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Rain Gods by James Lee Burke: When Hackberry Holland became sheriff of a tiny Texas town near the Mexican border, he'd hoped to leave certain things behind: his checkered reputation, his haunted dreams, and his obsessive memories of the good life with his late wife, Rie. But the discovery of the bodies of nine illegal aliens, machine-gunned to death and buried in a shallow grave behind a church, soon makes it clear that he won't escape so easily

Easy on the Eyes by Jane Porter: At 38, Tiana Tomlinson has made it. America adores her as one of the anchors of America Tonight, a top-rated nightly entertainment and news program. But even with the trappings that come with her elite lifestyle, she feels empty. Tiana decides to take a trip away from the Hollywood madness, but it has consequences that could affect the rest of her life.

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson: Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government.But he has no idea just how explosive the story will be until, on the eve of publication, the two investigating reporters are murdered.

In Free, Chris Anderson makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. Far more than a promotional gimmick, Free is a business strategy that may well be essential to a company's survival.

The costs associated with the growing online economy are trending toward zero at an incredible rate. Never in the course of human history have the primary inputs to an industrial economy fallen in price so fast and for so long. Just think that in 1961, a single transistor cost 10 dollars; now Intel's latest chip has two billion transistors and sells for 300 dollars (or 0.000015 cents per transistor--effectively too cheap to price).

The traditional economics of scarcity just don't apply to bandwidth, processing power, and hard-drive storage.Yet this is just one engine behind the new Free, a reality that goes beyond a marketing gimmick or a cross-subsidy. Anderson also points to the growth of the reputation economy' explains different models for unleashing the power of Free; and shows how to compete when your competitors are giving away what you're trying to sell. To drive his this all home, Free is free to download until July 22nd.

New York Times best-selling author Ted Dekker revisits the universe of his half-million selling Circle Trilogy with the continuation of this popular YA series--and brings along a member of  "The Circle" as his coauthor in Lunatic and Elyon. 

 

Lunatic: Johnis, Silvie, and Darsal found the Books of History, and now it's time to return home--but five years have passed at home, and nothing is as it was. The Horde has taken over Middle, Thomas and the rest of the Forest Guard are in hiding, and a strange new force is challenging everything they thought they knew. Should the Chosen One continue to follow his heart...or is his heart finally leading them astray?

Elyon: Darsal is trying to love the Horde as Elyon asked her to, but she's torn between this new mission and her original one, especially now that Johnis and Silvie no longer seem to be on her side.

The Chosen Ones are facing their greatest threat--extinction--and only by Elyon's grace will they survive to tell the tale.

 

This week we've added two newspapers to the Kindle library:

Daily Mail: Founded in 1896, the Daily Mail is one of the UK's most successful newspapers. With countless awards for its editorial flair, outstanding reporting, design and print quality, the Daily Mail has long been heralded as the voice of the mid-market. 

Star Tribune: The Star Tribune has the largest news gathering operation in the upper Midwest, providing the Twin Cities area with timely and accurate coverage of local news, sports and business information.

Remember that Kindle newspaper, magazine and blog subscriptions begin with a 14-day free trial.

Andrew Winston's forthcoming book, Green Recovery, argues that when the economy turns rough, many companies sideline their green business initiatives, but that's a big mistake. Green initiatives actually are a great way to cut costs precisely because these initiatives are all about ratcheting up your company's resource efficiency. They save energy, waste, and money, preserving precious capital, and give precise focus to your innovation efforts and strategic priorities. They can also help you position your organization for the recovery--boosting creativity and employee motivation for long-term strategic growth.
 
While Winston's larger work isn't available until August--you can download the chapter entitled, Green Cost Cutting: Five Ways to Get Lean Now, for free until July 21st. In it you'll learn about the overarching logic of a plan to implement green initiatives for both short and long-term gains, and what actions companies need to implement immediately to get lean quickly. From changing light bulbs to tweaking distribution routes and innovating recycling patterns, Winston selects just the ideas that will bring you a return on investment quickly and get you leaner faster.

FreeHand Systems has announced that its Novato Music Press catalog, which includes thousands of classical, traditional and American music titles, is now available on Kindle. This marks the first time that a comprehensive collection of sheet music is being offered for this exciting new medium.

 

"This is a wonderful boon to musicians who want instant access to a vast library of in-demand sheet music," said Kim Lorz, CEO of FreeHand Systems, Inc. "In addition to the convenient and comprehensive content selection that we offer, musicians never have to fumble through paper scores or worry about forgetting a piece of music. Everything is wirelessly downloaded and stored in the Kindle and is available for easy recall."

 

The Novato Music Press catalog consists of a wide variety of instruments and ensembles, including solo, chamber, opera and orchestra scores. All scores consist of modern engravings rather than reprints.

 

Major composers such as J. S. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven are well-represented, but the collection also contains traditional songs and works from popular songwriters like Stephen Foster and George M. Cohan, along with rare, but important works by minor composers, including Bredon Hill by George Butterworth, and Scott Joplin's Treemonisha.

 

To mark the release of the latest title in the Monk series, Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, we've brought in Monk's tireless assistant, Natalie Teeger, to give a little more perspective on the dirty work she and Monk get into:

My name is Natalie Teeger and I'm Adrian Monk's assistant. If you live in San Francisco, you may know him. He's a brilliant detective who is great at solving murders but calls 911 every time a bird poops on my windshield.

I don't know exactly what Monk's problem is. He's got some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder that I'm told doesn't qualify him as a nut, but it certainly makes me crazy. And I'm a single mother raising a 17-year-old daughter, so it takes a lot to stress me out.

