No. 1 bestselling author Leslie Gould tops today’s Buffet with her most recent book, Courting Cate, the first installment in her “Courtships of Lancaster County” Amish romance series. This book was selected as one of Oprah Magazine’s “7 Books That Will Transport You to Another World.” It’s a retelling of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” set in rural Pennsylvania.
Leslie caught the writing bug in the sixth grade, but before she became an author she worked as a museum curator, then a public relations specialist, and finally as a magazine editor. Once she finally started writing fiction, it was another 10 years until she sold her first novel. By that time she’d been married for nearly 20 years and had four children of her own to read to. Since then she’s written 15 books, starting with Beyond the Blue, a story about international adoption set in Vietnam.
As usual, each book listed here has gone FREE within the past 24 hours (except for the “Bargains” at the bottom of this page). Warning: Kindle book promotions can end without notice, so before downloading click the link “See Kindle price at Amazon” to verify that the book is still free. (Prices and availability may differ outside USA.)
Courting Cate (The Courtships of Lancaster County Book #1)
Romance > Inspirational > Amish
Author: Leslie Gould
When Amish farmer Pete Treger moves to Paradise Township, Pennsylvania, seeking a better life, he meets sisters Cate and Betsy Miller. Both are beautiful, but older sister Cate is known more for her sharp tongue and fiery temper than her striking appearance. Betsy, on the other hand, is sweet and flirty–and seems to have attracted most of the bachelors in Lancaster County!
However, the sisters’ wealthy father has made one hard and fast rule: elder sister must marry first, before the younger can even start courting. Unfortunately for poor Betsy, and for the men who want to court her, her older sister, Cate, doesn’t have any suitors–until Pete comes to town, that is.
Though he finds both sisters attractive, something about Cate’s feisty demeanor appeals to him. Soon the other bachelors in the district convince Pete to court Cate. She hardly seems receptive to his overtures, though. Instead, she’s immediately suspicious of his interest.
The Guys Are Props Club (The G.A.P. Series, Book 1)
Romance > Coming of Age
Author: Ingrid Seymour
During her senior year in high school, Maddie Burch promised herself not to ever fall for a cute guy – or any guy – again. Cute guys are players and not to be trusted, a fact she learned the hard way when her first boyfriend ran her heart through a paper shredder. Two years later, her promise is still intact, and she’s determined to make it through college without falling victim to another creep. She has her job, school and The Guys Are Props Club to keep her mind and hormones in check.
The club was founded by Jessica, Maddie’s best friend. It is a sisterhood of girls who have fallen prey to heartless jerks and who have vowed to turn the tables. Once a semester, Jessica requires members to “do onto others as they’ve done unto you.” Setting the example, Jessica’s next play is Sebastian Capello, a theater major with heartthrob looks and a flair for Latin dance, whose heart she plans to break the way hers was once broken.
What the friends don’t know is that Sebastian is different. Despite his perfect looks and popularity, he’s not a jerk. He doesn’t play games to get his way. Instead, he keeps it real and goes after what he wants with honest intentions. And what he wants is not a bombshell like Jessica, but a down-to-earth girl like Maddie – even if it causes a riff in the girl’s friendship. Even if it means getting Maddie to break her personal vow.
The Scent of Lilacs (The Heart of Hollyhill Book, Book 1)
Women’s Fiction > Domestic Life > Inspirational
Author: Ann H. Gabhart
Jocie Brooke has never wanted for love, despite the fact that she hardly remembers her mother. Jocie’s father, preacher David Brooke, has done his best to be both father and mother to his daughter. Even Jocie’s spinster Great-aunt Love, who’s slowly going senile, cares for Jocie in her own stern way. But in their small town of Hollyhill, Kentucky, painful secrets lie just beneath the surface, and inquisitive spirits discover surprising truths. There’s a reason why Aunt Love hides behind black dresses and a stoic countenance. And David takes his morning walks not just for quiet solitude, but to wrestle with the past.
Full of stories of lost loves and the trials of small-town living, this heartwarming novel explores the journey of faith and family.
Love Thy Rival: What Sports’ Greatest Rivalries Teach Us About Loving Our Enemies
Religion & Spirituality > Sports
Author: Chad Gibbs
Gibbs asks 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.
Don’t Look Old: 23 Things You Are Doing That Are Making You Look Older
Aging > Beauty, Grooming & Style
Author: Raven Heidrich
Did you know that people living over 100 is the largest growing population group in the planet? This means that people are living longer and longer everyday. This is good news, or it can be bad news.. it all depends how you are living your life.
