Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832 – 1898), better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (which tops today’s Buffet) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems “The Hunting of the Snark” and “Jabberwocky.”
Carroll is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies in many parts of the world (including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand) dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) was published in 1865. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It’s considered one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre, and its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.
The Kindle edition offered today, normally priced at $2.99, includes Sir John Tenniel’s classic illustrations, along with a gallery of art from six different artists’ interpretations.
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.)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Science Fiction, Fantasy & Scary Stories
Author: Lewis Carroll, Peter Newell, Beasie Pease Guttman, John Tenniel, E. Gertrude Thompson, Brinsley Le Fanu, Charles Robinson, Arthur Rackham
![Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [illustrated]](https://i0.wp.com/ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51n%2BG5YL60L.jpg?w=640)
- $1.99 List Price
- See Kindle Price at Amazon.com
Mix equal parts creativity, bewilderment, and complete nonsense and you have Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. On a day that begins like any other, Alice notices a rabbit—a rabbit with a pocket watch. She chases after it and stumbles down a hole… and keeps falling and falling and falling. That’s when things start to get weird. She encounters a bizarre cast of characters — the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, a pipe-smoking caterpillar, the Pigeon, a Duchess, the Cook, and the decapitation-happy Queen of Hearts. It’s an adventure of completely intolerable logic, as witty as it is completely insane.
Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll’s putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing “The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new.” There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters–extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be “curiouser and curiouser,” seemingly without moral or sense.
Irreparable Harm (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 1)
Mystery > Women Sleuths
Author: Melissa F. Miller
- $3.99 List Price
- See Kindle Price at Amazon.com
After eight long years, attorney Sasha McCandless is about to make partner at a prestigious law firm. All she has to do is keep her head down and her billable hours up.
When a plane operated by her client slams into the side of a mountain, killing everyone aboard, Sasha gears up to defend the inevitable civil lawsuits. She soon realizes the crash was no accident: a developer has created an application that can control a commercial plane’s onboard computer from a smartphone.
Sasha joins forces with a federal air marshal, and they race to prevent another airline disaster. But when people close to the matter start turning up dead, Sasha must rely on both her legal skills and her Krav Maga training to stop the madman before he kills her.
Almost a Bride
Romance > Western
Author: Patricia McLinn
- $2.99 List Price
- See Kindle Price at Amazon.com
Dave Currick was everything Matty Brennan wanted for as along as she could remember. Right up until he broke her heart six years ago. Now that she’s returned to Wyoming for good, what she wants more than anything is to save her family’s ranch. Even if that means swallowing her pride and asking Dave to marry her.
Matty’s up to something – Dave knows that much. Just as he knows that Matty needs help, so of course he’ll provide it, just as he has all her life. Doing what’s best for Matty is second nature. Even when it comes to marrying her in name only. Although he can’t resist one hot-blooded kiss after the I-dos.
Maybe – just maybe – his Matty will become more to him than Almost a Bride.
Flash Gold
Science Fiction & Fantasy > Steampunk
Author: Lindsay Buroker
- $0.99 List Price
- See Kindle Price at Amazon.com
Eighteen-year-old Kali McAlister enters her steam-powered “dogless sled” in a race, intending to win the thousand-dollar prize and escape remote Moose Hollow forever. The problem? Fortune seekers and airship pirates are after her for the secret to flash gold, her late father’s alchemical masterpiece.
With her modified rifle and a pocketful of home-made smoke bombs, Kali wouldn’t normally hide from a confrontation, but taking on a whole airship single-handedly is a daunting task. Unfortunately, the other racers won’t assist her–they’re too busy scheming ways to sabotage her unorthodox sled.
When a sword-slinging stranger shows up, wanting to hire on as her protector, she’s sure he has ulterior motives, but he’s the only one interested in helping her. The question is…why?
Shades of Honor
Historical Romance
Author: Wendy Lindstrom
- $3.99 List Price
- See Kindle Price at Amazon.com
Everything Radford Grayson wanted was in his hometown: his beloved mother and brothers, and the unscarred part of himself he’d left behind. After surviving a gruesome war, all Radford wants is to work the family sawmill and make a real home for his young daughter. But Evelyn–his brother’s fiancée–reaches into his darkness with her healing love and makes him feel whole again for the first time in years. Torn between his unexpected and forbidden love for Evelyn and a desperate need to honor and protect his brother, Radford discovers that his fiercest enemy is his own heart. The one woman he cannot have is the only woman he wants.
The Sea of Storms
Science Fiction > Adventure
Author: Mark Whiteway
- $0.99 List Price
- See Kindle Price at Amazon.com
On the planet Kelanni, life is cheap. With the aid of the fearsome “Keltar” enforcers, in their flying cloaks, a ruthless invader is forcing the native people to mine the colloquially named “lodestone” – a substance from another universe with infinitely destructive power.
The only ones who can stop him are a tiny girl with fiery disposition, a former Keltar, a failed revolutionary, a musician and the mysterious creature, Boxx, who seems to speak only in riddles.
