New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Julie Cantrell tops today’s Buffet with Into the Free, her novel set in Depression-era Mississippi. The book won an amazing two Christy Awards — one for “Debut Novel of the Year” and a second for the grand-prize “Book of the Year.” (The Christy Awards recognize novels of excellence written from a Christian worldview.)
Julie has served as editor-in-chief of the Southern Literary Review and is a recipient of the Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Fellowship. She and her family live in Mississippi, where they operate Valley House Farm.
The sequel to Into the Free, When Mountains Move, will be released next month.
Currently Julie is working on a creative nonfiction book about her family’s adventures as first-generation farmers.
As usual, each book listed here has gone FREE within the past 24 hours. 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.)
Into the Free: A Novel
Historical Romance
Author: Julie Cantrell
Just a girl. The only one strong enough to break the cycle.
In Depression-era Mississippi, Millie Reynolds longs to escape the madness that marks her world. With an abusive father and a “nothing mama,” she struggles to find a place where she really belongs.
For answers, Millie turns to the Gypsies who caravan through town each spring. The travelers lead Millie to a key that unlocks generations of shocking family secrets. When tragedy strikes, the mysterious contents of the box give Millie the tools she needs to break her family’s longstanding cycle of madness and abuse.
Through it all, Millie experiences the thrill of first love while fighting to trust the God she believes has abandoned her. With the power of forgiveness, can Millie finally make her way into the free?
Saturated in Southern ambiance and written in the vein of other Southern literary bestsellers like The Help by Kathryn Stockett and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, Julie Cantrell has created in Into the Free—now a New York Times Best Seller—a story that will sweep you away long after the novel ends.
A Deadly Distance
Thrillers > Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue
Author: L.T. Ryan
Washington, D.C. Midday. A man waits at a bus stop, his intentions unknown. Two government operatives have been stalking him for days, waiting for him to make his move. Unexpectedly, the man takes off running and heads for a deserted warehouse.
Jack Noble and his partner, Frank Skinner, believe the man to be part of a terrorist organization that is involved in smuggling drugs and guns and men into the country. But it turns out their plan involves far more export than import, and hits a lot closer to home.
Baking Basics and Beyond
Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Baking
Author: Pat Sinclair
With the demise of home economics in the school system, many adults have no baking experience at all, relying on dreary store-bought baked goods and artificial mixes to satisfy their cravings. Baking Basics and Beyond allows even absolute novices to prepare a wide array of delicious, healthy breads, cakes, cookies, pies, and more.
In a warm, reassuring manner, Pat Sinclair leads beginning bakers step-by-step through each recipe, thoroughly explaining each technique and direction. After learning a basic technique, additional recipes provide further practice and more elaborate results. This second edition contains more than 100 recipes, from old favorites like icebox cookies, cornbread, and brownies to updated classics, including Butterscotch Cashew Blondies, Chai Latte Custards, and Savory Wild Mushroom Bread Pudding.
Passport through Darkness: A True Story of Danger and Second Chances
Biographies & Memoirs > History > Africa
Author: Kimberly L. Smith
As she shares her extraordinary stories of fighting human trafficking as an ordinary mom, Kimberly Smith offers hope for readers who wonder if God is calling them to greater things.
Passport Through Darkness takes readers on Smith’s journey from normal family life and business, to Europe, to the deserts of Africa and ultimately, to the deserts of her own soul as she tries to live well as an imperfect American mom, crusade for justice for orphans around the world, and embrace God’s extraordinary dreams for her. When Kimberly and her husband risk everything to answer God’s call, they see God change and restore them—even amid exhaustion, marital struggles, and physical limitations.
Healing for Damaged Emotions
Christian Living > Personal Growth
Author: David A. Seamands
Whether through our own fallen temperament, willful disobedience, or as victims of the hurtful actions of others, many of us struggle with crippling emotions, among them perfectionism, depression, and low self-worth. The pain of such emotions is often present with us even though the incidents and relationships that caused the hurt may be long past.
Healing for Damaged Emotions, first published in 1981 and since translated into over 15 languages, has helped over a million readers worldwide deal honestly and successfully with their inner hurts. Through the realistic, scriptural approach that Dr. David Seamands brings to this deeply personal subject, you too can find healing—and then become an agent of healing for other strugglers.
As the case in this explosive thriller unfolds, the man behind it all reaches out to Jack with a simple message… 37 hours.
After the Ashes
Romance > Westerns
Author: Cheryl Howe
Lorelei Sullivan longs for the home and family that was torn from her during the war. After the death of her mother, she follows her younger brother out west, hoping for a fresh start with her last living relative. Instead she finds a ruthless bounty hunter looking for the brother she knows she must protect at all costs. She doesn’t expect the price to be losing her heart to a man who promises her nothing but shared passion.
Christopher Braddock wants information more than the bounty of a bumbling kid who got mixed up with the outlaw Braddock has been searching for since the war. But when his prey’s sister tries to throw him off her brother’s trail, Braddock isn’t noble enough to not let her try. What he doesn’t expect is the spark that brings his body, and worse, his numbed emotions back to life. His unexpected feelings for Lorelei has Braddock crossing the line from bounty hunter to outlaw. He’ll do whatever it takes to keep Lorelei safe, including breaking her heart.
Completely Restored
Contemporary Fiction
Author: Robert Kerr
When Joe Murphy’s wife, Linda, spies an ad for a “beautiful 3-story Victorian house in need of some TLC,” the couple jumps at the chance for their dream home. Renovating it will allow them to indulge their passion for antiques and to get closer to an era they believe was a better time. Privately, Joe hopes that the project will also fill the void that has opened within their family life. They embark upon a grueling three-year renovation to restore the house to its former splendor, and everything seems perfect…until the morning Joe awakes to find a horse-drawn milk cart in his driveway and his family inexplicably transported back to the year 1909.
