A Small Fortune by Audrey Braun is Today's Amazon Kindle Daily Deal

MystereBooks is pleased to feature A Small Fortune by Audrey Braun as today's Amazon Kindle Daily Deal. The deal price of $0.99 is valid only for today, Saturday, June 23, 2012.

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A Small Fortune by Audrey Braun
Publisher: AmazonEncore

About A Small Fortune (from the publisher): When Celia Donnelly’s husband, Jonathon, surprises her with a family vacation to Mexico, the harried book editor couldn't be happier. She is overworked and exhausted, a situation that has taken a toll on her eighteen-year marriage, not to mention her relationship with her teenaged son. Escaping the perpetually rainy Pacific Northwest for the sugary sands of Mexico could be just what the doctor ordered.

Yet shortly after their arrival south of the border, a chance encounter with a stranger sparks illicit memories of a former affair. The moment passes, but that brief encounter proves enough to change her life forever. Hours later, Celia is lured from the beach and abducted off the street.

At first a seemingly random victim, Celia quickly realizes her captors know exactly who she is. Desperate for news of her family and devastated by the betrayal of someone she trusts, Celia, along with an unlikely ally, is soon running for her life.

Pursued from the balmy shores of Mexico to the steamy thickets of the jungle, to the crisp, cold mountains of Zurich, Celia will stop at nothing to find her way home.

Important Note: Amazon.com updates its Kindle book deal every day at approximately midnight PT. The title referenced above is available at a discounted price for Saturday, June 23, 2012 only.

Download Link(s):

Amazon Kindle Daily Deal.

Amazon's The Big Deal Ends This Sunday, June 24th

This post is essentially a repost of one from last Saturday, announcing The Big Deal at Amazon.com. But we thought it important enough to mention it again!

Through this Sunday, June 24th, 2012 only, 400 Kindle ebooks are priced $3.99 or less.

Amazon has conveniently sorted the titles by price — $0.99, $1.99, $2.99, and $3.99 — but we've taken that a step further and added the "mystery" keyword to these links: $0.99 mysteries, $1.99 mysteries, $2.99 mysteries, and $3.99 mysteries.

If you're looking to stock up on some summer reading at great prices, this is a terrific place to start.

Important Note: The books on these lists are only available at these special prices through June 24th, 2012.

International Teaser Poster for Taken 2

Earler this week we featured the UK quad poster for the thriller Taken 2. Now we have the international teaser version (right; click for larger image). We like the introspective, somewhat minimalist looks to these posters.

Liam Neeson reprises his role as Bryan Mills, the retired CIA agent with a particular set of skills who stopped at nothing to save his estranged teenage daughter Kim from Albanian kidnappers — the storyline from the 2008 film Taken. When the father of one of the kidnappers swears revenge and takes Bryan and his wife hostage during their family vacation in Istanbul, Bryan enlists Kim to help them escape, and uses the same advanced level of special forces tactics to get his family to safety and systematically take out the kidnappers one by one.

Directed by Olivier Megaton from a screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, the film opens on October 5th, 2012 in the US … and apparently October 3rd internationally. An international trailer has been released but we couldn't find an embeddable version that wasn't cluttered with ads; when we do, we'll post it.

Two Poisoned Pen Press First in Series Mysteries, Free on iTunes

Poisoned Pen Press just notified us that it has lowered the price of two of its "first in series" mysteries to free … on iTunes. Restrictions prevent the publisher from listing these books as free on other vendors, though in the past Amazon has quickly matched prices, even free prices.

We wanted our i-device readers to know about these books as quickly as possible, hence this post. If the other vendors price match, we'll do an update.

The series are the Melissa and Rep Pennyworth mysteries by Michael Bowen — first title, Screenscam — and the Inez Stannert, Silver Rush mysteries by Ann Parker — first title, Silver Lies. (A bit of trivia: our review of Screenscam was one of the first we published on our, at the time, "new" Mysterious Reviews. It's written in a clumsy and awkward manner. We've improved since then … at least we hope so!)

Important note: Prices can and do change without prior notice. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your purchase. The price displayed on the vendor website at the time of the sale is the price of the book.

Screenscam 
Michael Bowen
Series: Rep and Melissa Pennyworth

Silver Lies 
Ann Parker
Series: Inez Stannert, Silver Rush

Important Note: Prices can and do change without notice. The price shown on the vendor website at the time of the sale is the price of the book. Please confirm the price before completing your purchase.

Culinary Noir: Get Jiro!, a Graphic Novel by Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose

We were preparing updates for our July 2012 hardcover and paperback mystery titles and came across something we're quite sure we haven't seen before: culinary noir, in the form of a graphic novel, and more specifically Get Jiro! by Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose, with illustrations by Langdon Foss.

In a not-too-distant future L.A. where master chefs rule the town like crime lords and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants, a bloody culinary war is raging.

