Win a Copy of The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks

New nonfiction from The Atavist:

Joseph Gutheinz is on a mission to save the moon. Decades ago, astronauts brought back 850 pounds of rocks from their lunar journeys; the U.S. gave some away as “goodwill” gifts to the world’s nations. Over time, many of them disappeared, stolen or lost in the aftermath of political turmoil, and offered for millions on the black market. Gutheinz, first as a NASA investigator and then the leader of a ragtag group of students, has dedicated his life to getting them back. Author Joe Kloc tells a wild story of geopolitics, crime, science, and one man’s obsession to keep the moon out of the wrong hands.

The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks is available from The Atavist for Kindle, iPad/iPhone, Nook, and iBooks.

I have one digital copy to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner next week.

Time for a Threadless giveaway

UPDATE: Contest is closed, Kristen won.

I got a promotion at work recently, so to celebrate, I'm giving away a $25 Threadless credit.

For a chance to win, simply comment on this post, and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner tonight.

(And don't forget to try to win the set of Disturbia shirts I'm giving away.)

Disturbia x Hammer House of Horror Giveaway

Disturbia has a brand new limited edition collection of t-shirts featuring illustrations by Godmachine, Michele Boscagli and Robert Borbas, based on classic Hammer films. The t-shirts just went on sale here.

I have one set of four t-shirts to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post, and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide.

Win a copy of Lawrence Lessig's new eBook

Out today from Byliner is One Way Forward: The Outsider's Guide to Fixing the Republic by Lawrence Lessig.

I have one digital copy to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner Sunday night.

Island of Secrets by Matthew Power review/giveaway

About a year ago, I read David Grann's The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (about the turn of the century real-life adventurer Percy Fawcett) and wrote that I'd greatly enjoyed about half of it, and hated the rest. It was an interesting story wrongly stretched into a book.

Matthew Power's Island of Secrets once again demonstrates that Kindle single-sized editions are perfect for nonfiction that's a bit too long for a magazine, but not deep enough to deserve publication as a book.

Here's the official description:

If geologist, adventurer and risk-prone eccentric John Lane can prove the existence of the elusive tree kangaroo on the remote Pacific island of New Britain, he just might be able to save one of the last truly wild endangered forests on earth. But first he and his ragtag expedition party—college students, adventure-seeking biologists, disinterested local teenagers—will have to find the rare animal. Award-winning writer Matthew Power plunges into one of the world’s most foreboding jungles alongside Lane. It is a quest that’s equal parts noble, dangerous and wacky, in a place that’s truly off the map.

Here's a photo gallery of the strange creatures spotted on the journey, including glow in the dark mushrooms.

And here's a sample:

I observed to Lane that a bunch of Californian college kids in the middle of a jungle sounded like the archetypical setup of a 1970s exploitation movie. And it did seem as though an F/X crew was on the premises. One morning, Lane woke to find a 10-foot web stitched between the same pair of trees as his hammock, an orb weaver spider the breadth of my palm splayed at its center. There were at least three species of scorpion in camp, and the native amethystine pythons were known to grow to 25 feet. Tiger leeches waited in ambush on the undersides of leaves, squirmed through the eyelets in hiking boots, and crawled to out-of-the-way sites to feed undisturbed. A few days earlier, Lane thought he felt a loose piece of skin on the inside of his cheek and discovered a leech feeding in his mouth. Alan discovered the same while brushing his teeth. One morning, Sarah had felt what she thought was a bit of dirt in her eye. She asked Heidi to take a look and was informed that a leech had attached itself to her eyeball, where it was happily engorged. As the camp gathered around to observe, Sarah maintained clinical detachment while...

Don't you want to read more?

The full story is available from The Atavist for the Kindle, the iPad/iPhone, the Nook, or iBooks.

I also have one digital copy to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner next week.

Want a Super Punch Chimera sticker?

Sticker Mule, maker of "custom stickers that kicks ass" (and custom iPhone, Kindle, and laptop skins) sent me some rad stickers featuring the Super Punch Chimera. If you'd like a free sticker, email me to get my address and then send me a self addressed stamped envelope. And of course, if you need some custom stickers, check out the Sticker Mule site. The site offers free shipping in the USA.

