Olivia Newport tops today’s Buffet with the historical romance The Pursuit of Lucy Banning. Readers will love being swept away into a world of mansions, secrets, and romance as they follow Lucy through the streets of the Windy City during one of the most exciting times in the city’s history. From opulent upper-class homes to the well-worn rooms of an orphanage, Olivia Newport breathes life and romance into the pages of history–and everyone is invited.
Olivia lives in Colorado. Her husband and two twenty-something children provide welcome distraction from the people stomping through her head on their way into her books.
As usual, each book listed here has gone FREE within the past 24 hours (except for the “Bargain Books” at the bottom of this page). 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.
The Pursuit of Lucy Banning (Avenue of Dreams)
Lucy Banning may live on the exclusive Prairie Avenue among Chicago’s rich and famous, but her heart lies elsewhere. Expected to marry an up-and-coming banker from a respected family, Lucy fears she will be forced to abandon her charity work–and the classes she is secretly taking at the newly opened University of Chicago. When she meets an unconventional young architect who is working on plans for the upcoming 1893 World’s Fair, Lucy imagines a life lived on her own terms. Can she break away from her family’s expectations? And will she ever be loved for who she truly is?
The Jane Austen Collection: 28 Classic Works
A convenient collection complete with a linked table of contents.
Jane Austen was an English author best known for writing romantic fiction. The Jane Austen Collection includes Sense and Sensibility and 27 other works.
Included are the following:
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Emma
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Lady Susan
Love and Friendship
The Three Sisters
The Watsons – unfinished novel
Jack & Alice
Henry & Eliza
Frederic & Elfrida
Sanditon – unfinished novel
Evelyn
The History of England
Catharine
A Collection of Letters
Scraps
Lesley Castle
Edgar and Emma
Sir William Mountague
Memoirs of Mr. Clifford
The Beautifull Cassandra
Amelia Webster
The Visit: A Comedy in Two Acts
The Mystery: An Unfinished Comedy
Detached Pieces
Dare to Love
When it comes to family, Ian Dare gives his all but in relationships he offers the bare minimum. Until one glimpse of sensual Riley Taylor arouses his dominant and protective instincts. He will do anything to possess her … and does. But any future with Riley must include him dealing his half-brother who is a constant reminder of the pain he’d rather forget.
Riley Taylor believes herself immune to domineering men – until charismatic Ian Dare turns a simple kiss into an all out assault on her senses and she discovers she likes his brand of control in the bedroom. As their affair heats up, they soon realize they complete each other in ways neither imagined. But Riley’s past is closer than she cares to remember, and her struggles with Ian’s dominance might just cost her everything. (love story, contemporary romance, alpha heroes, beach reads, sports heroes, bad boys, billionaire)
Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series Book 1)
If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the best cupcakes were dark chocolate with chocolate cream cheese icing, that dancing in a crowd of magic wielders — the Adept — was better than sex, and that my life was peaceful and uneventful. Just the way I liked it. That’s what twenty-three years in the magical backwater of Vancouver will get you — a completely skewed sense of reality. Because when the dead werewolves started showing up, it all unraveled … except for the cupcake part. That’s a universal truth.
Money Management Makeover: The Ultimate Plan for Financial Success
You’re about to discover certain steps and strategies on how to assess your current financial situation and make sound plans in order to get rid of debt, start an emergency fund, and achieve your financial goals. This book will help you get started on budgeting, saving and investing your money to gain financial wealth and freedom.
If you want to become financially stable but don’t know where to begin, then you should start by first determining your exact financial health status. You need to be able to identify how much money you have, how much you owe, and how much you need to have. Knowing these facts will help you create changes to improve your finances and achieve your goals.
A solid financial plan should be organized and written down. It is your guide to achieving your financial goals each step of the way. It also serves as a reminder of your financial responsibilities towards yourself and your future.
Impossible Love (Amish Wedding Season Book 1)
What will Verity Fisher do when she comes face to face with Reuben King, the man who has doomed her to the life of a lonely spinster? Chasing riches, Reuben King left his soon to be bride, Verity, promising to return very soon with a deposit for a home of their own.
Years pass before Verity faces the fact that Reuben is not coming home. The love in Verity’s heart turns into bitterness as she finds all the Amish men her age have already married. What finally draws the successful and very wealthy Reuben back home to the simple ways of the Amish, away from his homes, fast cars and his beautiful English fiancé, Brittany?
It is clear to Verity that Reuben is the one in the wrong, so why is he so angry with her?
RUNAWAY TWINS (Runaway Twins series #1)
Beautiful preteen twins Rachel and Janie Lemon are desperate to avoid the fate of their older sister Mary, who at thirteen was forced to marry the polygamous Prophet of Sheba Hill.
Their determination leads to an aborted escape attempt, and the cult leader sends the girls to a retraining center deep in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains. Justin Patrick, an openly rebellious twelve-year-old boy who has been dragged into the cult by his aunt, is sent along with them.
Justin and the twins plan an escape in mid-winter through the Bitterroots. Justin’s father and uncle (who were both killed in an avalanche) trained him as a survivalist, and he assures the girls that the Bitterroots are not as dangerous as the Alaskan wilderness where he grew up.