If you are taking good care of your body, then you will benefit from this tremendously. If you want the truth, I just think of it as preserving myself because I know technology is going to do amazing things for rejuvenation in the future. Right now the way I see it, our job is to keep our bodies in the best shape possible while all these amazing technologies get created.
So the million dollar question is: How do I preserve myself so I don’t look old? In this book, I’ve attempted to answer those questions by giving you 23 simple mistakes you’re probably making, that if you stop will help you preserve your youth. Plastic surgery and all those “external fixes” can help of course, but if you are mistreating your body then it will look bad regardless of plastic surgery. You won’t look vibrant, alive and full of youth. To look and feel like you are truly ageless you must follow certain principles. This book is going to help get you on that path.
DreamQuest (Lands of Daranor, Book 1)
Fantasy > Sword & Sorcery
Author: Bill T Pottle
A young boy in a small village has a mysterious dream that hints of the fantastic power of the Water Orb, one of the four elemental forces that has been lost to the world for nearly three centuries. Heeding the advice of the powerful wizard Zelin, Tarthur sets off on a quest to understand his dream and its consequences for the fate of civilization.
Join Tarthur and Derlin as they travel through the land, learning not only about the world but also about themselves and what it means to pass from boyhood into the world of men.
Journey to the mystical lands of Daranor—see a sunrise on the shoals of the merfolk, ponder the powerful evil of the Death Lord Darhyn, feel the hope of Freeton, the serenity of the lands of the elves, and the cunning of Queen Marhyn. Meet a mysterious shapeshifter, the twin heads of the Guild of Thieves, and the stunningly beautiful princess of the elves. Whether you are a child, teen, or adult, the lands of Daranor have something for you.
Aberrations
Genre Fiction > Coming of Age
Author: Penelope Przekop
Twenty-one-year-old narcoleptic Angel Duet knows her father harbors secrets. He loves and protects her, but his suspicious refusal to discuss her mother s death drives Angel to worship an image created from the little history she does have: her father’s sketchy stories and her mother’s treasured photography, studies of clouds that have hung in the their foyer for more than twenty years.
When her father’s girlfriend moves in, the photographs come down, and Angel’s search for truth becomes an obsession. As she struggles to uncover the past and gain control over the narcolepsy that often fogs her world, Angel descends into a dizzying realm of drugs, adultery, and confused desire that further obscures reality.
The King of Terrors
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: D. M. Mitchell
It begins in the year 1929. DCI Thomas Rayne discovers the decomposed body of an unknown man in a Suffolk barn, a strange black symbol painted on the barn wall. A crime that Inspector Rayne never solved. A case he would go to his death calling his Curse.
More than eighty years later in 2011, guilt-ridden Gareth Davies seeks a quiet life in rural Wales. But his self-enforced solitude is soon to be violently shattered. Driving home one night in a snowstorm he knocks down and nearly kills a mysterious young woman in a country lane.
He doesn’t know it but his life will never be the same again. The woman claims to be his twin sister Erica – a sister he never knew he had, because his unknown mother abandoned him in 1976 as a baby at Cardiff Central railway station. But his newfound sister brings with her a dire warning: his life is in great danger. When she disappears unexpectedly, he decides he must find her. That’s when his nightmare truly begins.
Ms America and the Offing on Oahu (Beauty Queen Mysteries No. 1)
Mystery > Cozy > Humor
Author: Diana Dempsey
Ms Ohio Happy Pennington finds out it’s not all sequins and silicone when she competes on Oahu for the Ms America crown—the first national title of her life.
When her fiercest competitor tumbles dead out of the isolation booth during the televised pageant finale, Honolulu PD gets to thinking Happy might have killed her.
What’s the only thing a beauty queen worth her sash can do? Nab the real killer—even if that means tangling with snarky rival contestants, a local who claims to be Hawaiian royalty, a brooding helicopter pilot, and a pageant emcee hot enough to die for …
TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?
Soy Sauce for Beginners
Women’s Fiction > Domestic Life
Author: Kirstin Chen
Regularly $4.99, Today $1.99
Gretchen Lin, adrift at the age of thirty, leaves her floundering marriage in San Francisco to move back to her childhood home in Singapore and immediately finds herself face-to-face with the twin headaches she’s avoided her entire adult life: her mother’s drinking problem and the machinations of her father’s artisanal soy sauce business.Surrounded by family, Gretchen struggles with the tension between personal ambition and filial duty, but still finds time to explore a new romance with the son of a client, an attractive man of few words.
