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The Big Deal Sale ends Monday. Post on children’s and teens books is here.

The Big Deal Sale is a regular sale that Amazon runs with around 500 Kindle Books on sale in a variety of subjects.  This time is runs until May 27th.  The complete list is here and the category list is here.  Below are some of the non-fiction books that looked good to me.  I will post a fiction list later today.

Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler

Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler – $1.99

496 pages, 83 of 107 reviews are 4 or 5-star

Its stories may be the best known in the world, but its locations have long been a mystery. Where did Noah’s ark land? Where did Moses receive the Ten Commandments? Where are the lost cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? Now, in Walking the Bible: A Photographic JourneyNew York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler offers an unprecedented heart-stirring adventure through the landscape of some of history’s most storied events.

Featuring Bruce Feiler’s own photography as well as his selections from professional collections, Walking the Bible: A Photographic Journey brings together breathtaking vistas, intimate portraits, and fascinating panoramas, providing firsthand access to the inscrutable land where three of the world’s great religions were born—and finally puts a face on the stories that have long inspired the human spirit.

Over several years, Feiler traveled nearly ten thousand miles through the deserts of the Middle East, which led first to his runaway national bestseller Walking the Bible. This new illustrated book follows his route, offering a thrilling photographic voyage through the actual places of some of the Bible’s most memorable events—from the heights of Mount Ararat, where Noah’s ark landed, to the desert outpost in Turkey, where Abraham first heard the words of God, to the summit where Moses overlooked the Promised Land.

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy – $2.99

145 pages, 220 of 274 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Bookwi.se Review

Using “eat that frog” as a metaphor for tackling the day’s most challenging task, Tracy shows readers how to zero in on these critical tasks and organize their time. He details 21 practical, doable steps to stop the procrastination treadmill and get more of the important tasks done.

BirthCONTROL: A Husband's Honest Account of Pregnancy by James Vavasour

BirthCONTROL: A Husband’s Honest Account of Pregnancy by James Vavasour – $1.99

166 pages, 19 of 20 reviews are 5-star

This nine-month non-fiction account of pregnancy, from the husband’s perspective, details how the protagonist learned to let go of control in the quest for the perfect pregnancy. All accounts were documented as they happened, long before the blurred baby goggles of fatherhood were firmly affixed. This dark, entertaining, poignant satire will be educational for any new couple thinking of starting a family. For those already pregnant, it will be a funny and often neurotic vision of their day to day struggles.

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The Swan ThievesSummary: I gave up after 40 percent because I just didn’t care any more.

I borrowed Swan Thieves from the library because I loved Kostova’s first book, The Historian.

The Swan Thieves is not the Historian.  The Historian was a wide ranging (and too long) look at the idea of Dracula.  It came out just before the Twilight series changed the concept of vampires for modern readers.

I read the Historian after I first read Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  The Historian was a modern take on how a historical Dracula could have hidden and still be around.  It kept with most of the original vampire lore that Stoker used.  Vampires were ultimate evil.

Twilight changed that and suddenly the erotic imagery became central point and instead of ultimate evil, vampires just became evil because they stopped paying attention to humans.  But those vampires that cared for humans were as good as if they had never changed.

Swan Thieves is a confusing interplay between a modern psychologist, his patient, the patient’s ex-wife and a historical painter and his muse.

I read 40 percent of the book and was bored out of my mind.  Often books get better.  So I reached out to my social media world and everyone that responded back said get out because it doesn’t get any better.

So I gave up.  If anyone actually liked it, leave a comments and let me know.  Maybe I will come back to it later.

The Summary Thieves Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

How the bible Came to Be by J Daniel Hays and J Scott Duvall

How the Bible Came to Be by J Daniel Hays and J Scott Duvall

62 pages, no reviews, Lending Enabled

This short ebook explores how the Bible came to be, with fascinating chapters on divine inspiration, the Septuagint, the shaping of the canon, translation, and much more.

