Free Book Friday

[jammom]

http://www.freebookfriday.com/
Sign up on left

Every wk on Fri AM they hold a drawing (enter once a wk)

[rebate queen]

Thanks Deb--just added to my favorites;)

[swede]

Thank you. I just entered for the week

[rebate queen]

There is also a Free Book Friday for teens.

http://teens.freebookfriday.com/

[rebate queen]

FBF Fiction is closed this week. But we will be back next week with an exciting All-Star Author and her newest featured release that you WILL NOT want to miss!
Until then, check out this week's great feature and giveaway on the FBF Teens site!

[jammom]

Bummer-I always enter on Mon

[rebate queen]

BEAUTIFUL MARIA OF MY SOUL


by Oscar Hijuelos

General Fiction

Hyperion
Author's website


5 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, August 13, 2010

PULITZER PRIZE Winning Author!




We're also including 5 copies of the author's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE to the winners!

Here is the story of the memorable Castillo brothers, ?migr?s from Havana to New York??™s Upper West Side. The lovelorn songwriter Nestor and his macho brother Cesar find success in the city??™s dance halls and beyond playing the rhythms that earn them their band??™s name, as they struggle with elusive fame and lost love in a richly sensual tale that has become a cultural touchstone and an enduring favorite.



About Beautiful Maria of My Soul:

The Pulitzer Prize??“winning The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a contemporary American classic, a novel that still captures the imagination twenty years after its first publication. And now, in Beautiful Mar?a of My Soul, Oscar Hijuelos returns to the story, but tells it from the point of view of its beloved heroine, Maria.

She??™s the great Cuban beauty, the woman who stole musician Nestor Castillo??™s heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings??™ biggest hit, ???Beautiful Mar?a of My Soul.??? Here, in Hijuelos??™s dazzling new stand-alone novel, she finally takes the spotlight.

Now in her early sixties and living in Miami with her pediatrician daughter, Teresa, Beautiful Mar?a still turns heads. Having left Cuba decades before, she has gone on with her life, but has never forgotten Nestor, and as she thinks back to her days??”and nights??”in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the Mambo Kings story unfolds. Beautiful Mar?a of My Soul is a stunning feat of reimagination, another contemporary classic from an extraordinarily talented writer.


Check out Chapter 1 of Beautiful Maria of My Soul here:

Over forty years before, when Nestor Castillo??™s future love, one Mar?a Garc?a y Cifuentes, left her beloved valle in the far west of Cuba, she could have gone to the provincial capital of Pinar del R?o, where her prospects for finding work might be as good??”or bad??”as in any place; but because the truck driver who??™d picked her up one late morning, his gargoyle face hidden under the lowered brim of a lacquered cane hat, wasn??™t going that way and because she??™d heard so many things??”both wonderful and sad??”about Havana, Mar?a decided to accompany him, that cab stinking to high heaven from the animals in the back and from the thousands of hours he must have driven that truck with its loud diesel engine and manure-stained floor without a proper cleaning. He couldn??™t have been more simp?tico, and at first he seemed to take pains not to stare at her glorious figure, though he couldn??™t help but smile at the way her youthful beauty certainly cheered things up. Okay, he was missing half his teeth, looked like he swallowed shadows when he opened his mouth, and had a bulbous, knobbed face, the sort of ugly man, somewhere in his forties or fifties??”she couldn??™t tell??”who could never have been good looking, even as a boy. Once he got around to tipping up his brim, however, she could see that his eyes were spilling over with kindness, and despite his filthy fingernails she liked him for the thin crucifix he wore around his neck??”a sure sign, in her opinion, that he had to be a good fellow??”un hombre decente.

Heading northeast along dirt roads, the Cuban countryside with its stretches of farms and pastures, dense forests and flatlands gradually rising, they brought up clouds of red dust: along some tracks it was so hard to breathe that Mar?a had to cover her face with a kerchief. Still, to be racing along at such bewildering speeds, of some twenty or thirty miles an hour, overwhelmed her. She??™d never even ridden in a truck before, let alone anything faster than a horse and carriage, and the thrill of traveling so quickly for the first time in her life seemed worth the queasiness in her stomach, it was so exciting and frightening at the same time. Naturally, they got to talking.

???So, why you wanna go to Havana???? the fellow??”his name was Sixto??”asked her. ???You got some problems at home????

