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Author: Julian, Stephanie
FREE
Polyamory Romance

One woman. Two men. One night. Half a million dollars.

Erik watches from the shadows, his scars a prison he can’t escape. Work is his only refuge. Keegan has watched his best friend retreat from the world for too long after an explosion in their lab nearly killed Erik. Keegan will do whatever it takes to draw Erik out of the darkness. Erik is about to take Keegan up on that promise…
Julianne has big dreams but she’s in massive debt due to her mother’s illness. Her waitressing job will never be enough to make ends meet. But a mysterious offer could solve all her problems. The only catch: She has to have sex with a stranger.
Erik wants Keegan to make love to Julianne so he can watch. Keegan is shocked…and secretly thrilled. He wants Julianne just as much as Erik does. Julianne takes the money but never expected to be so excited by the illicit arrangement or to fall for the quiet Keegan and the scarred Erik. But when one night becomes an ongoing affair, will Julianne be able to draw the men out of the shadows and into the light?

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Author: Wolfe, Cecily K.
FREE
Historical Christian Romance

Can a newly Christian young man convince his mother’s maid that his love for her is worth more than his inherited life of luxury?

Josie is content as a maid in a rich cottager’s mansion along the Cliff Walk of beautiful Newport, Rhode Island, but the arrival of her employer’s handsome, pensive son tempts her into a relationship that while chaste, is forbidden between their social classes in the Gilded Age of 1893.

After travels abroad have led Arthur in search of a deeper connection with his Lord, he returns home to find love with his mother’s maid, a Christian girl with a heart full of love and charity. Can they overcome their families’ refusal to accept their attachment, or is their relationship doomed from their very first meeting on the romantic Cliff Walk?

Falls Boys (Hellbent Book 1) (affiliate link)

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Author: Douglas, Penelope
FREE
Erotica

Hawken Trent. So polite. So sweet. Such an upstanding young man.

A virgin, too, I hear. He never gets naughty with a girl. Probably because Jesus told him not to.

And now here he is, trying to be the hero by protecting another girl from me.

He calls me a bully. Irrational. Unreasonable. A criminal. He can call me anything he wants, I’ve heard worse.

And he can try to stand between me and my money, but he’s never had to fight for food. That rich, clean, school boy doesn’t have what it takes.

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Author: Stewart, Douglas
FREE
International Crime Thriller

Detective Todd “Ratso” Holtom is as tough as they come.
Born and bred in gritty London, Ratso learned early how to spot criminals – eventually turning that skill into being a top Detective.

Now he’s handed a career-making case: destroy the elusive Boris Zandro’s drug-running empire. But the ruthless kingpin has evaded every attempt to arrest him, despite being linked to a dozen murders.

With a huge shipment of drugs due to arrive and no clarity on how Zandro’s getting help, the trail to find answers takes Ratso around the world. Along the way, he is helped by troubled Florida detective Kirsty-Ann Webber – but Ratso can’t afford to be distracted by his new alluring partner.

Ratso knows the dangers. But if he doesn’t stop Zandro, the political fallout – in London, Washington and the rest of the world – will be drastic.

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Author: Osburn, Terri
FREE
Romantic Comedy

Roxie Chandler might have found the place where she belongs, but will one mistake mean leaving her new life—and new love—behind? Roxie has hit rock bottom. No job. No home. Even her family is done with her. An unplanned visit to an older cousin is her only option, but stuck on a remote island is the last place she wants to be.

Alex has never been happier. As the village doctor, he has the small-town life he’s always wanted, living in peace and helping his neighbors. Except life isn’t so peaceful once the city girl with a chip on her shoulder moves in with his neighbor. To her surprise, Roxie likes Anchor Island and the people on it. Especially the hot doc next door.

They’re opposites in every way, yet Alex is turning out to be the good guy she never knew she wanted. But when Roxie’s mistake puts two of his patients in jeopardy, will he turn his back on her like everyone else in her life? Or will he show her what true love really means?

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Author: Ambrose, Adrianne
FREE
Humorous Mystery

Extortion rate rents, tech-bro infestations, and sage advice from random homeless citizens keep the laughs rolling in.

If you love a screwball mystery, but also enjoy stories where a hardboiled mug might get socked in the jaw, then you’re really going to fall for The Trouble with San Francisco.

After quitting her job at a sleazy internet company, Samantha Suite is hard-pressed for cash. She gets roped into following a friend’s cheating husband. But tailing a middle-aged lawyer through the streets of San Francisco is more challenging than it sounds.

Sam’s “easy gig” drags her into one perilous predicament after another, where she encounters a wide array of the citizens San Francisco has on offer, including: a hot cop, an out-of-control frat boy, a feisty grandmother who plays loose with the law, friendly leather daddies, an aging biker, a shady dude she used to know in high school, and worst of all, Slain. He’s a professional P.I., who is so hardboiled he needs a Google Translate button. And he doesn’t appreciate some dame filching a gig from a hard-working shamus. Slain goes out of his way to make Sam understand that being a private detective is a dangerous business. And ends up making her life miserable in the process.

