Friday, August 31, 2012

Free books for Friday & an overview for the week!

Some books that just came free today and some of the best rated freebies of the week!
All free in USA as I share them, and rated with an average of 4 stars or more from customer reviews.

Bestseller


Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, Book One) (Artemis Fowl (Quality))
Bestseller for Kids and young teens

Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl is a millionaire, a genius—and, above all, a criminal mastermind. But even Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These aren't the fairies of bedtime stories; these fairies are armed and dangerous. Artemis thinks he has them right where he wants them…but then they stop playing by the rules.




SIkander
Historical/ world fiction

Winner of the Grand Prizes in each of the 2010 Los Angeles Book Festival and the 2011 Paris Book Festival, SIKANDER is the tale of the son of a Pakistani middle-class family. It's 1986. Seventeen-year-old Sikander, dreams of studying and living in America, but after a family quarrel, he leaves his Peshawar, Pakistan home. Encountering mujahideen warriors, he joins them in their fight against the occupying Soviets in neighboring Afghanistan. American assistance is stepped up with advanced weapons, like the Stinger missile, and the mujahideen are able to neutralize the Soviet military advantage. After just two years following Sikander's arrival, a Soviet withdrawal begins. Amid the turmoil, Sikander finds love and marries a young, sharp-witted Afghan village girl. With the fighting all but over, the couple decide to move to Sikander's Pakistan home where he hopes to reconcile with his family. But his dream of living in America endures. It's a dream that is shattered in the aftermath of 9/11 and in seeking to help his Afghan relatives, Sikander, now a successful entrepreneur, finds himself on an unavoidable collision course with the America of his dreams.

SIKANDER takes us from the pricey suburbs of Peshawar to the primitive war-torn landscape of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, to the placid serenity of Scotland, through the camps of Guantanamo, and finally, corporate America. It is a 21 year journey through freedom and captivity, love and loss, wealth and poverty, dignity and humiliation, and transgression and redemption. A rare glimpse of a non-radical mainstream Muslim's experience of the West, SIKANDER is a journey of growth, self-discovery, and hope. It will touch the humanity of its readers. Along with the two Grand Prizes, SIKANDER has collected numerous other awards including Best Fiction in the Hollywood Book Festival and the Beach Book Festival and Best Multicultural Fiction in the National Indie Excellence Book Awards for 2011.




The Wife of Reilly
A romantic comedy about a woman who secretly tries to find a new wife for her soon-to-be ex-husband.







Ordeal
Vampires


Luella, fierce, strong vampire,
Falls for a pretty human catch
Sent on her fiancé's desire
To celebrate they are engaged.

This unexpected turnabout
Is doomed to come to a dead end:
Her human sweetheart's dead to shroud;
Her fiancé's avenged for that;

And she is punished for blood treason,
Banished into a mortal child,
Whose human body is a prison
For all her powers to bind.

Her memories obliterated,
She is to find her love at last
Who proves to be too much related
To the misfortunes from her past.





The Rainbow Stick Boy (A children's picture book about diversity, and the beauty within)
Young children

This is the story of Huey, a stick boy who is born a little different than everyone else in the town. He doesn't let his differences keep him down. Huey finds a friend who is also a little different and together they find the magic at the end of the rainbow, and discover that their differences are really only skin deep.

This is a great Kindle e-book about diversity and the beauty within!



Overview from the week - some of the most popular - (and still free!) Kindle books this week


Trouble in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) 
Mystery

Scientist Maryse Robicheaux thought that a lot of her problems had gone away with her mother-in-law’s death. The woman was rude, pushy, manipulative and used her considerable wealth to run herd over the entire town of Mudbug, Louisiana.

Unfortunately, death doesn’t slow down Helena one bit.

DEA Agent Luc LeJeune is wondering what his undercover assignment investigating the sexy scientist has gotten him into – especially as it seems someone wants her dead. Keeping his secrets while protecting Maryse proves to be easier than fighting his attraction for the brainy beauty.





The Dragoneers (The Chronicles of Susah) 
Fantasy

THE DRAGONEERS is a coming of age story about Susah, a talented young woman, who refuses to join her three brothers in helping her father advance the family business. She wants to do something exciting with her life. While this story could have been set in any time, the fantastical world she lives in amplifies each step nearly beyond the bounds of imagination.

This adventure builds on the little we know about the antediluvian world and overlays it with a blend of technology, supernatural powers, fire-and-ice-breathing, flying dragons, giants, and martial arts to begin Susah’s adventure to discover herself. Climb aboard and hang on for the ride of your life.

This 100,000 word, Genesis-based epic fantasy will attract those interested in speculative fiction, especially about the antediluvian world, and will also appeal to readers of contemporary fantasy as well as military fiction.




Border Crossings: A Catherine James Thriller 
Mystery

Kirkus Reviews

When a college student vacationing in Cancun is abducted, her parents turn to a friend to help find her.
After spurning the sleazy advances of an older man in a nightclub in Cancun, spring-breaking college student Taylor Woodall is abducted at gunpoint outside her hotel, and her friend is shot. Her father immediately contacts his old friend Catherine James, a smart, resourceful attorney who has long dealt with sketchy characters south of the border. After running into a dead end with the local cops, James stumbles across a street kid who may have some pertinent information, but after the two are attacked in a crowded market, she realizes she's in over her head. She has no choice but to contact Matt, an old boyfriend who is currently working as a gun for hire, training anti-cartel soldiers deep in the jungle. Once Matt is on the scene, the pace of the investigation picks up, but, given his extreme methods, James is forced to confront some prickly moral issues if she's going to find out exactly what happened to Taylor. Although the novel follows thriller plot conventions fairly closely, when it comes to character development, Weems makes interesting choices. James' discomfort with Matt's methods is well-portrayed, as she tries her best to accept using extreme violence to achieve moral ends. The action scenes are well-wrought, and the prose flows clearly for the most part, occasionally hampered by the insertion of unnecessary detail. Overall, the book's strengths outweigh this minor weakness, and a parallel plot concerning a young Mexican girl lured into prostitution in the U.S. works well to underscore the themes of the primary plot, even if it doesn't seem to relate to it directly.

A tightly scripted thriller with an unusually well-developed main character.




Prison Nation
Futuristic fiction


In the Nation, no one is innocent - not even the children born behind bars. Millie 942B has spent her entire life locked away with her criminal parents and countless other inmates. She believes in the Nation, in its strict laws and harsh punishments.

But when Millie is released on her eighteenth birthday, she finds things are nothing as she was taught. People vanish, never to be seen again. Lies cover every word. Trust is as fragile as ice.

And then there is Reed. Born and raised outside the Prison walls, his dreams and thoughts cause Millie to doubt everything she has ever believed.

What is truly worth fighting for? If she pushes too hard, she could lose her freedom. If she stays silent, she could lose herself. The clock is ticking, and Millie must find the truth before it is too late.






1 comment :