No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Barbara Freethy has been busy the past couple of years. She’s begun independently publishing her books, enabling her to bring new titles to her readers more frequently. And in the process, she’s sold more than 3 million eBooks in the past two years. (Read more about her self-publishing exploits here.)
In addition to her tremendous sales, Barbara was honored with the RITA this year for THE WAY BACK HOME, which took the award for “Best Single Title Contemporary Romance.”
Barbara tops today’s Buffet wit A SECRET WISH, an eBook original short novel of 40,000 words. This beautifully written contemporary romance novella was the first book in a series of stories revolving around wishes that Barbara began publishing in 2012. Also available in the series are two full-length novels, JUST A WISH AWAY (#2), and WHEN WISHES COLLIDE (#3).
Barbara resides in California with her husband and children. When she’s not writing or reading, she enjoys taking long walks and playing tennis.
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.)
A Secret Wish
Romance > Contemporary
Author: Barbara Freethy
Three women, three birthdays and one unforgettable night that will change their lives forever.
One night in San Francisco, three women make a birthday wish believing it can’t possibly come true. Liz is turning thirty. A successful nurse, she has a good career, but no man to share her life. All her friends are married, and she’s alone, still trying to outrun a tragedy from her past. Then she meets a handsome stranger.
Angela, a member of a large, loving Italian family, is facing thirty-five with no baby in the nursery. Eight years of infertility treatments have put a strain on her marriage. Will she have to choose between her husband and having a child? When she is mugged by an unexpected assailant, her life takes a new turn.
Carole, a corporate wife, is staring down forty candles. Having grown up poor, she worked hard to get ahead, but when her kids bail on her birthday, and she discovers her husband with another woman, she realizes that she may have nothing at all. She goes back to where it all began, the mother she left behind, and the man whose heart she once broke.
Three women, three birthdays and a night of events that connects them in unexpected ways …
Yellow Crocus: A Novel
Historical Fiction
Author: Laila Ibrahim
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In 1837, Lisbeth Wainwright is born to the white mistress of a sprawling Virginia plantation. Seconds later, she is delivered into the arms of her black wet nurse, Mattie. For a field hand like Mattie, her transfer to the big house is supposed to be considered an honor—except that the move tears Mattie away from her beloved grandfather and her infant son, Samuel. But Mattie is a slave, with no say in the matter, and so she devotes herself to her master’s daughter, though she longs to be raising her own child. Growing up under Mattie’s tender care, little Lisbeth adopts the woman’s deep-seated faith in God, her love of music and black-eyed peas, and the tradition of hunting for yellow crocuses in the early days of spring.
As the years pass, Lisbeth is drawn slowly back into her white parents’ world and begins to learn the ins and outs of life for a high-born young lady. Still she retains her connection to Mattie, befriending Samuel and drifting comfortably between the two worlds. She accepts her parents’ assertion that their slaves depend upon them for guidance and protection, yet that notion becomes more and more difficult to believe as she gains awareness of the inequality of life in the big house versus the slave quarters. When, on the threshold of her society wedding to debonair Edward Cunningham, Lisbeth bears witness to a shockingly brutal act, the final vestiges of her naiveté crumble around her. Just twenty-one years old, she is forced to choose between what is socially acceptable and what is right, a decision that will change her life forever.
A Song for the Asking
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: Steve Gannon
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Detective Daniel Kane is the self-proclaimed king of his castle, his California beachfront home, and the ironfisted ruler of his subjects — his wife, Catheryn, and his four children: Tommy, Travis, Allison, and Nate. Hardened by years of law enforcement, he is determined to prepare his children to face a harsh and violent world. With a relentless will for perfection and scorn for anything less, Kane teaches them his rules for success and provides a model for the essentials of survival: strength, bravery, ambition, stoicism, and vengeance. He shows them everything — everything but what is in his heart.
Over the course of a single shattering summer, each of Kane’s children will be forced to pay the price his standards demand, but the brunt of Kane’s fierce and exacting love will fall on Travis. Lacking the physical prowess of his older brother Tommy, Travis confounds his father with artistic “softness” and musical gifts. Yet in a devastating moment that will change all the Kanes forever, it is Travis alone who will find the courage to defy his father and, ultimately, to redeem him.
This Little Piggy Went to the Liquor Store
Humor > Essays
Author: A.K. Turner
Chronicles what happens when a little girl who scorns the idea of marriage and children (in favor of becoming a stiletto-wearing, attache-carrying Secret Agent), majors in Russian, minors in Vodka, and then one day finds herself with child… and in-laws.
That Girl Started Her Own Country
Contemporary Fiction
Author: Holy Ghost Writer
International Playgirl Zaydee finds herself in the midst of a crisis fueled by international intrigue, multinational corporate greed, and a
convoluted legal system. Imprisoned for computer hacking, this brilliant jet-setter becomes an international media celebrity as she defends herself, an unknown girl labeled Princess Jane Doe, against unknown charges. With complicated and shadowy plots brewing, the book is lush and captivating and perhaps the best addition to the series yet.
The Spirit Clearing
Teen & Young Adult > Romance > Paranormal
Author: Mark Tufo
After a horrific accident Mike wakes to find himself blind in one eye. He now sees things that others can’t and nobody will listen to him.
That is until he meets Jandilyn Hollow. Will she be able to pull him out of the depths of his despair? Can love transcend even death?
Stage Climbing
Self-Help > Success
Author: Michael S. Broder Ph.D.
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Stage Climbing is a book based on a highly innovative approach that its author, noted psychologist Dr. Michael Broder, has conceptualized, used clinically, fine tuned and tested clinically for over three decades. Within the next few weeks, it will be right here for you to use as a tool to help you to understand and/or change virtually any area of your life.