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Author: Pilarchik, Gary, D’Amore, Chiara
Regularly $27.99, Today $4.99
Gardening & Horticulture

Convert your unproductive lawn and landscape areas into fruitful edible gardens with this practical guide overflowing with ideas, plans, designs, and know-how.

Out with the lawn and in with the food! That’s the battle cry of millions of modern gardeners who are not only looking to reduce the amount of time and energy they have to spend tending a lawn, but they’re also looking to improve the lives of their family, friends, and neighbors by supplying them with fresh, homegrown food. In the United States alone, 46 million acres of land are covered in turfgrass (that’s more acreage than corn and soybeans combined!). Imagine all the good that would come if that land were dedicated to growing food instead!

Converting unused areas of the landscape into food gardens helps mitigate the effects of climate change, reduces food miles, improves food security, and allows us to be a better steward of our little slice of the planet. But how do you get started? Which plants do you choose? Is there a series of best practices to follow to successfully convert your yard into an edible oasis so that it’s not just high-yielding, but it’s also attractive? Growing an Edible Landscape is here to help answer all of these questions and many more.

The Rome Affair (affiliate link)

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Author: Swan, Karen
Regularly $12.99, Today $3.99
n Contemporary Women Fiction

1974. Elena Damiani lives a gilded life. Born to wealth and a noted beauty, no door is closed to her, no man can resist her. At twenty-six, she is already onto her third husband when she meets her love match. But he is the one man she can never have – and all the beauty and money in the world can’t change it.

2017. Francesca Hackett is living la dolce vita in Rome, leading tourist groups around the Eternal City and forgetting the ghosts she left behind in London.

When chance brings her into the orbit of her neighbour across the piazza – famed socialite Viscontessa Elena dei Damiani Pignatelli della Mirandola – the two women are intrigued by one another – and agree to collaborate on Elena’s memoirs. As summer unfurls, Elena tells her sensational stories, leaving Cesca in her thrall.

But when a priceless diamond ring, found in an ancient tunnel below the city streets, is ascribed to Elena, Cesca begins to suspect a shocking secret at the heart of Elena’s life . . .

The War Outside (affiliate link)

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Author: Hesse, Monica
Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99
Romantic Mystery

It’s 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado—until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan.

Margot and Haruko meet at the high school in Crystal City, a “family internment camp” for those accused of colluding with the enemy. The teens discover that they are polar opposites in so many ways, except for one that seems to override all the others: the camp is changing them, day by day and piece by piece. Haruko finds herself consumed by fear for her soldier brother and distrust of her father, who she knows is keeping something from her. And Margot is doing everything she can to keep her family whole as her mother’s health deteriorates and her rational, patriotic father becomes a man who distrusts America and fraternizes with Nazis.

With everything around them falling apart, Haruko and Margot find solace in their growing, secret friendship. But in a prison the government has deemed full of spies, can they trust anyone—even each other?

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Author: Catron, Mandy Len
Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99
Love & Romance

What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer.

In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship.

 

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Author: Lin, Irvin
Regularly $17.99, Today $3.99
Dessert Baking

Incredible desserts with layers and swirls of flavor that are beautiful and delicious—inside and out When you marble, layer, and swirl doughs, batters, toppings, or frostings, good looks and good taste come together in one total package. Irvin Lin, creator of the popular blog Eat the Love, shows how these techniques open the door to inventive flavor combinations that look as fantastic as they taste.

Bakers of all levels will enjoy recipes ranging from easy brownies and bars to brunch-worthy muffins and morning buns to show-stopping cakes and tarts: cinnamon spiral icebox cookies, pistachio-swirl brownies, triple-chocolate pie, multicolored “Neapolitan” layer cake, and more. Lin offers variations to suit any taste (more than 150 recipes total) plus baking and decorating tips throughout on topics like making your own all-natural food coloring, rolling up jelly roll–style cakes, and discovering the magic of browned butter. Readers (and eaters) are sure to ooh and ahh over every dazzling dessert at first glance—and then again at first bite.

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Author: Lee, Mackenzi
Regularly $19.99, Today $2.99
Animal Care & Pet Essays
Most dog lovers know Fido and Laika, but how about Martha, Paul McCartney’s Old English Sheepdog? Or Peritas, Alexander the Great’s trusted canine companion? As long as there have been humans, those humans have had beloved companions—their dogs. From the ancient Egyptians mummifying their pups, to the Indian legend of the king who refused to enter the afterlife unless his dog was allowed there too, to the modern meme and popularity of terms like the corgi sploot, humans are undeniably obsessed with their dogs. Told in short, illustrated essays that are interspersed with both historical and canine factoids, The History of the World in Fifty Dogs brings to life some of history’s most memorable moments through the stories of the dogs that saw them happen.

… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2