Amazon’s done it again! They’ve picked 100 ebooks and then slashed the prices in a special sale for October. You can find all 100 ebooks at tinyurl.com/399books This time I recognized at least one or two bargain books that were written by my favorite authors!
Amazon’s discounting books from seven different genres, too, so there’s a really nice variety to choose from. There’s mysteries, thrillers, romance, literature, memoirs and general nonfiction — and even some science fiction titles. Be sure to check the bottom of each of these page, because Amazon seems to have some grouped some more ebooks together in extra categories, like “Top-Rated Reads, Just $2.99”. And there’s even a new category, called “Popular Thrillers with Leading Ladies, $3.99 or Less”
Here’s some of the most interesting titles.
When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories by Molly Ringwald ($3.99)
This author was a movie star in the 1980s (starring in a string of iconic teen comedies directed by John Hughes, like Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club.) But now that she’s 44, Molly Ringwald “mines the complexities of modern relationships,” according to the book’s description at Amazon, “in this gripping and nuanced collection of interlinked stories.” In this 237-page novel, Ringwald describes a Los Angeles family and their friends, “revealing the deceptions, heartbreak, and vulnerability familiar to us all….” revealing “a startling eye for the universality of loss, love, and the search for connection.” It’s only been available since August, and it’s already racked up 24 five-star reviews.
Beer-Can Chicken by Steven Raichlen ($2.51)
Wait, what? According to this book’s description at Amazon, the author reveals “everything one should ever need to know about roasting a chicken upright on top of a can of beer.” But that’s not all. If you use a 32-ounce can of Foster’s beer, you can actually cook a whole turkey. If you slap on some welder’s gloves, you can even reach right into the flames to turn a stewing hen yourself, and there’s also a receipe for basting a chicken using black-cherry soda. “Raichlen’s goal is to encourage grillers to have fun and use their imagination,” Amazon’s description promises, “and he presents 74 ‘offbeat recipes’ as starting points…” Even if a recipe doesn’t turn out the way you’d hoped, “A chicken straddling a beer can, at the very least, makes a great conversation piece at an outdoor beer bash.”
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk: a Novel by Ben Fountain ($2.99)
Amazon’s editors picked this novel as one of the best new books of May, so it’s a real treat that it’s now been discounted to just $2.99. In his first novel, author Ben Fountain describes eight American soldiers who survive an intense firefight in Iraq, only to be honored with a guest appearance beside the Dallas Cowboys during a Thanksgiving halftime show. There they meet a wild cast of characters, according to the book’s description on Amazon, and “Over the course of this day, Billy will begin to understand difficult truths about himself, his country, his struggling family, and his brothers-in-arms – soldiers both dead and alive. In the final few hours before returning to Iraq, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision, and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.â€
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates ($1.99)
She’s been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize three separate times, and won the National Book Award in 1969. But in 2009, at the age of 72, Joyce Carol Oates wrote a novel about “the most believable and thoroughly terrifying sexual psychopath and killer ever to be brought to life in fiction,” according to Amazon’s description of Zombie. Oates has already written more than 50 novels, but at the age of 72 she sat down to create “a dazzling work of art that extends the borders of the novel into the darkest heart of truth.” Two years later, it’s still one of Amazon’s top 5 best-selling psychological thrillers. Amazon calls it “her boldest and most brilliant triumph yet,” and on the book’s page it’s already racked up 36 different five-star reviews.
tinyurl.com/399books