Their adventures in the mountains include searches for food, shelter, water, and warmth—all the while looking over their shoulders for the pursuing cult members.
As they race for freedom, they are fully aware that capture means certain death for Justin and death or brutal enslavement for the twins.
Artistic License
An art exhibition in Queenstown, New Zealand results in an unlikely friendship and a reluctant love when shy art student Sophy James meets reticent security consultant Mick Hollister. Content with her solitude and independence, Sophy has never desired a long-term relationship. Born with a face that apparently not even a mother could love, Mick has given up hope of having one. They don’t have a lot in common; they shouldn’t even like one another – and they can’t stay away from each other.
Imager: The First Book of the Imager Portfolio
Imager is the beginning of a whole new fantasy in a whole new magical world from the bestselling creator of Recluce. Although Rhennthyl is the son of a leading wool merchant in L’Excelsis, the capital of Solidar, the most powerful nation on Terahnar, he has spent years becoming a journeyman artist and is skilled and diligent enough to be considered for the status of master artisan—in another two years. Then, in a single moment, his entire life is transformed when his master patron is killed in a flash fire, and Rhenn discovers he is an imager—one of the few in the entire world of Terahnar who can visualize things and make them real.
He must leave his family and join the Collegium of Imagisle. Imagers live separately from the rest of society because of their abilities (they can do accidental magic even while asleep), and because they are both feared and vulnerable. In this new life, Rhenn discovers that all too many of the “truths” he knew were nothing of the sort.
Timequake
Timequake (1997) exists in two conjoined versions (“Timequake One”/”Timequake Two”) and in meta-fictional mode is a novel about a novel, composed in short, arbitrary chapters and using its large cast of characters and disoriented chronology to mimic the “timequake” which is its subject. Some cosmic upheaval has hurled the entire population a decade back where, in full consciousness (but helplessly entrapped) everyone’s pitiable and embarrassing mistakes are helplessly enacted again.
By this stage of his life–he was 72 the year the novel was published–Vonnegut was still wearing his luminescent bells and Harlequin’s cape, but these had become dusty and the cape no longer fitted. Vonnegut’s exasperation and sense of futility could no longer be concealed or shaped, and this novel is a laboratory of technique (deliberately) gone wrong, a study of breakdown.
Vonnegut had never shown much hope in his work for human destiny or occupation; the naive optimism of Eliot Rosewater in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater had in the damaged veteran Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse-Five become a naive fantasy of escape to a sexual heaven. In the nihilism of Timequake, the only escape is re-enactment, but re-enactment has lost hope and force.
The Lodge Cast Iron Cookbook: A Treasury of Timeless, Delicious Recipes
Cast-iron cooking is back in vogue! From America’s most chic restaurants to the countless kitchens of avid home cooks, everyone is rediscovering the joy of cooking with classic cast iron. Cast-iron cooking has always been a kitchen favorite with its even heating, great heat retention and its flexibility to go outdoors and grill or cook over an open fire. According to Esquire magazine, cast-iron cookware “will enrich your eggs and burgers, it’s impossible to break and it will last longer than you.”
And now with The Lodge Cast Iron Cookbook, every cook will learn the simple, savory secrets of cast-iron cookery. From the kitchens of Lodge, America’s leading manufacturer of cast iron cookware, this unique cookbook offers over 200 mouthwatering recipes. The delectable dishes range from breakfast specials to the secrets of great fried food, to soups and stews, biscuits and baked goods, fish, veggies and finally those sweet finales.
Hopeful: Return to Sugarcreek, Book One
In the Amish town of Sugarcreek, love comes in many forms. But will it come at all for Miriam?
Miriam Zehr has worked at the Sugarcreek Inn longer than she cares to admit. The restaurant is a favorite of town residents as well as the many tourists who come to taste the famous Amish fare. Though she always tries to have a smile for every customer, deep down Miriam knows something’s missing: a family of her own.
Miriam has never felt particularly beautiful, especially because she’s always been a bit heavier than other girls her age. When Junior, the man she’s pined for all her life, suddenly seeks her out, she’s thrilled to be noticed . . . until she realizes he’s only asking her to help get the attention of Mary Kathryn Hershberger, her pretty friend.
If Miriam helps Junior court Mary Kathryn, she’ll get to spend a lot of time with him, but she might lose him in the process. Are these few stolen moments worth a lifetime of sacrifice? Is Miriam right to even hope for the life she dreams of?
Fractured (Guards of the Shadowlands Book 2)
Book Two in the Guards of the Shadowlands seriesIn the week since Lela returned to Rhode Island as Captain of the Guard with Malachi as her second in command, local news has been dominated by chilling sightings of human-like creatures running on all fours. Lela knows there’s only one explanation: the Mazikin have arrived in the land of the living.
Needing to maintain the appearance of a normal life for her foster mother, her probation officer, and her classmates, Lela returns to Warwick High along with Malachi. At night they secretly hunt for the Mazikin nest. To assist, two new Guards from very different parts of the Shadowlands are assigned to Lela’s unit, including the bad boy Jim, who repeatedly challenges Lela’s authority. Lela struggles to keep all her Guards on the right side of the law, but their mistakes come at a terrible cost.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2