We're quite impressed by Amazon.com's recent implementation of Whispersync for Voice, the ability to seamlessly switch back and forth between reading a Kindle ebook and listening to the Audible audiobook.
In this post we're taking a look at particularly appealing deals involving Poisoned Pen Press titles. Our definition of a "deal" here is the ability to purchase both the Kindle version of the book and the Audible audiobook version for less than half the price of the Audible version alone.
OK, let's get started. We began with creating a list of Poisoned Pen Press books that have Whispersync available, sorting it by price (low to high). As of the date and time of this post, there were 77 results returned. We're unaware of any search tools to refine this list further, so we began checking each entry manually. It soon became clear that our best chances of finding a "deal" were if the Kindle ebook was $3 or less and the add-on Audible audiobook offer was $5 or less. (Most Audible audio books are priced around $18, so this $8 combined price met our "deal" criteria.) We came up with 7 books, listed below.
If you're willing to expand the range a bit, say up to $12 for a combined purchase, which is still considerably less than the average $18 price of the Audible audiobook alone, there are a lot more titles available.
For the most part, these "deals" are best for those readers, who would be buying the Audible audiobook alone. But even if you aren't necessarily interested in the audiobook, for a small incremental purchase you can add the flexibility of reading and listening to your book. (If you haven't tried Whispersync, you can do so for free. Here is our first post on the subject, with instructions on how to sample Whispersync.)
Note: You can take advantage of the Whispersync offer even if you already own the Kindle ebook. You'll see a message confirming you own the book and the special offer price will be shown as the list price of the Audible audiobook format.
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Hornswoggled
Donis Casey
An Alafair Tucker Mystery (2nd in series)
It's the spring of 1913, and love is in bloom for Alice Tucker. Alice's new beau, Walter Kelley, is handsome, popular, and wealthy. Everyone in Boynton, Oklahoma, likes him. Everyone but Alice's mother, Alafair. She sees that Walter has a weakness for the ladies — and they for him. Moreover, Walter's late wife Louise had been stabbed in the heart and her body disposed of in Cane Creek only a few months earlier. The murderer has never been caught.
The sheriff has cleared Walter of the deed — he has an alibi — but Alafair is not so sure that he wasn't involved in some way. Something literally doesn't smell right. Could it be Louise's tormented spirit signaling clues from the other side, or is Alafair scenting a more direct link to the crime?
Even if he had nothing to do with his wife's death, Alafair judges Walter to have been a bad husband. With the help of her feisty mother-in-law, Sally McBride, Alafair sets out to prove to the headstrong Alice that Walter is not the paragon she thinks he is. As she searches for the truth behind the death of Louise Kelley, Alafair uncovers such a tangle of lies, misdirection, and deceit that she begins to think that the whole town has been downright hornswoggled!
Click on the Amazon.com button to check out the special Whispersync offer associated with this title.
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Embrace the Grim Reaper
Judy Clemens
A Casey Maldonado, "Grim Reaper" Mystery
Casey Maldonado's life is over – at least as she knows it. In one brief moment of fire and wrenching metal, everything important was gone. The car manufacturer was generous with its settlement, but it can never be enough. Her family and friends – not to mention her lawyers – want her to go for more. More money. More publicity. More everything. But Casey is done. No financial gain or courtroom retribution will bring back what really matters. So she packs up, puts her house on the market, and leaves town. Her only companion – Death, who won't take her, but won't leave her alone.
Stopping on a whim in Clymer, a small blue-collar town in the midst of Ohio farmland, Casey discovers a town wrapped in tragedy. Not only is HomeMaker, the town's appliance factory and main employer, moving to Mexico, but the town has been rocked by the suicide of a beloved single mother. Casey is drawn to the town, and soon realizes that many of the citizens don't believe the verdict of suicide at all. Death encourages her to investigate, and she uncovers information that points to the factory. Was the victim's death a cover-up? Did she truly have the means – as she claimed – to keep the factory from leaving town? When Casey begins to receive messages that she should leave well enough alone, she decides she'd be better off back on the road, but the murderer can't let her go with everything she knows …
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Valley of the Lost
Vicki Delany
A Molly Smith Mystery (2nd in series)
In the bucolic mountain town of Trafalgar, British Columbia, a young woman is found dead of a heroin overdose, her baby lying at her side. While this should be an open-and-shut drug case, restraint marks on the victim suggest that the death might not have been completely accidental.
