous rewards in a well-told saga filled with just the right amount of exacting period detail." - Publishers Weekly.

The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor. Hyperion, 2011. Print Length: 432 p. TIME FRAME: England in 1786. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (29 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $16.49. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"1786, Jerusalem College, Cambridge. The ghost of Sylvia Whichcote is rumored to be haunting Jerusalem ever since student Frank Oldershaw claimed to have seen the dead woman prowling the grounds and was locked up because of his violent reaction to these disturbed visions. Desperate to salvage her son's reputation, Lady Anne Oldershaw employs John Holdsworth, author of The Anatomy of Ghosts - a stinging account of why ghosts are mere delusion - to investigate. But his arrival in Cambridge disrupts an uneasy status quo as he glimpses a world of privilege and abuse, where the sinister Holy Ghost Club governs life at Jerusalem more effectively than the Master, Dr. Carbury, ever could. And when Holdsworth finds himself haunted— - not only by the ghost of his dead wife, Maria, but also by Elinor, the very-much-alive Master's wife - his fate is sealed. He must find Sylvia's murderer..." - Amazon.

The Raven's Bride by Lenore Hart. St. Martin's Griffin, 2011. Print Length: 368 p. TIME FRAME: 19th century United States. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (9 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $21.27. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When eight-year-old Virginia 'Sissy' Clemm meets her handsome cousin, Eddy, she sees the perfect husband she's conjured up in childhood games. Thirteen years her elder, he's soft-spoken, brooding, and handsome. Eddy fails his way through West Point and the army yet each time he returns to Baltimore, their friendship grows. As Sissy trains for a musical career, her childhood crush turns to love. When she's thirteen, Eddy proposes. But as their happy life darkens, Sissy endures Poe's abrupt disappearances, self-destructive moods, and alcoholic binges. When she falls ill, his greatest fear - that he’ll lose the woman he loves - drives him both madness, and to his greatest literary achievement. Part ghost story, part love story, this provocative novel explores the mysterious, shocking relationship between Edgar Allan Poe and young Sissy Clemm, his cousin, muse and great love." - Amazon.

The Officers' Club by Ralph Peters. Forge Books, 2011. Print Length: 304 p. TIME FRAME: 1981 Arizona. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (46 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.15. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"The time is 1981, the place remote Fort Huachuca, along the Arizona-Mexico border, where the army, still demoralized by the Vietnam War, trains intelligence officers for future war with the USSR. The central character is Lieutenant Roy Banks. Smart and committed to the army, Banks enjoys the approbation of senior officers, the companionship of male peers, and considerable attention from female officers. But Banks spurns Lieutenant Jessica Lamoureaux, a beautiful schemer who has turned almost every male head on the base. When she is murdered, Banks must determine who killed her... " - Thomas Gaughan for Booklist.

Sins of the House of Borgia by Sarah Bower. Sourcebooks Landmark, 2011. Print Length: 544 p. TIME FRAME: Renaissance Italy. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $9.68; Paperback $10.19. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A young Jewish woman is drawn into the splendor and corruption surrounding the court of the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, in Bower's debut, a slick historical soap opera. After Esther Sarfati is baptized and becomes a lady-in-waiting to the widowed Lucrezia Borgia, the pope's illegitimate daughter, she is attracted to Lucrezia's seductive and cruel brother, Cesare. Esther becomes ensnared in a web of deceit and betrayal as Lucrezia is sent in a political marriage to the powerful Alfonso d'Este, heir to the dukedom of Ferrara. Determined to pursue a romance with the elusive Cesare, Esther is increasingly drawn into the schemes and passions of the Ferrara and Borgia families." - Publishers Weekly.

Elizabeth I by Margaret George. Viking, 2011. Print Length: 688 p. TIME FRAME: 16th Century England. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $14.99; Hardcover $16.75. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"...Margaret George dazzles here as she tackles her most difficult subject yet: the legendary Elizabeth Tudor, queen of enigma - the Virgin Queen who had many suitors, the victor of the Armada who hated war; the gorgeously attired, jewel- bedecked woman who pinched pennies. England's greatest monarch has baffled and intrigued the world for centuries. But what was she really like? In this novel, her flame-haired, lookalike cousin, Lettice Knollys, thinks she knows all too well. Elizabeth's rival for the love of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and mother to the Earl of Essex, the mercurial nobleman who challenged Elizabeth's throne, Lettice had been intertwined with Elizabeth since childhood. This is a story of two women of fierce intellect and desire, one trying to protect her country, and throne, the other trying to regain power and position for her family and each vying to convince the reader of her own private vision of the truth about Elizabeth's character. Their gripping drama is acted out at the height of the flowering of the Elizabethan age. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dudley, Raleigh, Drake - all of them swirl through these pages as they swirled through the court and on the high seas." - Amazon.

The School of Night by Louis Bayard. Henry Holt, 2011. Print Length: 352 p. TIME FRAME: Elizabethan England and present-day America. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (18 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $13.54. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In the late sixteenth century, five brilliant scholars gather under the cloak of darkness to discuss God, politics, astronomy, and the black arts. Known as the School of Night, they meet in secret to avoid the wrath of Queen Elizabeth. But one of the men, Thomas Harriot, has secrets of his own, secrets he shares with one person only: the servant woman he loves. In modern-day Washington, D.C., disgraced Elizabethan scholar Henry Cavendish has been hired by the ruthless antiquities collector Bernard Styles to find a missing letter. The letter dates from the 1600s and was stolen by Henry's close friend, Alonzo Wax. Now Wax is dead and Styles wants the letter back. But the letter is an object of interest to others, too. It may be the clue to a hidden treasure; it may contain the long-sought formula for alchemy; it most certainly will prove the existence of the group of men whom Shakespeare dubbed the School of Night but about whom little is known..." - Amazon.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.