After the Leaves Fall

After the Leaves Fall [Kindle Edition]
Nicole Baart (Author)

I loved this book. From page one, Baart's distinctive style engrossed me. After the Leaves Fall is a beautiful portrait of a young girl struggling with life, love and decisions. Julia wants to be someone else, or at least not who she is. Life hasn't been kind to her. She grew up with a mother who didn't want to be a mother. She preferred Julia call her by her first name instead of mom. The only bright spot in her life was her father, who loved her unconditionally.

Julia wasn't bothered much when her mother left one day and never returned, but when her father dies, she's devastated. Baart skillfully and beautifully exposes Julia's grief, raw and multi-layered. She's left with wounds so deep, she doesn't like to talk about her parents to anyone.

I don't often read such complex emotions written with such credibility. I believed every word. After the Leaves Fall is the kind of book that leaves you wanting more. I'm glad there's a sequel, and Baart is an author to watch. Her debut novel is highly recommended by this reviewer.  By Ane Mulligan "editor, Novel Journey"
Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• Print Length: 368 pages
• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (September 5, 2007)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English

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Listen

Listen [Kindle Edition]
Rene Gutteridge (Author)
Clever novelist Gutteridge (the Storm series) has consistently upped the ante of Christian storytelling by offering her readers intelligent and entertaining texts. Her newest work delves into the deepest recesses of the human heart via the spoken word. The small town of Marlo, where nothing newsworthy ever happens, is blindsided when a mysterious Website begins posting the private conversations of its citizens. Intrigue and suspicion mount quickly and everyone is suspect and suspicious. When one of Marlo's police officers dies, newspaperman Damien Underwood commits himself to pursuing the site's creator. Damien's search hits close to home as he attempts to protect his wife Kay and two teens, Jenna and Hunter, from the escalating mistrust, lies, and deceit. Swirling acts of violence and voices of condemnation serve to heighten an already tense and fragile citizenry. Gutteridge's skillful handling of the power of words will have every reader quietly introspective. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Belief in the power of words led Damien Underwood to a career in journalism and a job on his hometown newspaper, the Marlo Sentinel, where he uses words to persuade in op-ed pieces. But when an anonymous person records private conversations in people’s homes and posts them on a new Web site, Listentoyourself, words turn even loved ones against each other and threaten to tear the town apart. Suspicion about the originator of the Web site centers first on Underwood’s best friend, police officer Frank Merret, then on Underwood himself, before he finally discovers the source. The meanness of teenage girls, particularly against each other, also leads to violence and near tragedy, but the more relentless message is that “life and death are in the power of the tongue.” Gutteridge is fine at telling a story and portraying characters, including Underwood’s well-drawn teenage daughter and son, but her primary point about the power of words, with its religious undercurrent, would be more persuasive if it were less incessant. --Michele Leber

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 494 KB
• Print Length: 432 pages
• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (January 2, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English

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Crack Shot

Crack Shot [Kindle Edition]
Sinclair Browning (Author)

Part dirty-shirt cowgirl, part Apache, and part-time private eye, Arizona rancher Trade Ellis doesn’t have time to waste chasing down bad boys like Eddy Gallegos. And besides, finding the runaway teen in the middle of a blistering Tucson summer swarming with kids isn’t going to be easy.

But Trade’s doing it anyway. She’s doing it for Eddy’s grandmother–a friend of a friend–and because she has this thing about justice. She believes in it.

At first Trade figures Eddy is just a juvenile delinquent who broke out of a detention center with a couple of his compadres. But when her questions get answers the fragrance of cow pies, and one of his homeboys, a senator’s son, shows up dead, she realizes the barrio teen is actually running for his life.

Hot on his tail are a team of crooked cops, a suspicious homeless kid on a bike, and maybe an X-rated movie producer. For a yet-to-be-discovered reason, a dangerous race is on, leading Trade down a deadly path of violence and scandal. And from the looks of things, if the good guys finish last, they finish dead....
Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 533 KB
• Print Length: 382 pages
• Publisher: Crimeline (December 10, 2008)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English

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Water for Elephants: A Novel - Sara Gruen

Water for Elephants: A Novel [Kindle Edition] Sara Gruen (Author)

Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. --Valerie Ryan

With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book. (May 26)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 1252 KB
• Print Length: 350 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (May 1, 2007)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English

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The Hangman's Daughter - Oliver Pötzsch

The Hangman's Daughter [Kindle Edition] Oliver Pötzsch (Author)

Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Author Oliver Pötzsch

Question: What initially inspired you to write this story?