As the investigation into the young woman's death and life grows, the case becomes increasingly personal for Probationary Constable Molly Smith and Sergeant John Winters. Only two things are known about the dead woman: her first name is Ashley, and she has a three-month-old baby boy. Who was she? And was this is just a drug deal gone wrong, or is there something more sinister at play?
Meanwhile, Winters' wife, Eliza, is considering accepting a modeling contract with the same resort development that seems to be ripping the close-knit community apart. Has the controversial project pushed a member of this quiet community to murder?
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Cocaine Blues
Kerry Greenwood
A Phyrne Fisher Mystery (1st in series)
The London season is in full fling at the end of the 1920s, but the Honorable Phryne Fisher — she of the green-grey eyes, diamant garters and outfits that should not be sprung suddenly on those of nervous dispositions — is rapidly tiring of the tedium of arranging flowers, making polite conversations with retired colonels, and dancing with weak-chinned men. Instead, Phryne decides it might be rather amusing to try her hand at being a lady detective in Melbourne, Australia.
Almost immediately from the time she books into the Windsor Hotel, Phryne is embroiled in mystery: poisoned wives, cocaine smuggling rings, corrupt cops and communism — not to mention erotic encounters with the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse — until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.
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Murder on the Ballarat Train
Kerry Greenwood
A Phyrne Fisher Mystery (3rd in series)
When the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher arranges to travel inland to Ballarat for the week, she eschews the open-road excitement of her red Hispano-Suiza for the stately safety of the train. But as the passengers sleep, they are poisoned with chloroform!
Phryne keeps her wits about her and saves her fellow travelers, but is left a hodgepodge of clues to piece together: a young girl who remembers nothing — not even why she's aboard; whispered rumors of white slavery and black magic; and the body of an old woman, lying beside the tracks. Then there's the rowing team and the choristers, all deliciously engaging young men. At first they seem like such a pleasant diversion …
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The Commission
Michael Norman
A Sam Kincaid Mystery (1st in series)
Levi Vogue, Chairman of the powerful Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, is gunned down in the driveway of his home as he returns from a late evening tryst with Sue Ann Winkler, an exotic dancer employed in a Salt Lake City strip club.
Sam Kincaid, Chief of the Special Investigations Branch (SIB) of the Utah Department of Corrections, is assigned to help Salt Lake City Police Department homicide detective Lt. Kate McConnell solve Vogue's murder.
The investigation soon leads Kincaid and McConnell into the seedy world of prostitution and strip clubs. Ultimately, the investigation focuses on Charles (Slick) Watts, a violent ex-convict with a long criminal history and a score to settle with Levi Vogue. But before Watts can be apprehended, his body is discovered at an abandoned military base in Wendover, Nevada.
When the medical examiner concludes that Watt's death was a homicide elaborately staged to look like a suicide, Kincaid and McConnell are forced to turn their attention to a complex conspiracy behind the murders.
Ultimately, the investigation leads Kincaid and McConnell inside the Utah state prison to a small group of corrupt prison employees known as the Commission. As the police close in, Commission members turn, first on each other, and then on Kincaid.
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Sorrow Without End
Priscilla Royal
A Prioress Eleanor Mystery (3rd in series)
In 1271, tough-minded Ralf the Crowner, who's trying to bring a brutal serial killer to justice, prevails upon Eleanor to allow the mangled corpse of a lowly foot soldier to be laid in the chapel during his investigation. The "rule of Eve" prevails in Tyndal, where pious Eleanor resists the demands of rival monks who complicate Ralf's work with their own competing agendas for the priory's future.
Eleanor faces further challenges when a knight is slain and an infirmarian (or hospital) nun is beaten and raped before the altar.
Suspense builds amid a vivid backdrop of lepers wearing "clappers", a madman who chatters warnings, venal relic sellers and the shadowy "man from Acre", haunted by guilt for his wife's death at the hands of a sadistic crusader.
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Important Note: Any prices and/or special deals mentioned above were correct as of the date and time of this post. Prices are subject to change without notice. The price displayed on the vendor website at the time of purchase will be the price paid for the book. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your transaction.
Sounds like an excellent idea and I'm sure will become more popular. I'd love to see my Kindle crime novels and audio books combined in a package like this and I know there is talk of combining paperback and ebooks so who knows? If you have different publishers for e books, audio books and paperbacks though it does make this more difficult to achieve.
ReplyDeleteWe're still learning about this ourselves. Not every title that has both a Kindle version and an Audible audiobook version has Whispersync enabled. And for those that do, only a very small percentage have a "special offer" associated with them. The actual publisher of the audiobook doesn't seem to be a factor as to whether or not Whispersync is available, though we could be wrong.
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