Books On Sale

Books on Sale: Two Shalvis Novels and Historical Fiction About Laura Ingalls Wilder

BookAlways on My Mind

Always on My Mind by Jill Shalvis is $1.99 right now at most vendors. This is book 8 in the Lucky Harbor series, and is a friends-to-lovers story. It has a 4+ star average on GoodReads, and readers who enjoyed it particularly loved the humor in the dialogue, and the emotional history between the heroine and the hero.

After dropping out of pastry school and messing up her big break on a reality cooking show, Leah Sullivan needs to accomplish something in her life. But when she returns home to Lucky Harbor, she finds herself distracted by her best friend, Jack Harper.

In an effort to cheer up Jack's ailing mother, Dee, Leah tells a little fib – that she and Jack are more than just friends. Soon pretending to be hot-and-heavy with this hunky firefighter feels too real to handle . . .

No-strings attachments suit Jack just fine – perfect for keeping the risk of heartbreak away. But as Jack and Leah break every one of their “just friends” rules, he longs to turn their pretend relationship into something permanent. Do best friends know too much about each other to risk falling in love? Or will Jack and Leah discover something new about each other in a little town called Lucky Harbor?

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 Book Lucky in LoveLucky in Love by Jill Shalvis is $1.99 right now. This book starts the second trilogy within the series, better known as “the Chocoholics” trilogy, and begins with Mallory, who is caring, thoughtful, and ready to take a few emotional and  sexual risks, and Ty, who is the town Mystery Man.  

 Mallory Quinn has had enough of playing it safe. As a nurse and devoted daughter, she takes care of everyone but herself. And as the local good girl, she's expected to date Mr. Right. But for once, she'd like to take a risk on Mr. Wrong. And who could be more wrong than Ty Garrison? The mysterious new guy in town has made it clear that he's only passing through, which suits Mallory just fine. Besides, his lean, hard body and sexy smile will give her plenty to remember once he's gone . . .

For the first time in his life, Ty can't bear to leave. Helping this sexy seductress-in-training walk on the wild side is making him desire things he shouldn't including leaving the military for good. As their just-for-fun fling becomes something more, Mallory and Ty wonder if they could really be this lucky in love. After all . . . anything can happen in a town called Lucky Harbor.

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Book A Wilder Rose

A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert is .99c right now. This is literary historical fiction about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, based on Lane's diaries and Wilder's letters. The author explores their relationship, and the reasons why Lane's involvement in her mother's publishing career was concealed. If you know of a Little House of the Prairie fan (I remember being so mad that I wasn't allowed to stay up late to watch that show – which was on at, like, 8 or 9 – when I was a kid), or you really like historical fiction, this book might make you a happy reader indeed. It has a 3.65-star average on GR. 

In 1928, Rose Wilder Lane—world traveler, journalist, much-published magazine writer—returned from an Albanian sojourn to her parents’ Ozark farm. Almanzo Wilder was 71, Laura 61, and Rose felt obligated to stay and help. To make life easier, she built them a new home, while she and Helen Boylston transformed the farmhouse into a rural writing retreat and filled it with visiting New Yorkers. Rose sold magazine stories to pay the bills for both households, and despite the subterranean tension between mother and daughter, life seemed good.

Then came the Crash. Rose’s money vanished, the magazine market dried up, and the Depression darkened the nation. That’s when Laura wrote her autobiography, “Pioneer Girl,” the story of growing up in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, on the Kansas prairie, and by the shores of Silver Lake. The rest—the eight remarkable books that followed—is literary history.

But it isn’t the history we thought we knew. For the surprising truth is that Laura’s stories were publishable only with Rose’s expert rewriting. Based on Rose’s unpublished diaries and Laura’s letters, A Wilder Rose tells the true story of the decade-long, intensive, and often troubled collaboration that produced the Little House books—the collaboration that Rose and Laura deliberately hid from their agent, editors, reviewers, and readers.

Why did the two women conceal their writing partnership? What made them commit what amounts to one of the longest-running deceptions in American literature? And what happened in those years to change Rose from a left-leaning liberal to a passionate Libertarian?

In this impeccably researched novel and with a deep insight into the book-writing business gained from her own experience as an author and coauthor, Susan Wittig Albert follows the clues that take us straight to the heart of this fascinating literary mystery.

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Book Sloppy Firsts

RECOMMENDED: Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty is $1.99 right now at all vendors. Amanda recommends this book, saying I feel like this book was an integral part of my adolescence. This is a YA novel that has spoken to a LOT of readers since its publication in 2001.

My parents suck ass. Banning me from the phone and restricting my computer privileges are the most tyrannical parental gestures I can think of. Don’t they realize that Hope’s the only one who keeps me sane? . . . I don’t see how things could get any worse.

When her best friend, Hope Weaver, moves away from Pineville, New Jersey, hyperobservant sixteen-year-old Jessica Darling is devastated. A fish out of water at school and a stranger at home, Jessica feels more lost than ever now that the only person with whom she could really communicate has gone.

How is she supposed to deal with the boy- and shopping-crazy girls at school, her dad’s obsession with her track meets, her mother salivating over big sister Bethany’s lavish wedding, and her nonexistent love life? 

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Book Imagine

Imagine by Jill Barnett is a Kindle Daily Deal today at $1.99. So far that price is only at Amazon. This is a blend of historical, contemporary, and fantasy romance about survivors of a shipwreck who end up on a deserted island together with a bottle full of magic. This book was originally published in 1995, and has a 3.8-star average. Have you read this book? Do you recommend it? (I confess, I am really curious.) 