Oliver Pötzsch: As a descendant of the executioner’s dynasty Kuisl, I have been fascinated by their history since my childhood. Engaging myself with the Kuisls makes me feel connected to a greater lineage. In addition, executions are a fascinating topic often treated with undue prejudice. In this respect my books are a defense of my ancestors’ honour.

Question: What authors or books have influenced your writing?

Oliver Pötzsch: Regarding historic novels, my writing has been influenced by Paul Harding, Robert Harris, and the fantastic novel Terror by Dan Simmons. But I also look up to many authors of the fantasy genre such as Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, and the almost forgotten Fritz Leiber.

Question: What research did you do while writing your book?

Oliver Pötzsch: My grandmother’s deceased cousin was a passionate genealogist. In his life he built an enormous archive of information about my ancestors and the hangman profession, and I have been allowed free use of this resource. Also, during my career as a journalist I made several radio programs on this topic, talking to herb women and guardians of cultural heritage and searching in many archives of Bavarian cities for my ancestors.

Question: Is there any character you most identify with? Why?

Oliver Pötzsch: I am a cross between Jakob Kuisl and Simon Fronwieser. I am sometimes ferociously melancholic like Kuisl, and I have his stubbornness and his grumbling taciturnity which can drive my wife crazy. But also, like Simon, I am curious, I can be charming and at times even loquacious, and I love great coffee!

Question: Have you considered trying your hand at other genres?

Oliver Pötzsch: In March 2011, my new book, The Ludwig Conspiracy, will be released. It’s about the mysterious background of the death of King Ludwig II, the Bavarian fairy tale king. The novel is set in the present day; it is a contemporary thriller which I took great pleasure in writing. And one day I want to write a fantasy novel. As a child I couldn’t get enough of them.

Question: Have you always wanted to be an author? What other careers have you pursued?

Oliver Pötzsch: As a child I wanted to become a soccer commentator, actor, and yes, as a matter of fact, I wanted to become a writer. I always made up stories and wasted my youth on never-ending fantasy roleplaying.

Question: What's it like to have a book published for the first time?

Oliver Pötzsch: The first book is like the birth of a child, a long-cherished dream come true. Apart from that, every novel is really hard work! But I can’t think of anything else to do.

Question: What's next for you?

Oliver Pötzsch: After the thriller about Ludwig II, I am writing the fourth novel in the Hangman series. Later I will fulfil another childhood dream of mine and go live in Iceland for a while. Without my mobile or laptop. It is something I promised my family. Well, I might take a big notepad for a few new ideas...

From Booklist

This novel has been popular in Germany since its 2008 publication there, and it’s easy to see why. Set in the mid-1600s in the Bavarian town of Schongau, it features a hangman, Jakob Kuisl, who is asked to find out whether an ominous tattoo found on a dying boy means that witchcraft has come to town. This is no idle fiction. The German rulers were, at the time, heavily involved in the detection, prosecution, and execution of suspect witches. Pötzsch, who is descended from the real-life Kuisl family, does an excellent job of telling the story and supplying the historical backdrop. And his characters—Jakob, the hangman; his daughter, Magdalena; and Simon, the physician’s son—are extremely well drawn and believable. Kudos, too, to translator Chadeayne, who retains the story’s German flavor while rendering the text in smooth and highly readable English. Readers of historical fiction should find this very much to their liking. --David Pitt

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 646 KB
• Print Length: 448 pages
• Publisher: AmazonCrossing (December 7, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English

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First Manga on the Kindle

Who does not recognize Amazon Kindle? Kindle has begun to change the way people read. With Kindle you can read books, magazines, newspapers, comics - and anything printed on plain paper - where you are, whenever you want, you just have to download the newest edition.
Recently, a mangaka publishes Japanese-language manga titled " Aozora Finder Rock" on the Kindle platform. This means Aozora is the first manga in the world based Kindle.
Kindle users can read comics too. In fact, for black-and-white comics, like The Walking Dead, the Scott Pilgrim series, or most Manga, it looks pretty good once you get the files onto your e-reader. That’s where the open-source software tool Mangle helps out.

Mangle (Manga + Kindle = Mangle, get it?) was designed by FooSoft’s Alex Yatsov for the bad old days, before the Kindle had decent orientation tools. But it’s still really useful for getting your comic images in the right alignment and order. Plus, it’s compiled for Mac and Windows, or you can run it right in Python.

To make it even easier, the iReader Review blog included step-by-step directions and blogged the process. They hit a few snags, but the final product looks very nice indeed.

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Tips for forgotten passwords Kindle Devices

Forgot your password Kindle? Do not Panic! Just type in the password field: "resetmykindle" and press enter.

And will appear as notification, which tells you to wait until the Kindle restart.

