New Orleans-based attorney and writer Tony Dunbar is the Lillian Smith Book Award-winning author of books about Mississippi, Appalachia, migrant workers, and the Southern labor movement, plus the acclaimed Tubby Dubonnet mystery series.
Book 4 in the witty yet hard-boiled foodie-noir Tubby series tops today’s Buffet. Shelter From the Storm features “slick prose, upbeat characters, and the wonders of the French Quarter will commend this to any Skip Langdon or David Robicheaux fan,” according to Library Journal.
When he was just 12 years old, growing up in Atlanta, Tony told people that he was going to be a writer, but it took him until age 19 to publish his first book, Our Land Too, based on his civil rights experiences in the Mississippi delta. For entertainment, Tony turned not to television but to reading mysteries such as dozens of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories. Among his favorites are: Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, and Tony Hillerman, and John D. MacDonald, and Mickey Spillane.
As usual, each book here has gone FREE within the past 24 hours, except for the Bargain books in the yellow section below. 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.)
Shelter From The Storm: (Tubby Dubonnet Mystery #4)
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: Tony Dunbar
The seamier side of the Crescent City…
To out-of-town kingpin Willie LaRue, Mardi Gras seems the perfect time for a New Orleans heist – nobody, but nobody will be thinking about a single other thing. Parties, parades, chaos, alcohol – who could be concerned about a little thing like a bank job? Indeed, all might have gone well except for an out-of-season frog-flogger that threatens to flood the French Quarter – something even Hurricane Katrina couldn’t do.
Next thing you know the survivors – thieves and revelers alike – find themselves marooned together. As the LaRue gang plans its watery escape, raffish lawyer Tubby Dubonnet is obliged to take time out from his customary eating and loafing to thwart their murderous intentions. The body count rises as the tempest subsides, and Tubby finds himself fighting not only for his life, but (it seems to him) the very city itself.
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The Back Door Man
Science Fiction > High Tech
Author: Dave Buschi
All credit cards have stopped working. Today. This morning.
What cash you have in your wallet is it. ATMs and bank systems are down. You can’t get gas, groceries… Commerce has essentially come to a halt.
Our society is computercentric. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. We’re plugged in. Managing our finances online. Downloading apps for our iPhone. Reading the WSJ on our Kindle.
There are things out there on the cutting edge we don’t even know we need to fear. We see it through the eyes of James Kolinsky, a simple family man who works in information security. His day goes from bad to worse when he discovers that his greatest fear is his fault and what’s happened to him has happened to millions of others.
He’s been set up. His family—make that the world—has been taken hostage. The next twenty-four hours we find out what James Kolinsky is really made of.
Mashitta! A Collection of Simple South Korean Recipes
Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Asian
Author: Cooking Penguin
Evolving from a complex mix of tradition, geography and history makes the South Korean cuisine an exciting mix of varying ingredients and spices. Notable for their spicy dishes and vast number of side dishes, South Korean cuisine is definitely a taste to experience. For anyone who doesn’t know much about South Korean, it is the country that Gangnam Style comes from.
This book shows you how you can create delicious South Korean recipes in your very own kitchen.
The Runaway Pastor’s Wife
Christian Fiction > Suspense
Author: Diane Moody
What could possibly drive a pastor’s wife to run away from home?
After years of frustration from life in a church fishbowl, Annie McGregor walks away from it all and boards a plane for Colorado. She has no way of knowing her college sweetheart is headed to the same cabin in the Rockies, terrified and gravely wounded. Their unexpected reunion couldn’t have come at a worse time. Or could it? Bewildered that God would allow Michael Dean to walk back into her life, Annie pleads with Him to keep her heart true to her husband and her family. God answers her prayer, but in a way she would never expect.
Written by a former pastor’s wife, Annie’s story provides a rare look inside the family life of those in the ministry, particularly the unique pressures on those who marry men of God.
A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny
Christian Living > Inspirational
Author: Amy Julia Becker
Challenging surprises often lead to unexpected joy. Amy Julia opens eyes and softens hearts as she brings readers into her own story of disappointment turned to blessing. This is a journey of discovering strength through weakness, and the author learns to embrace the face that we are all dependent on God and one another. This books will inspire readers who appreciate beautiful writing coupled with deep insights about life and faith.