UPDATE: FYI, I'll get back to your emails ASAP.

UPDATE: All gone.

Win the Pearls Before Swine iPad app

There's a new Pearls Before Swine iPad app called Only the Pearls:

This behind-the-scenes app from Stephan Pastis, the creator of the syndicated comic strip Pearls Before Swine, includes 250 of the best strips in full color, 12 animated strips, 22 videos of Pastis sharing insights (and clowning around), 125 audio commentaries, and more.

Stephan Pastis is the creator of Pearls Before Swine, the daily comic strip centered around an angry Rat, an innocent Pig, and a fraternity of hungry crocodiles that has earned him devoted fans worldwide.

For Only the Pearls, Pastis has personally selected his favorite 250 strips from the first ten years of Pearls Before Swine. More than half of the strips in this dynamic app include the cartoonist's funny and revealing audio and video commentary, created exclusively for the app. All strips are presented here in color (many for the first time), and a dozen are animated to bring the Pearls characters to life.

This video shows a bit of the app, but mostly features Stephan Pastis's slapstick antics:



You can download the app at iTunes. I also have one download to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. (Just remember, you'll need an iPad and access to iTunes.) I'll pick a winner on Monday.

Win a copy of the Baghdad Country Club

UPDATE: Pippa won and has been contacted.



Usually I find nonfiction to be desperately in need of a good condensing, but Joshua Bearman's new Kindle Single Baghdad Country Club is so polished and focused that it's like a handful of diamonds. Here's the official description:

Welcome to a place where even beer runs are a matter of life and death. As the Iraq War draws to an official close, Joshuah Bearman tells the funny and poignant tale of the real-life Baghdad Country Club, a bar in the Green Zone during the conflict's bloodiest years. Against all odds, its proprietors struggle to keep their raucous watering hole safe and well-stocked as the insurgency rages outside.

And here's a taste from the beginning:

A few weeks later, James was cursing himself for getting into the bootlegging business. He had never handled that much of his own money before—$150,000—much less handed it over to someone he barely knew, in cash. His entire life savings was now denominated in liquor, which he had piled into an 18- wheeler and driven through hostile Baghdad. He wound up circling the Green Zone several times, unsuccessfully seeking entry—wrong badges, wrong checkpoints, wrong turns through the often deadly downtown—and was starting to get nervous when he eventually made it through Checkpoint 18.
. . .
And so James became an extreme restaurateur, opening the only authentic bar and restaurant in the Green Zone. It would be the one place where anyone—mercenaries and diplomats, contractors and peacekeepers, aid workers and Iraqis—could walk in, get dinner, open a decent bottle of Bordeaux, and light a cigar from the humidor to go with it. Patrons would check their weapons in a safe, like coats in a coatroom, and leave the war behind...

The book is also illustrated, but the illustrations are fairly lackluster, and really superfluous (you can get a sense by watching the animated trailer). The characters and locales leap off the page:

As the charming maître d’, it was Danny’s job to defuse any commotion. And despite his small (and clearly civilian) stature, he was pretty good at it. James thought Danny’s self-deprecating Jewish-guy-with-glasses routine helped him keep people from killing each other or getting out of control. There was, for instance, the time when Tony the Mouse, a notorious Lebanese pimp, showed up in the BCC brandishing his goods. Tony was short, sleazy, and self-confident; Danny noticed him the moment he walked in. Tony tried to dress like the contractors, but his gear was too big. Danny thought he looked like a kid in his dad’s hunting outfit. With him were several Iraqi girls of questionable age, done up in even more questionable makeup, doused in perfume, and wearing what in theory was passable Islamic dress but in material looked more like harem couture. “You smelled the girls before you saw them,” Danny recalls.

It's just begging to be turned into a series of novels or turned into a movie.

Highly recommended. You can read a longer excerpt here, and apparently see the club on Google Maps. The full version is available from The Atavist for the Kindle, the iPad/iPhone, the Nook, or iBooks.

I also have one digital copy to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner on Monday.

Win a Zombre print by Ansis Purins

UPDATE: M'ris, Thieu, and CJ Howker won and will be contacted soon.