???No.??? She shook her head.

???What are you gonna do there, anyway? You know anyone????

???I might have some cousins there, from my mam???™s side of the family?????”she made a sign of the cross in her late mother??™s memory. ???But I don??™t know. I think they live in a place called Los Humos. Have you heard of it????

???Los Humos???? He considered the matter. ???Nope, but then there are so many hole-in-the-wall neighborhoods in that city. I??™m sure there??™ll be somebody to show you how to find it.??? Then, picking at a tooth with his pinkie: ???You have any work? A job????

???No, se?or??”not yet.???

???What are you going to do, then????

She shrugged.

???I know how to sew,??? she told him. ???And how to roll tobacco??”my papito taught me.???

He nodded, scratched his chin. She was looking at herself in the rearview mirror, off which dangled a rosary. As she did, he couldn??™t resist asking her, ???Well, how old are you anyway, mi vida????

???Seventeen.???

???Seventeen! And you have nobody there???? He shook his head. ???You better be careful. That??™s a rough place, if you don??™t know anyone.???

Click here to continue reading the entire First Chapter!

About The Author:

OSCAR HIJUELOS, the son of Cuban immigrants, is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His seven novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. He lives in New York City and spends part of the year in Durham, North Carolina, where he teaches at Duke University. Visit the author online HERE.

**Please enter to win using the form on the left side bar of our website. Comments left on the post are not used as entry.


Posted by Free Book Friday at 12:01 AM 0 comments
Labels: All-Star Author, Featured Author
Friday, August 6, 2010
The Unexpected Son - Winners!



3 lucky winners will be receiving free autographed copies of The Unexpected Son

And those winners are...

1) Melanie Lynch
2) C-L Rossel
3) Lisa Sperry


If you didn't win, but still want to read The Unexpected Son, be sure to order one from Amazon by clicking here!

Or find it in our official Free Book Friday Amazon Book Store!

[rebate queen]

NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH



by Cammie McGovern


Commercial Fiction

Viking
www.CammieMcGovern.com


4 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, August 27, 2010



About the Book:

After twelve long years, Betsy Treading is released from prison when DNA testing proves that she didn??™t murder her neighbor, Linda Sue Murphy. During those intervening years, her life outside of prison evaporated ??“ her marriage is over and her job as a librarian is no longer available to her (cruelly, the media had dubbed her the ???Librarian Murderess??? as they chronicled the events of her trial). When she returns to her small suburban community, it??™s immediately clear that DNA evidence isn??™t enough to make her innocent in the eyes of her neighbors. Determined to clear her name and find Linda Sue??™s true killer, Betsy sifts through old evidence and tracks down one lead after another. As Betsy??™s past begins to reveal itself, from grief over a series of miscarriages to her own troubled childhood, so do the buried secrets of the neighbors she thought she knew so well.

NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH examines the deep, dark secrets of a small community??”ones that are hidden behind the manicured lawns and white picket fences, and how people who have been your neighbors for years can turn out to be complete strangers in the end.



Free Book Friday's Exclusive Interview with the Author!

1) How did you get the idea for the novel

After watching a beautiful documentary called After Innocence about long-term prisoners getting exonerated and released after DNA testing proved their innocence, I kept thinking about the surprising number of those cases (about half) where the conviction came largely because the person had confessed to a crime they never committed. It??™s unimaginable at first and then, when you consider the complicated sense of guilt and responsibility we all walk around with so much of the time??”our inflated sense of self and our aggrandizing imaginations??”I thought: maybe it??™s not so unimaginable. We have all wished certain people out of our lives. We??™ve all felt responsible for things we had little to do with. Women are especially susceptible to this, I suspect. I wanted to tell the story of an educated but vulnerable woman who finds some evidence implicating her in the murder of her neighbor and decides that yes, she must have killed her. The real mystery unfolds when she discovers, twelve years later, that she didn??™t kill the woman and now has to figure out who did.

2) When you start a new book, do you like to outline the entire story or fly by the seat of your pants? What about your characters? Do you figure them out entirely before you start writing or do they reveal themselves to you along the way?

I wish I did outline more because I??™m sure the process would go so much faster if I did. My background was much more in literary fiction (I have an MFA from Michigan and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford where no one talked about genre writing at all or the practical aspects of telling a suspense story that both twists and surprises and also pays off emotionally). For me, it still starts with characters and writing a whole bunch of scenes where the liveliest and most vivid ones end up taking over parts of the story. Now that I am writing more in a suspense genre though, the fun is in piecing together a really good story out of those scenes.