After years in prison for a murder he never committed, escaped convict Hank Wyatt knew how to survive. But he didn't know if he could last an hour marooned on a deserted tropical island with a beautiful blonde and three orphaned children. Now, looking out for number one doesn't seem to be enough …

San Francisco attorney Maggie Smith felt like having a good cry. Thoroughly modern, wealthy, and bright, she's suddenly been cast in the role of mother and forced to battle wits and hearts with the most arrogant man she's ever met! Fate has thrown this makeshift family Robinson together and kismet tossed in a touch of magic … the chance for a love more powerful than they could ever imagine … only a wish away!

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  1. SAO says:

    There’s a book with the theory that Rose Wilder Lane pretty much wrote the Little House books, but it’s far from fact.  One of the facts of this theory rests on is that Laura Ingalls Wilder never finished high school.  Okay, but she was also a teacher for part of her career.  In the end, it’s remarkably like the theory that Shakespeare wasn’t well enough educated to write his plays or sonnets.

    Rose Wilder Lane was a novelist and journalist, but nothing she wrote under her own name has endured as a classic.  The notebooks in which Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her drafts are in libraries and can be studied by scholars.

    So, really, the most probable reason that Rose Wilder Lane’s name isn’t on the Little House books is that she wasn’t the author.

  2. Jane Davitt says:

    I remember being gobsmacked that Rose was friends with Sue Barton’s creator. Still am. I’ve reread the Little House and the Sue books a zillion times but I almost wish as an adult I hadn’t gone further into the real story behind the LH books. It’s taken some of the magic away to discover Pa and Ma did a moonlight flit to avoid paying rent. Same with reading L M Montgomery’s diaries and discovering how desperately unhappy she was.

    Give me a desert to bury my head in!

  3. Kara says:

    Jill Barnett’s Imagine is pretty cute. It’s not a serious book AT ALL. I think it has held up well in the almost 20 years (OMG- 20 years ago!) since it was written. It’s got the sensibilities of a typical 1990’s Romance Novel (yes, capital R, capital N). Had it been written a few years later, it probably would be more chick-lit.

    I loved Sloppy Firsts, even though I was older than the intended audience. I’m waiting to introduce this series to my daughter. She’s 11 now. I think in a few years, it’ll be good for her.

  4. martha lawson says:

    I have read it (twice) and loved it.

  5. EmilyCleone says:

    You guys, Marcus Flutie is the dreamiest YA hero (or anti hero) of all time, if you haven’t read Sloppy Firsts get on it!!!

  6. Katie Lynn says:

    I probably haven’t read Sloppy Firsts since soon after it came out (and at least through the third book or so), but I recall reading recently that another book came out with Jessica as an adult. I wanted to reread the series before getting my hands on the new one, and this is the perfect opportunity.

  7. Elinor Aspen says:

    @Jane, just remembering the content of some of the Little House books themselves takes the magic away. I clearly recall Pa Ingalls and the other white men of the town (I believe it was when they lived in the Dakota Territory) putting on blackface and performing a minstrel show for their families’ entertainment. There was also the uncomfortable fact that the family had to leave the titular “Little House on the Prairie” because they were illegally squatting on reservation lands. If Charles and Caroline Ingalls were alive today, they would probably live in a white supremacist compound in Montana.

  8. Jane Davitt says:

    @Elinor Ma’s racism always bothered me as a child.  I definitely wouldn’t have seen the wider issues as an English child in the sixties, but her dislike of the people she was displacing never sat well.

  9. Another Rebecca says:

    @Elinor
    “If Charles and Caroline Ingalls were alive today, they would probably live in a white supremacist compound in Montana”

    That is not a fair assessment considering it was the prevailing view of the vast majority of Americans (both native born and immigrants) at the time.  If we transferred those historical attitudes to modern society I think at least 90 of the population would be in those racist compounds.  It was a precious few who truly believed much less actively worked for freedom and equality for anyone who was not a caucasion of northern European descent (except the Irish Need Not Apply of course).  The north for example condemned the segregation of the South yet look at what happened in Boston when they began busing students.  Boston schools today are still heavily segregated along socio-economic lines that also correspond to race.  Coincidence? 

    We should be appalled at those attitudes shown by the Ingalls.  However I doubt that all of us who are appalled by it today would have been fighting for Native American rights had we lived in the 1880s.  The existence and expansion of the US was predicated upon the displacement and destruction of the Native Americans (if you want to become seriously outraged at injustice read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee) and aggression against Mexico and later Spain. 

    These books reflect not just the 1880s but also the 1930s in which they were written.  Have you seen some of the movies from 1930s?  We are not yet beyond the stereotypes – alcohol named after a freedom fighter of the Lakota, a grinning red-faced caricature as the mascot of a baseball team. 

    Sorry for the rant.  I loved those books growing up and yes, it is hard to reconcile the casual racism.

  10. SB Sarah says:

    @Rebecca:

    “I loved those books growing up and yes, it is hard to reconcile the casual racism.”

    I know exactly how you feel. It’s an awful feeling.

  11. lizO says:

    An annotated version of Pioneer Girl is coming out next month. Apparently it was a lot grittier than the Little House books ended up being. http://pioneergirlproject.org

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  13. Kelly C. says:

    I am currently reading LAURA INGALLS WILDER : A WRITER’S LIFE by Pamela Hill Smith.  In it, it is noted that Rose Wilder Lane though her mother was NOT the writer that Lane herself was.  It is also noted that Wilder wrote a lot of magazine articles, reluctantly, at Lane’s prodding.  It is these articles that were heavily edited (re-written) by Lane.

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