Six Miles From Nashville by Elaine Littau

Six Miles From Nashville by Elaine Littau

200 pages, 46 of 51 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled

Betty Barnes finds herself hundreds of miles away from her Guymon, Oklahoma home. Since leaving for a large Bible College in Missouri, her life has been twisted around. Not that things weren’t already a challenge for her with her brother in Vietnam and her heart bleeding from a recent break up.

Faced with unbearable loneliness and loss, she arrives at a diner six miles from Nashville. There, she has a chance to pick up the pieces and build a new life for herself as an independent young woman with a great future ahead of her.

Wishful Preaching: Things I Wish I'd Said From the Pulpit by Kim Williams

Wishful Preaching: Things I Wish I’d Said From the Pulpit by Kim Williams

56 pages, 9 of 9 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled

A little bit preaching, a tad irreverent and a dash of hilarious – Wishful Preaching is a collection of 12 sermons that SHOULD be preached from the pulpit. After 15 years of ministry and a less than pretty exit, I’ve become aware that there are a few things I wish I’d said from the pulpit.

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Kindle Daily Deal Romance Daily Deal
Kindle Daily DealHeaven’s Prisonersby James Lee BurkeCustomer review: “Captures the underbelly of the bayou.”

 

Deal Price: $0.99

 

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Kindle Daily DealAlong Came a Dukeby Elizabeth BoyleCustomer review: “The romance is slow and sweet.”

 

Deal Price: $0.99

 

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Science Fiction & Fantasy Daily Deal Kids Daily Deal
Kindle Daily DealTripletby Timothy ZahnCustomer review: “It blends Science Fiction with Fantasy and Romance.”

 

Deal Price: $1.99

 

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Kindle Daily DealLucy Cousins’ Maisy picture booksThree books at a special price.

 

Deal Price: $1.99 each

 

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This week is SID Display week, a trade show for display makers.  The guys at Goodereader are at the show looking at the new displays for ereaders.

Sony has a new 13.3 inch prototype reader using a new Eink screen.  The device itself is only 12.6 oz (only 4 ozs more than a Kindle Paperwhite, while more than quadrupling the screen size.)  The screen by itself is only weighs 16 grams and is flexible and does not require a glass screen.

This is still a prototype but Sony hopes to commercially release a model by the end of the year.

The large screen is focused on large format PDF documents and will be targeted toward business and technical uses and education.  It also allows you to use a pen to notate the device and finger touch navigation.

(After I original wrote up this post, I saw that Goodereader had a follow up post where they interacted with the 13.3 inch ereader on their own.  The pictures are better with this one.)

Here is a video from Good Ereader with a (slightly awkward) demonstration from an Eink employee.

Mystical Paths by Susan HowatchSummary: The son of Jon Darrow, Nicholas, has to come to his own faith and purpose.  

I am continuing to really enjoy the Church of England Series.  Mystical Paths is the fifth of the Church of England series and is the start of a spinoff series about Nicholas that starts with High Fliers.  There is one more in the Church of England Series, Absolute Truths.  But that book goes back to the 1960s again and revisits the original protagonist that started the series, Charles Ashworth.

Mystical Paths broke the series format again.  This book is mostly a mystery/thriller.  Christian Aysgarth, the oldest son of Neville (subject of books 3 and 4) died in 1965.  But Katie, his wife is still troubled with the thought that it was not an accident, but a suicide (and she is to blame).

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Kindle Daily Deal Romance Daily Deal
Kindle Daily DealBury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee BrownAmazon.com review: “This extraordinary book changed the way Americans think about… their country.” 

Deal Price: $2.99

Audiobook is discounted to $3.99 with purchase of Kindle Book

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When Sparks FlyWhen Sparks Flyby Autumn Dawn“This book is really a detective thriller heavily spiced with romance.” –Romantic Times Book Reviews 

Deal Price: $0.99

 

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Science Fiction & Fantasy Daily Deal Teens Daily Deal
Kindle Daily DealNight Bladeby J.C. DanielsCustomer review: “A really fantastic urban fantasy series with a tough female lead.” 

Deal Price: $1.99

 

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Kindle Daily DealNo and Meby Delphine de ViganCustomer review: “A great story about helping others and never giving up on them.” 