3) Considering a book from the first word you write to the moment you see it on a bookstore shelf, what??™s your favorite part of the process? What??™s your least favorite?

My favorite part??”absolutely??”is the beginning, when it??™s still a bunch of notes, handwritten in notebooks that I??™ve been filling for a few months and it??™s all still brilliant and all of it works beautifully because I haven??™t actually gone back and re-read it yet. My least favorite part is realizing how far I am from that earlier fantasy and getting what could be a great idea to actually work.

4) Be honest, how many drafts did you have to write for this book? Any horrific scenes that were cut from the original that you want to share?

I will be honest: I write MANY drafts and go back and change a lot as I re-work my books. Neighborhood Watch is my third book and I keep being shocked that the process doesn??™t seem to have gotten any easier, nor have I gotten any smarter particularly. It keeps being true: the things I LOVED in my early drafts don??™t work at all when I go back and re-read them, and then odd, throwaway bits end up taking over the story. The question I can??™t answer is why I don??™t see certain weaknesses from the beginning when they seem so obvious later on. My agent once said I was one of the best editors of my own work he had, by which he clearly meant??”I am willing to cut a lot. I do cut a lot but I think one has to be ruthless to keep a story going.

5) What??™s your strangest writing quirk or habit?

Probably the fact that I still write almost everything longhand in notebooks first. As time consuming as it may seem, I find it helps me writing a lot more often (in odd places, in the car, waiting for appointments) and notebooks never crash on you??¦


About The Author:

Cammie McGovern was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and has received numerous prizes for her short fiction. Her stories have appeared in several magazines and journals, and she is the author of two novels, Eye Contact, which was published in 2006, and The Art of Seeing. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with her husband and three children. She is one of the founders of Whole Children, a resource center that runs after-school classes and programs for children with special needs. Visit the author online at: www.CammieMcGovern.com

**Please enter to win using the form on the left side bar of our website. Comments left on the post are not used as entry.

[rebate queen]

OUT OF THE SHADOWS



by Joanne Rendell


General Fiction

New American Library
www.JoanneRendell.com


3 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, September 10, 2010



About the Book:

Clara Fitzgerald's recent losses have set her adrift, personally and professionally. Her mother has passed away, and her career seems stalled while her fianc???™s scientific research is poised to take off in an exciting new direction. As great as the potential is for his future, Clare can??™t help ??“ or ignore ??“ that her emotional connection to him has slowly been slipping away.

Remembering the stories her mother used to tell her, Clara decides to research her ancestry-only to uncover an extraordinary link to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. With her sister in tow and the help of Kay, a retired Shelley scholar, Clara embarks on a search for the nineteenth-century author's long lost journals and letters. As a bond among the three women grows, and as the profound connection between the past and present deepens, Clara discovers where her heart truly belongs.

Told from alternating points of view between Clara and the young Mary Shelley who is preparing to write Frankenstein, Out of the Shadows is a tale of hubris and greed, passion and truth, loss and love.

[rebate queen]

HOW CLARISSA BURDEN LEARNED TO FLY



by Connie May Fowler


Commercial Fiction

Grand Central Publishing
www.ConnieMayFowler.com


5 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, September 17, 2010




About the Book:

The temperature in Hope, Florida reads ninety-two degrees at seven a.m. on the day of the solstice. For writer Clarissa Burden, her routine of being ignored by her artist/husband Iggy while he photographs nude twenty-something??™s is jarred by the realization that her marriage is failed, her writer??™s block is ever-present and the pains of her abusive childhood aren??™t going away. The ghosts haunting Clarissa??™s house empathize with her and yearn for her happiness, but they have watched her become complacent.

Unexpectedly, Clarissa becomes fed-up. Whether it is the searing heat, the call from a sexy, younger colleague, or the naked girls giggling with her husband outside her kitchen window, the combination becomes unbearable and the hottest day of the year becomes a day of reckoning.
With a sharp eye and articulate voice, Connie May Fowler deftly introduces a memorable cast of characters that are as colorful as they are troubled and as familiar as they are complex.

HOW CLARISSA BURDEN LEARNED TO FLY is a compelling exploration of one woman??™s inner life and of the lives she unexpectedly encounters.

