Today Amazon offers Night Swim by Jessica Keener just for $1.99.
Sixteen-year-old Sarah Kunitz lives in a posh, suburban world of 1970 Boston. From the outside, her parents’ lifestyle appears enviable – a world defined by cocktail parties, expensive cars, and live-in maids to care for their children – but inside their five-bedroom house, all is not well for the Kunitz family. Coming home from school, Sarah finds her well-dressed, pill-popping mother lying disheveled on their living room couch. At night, to escape their parents’ arguments, Sarah and her oldest brother, Peter, find solace in music, while her two younger brothers retreat to their rooms and imaginary lives. Any vestige of decorum and stability drains away when their mother dies in a car crash one terrible winter day. Soon after, their father, a self-absorbed, bombastic professor begins an affair with a younger colleague. Sarah, aggrieved, dives into two summer romances that lead to unforeseen consequences. In a story that will make you laugh and cry, Night Swim shows how a family, bound by heartache, learns to love again.
Some words about the Author
Jessica Keener has been listed in The Pushcart Prize under “Outstanding Writers.” Her fiction has appeared most recently in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Night Train, and Wilderness House Literary Review. A recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Grant Program, and second prize in fiction from Redbook magazine, her feature articles have appeared in The Boston Globe, Design New England, O, The Oprah Magazine and other national publications. Night Swim is her first novel.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is also offered today with great discount. It costs $1.99.
Huxley’s bleak future prophesized in Brave New World was a capitalist civilization which had been reconstituted through scientific and psychological engineering, a world in which people are genetically designed to be passive and useful to the ruling class. Satirical and disturbing, Brave New World is set some 600 years ahead, in “this year of stability, A.F. 632”–the A.F. standing for After Ford, meaning the godlike Henry Ford. “Community, Identity, Stability,” is the motto. Reproduction is controlled through genetic engineering, and people are bred into a rigid class system. As they mature, they are conditioned to be happy with the roles that society has created for them. The rest of their lives are devoted to the pursuit of pleasure through sex, recreational sports, the getting and having of material possessions, and taking a drug called Soma. Concepts such as family, freedom, love, and culture are considered grotesque.
Against this backdrop, a young man known as John the Savage is brought to London from the remote desert of New Mexico. What he sees in the new civilization a “brave new world” (quoting Shakespeare’s The Tempest). However, ultimately, John challenges the basic premise of this society in an act that threatens and fascinates its citizens.
Huxley uses his entire prowess to throw the idea of utopia into reverse, presenting us what is known as the “dystopian” novel. When Brave New World was written (1931), neither Hitler nor Stalin had risen to power. Huxley saw the enduring threat to society from the dark side of scientific and social progress, and mankind’s increasing appetite for simple amusement. Brave New World is a work that indicts the idea of progress for progress sake and is backed up with force and reason.
Some words about the Author
Writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was an extraordinary man who brought to his work a strong sense of the world into which he was born (amid the rarefied privilege of a distinguished English family), his own probing intelligence, and a restless soul. Huxley’s grandfather was the eminent biologist and writer Thomas Huxley, who helped Darwin realize his theory of evolution, and his mother was the niece of poet Matthew Arnold (Huxley’s brother Julian also became an esteemed writer and their half-brother Andrew won a 1963 Nobel Prize in physiology).
Success came early to Huxley, and he enjoyed poking fun at society’s pretensions in some of his satirical novels like Crome Yellow and Antic Hay. The publication of Brave New World in 1932 marked a sea-change for Huxley. Growing maturity had brought him interest in political, philosophical, as well as spiritual matters that form the root of some of his other novels such as Eyeless in Gaza, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan and Time Must Have a Stop.
Parachute is a simple and funny game for your Kindle Fire. Today only it is free.
Guide Paraman through 40 levels of intense Parachuting fun! If you enjoy classic jumping games such as Doodle Jump, NinJump and Abduction! then you will love this variation which takes the genre and turns it on its head. Parachute jump down through 40 fun packed levels avoiding obstacles, collecting power-ups and completing each as fast as possible to achieve the maximum score. But be warned! Mysterious creatures plot to thwart your progress as you fall…. Can you chase them back to their home world?
Simple tilt controls, five unique themed areas and two modes of play provide a varied, challenging and fun game for kids and adults alike.
You are Paraman. A slightly unhinged, but incredibly skillful Parachutist. Have you got what it takes to parachute jump down through 40 challenging levels, jam packed with deadly obstacles, to reach the final landing pad. Parachute through 5 uniquely themed areas:
- Mountains
- Jungle
- Desert
- Area 51.2
- Space
Each area contains 8 hand crafted levels with unique obstacles to avoid. Dodge moving platforms, falling objects, killer bees, angry yetis, UFOs, rockets, rocks, flying pigs, and a whole lot more.
Controls: Tilt your phone left and right to move and up and down to adjust your speed. Uses accelerometer and touch for control. The faster you fall down the higher score you will achieve, but be careful, avoiding those obstacles will require careful control.
Post your scores online and compete for the top spot in the Parachute leaderboards!