Deal Price: $1.99

Audiobook is discounted to $2.99 with purchase of Kindle Book

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Apple has a sale on NYT Bestsellers for $4.99 each.  Amazon has price matched (or better) most of the books I have looked at.

An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski

An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski - $4.99

274 pages, 682 of 740 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Audiobook is discounted to $3.99 with purchase of Kindle Book 

An Invisible Thread tells of the life-long friendship between a busy sales executive and a disadvantaged young boy, and how both of their lives were changed by what began as one small gesture of kindness.

When Laura Schroff brushed by a young panhandler on a New York City corner one rainy afternoon, something made her stop and turn back. She took the boy to lunch at the McDonald’s across the street that day. And she continued to go back, again and again for the next four years until both their lives had changed dramatically. Nearly thirty years later, that young boy, Maurice, is married and has his own family. Now he works to change the lives of disadvantaged kids, just like the boy he used to be.

An Invisible Thread is the true story of the bond between a harried sales executive and an eleven-year-old boy who seemed destined for a life of poverty. It is the heartwarming story of a friendship that has spanned three decades and brought meaning to an over-scheduled professional and hope to a hungry and desperate boy living on the streets.

French Silk by Sandra Brown

French Silk by Sandra Brown - $1.99

403 pages, 69 of 81 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Audiobook is discounted to $2.99 with purchase of Kindle Book 

Like the city of New Orleans itself, Claire Laurent is a vibrant beauty laced with a mysterious elusiveness. The founder of French Silk, a fabulous lingerie company, she has fought hard to make it a worldwide success. Then a TV evangelist attacks French Silk’s erotic sleepwear as sinful. And when he is killed, Claire becomes the prime suspect.

District Attorney Robert Cassidy knows Claire is damning herself with lie after lie about the murder, even as he feels her drawing him into her world and her very soul. But neither Cassidy nor her protests of innocence can save Claire unless she reveals a shocking truth — one she has sworn to take to the grave…

Thinking, Fast and Slow Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - $4.99

512 pages, 458 of 543 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.

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Jesus is Lord, Ceasar is NotSummary: Jesus is Lord does not necessarily mean that early Christians were also saying Caesar is not.

Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not sounded like a great book that I desperately wanted to read.  In the end I found it was a good book that I probably could have read a review of instead.  That is not to say it isn’t worth reading.  Just to say it was not worth reading for me.

You see I have previously thought that thinking about Christianity in terms of Empire or Anti-Empire could be useful, but either way often put more emphasis on the writer’s political views than on the actual biblical evidence.

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Love Thy Rival: What Sports' Greatest Rivalries Teach Us About Loving Our Enemies by Chad Gibbs

Love Thy Rival: What Sports’ Greatest Rivalries Teach Us About Loving Our Enemies by Chad Gibbs

244 pages, 6 of 6 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled

In his first book, the best-selling God & Football: Faith and Fanaticism in the SEC, humorist Chad Gibbs explored his own struggles to balance faith in God with passion for pigskin. Now Gibbs is back asking how Christian fans can love their enemies, when we can’t even love rival fans.

From the cross-country culture war of Lakers vs. Celtics, to the cross-state hate-fest of Alabama vs. Auburn, Gibbs spent one year attending the most intense rivalry games in sports (Yankees vs. Red Sox, Duke vs. Carolina, and many more), observing the darker side of fan culture, and pondering the problems rivalry games present to the Christian fan.

The result… Love Thy Rival, an enlightening, laugh-a-minute look at what sports’ greatest rivalries teach us about one of Jesus’ most difficult commands: Love your enemies.

Maid for Murder: Deadly Business by Susette Williams

Maid for Murder: Deadly Business by Susette Williams

254 pages, 60 of 92 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled

Bailey inherits her grandfather’s business, Maid For You, but cleaning up dead body parts wasn’t part of the job description. Bailey hopes to wipe out crime with the help of Nate, her computer hacker assistant, despite protests of their involvement in the case from Detective Max Wellington.

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