December Lucky Stars: Books To Read by the Fire

LuckyStars-white-logoFeeling a little cold this winter? We’ve got just the book to warm you up. Cozy up next to these Lucky Stars e-books, all pricing in at $1.99 throughout the month of December. Christmas is coming a little bit early this year.

Roorback_Remedy_jkt_pbk_rgb_HRRemedy for Love by Bill Roorbach: When the “Storm of the Century” threatens western Maine, Eric closes his office early and heads to the grocery store. In line ahead of him, an unkempt and seemingly unstable young woman comes up short on cash, so Eric offers her twenty bucks and a ride home. Trouble is, Danielle doesn’t really have a home. She’s squatting in a cabin deep in the woods: no electricity, no plumbing, no heat. Eric, with problems of his own, tries to walk away, but finds he can’t. Fending off her mistrust of him, he gets her set up with food, water, and firewood, and departs with relief. But when he climbs back to the road, his car is gone, and in desperation he returns to the cabin. As the storm intensifies, these two lost souls are forced to wait it out together.

Deeply moving, frequently funny, The Remedy for Love is a story about the secrets revealed when there is no time or space for anything but the truth.

You can purchase Remedy for Love e-book for $1.99 throughout December.

reliable wife coverA Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick: Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for “a reliable wife.”

But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she’s not the “simple, honest woman” that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man’s devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt — a passionate man with his own dark secrets —has plans of his own for his new wife. Isolated on a remote estate and imprisoned by relentless snow, the story of Ralph and Catherine unfolds in unimaginable ways.

With echoes of Wuthering Heights and Rebecca, Robert Goolrick’s intoxicating debut novel delivers a classic tale of suspenseful seduction, set in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis.

#1 New York Times Bestseller

You can purchase A Reliable Wife e-book for $1.99 throughout December.

if-you-lived-here-siteIf You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name by Heather Lende: Tiny Haines, Alaska, is ninety miles north of Juneau, accessible mainly by water or air—and only when the weather is good. There’s no traffic light and no mail delivery; people can vanish without a trace and funerals are a community affair. Heather Lende posts both the obituaries and the social column for her local newspaper. If anyone knows the going-on in this close-knit town—from births to weddings to funerals—she does.

Whether contemplating the mysterious death of eccentric Speedy Joe, who wore nothing but a red union suit and a hat he never took off, not even for a haircut; researching the details of a one-legged lady gold miner’s adventurous life; worrying about her son’s first goat-hunting expedition; observing the awe-inspiring Chilkat Bald Eagle Festival; or ice skating in the shadow of glacier-studded mountains, Lende’s warmhearted style brings us inside her small-town life. We meet her husband, Chip, who owns the local lumber yard; their five children; and a colorful assortment of quirky friends and neighbors, including aging hippies, salty fishermen, native Tlingit Indians, and volunteer undertakers—as well as the moose, eagles, sea lions, and bears with whom they share this wild and perilous land.

Like Bailey White’s tales of Southern life or Garrison Keillor’s reports from the Midwest, NPR commentator Heather Lende’s take on her offbeat Alaskan hometown celebrates life in a dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful place.

You can purchase If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name e-book for $1.99 throughout December.

9781565126145An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England by Brock Clarke: A lot of remarkable things have happened in the life of Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel, beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson’s house and unwittingly killing two people. emerging at age twenty-eight, he creates a new life and identity as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous New England writers suddenly go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist.

In the league of such contemporary classics as A Confederacy of Dunces and The World According to GarpAn Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England is an utterly original story about truth and honesty, life and the imagination.

You can purchase An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes e-book for $1.99 throughout December.

high-divide-for-siteThe High Divide by Lin Enger: In 1886, Gretta Pope wakes up one morning to discover that her husband is gone. Ulysses Pope has left his family behind on the far edge of Minnesota’s western prairie, with only a brief note and no explanation for why he left or where he’s heading. It doesn’t take long for Gretta’s young sons, Eli and Danny, to set off after him, leaving Gretta no choice but to search out the boys and their father and bring them all home.

Enger’s breathtaking portrait of the vast plains landscape is matched by the rich expanse of the story’s emotional terrain, in which pivotal historical events coincide with the intimate story of a family’s sacrifice and devotion.

“[A] compelling story of a house divided, of a man’s haunting pursuit of forgiveness, and a family’s search for the husband they thought they knew–but never really did . . . The High Divide is a vivid reminder of why we read, and why we want to.” —True West Magazine

You can purchase The High Divide e-book for $1.99 throughout December.

Olmstead_ColdestNight_pbk_jkt_rgb_web_HRThe Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead: Henry Childs is just seventeen when he falls into a love affair so intense it nearly destroys him. To escape the wrath of the young girl’s father, Henry joins the Marines, arriving in Korea on the eve of the brutal battle of the Chosin Reservoir—the defining moment of the Korean War. There he confronts an enemy force far beyond the scope of his imagining, but the challenges he meets upon his return home, scarred and haunted, are greater by far. From the steamy streets of New Orleans to the bone-chilling Korean landscape, award-winning author Robert Olmstead takes us into one of the most physically challenging battles in history and, with just as much intensity, into an electrifying, all-consuming love affair.

“The no-rush gait, the unadorned yet unambiguous description, the resonant alliteration . . . This is the kind of sentence that warms The Coldest Night and makes you wonder if Olmstead was meant to be a poet. But Olmstead is a novelist, and a very good one . . . It’s his depiction of war’s less monstrous aspects—the continuous repositioning of troops and reshuffling of strongholds, the ceaseless anticipation of surprise attacks, the unmitigated exhaustion—that steadily unsettles . . . These lines lend a humanity to war that descriptions of guts and gore alone cannot.”—The New York Times Book Review

You can purchase The Coldest Night e-book for $1.99 throughout December.

Ashcom_WinterRun_jkt_rgb_web_HRWinter Run by Robert Ashcom: There are certain special—and rare— books that refresh our understanding of how children see the world. This is one of those books. It’s the story of a boy growing up in a lost time in an idyllic place—rural Virginia of the late 1940s.

Charlie Lewis is the only child of city people who, after the war, choose to live at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains on a “gentleman’s farm” near Charlottesville. Six years old when his family settles in the renovated corn crib on old Professor Jame’s place, Charlie grows up in his personal version of heaven. His innocence is, of course, lost in the process. And so is his version of heaven. But, as the old saying goes, still waters run deep, and Charlie runs deep, with a natural (almost supernatural) affinity for the land and its animals. For knowledge , he instinctively turns to a group of older black men, some of whom work the farm, others who are neighbors. Jim Crow laws and “the curse left on the land by slavery”—as old Professor James puts it—are still very much in evidence. Even so, Charlie’s passions endear him to these men. They understand that he is lonely even if he does not. They watch out for him. And more—they love him.

Winter Run is a story that lets us escape for a moment our own noisy and complicated contemporary lives. Like The Red Pony, like Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, it takes us back to the joys of childhood’s unrestricted enthusiasm and curiosity.

You can purchase Winter Run e-book for $1.99 throughout December.

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