When an old American friend comes to town, the two of them are pulled into the controversy surrounding Gretchen’s cousin, the only male grandchild and the heir apparent to Lin’s Soy Sauce. In the midst of increasing pressure from her father to remain permanently in Singapore—and pressure from her mother to do just the opposite—Gretchen must decide whether she will return to her marriage and her graduate studies at the San Francisco Conservatory, or sacrifice everything and join her family’s crusade to spread artisanal soy sauce to the world.
Soy Sauce for Beginners reveals the triumphs and sacrifices that shape one woman’s search for a place to call home, and the unexpected art and tradition behind the brewing of a much-used but unsung condiment. The result is a foodie love story that will give readers a hearty appreciation for family loyalty and fresh starts.
Beowulf: Explosives Detection Dog (A Breed Apart)
Christian Fiction > Romance > Suspense
Author: Ronie Kendig
Regularly $12.99, Today $1.99
Beowulf—a hulky, brindle-coated bullmastiff—is the only “boy” for Timbrel Hogan. And she has a history to remind her why. But when Timbrel, a handler at A Breed Apart, embarks on a mission to detect WMDs in Afghanistan, she reunites with Tony “Candyman” VanAllen and her no-other-man philosophy is challenged. While tension mounts between Timbrel and Tony, the team comes under fire after Beowulf gets a “hit.” When tragedy threatens Tony’s career and Timbrel’s courage, they must maneuver through an intricate plot and a mission like no other. . . .
Blood Wager (Blood Destiny, Book 1)
Fantasy > Paranormal & Urban
Author: Connie Suttle
Regularly $2.99, Today $0.99
“I agree to pay Sergio Velenci one million pounds if the female takes less than nine days to fully turn.”
Lissa’s life as a vampire begins on the day her husband is removed from life support. Turned by rogues who wager her life, Lissa is running from her maker who is determined to kill her, hunted by the Council who has branded her a rogue and blackmailed by werewolves, who utilize her newly-developed talents for their own gain.
How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain
Pets & Animal Care > Dogs
Author: Gregory Berns
Regularly $5.99, Today $1.99
The powerful bond between humans and dogs is one that’s uniquely cherished. Loyal, obedient, and affectionate, they are truly “man’s best friend.” But do dogs love us the way we love them? Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns had spent decades using MRI imaging technology to study how the human brain works, but a different question still nagged at him: What is my dog thinking?After his family adopted Callie, a shy, skinny terrier mix, Berns decided that there was only one way to answer that question—use an MRI machine to scan the dog’s brain. His colleagues dismissed the idea. Everyone knew that dogs needed to be restrained or sedated for MRI scans. But if the military could train dogs to operate calmly in some of the most challenging environments, surely there must be a way to train dogs to sit in an MRI scanner.
With this radical conviction, Berns and his dog would embark on a remarkable journey and be the first to glimpse the inner workings of the canine brain. Painstakingly, the two worked together to overcome the many technical, legal, and behavioral hurdles. Berns’s research offers surprising results on how dogs empathize with human emotions, how they love us, and why dogs and humans share one of the most remarkable friendships in the animal kingdom.
How Dogs Love Us answers the age-old question of dog lovers everywhere and offers profound new evidence that dogs should be treated as we would treat our best human friends: with love, respect, and appreciation for their social and emotional intelligence.
Shame
Mystery > Hard-Boiled
Author: Alan Russell
Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99
Although it’s been many years since the death of his father—an infamous serial killer known as Shame—Caleb Parker still struggles to free himself from his father’s dark shadow. Caleb wishes only for a normal life without being branded a “killer’s son,” but his dreams are shattered when a new string of murders surfaces that are all too reminiscent of Shame’s terrible killings.
When the police label him the prime suspect, Caleb forges an unlikely partnership with true-crime author Elizabeth Line, a writer whose career began when she survived an encounter with Shame and who then went on to document his life—and death. As the body count begins to pile up, Elizabeth and Caleb come to the conclusion that one of them has been targeted by the killer, and a game of cat and mouse begins as they try to uncover the murderer’s identity before becoming his next victims.
Brutal and unapologetic, Shame draws you into the mind of a serial killer with no chance of escape until the last page is turned.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2