Stage Climbing is a book based on a highly innovative approach that its author, noted psychologist Dr. Michael Broder, has conceptualized, used clinically, fine tuned and tested clinically for over three decades. Within the next few weeks, it will be right here for you to use as a tool to help you to understand and/or change virtually any area of your life.
FeMALE TRAITS
Literature & Fiction > Drama
Author: Lurea C. McFadden
- $0.99 List Price
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The story of sexy, smart and very married Grace Trufant and her playa lifestyle. She is married to a successful, loving husband but somehow she requires more attention than this fine upstanding man can offer. She plays hard; in fact she is a playa in her own right. But Grace forgets that Game recognizes Game when she runs into Sonia, her husband’s best friend. This is the tale of Grace’s extra-marital love affair, love and support of good friends, and lessons learned along the way.
The Mortician’s Wife
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: Maralee Lowder
Five miles from the new age Mt. Shasta City, the sleepy Northern California town of Dunsmuir plays host to a nightmarish house – the Old Mortuary – where the mortician’s wife spent four decades alone, and some say insane, sleeping in an alcove off one bedroom where she believed the evil spirits of the house could not get to her, harboring terrible secrets.
With the steady flow of dead bodies through the basement and the murderous events upstairs, this is the story of how the Old Mortuary of Dunsmuir became one of the most haunted houses in America as a result of the personality and misdeeds of one man, Horace Carpenter, whose eternal soul most certainly does not rest in peace, as many will attest, and probably never will.
Be The News: A Guide To Going Viral With Your Human Interest Story
Marketing & Sales > Public Relations
Author: Lori Gertz
Have you ever dreamed of going viral? Not just on YouTube, but like wildfire across all media, including radio, television and the world’s most important newspapers and magazines?
Be the News is the only how-to book that will teach you how to promote your human interest story so it becomes a national discussion.
Beyond standard public relations strategies, Be the News guides readers towards speaking to the media to create precedent-setting national debates in the media. The essay “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother” which appeared in the days right after the tragedy in Newtown, Ct is one such example.
With this step by step guide to going viral with your story, more people can stand up for their right to effect change and make a difference. So go ahead, think about going viral, but don’t do anything until you read Be the News. It will prepare you in a way no other book will.
Leaving Story Avenue
Biographies & Memoirs > Journalism
Author: Paul LaRosa
Emmy-Award winning CBS News producer Paul LaRosa’s evocative memoir of his days growing up in a Bronx housing project and working as a reporter at The New York Daily News in the late 1970s.
Paul was a clueless kid growing up in a Bronx housing project when he discovered there might be more to life. As the projects went from idyllic to dangerous, Paul made his way to The New York Daily News where he became a copyboy and later a reporter.
The News was still the largest circulating newspaper in the country but it was in the last, outrageous and often hilarious, gasp of The Front Page era. Reporters wallowed in a swirl of alcohol, hookers and bad behavior but none of it stopped them from delivering an electric and engaging paper every day. Paul, an innocent trapped in a Tabloid World, quickly adapted.
As a reporter, Paul had a front row seat to one of the most harrowing five-year periods in New York City history: the city s brush with bankruptcy, the terror reign of Son of Sam, the blackout riots, and the murder of John Lennon. Read what it was like to be in the center of it all.
Shadow Bound
Romance > Paranormal > Angels
Author: Erin Kellison
Some people will do anything to avoid it. Even trade their immortal souls for endless existence. Secretly, inexorably, they are infiltrating our world, sucking the essence out of unsuspecting victims with their hideous parody of a kiss.
Adam Thorne founded the Institute to study and destroy his monster of a brother, but the key to its success is held in the pale, slender hand of a woman on the run. There is something hauntingly different about Talia O’Brien, her unknowing sensuality, her uncanny way of slipping into Shadow.
This is the place between life and what comes after – a dark forest of fantasy, filled with beauty, peril, mystery. And Talia is about to open the door.
Love and Decay
Science Fiction > Dystopian
Author: Rachel Higginson
Zombies- as if that wasn’t enough to ruin any girl’s dream of a happily ever after.
Reagan said goodbye to love when she was forced to run her high school boyfriend over with her mom’s car just to keep him from eating her for dinner. Now, two years later, and in need of a serious shower, she’s just over the entire concept of a soul mate- or really, any kind of mate.
Well, mostly anyway. When she runs- literally- into a group of boys holed up in a relative utopia of peanut butter and bottled water, maybe all hope in the love department is not lost.
But at the end of the world, nothing can be simple. And with a horde of Zombies after her, Reagan is going to have to schedule falling in love between hunting and surviving. Hopefully she can last long enough to find out if true love can still exist when everything else has started to fall apart.
The Kaiser Affair
Mystery > Women Sleuths
Author: Joseph Robert Lewis
When a master thief escapes from prison, detective Bettina Rothschild must put him back behind bars before the scandalous fiasco destroys the Ministry of Justice. Her investigation leads from decaying cemeteries where ravens conspire to warehouses where wondrous machines are built in secret, and even to the fabled Drifting Isle above the city of Eisenstadt where an ancient tomb hides a deadly secret.
The relentless chase proves taxing for a young woman who relies on her cane and her steamcarriage to get about, but that’s where a good husband steps in. While Bettina picks locks and interrogates suspects, her beloved Arjuna defends her from the most brutal and bizarre assassins in Eisenstadt.
But as the clock ticks down, Bettina finds too many questions still remain. How did the thief escape from prison? How can he afford to hire so many killers? And why would he go to the Drifting Isle only to steal a giant beetle?
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2