Ride the Rainbow Home
Romance > Inspirational
Author: Susan Aylworth
Meg Taylor has never thought of Rainbow Rock, Arizona as home. The daughter of a serial-marrying mother, Meg has lived in many places—and most of them were kinder than this little town where she was the principal’s daughter. She returns after ten years only to help a dear high school friend.
Startled by the changes, Meg is pleased to see that her other high school buddy, Little Jimmy McAllister, isn’t little anymore. In fact, he is one of the most attractive men she has ever met. As she finds excuses to spend time with him, their friendship begins to blossom—but Meg has seen marriages come and go and she has no faith in happily ever after.
Can Meg let go of doubt, grab on to happiness and ride the rainbow home?
Touched By Magic
Fantasy > Magic & Wizards
Author: Doranna Durgin
Magic has never been a part of Reandn’s life. Almost gone from Keland when he was born, there is no trace of it left by the time he patrols the Keep lands as an elite King’s Wolf.
Magic has never been a part of Reandn’s life. Until the people under his care start dying. Until the threat extends to his family-and then turns on him. Someone, somewhere, is trying to draw magic back into Keland, and they don’t care what-or who-is destroyed in the process.
But Reandn does.
Wildflowers of Terezin
Religion & Spirituality > Fiction > Historical
Author: Robert Elmer
- $13.99 List Price
- See Kindle Price at Amazon.com
Wildflowers of Terezin is a sweeping historical novel set against a backdrop of danger. A Danish Lutheran pastor’s complacent faith is stretched to the breaking point during World War II when he meets a young Jewish nurse Hanne Abrahamsen and becomes deeply involved in Resistance efforts to save Denmark’s Jews from the Nazi prison camp at Terezin, Czechoslovakia—also known as Theresienstadt.
Challenged by his evangelical brother and swayed by his own attraction to Hanne, Pastor Steffen abandons his formerly quiet, uninvolved life and hesitantly volunteers to help smuggle Denmark’s Jews out of the country before a Nazi roundup. Steffen finds that helping his Jewish neighbors is the most decent, spiritual thing he has ever done. As he actually does God’s work, rather than just talking about it, Steffen’s faith deepens and he takes greater risks in his sermons.
When things go terribly wrong and Hanne is sent to Terezin, Steffen finds his heart fully engaged. He undertakes protests and rescues that are more and more dangerous, never imagining where it will lead him, or the ultimate cost of his decision to get directly involved.
Created, The Destroyer
Mystery > Hard-Boiled
Author: Warren Murphy, Richard Sapir
When you’re on death row, minutes from the electric chair, and a hook-handed monk offers to save your life if you’ll just swallow a simple little pill… what’ve you got to lose? You take the pill. Then you wake up, officially “dead,” in the back of an ambulance, headed for an undisclosed location. Welcome to your new life, working for CURE, the most secret, most deniable, most extra-judicial government agency ever to exist. Only the President knows about it, and even he doesn’t control it.
That’s what happened to Remo Williams, a New Jersey cop framed for a murder he didn’t commit. Framed by the very people who saved him, in fact. And now, trained in esoteric martial arts by Chiun, master of Sinanju, he’s going to become the ultimate killing machine. Remo will be America’s last line of defense against mad scientists, organized crime, ancient undead gods, and anything else that threatens the Constitution. Remo Williams is the Destroyer.
Falling Star
Romance > Contemporary
Author: Diana Dempsey
- $0.99 List Price
- See Kindle Price at Amazon.com
Natalie Daniels’ husband just dumped her. Her boss is scheming to replace her. And she’s falling in love with her sexy Australian TV news agent – who’s about to propose to somebody else.
What’s a woman to do? Dig deep and show what she’s made of – which just might land her both the job and the man of her dreams.
Just Add Water
Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure
Author: Jinx Schwartz
- $0.99 List Price
- See Kindle Price at Amazon.com
Hetta Coffey is a sassy Texan with a snazzy yacht and and she’s not afraid to use it.
She’s a globe-trotting civil engineer with swath of failed multi-national affairs in her jet stream.
Plying the San Francisco waterfront, trolling for triceps, her attention is snagged by a parade of passing yachts–especially their predominantly male skippers–and experiences a champagne-induced epiphany: If she had a boat, she could get a man.
In spite of a spectacular ignorance of all things nautical, Hetta buys her dream boat, but shadowy stalker, an inconvenient body, and Hetta’s own self-destructive foibles, give a whole new meaning to the phrase “sink or swim!”
Before the Scarlet Dawn
Christian Fiction > Historical
Author: Rita Gerlach
In 1775, Hayward Morgan, a young gentleman destined to inherit his father’s estate in Derbyshire, England, captures the heart of the local vicar’s daughter, Eliza Bloome. Her dark beauty and spirited ways are not enough to win him, due to her station in life.
Circumstances throw Eliza in Hayward’s path, and they flee to America to escape the family conflicts. But as war looms, it’s a temporary reprieve. Hayward joins the revolutionary forces and what follows is a struggle for survival, a test of faith, and the quest to find lasting love in an unforgiving wilderness.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2