Suddenly the Murphys’ dream for a simpler time becomes a shocking reality, one in which they will struggle to adapt to turn-of-the-century Iowa while seeking a way to return home. Completely Restored is a unique page-turner of a novel, filled with historical figures and events that help to teach a modern family about the simple joys of life. Reader Reviews: “An Unassuming Jewel!, Robert Kerr’s Completely Restored, starts as a very unassuming book…But Kerr is careful not to turn this into a simple romantic view of the past by interjecting a number of plot arcs which also convey how different the rule of law, child protection, and the limitations of medicine were one hundred years ago…
A Dangerous Harbor
Romance > Action & Adventure
Author: RP Dahlke
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Bleary-eyed and sleep deprived after a long overnighter into Mexico, solo sailor and SFPD police detective Katrina Hunter thinks the mermaid twenty yards behind her thirty-two foot Westsail is nothing more than a sailor’s hallucination But everything she knows about floaters convinces her to turn her boat around for another look.
Now, alone and isolated in the Mexican port’s police station for six hours she’s convinced that reporting a floater to authorities was a mistake. Even the arrival of a handsome, if somewhat dour, Mexican/Italian investigator does nothing to dispel her growing anxiety that she’s about to be charged with the murder.
Only the Truth
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: Pat Brown
Billy Ray Hutchins is a lonely uneducated man living in the hills of Arkansas. Life changes little for him from day to day until he brings home a young drifter he meets at the railroad tracks, the mysterious Charlene, whose last name he never asks. He becomes her Sweet Billy Ray and his love for Charlene is steady and uncomplicated until the sheriff shows up to take her away in handcuffs. With the only woman he has ever loved behind bars for the coldblooded murder of the old man across the road, a confused and devastated Billy Ray sets out on a quest to find the truth, only the truth, whether it leads him to be able to save his Charlene from a death sentence or it frees him from her spell.
Falling for the Ghost of You
Teen & Young Adult > Romance
Author: Nicole Christie
Seventeen year old Violet Mercer returns home from her summer vacation in Hawaii to discover her boyfriend’s cheating on her with a friend. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her mother’s marrying a man she just met.
Things take an awkward turn when Violet meets her rich new stepfather, and his gorgeous son–the hot guy whom she made a fool of herself in front of earlier that day! Zane O’ Connor is sexy and charming, and way out of her league. He makes her forget her ex-boyfriend even existed. But there’s no way she’d ever have a chance with him…right?
Through a strange turn of events, Violet finds herself living with Zane for a month. Somewhere between the fighting and flirting, they become friends. And it isn’t long before that friendship blooms into something else…something more powerful than Violet anticipated.
How I Made Over $42,000 in 1 Month Selling My Kindle eBooks
Writing & Publishing > Marketing & Sales
Author: Cheryl Kaye Tardif
My name is Cheryl Kaye Tardif and I am an international bestselling suspense author who earned over $42,000 dollars in March 2012 selling ebooks via Amazon’s KDP Select program, captured the interest of a major literary agency, and went on to sign with an agent at Trident Media. And I’m about to tell you HOW I did all that.
I don’t normally tell people how much money I make, but I believe writers need to know it IS possible to earn a real income from your books. Seriously, if I can do it, anyone can–if you have the right combination of criteria and techniques.
In this book, I’ll share with you what I believe are four key elements you must have in place to see high sales. And I’ll reveal the strategic techniques I used during my KDP Select promotions that resulted in earning over $42,000–with $32,000 of that from ONE title alone.
Dead Mech: Apex Trilogy
Science Fiction > Post-Apocalyptic
Author: Jake Bible
Hundreds of years after the zombie apocalypse decimates the world, human civilization has put itself back together again. Their secret weapon against the zombie hordes: the Mechs. Massive robotic battle machines. But what happens when a mech pilot dies in his mech and becomes a zombie? Hell on earth is unleashed…
Prepare for a high action, fast paced, hell ride through a futuristic wasteland as Mech Base Commander James Capreze and his crew of mech pilots battle zombies, cannibals, religious cults and worst of all, the Dead Mechs, all to try and save the human race one last time. Jake Bible’s Dead Mech: The future may not be completely dead, but it’s on its way…
Anonymity
Women’s Fiction > Friendship
Author: Janna McMahan
She’s not just a random homeless girl. Lorelei is street smart, elusive and manipulative. She’s a survivor, always on the move. Always one step ahead of the danger in her past.
Emily’s a hard-partying bartender in downtown Austin with problems of her own. When she meets a handsome reporter looking for a photographer, Emily volunteers her camera skills. As she follows him into the sordid world of gutter punks, Emily finds an unexpected friendship that will redefine her life.
But Emily realizes too late that each of her attempts to help only puts her new friend in ever increasing peril. Can she unravel the mystery of Lorelei’s past and find a way to protect her? Or would the girl be better off unknown and on her own?
Rocket Man
Humor > Satire
Author: William E Hazelgrove
Meet Dale Hammer, a man who is determined to find meaning in a landscape of suburban homogeneity, looking for the moment he had with his own father when they blasted off a rocket on a wintery evening. He feels his son slipping away as he tries to get around “the silent shame of fathers and sons.”
He becomes the Rocket Man for his son’s scout troop and immediately his life implodes. Accused of cutting down the subdivision sign to his neighborhood, he becomes the lone rebel, going down in a flaming arc. When Rocket Day comes, Dale is determined to give his son more than his father gave him.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2