In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, “Clare” is on sale for $1.99 until March 20th. If you haven’t yet read my novel about a young girl’s immigration from Ireland to St. Paul, go on over to Smashwords and enter the code WR97D to pick up a copy for 60% off the cover price. If you have friends who like historical fiction or coming-of-age stories, please share.
For the month of October, I’m offering Clare on a “set your own price” basis. Just go on over to Smashwords, download a 5% sample, and then decide what you want to pay for the rest. If you’ve ever thought books were too expensive, here’s your chance to do something about it.
In this fifth book in the Connor Burke martial arts thriller series, John Donohue breaks some new ground. Throughout Burke’s newest adventure, Donohue weaves the story of Burke’s sensei, Yamashita, as a young man. He looks at issues of loyalty, obedience and impetuousness while telling an edge-of-your-seat story involving kidnapping and the Korean mafia. As always Donohue gives us a meaty story that can be read as a darn good thriller, or as a study in human nature, or as a commentary on the traditions and inner workings of the martial art. Pick it up on Friday night when you don’t have to be at work Saturday morning. If you’re like me, you’ll be up half the night reading “just one more chapter.”
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I’m offering coupons on “Clare.” If you order from CreateSpace enter code SC679HTR to get 30% off. On Smashwords enter AL29U to get 30% off the e-book. Tell your Irish friends. (Hey, tell your non-Irish friends, too!) The offer is good until the 17th.
Here’s my holiday gift to you: Clare will be on sale until January 1, 2013.
• Prices on the ebook editions (Smashwords, Amazon, Sony, Kobo) are now $2.99.
• Order from Kobo, enter the code thankyou2012 and get another 35% off.
• Purchase the print edition directly from the printer,* enter the code KL75LT35, and you will get $6 off the cover price.
Do you know someone who loves historical fiction? Someone whose family came over from Ireland? Someone who enjoys journey tales? Give them a copy of Clare for Christmas. Smashwords has a give a gift link that makes giving Clare as a gift as easy as purchasing it for yourself.
Now is the time. These prices will go away January 1.
Learn more about the Clare
Read a sample
*Clare is printed by CreateSpace, a division of Amazon.com, so buying Clare from the printer gives you the same quality and security that you get from Amazon.
Alcuin Digital Classics (one of the imprints of my publishing company) has just released a Kindle version of F. J. Norman’s classic “The Fighting Man of Japan.” It details Norman’s experience with Kendo, Jujutsu, Sumo and the Japanese navy in late-nineteenth-century Japan. The photos are amazing and are now optimized for viewing on an Kindle.
The latest addition to the Alcuin Classics Digital Book series is now available: Carl Sandburg’s Smoke and Steel. I’ve always admired Sandburg’s ability to craft an image. It was a pleasure to resurrect this out-of-print book and offer it on Kindle.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother requires a certain flexibility of thought. The premise involves contrasting “American parents” and “Chinese parents” using experiences from Chua’s life bringing up her two daughters. But the narrative opens a hornet’s nest of questions: What is the purpose of childhood? Can what is deemed cruel in one culture be kind in another? If you had to choose between enjoying your life and doing something special with your life, is one choice more moral than the other? What if the choice was not for your own life but for your child’s?
If Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother was an easy book for you to read and process, you probably missed most of the nuance. The characters’ lives are filled with mindless simplification: sweeping generalizations, unwarranted dramatics, blind ambition, and false dichotomies. Chua does not appear to be a very reflective subtle person until you realize that in writing the book she is being very subtle and reflective about her lack of subtlety. Then you realize that your own response is not a simple response to a narrative but also a knee-jerk reaction to your own life as both a parent and a child.
Read it with your fiance, with your teenaged child, with your mother after you are grown and out on your own. Then talk. It asks for reflection and conversation, not just a gut response (though you will probably have one of those, too).
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I’m now offering electronic autographs for Clare and Western Herbs via Kindlegraph. So far these autographs are available on the Kindle, but I have to admit the technology is pretty cool. Check it out.
Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired “Upstairs Downstairs” and “Downton Abbey” by Margaret Powell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The cover of the book compares Below Stairs to “Downton Abbey” and “Upstairs, Downstairs.” In fact, the image of Daisy, the kitchen maid in “Downton Abbey” kept floating through my mind as I read. But what this book has that the two series don’t is a closely wrought picture of the life and heart of a kitchen maid. We see images of young Margaret, new to service, polishing the front door brass until her hands swell with chillblains, only to be dragged in front of the mistress of the house for a dressing down regarding the bits she missed. In Margaret Powell’s stories, we see not only how tough the work was, but the toughness of mind and the emotional calluses that she needed to form to do that work. She tells the story in simple, straightforward, almost childlike prose, but the detailed pictures she painted drew me in and made me ask the question of whether I could have survived the work and the indignities as well as she did.
Susan Lynn Peterson
author of Clare: A Novel
a story of Irish immigration in the early 20th century
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