DAILY DEALS: A couple unusual but highly recommend novels and a rebound romance
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The Complete Rebound Series by Jerica MacMillan $ 0.99
From the Jacket Copy:
The complete Rebound Series, all in one place!
REBOUND THERAPY
There’s no word for someone like me.
If the crash that ended Tom’s life had happened five weeks later, I’d be a widow.
Instead? I’m just … tragic. My happily ever after was ripped away before it even had the chance to start.
It’s been a year since fate took him away from me. And my best friend Amy is convinced that I’m stuck, refusing to move on. Since I won’t go to a grief support group, which was her first suggestion, she’s decided I need a hot, dirty fling. To move on and get back to living again instead of just existing.
She calls it rebound therapy.
I call it a load of crap. But there’s no arguing with her once she gets an idea in her head. And going out for drinks with my friend isn’t a bad way to spend an evening, even if I know she’s going to be scoping out all the available men in our vicinity.
What I don’t expect is to actually meet one. But Brian slips past all my defenses. Sexy and sweet, he makes me leave behind the sad, depressed girl I’d become, bringing me to life again.
Until a cruel reminder of what really happened the night Tom died slaps me in the face. How can I ever get past that?
REBOUND ENVY
You know the old saying, “Always the bridesmaid never the bride”? Well, in my case it’s the maid of honor.
My best friend Jenna is engaged for the second time. I’m happy for her. I really am. She’s been through a lot, and she deserves the wedding of her dreams.
I just wish I could find someone too. It stings that she’s fallen in love for the second time, ready to walk down the aisle, and I’ve never even been close.
It’s not for lack of trying.
To make matters worse, her fiancé’s wine bar had become our favorite hangout. That is, until I dated his business partner Adam. I thought we had a connection, but after the second date he stopped calling. He’s been weird and formal–instead of flirty and charming–ever since.
I make sure to show up with a date for the engagement party, thinking that’ll make things easier. But Adam starts acting like a jealous ex, and I can’t figure out his problem. He’s the one who stopped calling me.
Now I’m the maid of honor and Adam’s the best man. I won’t be able to avoid him anymore. We’ll have to make nice so we don’t ruin things for our friends.
With him constantly going hot and cold, I’m off-balance and don’t know how to act. And when he kisses me in front of everyone two days before the wedding?
Everything just gets even more complicated.
REBOUND REVIVAL
What’s the best way to get over your cheating ex-boyfriend?
Take a new job halfway across the country and have a fantastic one-night stand your first night in town.
At least that’s what I did.
I felt pretty good about my decisions … until I bumped into the guy that gave me the best orgasms of my life my first day at work.
Turns out, he owns the vineyard where I’m the new events coordinator. And he’s not satisfied with just one night.
I’d invited him back to my hotel as a palate cleanser, and now he wants to be the main course. Or to make me the main course.
Aside from the problems inherent in the fact that Max is my boss’s boss, I’m still raw from the end of my last relationship. And he’s too experienced to be anything but a player. Am I just setting myself up for more heartbreak by getting involved with him?
Shibumi by Trevanian $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
A classic spy novel from the bestselling author, Trevanian, about a westerner raised in Japan who becomes one of the world’s most accomplished assassins
Nicholai Hel is the world’s most wanted man. Born in Shanghai during the chaos of World War I, he is the son of an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father and is the protégé of a Japanese Go master. Hel survived the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished—and well-paid—assassin. Hel is a genius, a mystic, and a master of language and culture, and his secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection known only as shibumi.
Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his exquisite mistress, Hel is unwillingly drawn back into the life he’d tried to leave behind when a beautiful young stranger arrives at his door, seeking help and refuge. It soon becomes clear that Hel is being tracked by his most sinister enemy—a supermonolith of international espionage known only as the Mother Company. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other . . . shibumi.
Confessions Of An Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
Is this new land a place where magics really happen?
From Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author of Wicked, comes his much-anticipated second novel, a brilliant and provocative retelling of the timeless Cinderella tale.
In the lives of children, pumpkins can turn into coaches, mice and rats into human beings…. When we grow up, we learn that it’s far more common for human beings to turn into rats….
We all have heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave among the ashes. But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty . . . and what curses accompanied Cinderella’s exquisite looks?
Extreme beauty is an affliction
Set against the rich backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris’s path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister.
Clara was the prettiest child, but was her life the prettiest tale?
While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, burning all memories of her past, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household–and the treacherous truth of her former life.
God and Satan snarling at each other like dogs…. Imps and fairy godmotbers trying to undo each other’s work. How we try to pin the world between opposite extremes!
Far more than a mere fairy-tale, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a novel of beauty and betrayal, illusion and understanding, reminding us that deception can be unearthed–and love unveiled–in the most unexpected of places.
Damia by Anne McCaffrey $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
As willful as her mother, The Rowan, ever was, and possessing unimaginable powers, Damia defies her family’s attempts to tame and train her–only to bond with Afra Lyon, a Talent who serves The Rowan, and who becomes the object of her affection.
i really really really loved Damia as a teenager. I have to read it again.
Trevanian’s The Eiger Sanction is the book which, once I finished and took a deep cleansing breath, made me realize it was high time to adopt a DNF policy. I wouldn’t read Shibumi if it was delivered to my door in gift basket accompanied by flowers, chocolates and fancy beverage.
@LML: I read Shibumi eons ago. I honestly don’t remember much (anything?) about it except for massive disappointment. Sadly, it took many more years for me to adopt a DNF policy, and it still makes me vaguely uncomfortable at times.