Courtesy of Ansis Purins, I have three prints to give away based on his webcomic Zombre: The Magic Forest. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner on Sunday.

Also, he's giving away a much bigger prize pack as described here.

The Secret World of Saints: Inside the Catholic Church and the Mysterious Process of Anointing the Holy Dead (Giveaway)

UPDATE: Timothy won and has been contacted.

I've been trying to read Diarmid MacCullouch's heavily-praised Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, but after three months, I've made it through less than 300 pages. It's just too much of a slog, and I find I'm retaining almost nothing.

By comparison, Bill Donahue's The Secret World of Saints: Inside the Catholic Church and the Mysterious Process of Anointing the Holy Dead was a pleasure that I devoured in a sitting.



Here's the official description:

When Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian, converted to Catholicism in 1676, she did it with gusto. She slept on a bed of thorns. She had a friend whip her. She put hot coals between her toes. She suffered from smallpox, and the disease left her almost blind. Yet she still fasted, in penitence, and ministered to the sick and elderly. When she died, it was said, the smallpox scars instantly vanished from her face. It wasn’t long before people began to credit her with miracles.

Indeed, the Vatican has just announced, 300 years after her death, that Tekakwitha is a miracle worker. She will be named a saint—America’s first indigenous saint, no less—as early as next fall. But what, exactly, does that mean? How does someone become a saint? What’s the vetting process?

In this thoroughly entertaining investigation into the mysterious world of saints, Bill Donahue tells the strange and fascinating story of how the holy get their halos. The journey to canonization is long (sometimes, as in the case of Tekakwitha, it can take centuries), lurid (decayed body parts play a role), and, nowadays, surprisingly cutting-edge. Tekakwitha earned her saint status thanks to a medical miracle she allegedly caused in 2006: A boy suffering from a fatal flesh-eating bacteria suddenly and inexplicably recovered after his family prayed to the Blessed Kateri. Church experts grilled the boy’s doctors, studied his MRIs and hospital chart, and came to the conclusion that a force stronger than modern medicine saved him.

In addition to Tekakwitha, Donahue introduces us to a cast of celestial characters, from Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II—both on the fast track to sainthood—to Saint Francis, Joan of Arc, and the shady Padre Pio, who claimed to suffer stigmata and raise bodies from the dead. But it’s what happens after these holy folk die that’s arguably even more intriguing. Mixing legend and science, history and on-the-ground reporting, The Secret World of Saints sheds light on one of the Catholic Church’s most arcane and captivating traditions.

The book alternates between Donahue's anecdotes about his own life, and the history of Catholic saints. The characters he writes about really come alive.

Here's just a taste - - part of a footnote about his mother deciding to no longer display Saint Christopher in the her car:

Saint Christopher was gone from the dashboard by the time I entered first grade. And it was only recently that I discovered why. In 1969, when I was five, Pope Paul VI removed Chris’s feast day from the Church calendar. Christopher was a third-century Roman martyr. Sixties-era research revealed that almost nothing was known about him: The cult around him may have been a corny sixteenth-century invention; he was almost make-believe. My mom read the news reports and then cooled to Chris. “I got a new car,” she told me recently, “and I thought, What’s the point of carrying Saint Christopher around if he didn’t exist? Plus, having a Saint Christopher medallion was just one of those clichéd things that Catholics do—like rooting for Notre Dame. I wasn’t going to knock myself out for it anymore.”

Highly recommended, and available as a $2 download at Amazon.

I also have one copy to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner Sunday night.

Win a t-shirt from Martin Hsu

UPDATE: Jery and Sheri won and have been contacted.




Martin Hsu's latest t-shirts features his and hers crab-bears. You can buy those as well as lots of other t-shirts, prints, and original art at his site. Cool desktop wallpapers, too.

I have one guy's and one girl's shirt to give away. To enter, simply comment on this post, include your email so I can get in touch, and tell me whether you want the guy's or girl's shirt. (If you win, I'll ask for you size/address.) My apologies, but this giveaway is limited to USA residents.

Rules for Virgins by Amy Tan Giveaway

UPDATE: Karla Anne won and has been contacted.



