DAILY DEALS: Historical non-fiction, romance, and a little saucy Vegas mystery
Book Dealsdaily deals6 Comments
Proper Scoundrels by Laura Landon $ 0.99
From the Jacket Copy:
Eight hundred pages of historical romance from five best-selling authors.
SHATTERED DREAMS by Laura Landon
Brentan Montgomery, Earl of Charfield has one love – his stable of Arabian horses. When he’s offered breeding rights to the Marquess of Fellingsdown’s prize Arabian if he acts as companion to Fellingsdown’s sister, he doesn’t care if the reclusive Lady Elyssa has three chins and a dozen hairy moles. The prize is worth anything he has to endure. But when he meets the elusive Lady Elyssa Prescott, all thoughts of gaining a prize Arabian colt disappear. He realizes he’s met the woman of his dreams – if he can keep her from discovering his deceit and convince her that her imperfections don’t matter to him.
Lady Elyssa Prescott knows what it’s like to be ridiculed and shunned. But when Brent Montgomery lets her glimpse a world where her limitations aren’t important, she believes it’s possible for her dreams to become a reality. Until she discovers the man with whom she’s fallen in love was ‘hired’ to offer her everything she’s dreamed of having.
The cruel reality of a love built on deceit shatters both their dreams and threatens to destroy their lives forever.
WAGERS GONE AWRY by Collette Cameron
Brooke Culpepper resigned herself to spinsterhood when she turned down the only marriage proposal she’d likely ever receive to care for her family. After her father dies, a distant cousin inherits the estate and becomes their guardian but permits Brooke to act in his stead.
Heath, Earl of Ravensdale is none-too-pleased to discover five young women call the dairy farm he won and intends to sell, their home. Desperate, pauper poor, and with nowhere to go, Brooke proposes a wager. His stakes? The farm. Hers? Her virtue.
Brooke loses, and her devastation is compounded when the cousin arrives, intending to haul the Culpepper misses off to London. Heath astounds himself and proposes in order to apply for guardianship of the other girls. Does Brooke dare marry the handsome stranger who’d been bent on compromising her? Will Heath regret his impulsive gesture, or will unexpected love flourish?
LORD RUTHVEN’S BRIDE by Tarah Scott
Love is always sweetest the first time around…
A harmless attraction leads to a friendship that forces Lady Annabelle to choose between the two men who love her. One saved her from a killer. The other is her future husband.
James Waterson, newly titled Viscount Ruthven, is hunting a killer. When Lady Annabelle steps into the killer’s sights, James will do everything in his power to protect her. Even if that means letting her go.
THE MOST UNLIKELY LADY by Barbara Devlin
Book Three in the Brethren of the Coast Series.
Woo a young lady with a fishing rod and a bucket of worms? Oh-so dashing–but untitled–Everett Markham seeks a bride, and he has charged the field of Miss Sabrina Douglas, a woman who prefers trout to truffles.
Unabashed and unapologetic, Sabrina sets her cap for a second son, one who will smile patiently when he comes home to find she’s misplaced their children. But marriage changes her in ways she never imagined, as the awkward debutante surrenders to a very real, very womanly, all-consuming love.
An irresistibly handsome English rogue, Everett plots his future with ruthless detail, but his future wife is anything but predictable, resulting in the zaniest courtship London society has ever seen. When a family tragedy upends his life on his wedding day, he must chart a slippery course with his most unlikely lady–as the new Earl and Countess of Woverton.
LOVING THE HAWKE by Lana Williams
Two wounded souls, a wallflower and a war hero, stumble upon each other time and again in slums and ballrooms, realizing they fight a common cause and share an unbridled passion. Will the curse they fight be their downfall? Or will love win the day?
Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages by Frances Gies $ 0.99
From the Jacket Copy:
A compelling, lucid, and highly readable chronicle of medieval life written by the authors of the bestselling Life in a Medieval Castle and Life in a Medieval City
Historians have only recently awakened to the importance of the family, the basic social unit throughout human history. This book traces the development of marriage and the family from the Middle Ages to the early modern era. It describes how the Roman and barbarian cultural streams merged under the influence of the Christian church to forge new concepts, customs, laws, and practices. Century by century it follows the development — sometimes gradual, at other times revolutionary — of significant elements in the history of the family:
The basic functions of the family as production unit, as well as its religious, social, judicial, and educational roles.
The shift of marriage from private arrangement between families to public ceremony between individuals, and the adjustments in dowry, bride-price, and counter-dowry.
The development of consanguinity rules and incest taboos in church law and lay custom.
The peasant family in its varying condition of being free or unfree, poor, middling, or rich.
The aristocratic estate, the problem of the younger son, and the disinheritance of daughters.
The Black Death and its long-term effects on the family.
Sex attitudes and customs: the effects of variations in age of men and women at marriage.
The changing physical environment of noble, peasant, and urban families.
Arrangements by families for old age and retirement.
Diva Las Vegas by Stephanie Caffrey $ FREE
From the Jacket Copy:
When Las Vegas exotic dancer Raven McShane launches a private detective business, no one takes her seriously at first. But when a former dancer and good friend needs help solving the town’s most notorious murder, Raven joins forces with a built bouncer and a smokin’ hot Mormon to uncover the killer’s identity. Raven dodges casino thugs, old-money families, and long-buried secrets, all of which lead her down a path that’s seedier than the strip in the morning light. If she can stay one step ahead of the killer, she just may prove that this beauty has brains, too.
Raven McShane Mysteries:
Diva Las Vegas (book #1)
Vegas Stripped (book #2)
Royal Flush (book #3)
Double Down (book #4)
Ruby by Francesca Lia Block $ 0.99
From the Jacket Copy:
From the beloved author of Necklace of Kisses comes a modern-day fairy tale of a willful and intuitive heroine and a world of shocking realism and transcendent magic.
Francesca Lia Block, this time with co-writer Carmen Staton, introduces readers to Ruby, a Midwestern girl named for the jewel that is believed to ward off evil spirits. Ruby’s special gift is a sixth sense that makes her at one with nature and gives her the ability to know her own destiny.
After growing up in an abusive family, Ruby escapes to Los Angeles and learns of her soulmate — Orion — a British actor. She travels to England, where she works at a potions and herbs shop, and through a series of coincidental circumstances, ends up nursing Orion back to health without confessing that she has been on a quest to find him all along. But just when she thinks her dream is becoming a reality, Ruby is stopped in her tracks by the violent demons of her past. Only by facing the darkness together can she and Orion finally fulfill their destiny.
As with Necklace of Kisses, Block, here with Staton, breaks the mold. In Ruby, readers will find a story about the power of our minds to overcome the past and ultimately change the course of our lives.
I’m not a KU member and I had no problem buying that historical bundle.
I actually reviewed Ruby back in 2007. It was one of my earliest reviews on the blog and if I had it to do over again, I think I might grade it lower in the B range. I liked it but not as much as I liked Weetzie Bat or Witch Baby, for those who are familiar with the works of Francesca Lia Block.
@Lostshadows: I think what Jane meant was “Amazon only.”
Speaking of Amazon only deals, a bunch of LaVyrle Spencer’s ebooks have been marked down on Amazon. November of the Heart is $2.99, and Spring Fancy is $3.49 (I liked both of these a lot, but haven’t reread them recently). Some of the others are also marked down, but the prices may not seem that way since they started out really high.
@Ren Benton: Yeah, sorry. KU means Amazon only.
@Janine: Thanks for adding that in!