[rebate queen]

SEERS OF LIGHT


by Jennifer DeLucy

Paranormal Fiction

Omnific Publishing
www.JenniferDeLucy.com



3 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, September 24, 2010




About the Book:

Lilian Hunt has never truly lived. Always sensing more to the world than is easily perceived, she fears that her instincts are stubborn flights of fancy, or worse, mental instability. But some things - disappearing strangers, tangible dreams, and visits from malevolent creatures - cannot be ignored. Before it's too late, Lilian is ripped from the only existence she's ever known and thrust into a reality that she always suspected, but could scarcely believe. She must learn the truth about who she is, the powerful beings that wish to destroy her and the two men who would die to protect her.

[rebate queen]

A SUITOR FOR JENNY


by Margaret Brownley

Historical Fiction

Thomas Nelson Books
www.MargaretBrownley.com


5 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, October 1, 2010




About the Book:

When looking for a husband, it??™s best to go where the odds are in your favor.

And that would be Rocky Creek, Texas, 1880. But Jenny Higgins's plan to find husbands for her two sisters hits a snag when enthusiastic applicants fail to meet her stringent requirements.

Rejecting her sisters' choices for mates and riding herd on her growing feelings for Marshal Rhett Armstrong, she refuses to give up.

Jenny thinks choosing a husband is not a job for the heart. It'll take one strong and handsome marshal to convince her otherwise.

[rebate queen]

THE UNIDENTIFIED REDHEAD


by Alice Clayton

Contemporary Romance

Omnific Publishing
www.AliceClayton.com

Click here to view the Trailer!


3 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, October 8, 2010




About the Book:

When Grace Sheridan returns to Los Angeles to become a working actor, it's a second shot at a life-long dream. With some help from her best friend and agent, that dream could become a reality, but at thirty-three, has Grace missed her chance at the big time? Will an unexpected sizzling romance with the entertainment industry's newest 'it' boy shine an uncomfortable spotlight on her life?

Alice Clayton spins a playful and erotic May to December romance in this, her debut novel. Clayton's funny, borderline neurotic heroine is perfect in her imperfections, and the off the charts sexual chemistry between her and her charming, yet blissfully unaware leading man are the true heart of The Unidentified Redhead. With laugh out loud dialogue and a super steamy romance that will get your heart racing, sneaking around in L.A. and dodging the Paparazzi has never been so fun.

[rebate queen]

TALES FROM THE CRIB


by Jennifer Coburn

Commercial Fiction

Kensington
www.JenniferCoburn.com


5 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, October 15, 2010





About the Book:

Talk about bad timing!



When Lucy Klein gets her positive pregnancy results, she??™s overjoyed. She and her husband Jack have been trying to get pregnant for years throughout their rocky marriage. But before she can tell him the big news, Jack has something he needs to announce ??“ he wants a divorce!

Rather than split up, Lucy and Jack decide to live together as friends. This way, they can share expenses and parenting responsibilities. Co-parenting is a fine deal for Jack who is back in the dating scene by Lucy??™s third trimester of pregnancy, but is a frustrating one for Lucy who has unfulfilled sexual fantasies about every man from restaurant delivery boys to puppeteers.


Meanwhile, Lucy??™s mother is taking over her life. The grand dame of Planet Earth, Anjoli frequently visits her daughter to share her own brand of maternal wisdom.





As Anjoli leaves her Drama Queen bookstore to ???help??? Lucy with baby Adam, the new grandmother has an affair with baby??™s pediatrician, hosts two weddings (including cousin Kimmy??™s wedding to herself), and constantly frets about which kind of pie to serve guests. With a cast of family and friends from Lucy??™s Jewish aunts to Junior League neighbor, Candace, Tales From the Crib is the story of how one baby can bring people together ??“ so they can drive each other nuts!

[rebate queen]

SEEK ME WITH ALL YOUR HEART


by Beth Wiseman

General Fiction

Thomas Nelson
www.BethWiseman.com


5 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, October 22, 2010!





About the Book:

A groundbreaking series takes Amish readers where they've never gone before... Colorado.

Emily Detweiler??™s family abruptly moved to Colorado after tragedy struck in Ohio. But Emily can??™t get far enough to escape what happened there.