I can't afford therapy on what Monk pays me and I have no medical benefits so I've started writing books about my experiences just for myself (and some very close friends like you) as a way to keep my sanity without spending 100 dollars an hour.

You think I'm exaggerating? Okay, here's an example of what I've got to put up with:

The other day, Monk didn't have a case to work on and I didn't relish the idea of spending the day sitting around his house sorting out imperfect Wheat Chex from his boxes of breakfast cereal ("It will be fun," he said. "You'll feel like a kid again."). Instead, I talked him into going to this revival theatre in Haight-Asbury that was showing classic Hitchcock movies.

Monk insisted on bringing a plastic seat cover because there was no way he was sitting on something a thousand other people had sat on before him. He also brought disinfectant and delousing spray. And gloves. And baggies to put his gloves in. And gloves to handle the baggies with the gloves in them.

It wasn't easy getting all that stuff past the ticket-taker, but I flashed a smile and a little cleavage (very little...I don't have much to spare) and we got in.

Once we were in the theatre, Monk had to sit dead center in an even-numbered seat. Luckily, the center seat wasn't an odd number or he might have asked me to move the entire row.

Just when I thought we were home free, the movie turned out to be "The 39 Steps." The title alone was enough to drive Monk out of the theatre. But we stayed. It was everyone else who fled, irritated by his incessant whining about the title of the movie and the fact he gave away the whodunit it in the first five minutes.

All the cleavage my Wonderbra could muster couldn't convince the manager not to throw us out.

But my ordeal didn't end there.

Monk didn't sleep all night. He was too upset by the odd number in the title of the movie. He spent the next day on the phone with Universal Studios trying to convince them they had a moral obligation to add another step to the title.

So, the next time you think your job is tough, think about mine.

(Or you could find out all about it first-hand by reading my latest book, Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop) --Lee Goldberg

From July 1st- July 31st, 2009, buy Tom Rob Smith's The Secret Speech and receive a free download of Child 44.

The Secret Speech is set in the Soviet Union, in 1956. Stalin is dead, and a violent regime is beginning to fracture--leaving behind a society where the police are the criminals, and the criminals are innocent. A secret speech composed by Stalin's successor Khrushchev is distributed to the entire nation. Its message: Stalin was a tyrant. Its promise: The Soviet Union will change.

Facing his own personal turmoil, former state security officer Leo Demidov is also struggling to change. The two young girls he and his wife Raisa adopted have yet to forgive him for his part in the death of their parents. They are not alone. Now that the truth is out, Leo, Raisa, and their family are in grave danger from someone consumed by the dark legacy of Leo's past career. Someone transformed beyond recognition into the perfect model of vengeance.

Available at a reduced price until July 5th:

The American Patriot's Almanac: Daily Readings on America: 365 reasons to love America!

The fife and drum of history mark the time of each passing day. And within their cadence, personalities, conflicts, discoveries, ideas, and nations peal and fade. American history is no different. From the starving time of Jamestown during the Winter of 1609, through the bloody argument of the Civil War, and to today, the United States is a tale best told one day at a time.

In The American Patriot's Almanac, Dr. William J. Bennett distills the American drama into three hundred sixty-five entries--one for each day of the year. Fascinating in its detail and singular in its grasp of the big themes, Bennett's Almanac will make anyone a fan of history, assembling even some of the most obscure details.  

Boomtown: Chang's Famous Fireworks: This is a humorous mystery and adventure story that kids will love to read! Boomtown is the home of Chang's Famous Fireworks factory, the Slush Olympics, the "Fighting Slugs" football team, rocket reindeer, and flying barber chairs. Boomtown is a humorous tall tale about a fictional town and its odd residents, written to capture the attention and inspire the imagination of intermediate readers. It's a fun read. However, underneath the humorous veneer, Boomtown asks and answers the question, "What does a healthy community look like?" The main characters struggle as they learn to trust their neighbors. 

Available only to Kindle customers, one month in advance of its print publication, we're pleased to offer Bob Garfield's The Chaos Scenario. The co-host of NPR's All Things Considered and a columnist for Advertising Age, Garfield forecasts the end of the old mass media model and the rise of a new digital replacement. Garfield dropped by the Kindle Daily to offer insight on the digital revolution and wienerschnitzels:

 

God rest your soul, Bill Mays, and God forgive me for turning your untimely death into a cheap news hook...but could there be a more fitting metaphor for the Death of Advertising As We've Always Know It?

Rhetorical question. The answer is "No, there could be no more fitting metaphor." Nor could there be a more convenient episode for launching a book on the collapse of the mass media/mass marketing symbiosis that has been so magnificently self-sustaining for nearly 400 years. Which is happening, right before our eyes. Newspapers are going belly-up one after another. The recording industry barely exists anymore. TV networks and broadcast stations are on the brink. The advertising industry is in a panic. All because the digital revolution has yielded audience fragmentation, ad avoidance and an exponentially growing glut of supply.

For all of mass media, it's all over but the shouting. For all of mass marketing, now that Billy Mays is gone, it's all over including the shouting.

This isn't a mid-course correction, or even a sea change. It is a genuine revolution, like the Industrial Revolution, only with more apps. Much of it, most of it, is fantastic. (For instance, I'm told you can now store and read whole books on an electronic gizmo the size of a wienerschnitzel.) But millions of lives will be turned upside down, and all of us will lose a media/entertainment culture we've depended on for nearly four centuries. So, now what?

Also a rhetorical question. The answer is, obviously, get out your wienerschnitzel and download The Chaos Scenario, so that you can learn the path forward. The whole point of the book is that, in the rubble of mass media. Shouting to the audience is useless, because the audience is paying you no mind. It is time for marketers, media, government, businesses and everyone hitherto known as The Man, at long last, to shut up and listen.