On one side, the Internationalists, who blend foods from all over the world into exotic delights. On the other, the "Vertical Farm," who prepare nothing but organic, vegetarian, macrobiotic dishes.

Into this maelstrom steps Jiro, a renegade and ruthless sushi chef, known to decapitate patrons who dare request a California Roll, or who stir wasabi into their soy sauce. Both sides want Jiro to join their factions. Jiro, however has bigger ideas, and in the end, no chef may be left alive!

"I think the explosion of interest in chefs and restaurants is certainly easy fodder for satire," says Bourdain. "But my motivation was really nothing more than to help tell a story that would be fun, extremely bloody, beautifully illustrated — and insanely detailed as to the specifics of cooking and eating. I'm a big fan of classic Japanese cinema, Hammett's Red Harvest, spaghetti westerns and food — so these were obvious elements."

Get Jiro! has a publication date of July 3rd, but the publisher's website says that it should be in stores a week earlier.

This Week's Bestselling Mystery and Suspense Television and Film Video on Demand (120622)

Here is this week's list of the top bestselling mystery and suspense television and film videos available to download from Amazon Instant.

We're using a script to embed an RSS feed from Amazon.com, which is frequently updated, but if you cannot see the box below — or have scripts blocked — you can use this link to see the relevant page on Amazon.com.

The Bourne Legacy Release Date Delayed a Week

There are probably some lessons for young filmmakers to be learned from the making and marketing of The Bourne Legacy.

First, the title: With three Bourne films already released, had you not known any different, you'd think this fourth one would include Jason Bourne as well. It does not. Jeremy Renner steps in as Aaron Cross, a substitute Bourne, if you will. We're sure Renner will do a fine job in the role, but why risk alienating viewers by implying this is a "Bourne" film when it's not?

Second, the title: The first three Bourne films were adapted from novels written by Robert Ludlum. He only wrote three before his death, with the subsequent books in the series written by Eric Van Lustbader. Indeed, the fourth book in the series, published in 2004 and the first credited to Lustbader, is titled The Bourne Legacy. But is this book the basis for the film? No, it is not. There are lots of words in the English language; couldn't the marketing folks have come up with a few that wouldn't cause viewers (and readers) to assume that the book and the film have some link?

And now today's news. The release of The Bourne Legacy is being bumped a week — from August 3rd to August 10th — so that it doesn't have to compete with Total Recall and, rather more interestingly, The Dark Knight Rises, which will have come out two weeks earlier. Now this may be a smart move on the part of the studio, time will tell, but if the studio doesn't think the film has what it takes to go up against these other two films, especially one that will have already been out for two weeks, are they trying to tell us something? Hmm …

Here's the studio's statement; read between the lines — or not — as you see fit … though it is interesting that no mention of Total Recall, the film with which it actually competed on August 3rd, is made:

"Just as The Avengers demonstrated marketplace sustainability that well outpaced traditional patterns earlier this summer, the industry expects a similar trajectory for The Dark Knight Rises. Moving one week further from its release will give The Bourne Legacy an even greater opportunity to maximize its opening box office potential. Moving to August 10 will also allow us to extend valuable promotion for the film across all NBCUniversal platforms during the Olympics, which will dominate television and digital audiences beginning July 27. We are excited about this new chapter in our "Bourne" franchise and confident that August 10 is the right date for our film and for our industry as a whole."

Review: The Fallen by Jassy Mackenzie

We've just published our Review of The Fallen by Jassy Mackenzie. A Jade de Jong Mystery. Soho Crime Hardcover, April 2012.

Our rating:

Available to purchase from …

Today's Bestselling Free Kindle MystereBooks (120622)

Here is today's list of the top bestselling free Kindle mysteries, suspense novels and thrillers.

We're using a script to embed an RSS feed from Amazon.com, which is updated hourly, but if you cannot see the box below — or have scripts blocked — you can use this link to see the relevant page on Amazon.com.

UK Poster for Paranormal Thriller Red Lights

The paranormal thriller Red Lights opened in theaters last week in the UK and here is the poster for the film (right; click for larger image). The tagline: "You only see what you want to believe."

Written and directed by Rodrigo Cortés, Red Lights stars Robert De Niro as Simon Silver, a world-renown psychic, who returns after thirty years of mysterious absence to become the world's greatest challenge to orthodox science and professional skeptics. Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) are rationalist scientists, who dissect phenomena from the metaphysical world, exposing it as fraud, and see Silver as both dangerous and a challenge. But Buckley begins to develop a dense obsession for Silver, whose magnetism is enhanced dangerously with each new manifestation of inexplicable phenomena.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and opens in limited release here in the US on July 13th. The casting looks perfect here, and this is a movie we're looking forward to seeing. Watch the UK trailer for Red Lights below.