David Stoltzfus is not happy when his family relocates from Pennsylvania to Colorado. Nevermind that they haven't told him why. David struggles not only with this unwelcome move, but also with the fear that a health condition could keep him from living his life in full.

Emily and David each come to terms with a past that follows them, testing their faith and resolve. Will they overcome adversity and step onto the path God has chosen for them?

[rebate queen]

THE LOVE GODDESS' COOKING SCHOOL


by Melissa Senate

Commercial Fiction

Simon and Schuster
www.MelissaSenate.com


3 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, November 5, 2010





About the Book:

Camilla's Cucinotta:
Italian Cooking Classes
Fresh take-home pastas and sauces daily
Benvenuti (Welcome!)

Holly Maguire's grandmother was the Love Goddess of Blue Crab Island, Maine??“a Milanese fortune teller who could predict the right man for you, and whose Italian cooking was rumored to save marriages. Holly has been waiting years for her unlikely fortune: her true love will like sa cordula, an unappetizing old-world delicacy. But Holly can't make a decent marinara sauce, let alone sa cordula. Maybe that's why the man she hopes to marry breaks her heart. So when Holly inherits Camilla's Cucinotta, she's determined to forget about fortunes and love and become an Italian cooking teacher worthy of her grandmother's legacy.

Luckily, Holly's four students are seeking much more than how to make Camilla's chicken alla Milanese. Simon, a single father, hopes to cook his way back into his daughter's heart. Juliet, Holly's childhood friend, hides a painful secret. Tamara, a serial dater, can't find the love she longs for. And twelve-year-old Mia thinks learning to cook will stop her dad from marrying his phony lasagna-queen girlfriend.

As the class gathers each week, adding Camilla's essential ingredients of wishes and memories into every pot and pan, unexpected friendships and romances are formed??“and tested. Especially when Holly falls hard for Liam . . . and learns a thing or two about creating her own recipe for happiness.

[rebate queen]

AFTER YOU



by Julie Buxbaum

Commercial Fiction
Dial Press
www.JulieBuxbaum.com


5 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, January 14, 2011!




About the Book:

The complexities of friendship. The unraveling of a neglected marriage. And the redemptive power of literature... Julie Buxbaum, the acclaimed author of The Opposite of Love, delivers a powerful, gloriously written novel about love, family, and the secrets we hide from each other, and ourselves.

On a cobblestone street in Notting Hill, Ellie Lerner's life-long best friend, Lucy, is stabbed to death in front of her eight-year-old daughter. Ellie, of course, drops everything - her job, her marriage, her life in the Boston suburbs - and travels to London to pick up the pieces of the life Lucy has left behind. While Lucy's husband, Greg copes with his grief by retreating to the pub, eight-year-old Sophie has simply stopped speaking.

Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As the two spend hours exploring the novel, its story of hurt, magic and healing blooms around them. But so, too, do the secrets Lucy kept hidden, even from her best friend. As Ellie peels back the layers of her friend's life, she's forced to confront her own as well - the marriage she left behind, the loss she'd hoped to escape, and the elusiveness of the place we choose to call home.

A novel that will resonate in the heart of anyone who's had a best friend, a love lost, or a past full of regrets, AFTER YOU proves once again the unique and compelling talent of Julie Buxbaum.

[rebate queen]

SEEING ME NAKED



by Liza Palmer

Commercial Fiction
5 Spot
www.LizaPalmer.com


3 autographed copies will be given away on Friday, January 21, 2011!




About the Book:

Elisabeth Page has big shoes to fill. She's the daughter of living legend novelist Ben Page, and the sister of literary wunderkind Rascal Page, and her career as a pastry chef is decidedly not up to her family's snooty standards-even if she works at the hottest restaurant in L.A. Elisabeth hopes no one will notice that her five-year plan to run her own patisserie has morphed into an eleven-year plan to nowhere. Her personal life is also frozen in time: she's still involved with her family-approved childhood sweetheart, a journalist whose constant jaunts leave her lonely. Enter an exciting career opportunity and even more terrifying, Daniel Sullivan, a beer-drinking basketball coach who is everything her family is not. Addicted to control and bred to criticize, can Elisabeth finally embrace happiness? Only if she has the guts to let others see her naked??¦ and let them love her, warts and all.

[rebate queen]

We've expanded! FBF has added TWO new genres to the site which means even MORE free books! Check out FBF Romance and FBF Indie and see what new books we have up for grabs this week!