Special Offer: Kindle Edition of Gutshot Straight by Lou Berney with Bonus Excerpt, Free to Pre-Order

As of the date and time of this post, HarperCollins is offering a special edition of Lou Berney's debut crime caper Gutshot Straight as a free Kindle download. (As always, prices can and do change without notice, so please confirm the price of the book before 1-click ordering.)

This particular edition won't be delivered to your Kindle until June 12th … and it will include an excerpt from the next Heather Wells mystery by Meg Cabot, Size 12 and Ready to Rock, which is scheduled to be published July 10th. (A description of Meg Cabot's book is given instead of that for Gutshot Straight on the latter book's pre-order page, which we believe to be a simple error on the part of either the publisher or Amazon.)

Gutshot Straight, originally published in hardcover in 2010, features Charles "Shake" Bouchon, a professional wheel man, who walks out of prison after a three-year stretch for grand theft auto. Now he's got only two problems: he's too nice a guy for the life he's led and not nice enough for any other.

So he says yes when he's asked to run a simple errand for his former boss and lover, Alexandra Ilandryan, the formidable pakhan of the Armenian mob in Los Angeles. All Shake has to do is deliver a package to Las Vegas and pick up a briefcase.

Only the package turns out to be a wholesome young housewife named Gina whose husband has run afoul of Dick Moby, aka "The Whale," an unpleasant four-hundred-pound Vegas strip-club owner. Shake hates to think what's going to happen to Gina when he delivers her to The Whale, so in a move that's as noble as it is boneheaded, he decides to set her free.

Now Shake and Gina are on the run to Panama, hoping to unload the very valuable — and highly unusual — contents of The Whale's briefcase. Shake could end up a rich man, but first he'll have to outmaneuver two angry crime bosses, a murderous Armenian thug plagued by erectile superfunction, a former pro football player who blames Shake for his romantic woes, and a billionaire swindler with a flair for the theatrical. Not to mention, and not the least, Shake will need to survive his own heart, since he's going to discover that wholesome housewife Gina is even more intriguing, and a lot more complicated, than he ever imagined.