These can be categorized reset factory Setting. so all your data and your books are on Kindle disappeared, just copy and paste again from your computer

See detail Tips for forgotten passwords Kindle Devices

How to Use Kindle3

1. To use WiFi – Go to the Kindle Home Page, then open ‘Menu’ and click ‘Settings’. Go to ‘WiFi Settings’, then select ‘View’. A command box will show you the WiFi networks available. Choose the network you are going to access. Supply details, such as your security code or password, if asked
2. To put the Kindle 3 into sleep mode – Simply slide the power switch found at the bottom of the device to put it into sleep. Do the same if you want to wake it from sleep mode
3. To type in numbers – The Kindle 3 doesn’t have a numbers row anymore. If you want to key in numbers, you have to open the symbol key then use the 5-way controller to find the specific number you want to use. However, there’s a much faster way of typing in a number: simply press Alt-a letter on the QWERTY row. For instance, Atl+Q gives you 1, ALT+W=2, Alt+E = 3, and so on and so forth
4. To bookmark a page – The shortcut key is Alt-B. Alternatively, you can position the cursor on the page, then double press the 5-way controller
5. To highlight a text – Bring the cursor to where you want to start highlighting the text. Press the 5-way controller once, then release; this locks the starting point of your highlight. Use the 5-way controller to move the cursor and select the text. When you reach the end of the text you want to highlight, press and release the 5-way controller again
6. To add notes – Position the cursor. Use the keyboard to type the notes you want to add
7. To delete all the notes you typed – Press Alt-Del
8. To skip to a chapter – In books where jumping by chapter or section is set up, you can skip a chapter forward or backward using the 5-way controller
If moving by ‘Table of Contents’ is enabled, you can use this as the default menu for choosing the section you want to jump to
9. Sharing highlighted book passages – Position the cursor on a note or highlight. Press Alt-Enter to share it to Facebook and Twitter friends
10. To play background music – Press Alt-Spacebar
11. To proceed to the next track – Press Alt-F
12. To load photos to your Kindle from your PC – Plug your Kindle 3 to your PC using the USB cable. Go to the main folder of your reading device; create a new folder and label it ‘Pictures’. If you want, you can also create sub-folders to make your photo collection more organized. Copy and drag the pictures from your PC to the desired sub-folder
13. Search and Indexing - Immediately after adding books to your Kindle you will notice that the battery meter drops very quickly. This is because after your books have been added to the Kindle, it will start indexing the text inside all the books. This is useful when you want to use the search feature. To check if the indexing has completed, search for a random word (e.g. “qwerty”) and you will see the number of items that are yet to be indexed
14. To take screenshots on the Kindle simply hold the buttons “Alt + Shift + G” and the screen will flash momentarily. To retrieve your screenshots browse to the root directory of your Kindle and navigate to the “documents” folder. This folder contains all your saved books and the screenshots will be saved as GIF files

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Cross Fire

Cross Fire [Kindle Edition]
James Patterson (Author)

Wedding bells ringDetective Alex Cross and Bree's wedding plans are put on hold when Alex is called to the scene of the perfectly executed assassination of two of Washington D.C.'s most corrupt: a dirty congressmen and an underhanded lobbyist. Next, the elusive gunman begins picking off other crooked politicians, sparking a blaze of theories--is the marksman a hero or a vigilante?

A murderer returns
The case explodes, and the FBI assigns agent Max Siegel to the investigation. As Alex and Siegel battle over jurisdiction, the murders continue. It becomes clear that they are the work of a professional who has detailed knowledge of his victims' movements--information that only a Washington insider could possess.

Caught in a lethal cross fire
As Alex contends with the sniper, Siegel, and the wedding, he receives a call from his deadliest adversary, Kyle Craig. The Mastermind is in D.C. and will not relent until he has eliminated Cross and his family for good. With a supercharged blend of action, deception, and suspense, Cross Fire is James Patterson's most visceral and exciting Alex Cross novel ever. 

Review

READERS LOVE I, ALEX CROSS!