Five Days in Skye
Christian Fiction > Romance
Author: Carla Laureano
Hospitality consultant Andrea Sullivan has one last chance to snag a high-profile client or she’ll have to kiss her dreams of promotion good-bye. When she’s sent to meet Scottish celebrity chef James MacDonald on the Isle of Skye, she just wants to finish her work as efficiently as possible. Yet her client is not the opportunistic womanizer he portrays himself to be, and her attraction to him soon dredges up memories she’d rather leave buried. For James, renovating the family hotel is a fulfillment of his late father’s dreams. When his hired consultant turns out to be beautiful, intelligent, and completely unimpressed by his public persona, he makes it his mission to win her over. He just never expects to fall under her spell.
Soon, both Andrea and James must face the reality that God may have a far different purpose for their lives—and that five days in Skye will forever change their outlook on life and love.
TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?
Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
Biographies & Memoirs > Presidents & Heads of State
Author: Joshua Wolf Shenk
Regularly $15.95, Today $1.99
In this astonishing and illuminating book, Joshua Wolf Shenk reveals the deep melancholy that pervaded Abraham Lincoln’s life and its influence on his mature character. Mired in personal suffering as a young man, Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health. His coping strategies and depressive insight ultimately helped the sixteenth president find the strength that he, and America, needed to overcome the nation’s greatest turmoil.
Drawing on seven years of research, Shenk offers a nuanced, revelatory perspective on Lincoln and his legacy.
Far from Perfect (Perfect, Indiana: Book 1)
Romance > Military
Author: Barbara Longley
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
2013 HOLT Medallion Award Winner
Steal away on a journey to the heartland, where a wounded soldier meets the one woman who could be his new beginning…
Noah Langford narrowly survived the roadside bombing in Iraq that cost him his leg and forever his peace of mind. When his stepbrother Matt dies in a car accident, the loss feels like the final blow to Noah’s shattered soul. But then he learns about the girlfriend and baby living in Perfect, Indiana who Matt had never mentioned, and suddenly Noah has a new mission…
Ceejay Lovejoy was nineteen and pregnant when her boyfriend walked out. Since that day, Ceejay has devoted herself to giving her daughter a better life, avoiding any man who could threaten that security—until the day Noah Langford shows up on her doorstep in Perfect. His gentle spirit has an unexpected effect on Ceejay’s guarded heart, tempting her to take one last chance on love. But when a painful secret comes to light, it threatens to break the fragile bond growing between them…and to destroy a love powerful enough to heal them both.
Someone To Love (Someone To Love Series)
Romantic Comedy
Author: Addison Moore
Regularly $7.99, Today $2.00
A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller
“If you don’t give your heart away, you can’t get it broken.” When twenty-year-old Kendall Jordan transfers across the country to Garrison University, the last thing she’s looking for is a one-night stand. Unfortunately that’s exactly what gorgeous Cruise Elton offers. Kendall has long since come to realize that love is an illusion, and Cruise couldn’t agree more—but something deep inside her wants him all for herself.
So Kendall devises a plan to “play the player” and proposes that Cruise tutor her in becoming a female version of himself—Garrison University’s own playboy. But as real feelings emerge, the game gets complicated, and Kendall and Cruise will find themselves questioning everything they thought they knew about love.
This book is intended for mature audiences due to strong language and sexual content.
The Bean Trees: A Novel
Women’s Fiction > Domestic Life
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Regularly $7.99, Today $1.99
The Bean Trees is bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver’s first novel, now widely regarded as a modern classic. It is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a 3-year-old native-American little girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Tucson, Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West.
Written with humor and pathos, this highly praised novel focuses on love and friendship, abandonment and belonging as Taylor, out of money and seemingly out of options, settles in dusty Tucson and begins working at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires while trying to make a life for herself and Turtle.
A Watershed Year
Women’s Fiction > Christian
Author: Susan Schoenberger
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
What it means to be a mother, what it takes to save a life.
Lucy never confessed her love to her best friend, Harlan, before he passed away. Two months after his funeral, she is haunted by the power of things left unsaid. But then she receives the first of his e-mails arranged to be sent after his death. So begins the year that everything changes—Lucy’s watershed year.
In an e-mail, Harlan says something that consumes her: he’s certain Lucy is destined for motherhood. In her grief, she suddenly rediscovers hope, journeying to Russia to adopt a four-year-old boy. When she meets her son, Mat, for the first time, she realizes he’s also mending a wounded heart and is just as lost as she is. Together, they learn to trust, each helping the other to heal.
But just as they’re welcoming their new normal, Mat’s father comes to America to reclaim his son and reveals the truth about Mat’s past that might shatter Lucy’s fragile little family forever.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2