"[Patterson's] books don't pussyfoot around when it comes to the villains. These are bad, bad people... [I, Alex Cross] is political, with a lot of intrigue in high places." (The Today Show Al Roker)

"I truly believe that James Patterson has an IV hooked up to his writing arm and Great Ideas, Great Plots, and Great Characters dribble constantly into his bloodstream...I, Alex Cross stuns." (TheReviewBroads.com)

"The stakes are higher than ever before...More than a crime thriller, it's an absorbing family drama." (NightsandWeekends.com )

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 397 KB
• Print Length: 384 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (November 15, 2010)
• Sold by: Hachette Book Group
• Language: English

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [Kindle Edition]
Stieg Larsson (Author)

Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: Once you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back. This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. --Dave Callanan

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 869 KB
• Print Length: 480 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (September 16, 2008)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English

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Autobiography of Mark Twain

Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1 [Kindle Edition]

Mark Twain (Author), Harriet E. Smith (Author), Benjamin Griffin (Author), Victor Fischer (Author), Michael B. Frank (Author)

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Mark Twain is his own greatest character in this brilliant self-portrait, the first of three volumes collected by the Mark Twain Project on the centenary of the author's death. It is published complete and unexpurgated for the first time. (Twain wanted his more scalding opinions suppressed until long after his death.) Eschewing chronology and organization, Twain simply meanders from observation to anecdote and between past and present. There are gorgeous reminiscences from his youth of landscapes, rural idylls, and Tom Sawyeresque japes; acid-etched profiles of friends and enemies, from his "fiendish" Florentine landlady to the fatuous and "grotesque" Rockefellers; a searing polemic on a 1906 American massacre of Filipino insurgents; a hilarious screed against a hapless editor who dared tweak his prose; and countless tales of the author's own bamboozlement, unto bankruptcy, by publishers, business partners, doctors, miscellaneous moochers; he was even outsmarted by a wild turkey. Laced with Twain's unique blend of humor and vitriol, the haphazard narrative is engrossing, hugely funny, and deeply revealing of its author's mind. His is a world where every piety conceals fraud and every arcadia a trace of violence; he relishes the human comedy and reveres true nobility, yet as he tolls the bell for friends and family--most tenderly in an elegy for his daughter Susy, who died in her early 20s of meningitis--he feels that life is a pointless charade. Twain's memoirs are a pointillist masterpiece from which his vision of America--half paradise, half swindle--emerges with indelible force. 66 photos and line illus. (Nov.) (c)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Starred Review. In explaining his dissatisfaction with his early attempts to write his life story, Mark Twain blamed the narrowness of the conventional cradle-to-grave format: “The side-excursions are the life of our life-voyage, and should be, also, of its history.” This volume—the first of three—makes public autobiographical dictations in which Twain unpredictably pursues the many side-excursions of his remarkably creative life. Embedded in a substantial editorial apparatus, these free-spirited forays expose private aspects of character that the author did not want in print until he had been dead at least a century. Readers see, for instance, a misanthropic Twain consigning man to a status below that of the grubs and worms, as well as a tenderhearted Twain still grieving a year after his wife’s death. But on some side-excursions, Twain flashes the irreverent wit that made him famous: Who will not delight in Twain’s account of how, as a boy, he gleefully dons the bright parade banner of the local Temperance Lodge, only to shuck his banner upon finding a cigar stub he can light up? But perhaps the most important side-excursions are those retracing the imaginative prospecting of a miner for literary gold, efforts that resulted in such works as Roughing It and Innocents Abroad. A treasure trove for serious Twain readers. --Bryce Christensen 

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 4257 KB
• Print Length: 743 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 13, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English

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The Illustrated Jack the Ripper

The Illustrated Jack the Ripper [Kindle Edition] | Gary Reed (Author) | Mark Bloodworth (Illustrator)

Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Cate Eddowes, Mary Kelly...names immortalized for over 100 years. Not because of great deeds or noble acts or grandiose actions, but because they were prostitutes trapped in the cesspool of London, the jewel of the world's cities. Because they were victims...victims of a madness that struck the foggy night with gleaming steel. They were the food that fed the legacy of the greatest killer of all time...Jack the Ripper.

The Illustrated Jack the Ripper is a survey of the information known about the most infamous killer of all time, Jack the Ripper. Included here are brief looks at the official victims, suspects, background on the area of Whitechapel, and more, including some official photographs of the time period and newspaper articles. This short excursion provides a concise yet comprehensive look a killer who has never been caught. A perfect introduction to the complexities of the serial killer who has fascinated criminologists and mystery buffs for over a century. Mark Bloodworth adds a number of sequential art pages, conveying a dark and sinister look to his art as each of the victims is portrayed in their final moments with Jack.

The script and text writing by Gary Reed, known for his work in bringing historical and literary works to graphic novel formats, is succinct yet maintains the edge he is known for.

Review Pictures, drawings and text filled with the history of Jack the Ripper. If you love the legend of this serial killer, it's all here in this handy book!! The Illustrated Jack the Ripper is nothing short of spellbinding - fierce and compelling. You will come away as a knowledgeable Ripperologist! --Jazma Online

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 2906 KB
• Print Length: 54 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Transfuzion Publishing (March 10, 2008)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English

  

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