Rules for Virgins by Amy Tan:

In her startlingly sensual new story, “Rules for Virgins”—the first fiction she has published in six years—beloved bestselling author Amy Tan (“The Joy Luck Club,” “The Bonesetter’s Daughter”) takes us deep into the illicit world of 1912 Shanghai, where beautiful courtesans mercilessly compete for the patronage of wealthy gentlemen. For the women, the contest is deadly serious, a perilous game of economic survival that, if played well, can set them up for life as mistresses of the rich and prominent. There is no room for error, however: erotic power is hard to achieve and harder to maintain, especially in the loftiest social circles.

Enter veteran seducer, Magic Gourd, formerly one of Shanghai’s “Top Ten Beauties” and now the advisor and attendant of Violet, an aspiring but inexperienced courtesan. Violet may have the youth and the allure, but Magic Gourd has the cunning and the knowledge without which the younger woman is sure to fail. These ancient tricks of the trade aren’t written down, though; to pass them on to her student, Magic Gourd must reach back into her own professional past, bringing her lessons alive with stories and anecdotes from a career spent charming and manipulating men who should have known better but rarely did.

The world of sexual intrigue that Tan reveals in "Rules for Virgins" actually existed once, and she spares no detail in recreating it. But this story is more than intriguing (and sometimes shocking) historical literary fiction. Besides inviting us inside a life that few writers but Tan could conjure up, the intimate confessions of Magic Gourd add up to a kind of military manual for the War of the Sexes’ female combatants. The wisdom conveyed is ancient, specific, and timeless, exposing the workings of vanity and folly, calculation and desire that define the mysterious human heart.

You can read an excerpt here, and buy it at Amazon.

I have one digital copy to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner Sunday night.

Win a copy of The Art of Pixar: 25th Anniv.: The Complete Color Scripts and Select Art from 25 Years of Animation

UPDATE: JMichael won and has been contacted.



Good news, I have a copy of The Art of Pixar: 25th Anniv.: The Complete Color Scripts and Select Art from 25 Years of Animation by Amid Amidi to give away:

Over the past 25 years, Pixar's team of artists, writers, and directors have shaped the world of contemporary animation with their feature films and shorts. From classics such as Toy Story and A Bug s Life to recent masterpieces such as Up, Toy Story 3, and Cars 2, this comprehensive collection offers a behind-the-scenes tour of every Pixar film to date. Featuring a foreword by Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, the complete color scripts for every film published in full for the first time as well as stunning visual development art, The Art of Pixar is a treasure trove of rare artwork and an essential addition to the library of animation fans and Pixar enthusiasts.

You can see lots of photos here, and the book is 38% off at Amazon.

I have one copy to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. I'll pick a winner next Thursday evening. I apologize, but this giveaway is limited to USA residents. (But I do have other contests and giveaways right now.)

Music beg/giveaway

So that's what I'm listening to right now. How about you?

What's your favorite recent song? Include the artist and title and your email in the comments. I'll send a $25 Threadless credit to a commenter.

Win a copy of A Killing in Iowa: A Daughter’s Story of Love and Murder

UPDATE: Kristin won and has been contacted.



A Killing in Iowa: A Daughter’s Story of Love and Murder by Rachel Corbett:

Rachel Corbett was eight years old when the man she had come to regard as a father killed his girlfriend and then himself on May 13, 1993. Over the years Corbett has been haunted by how such a seemingly gentle, loving man could be capable of murder. She's wrestled with how her mother, who had been involved with the man for years, hadn't seen the signs. And she’s wondered what ghosts from Scott Johnson’s past compelled him to pick up that gun.

“The sudden brutality that gripped the last hours of his life—and eternally came to characterize it—was a mystery I couldn’t put out of my mind,” writes Corbett. “What broke this soft-spoken, achingly vulnerable man and made him so violent? His was a crime no one ever understood, with no apparent motive…. Why didn’t he just kill himself? What debt did Crystal pay? And why didn’t he kill us? After all, he was with us the day he died.”

"A Killing in Iowa," Corbett’s mesmerizing, beautifully written memoir, reconstructs the tragedy and tries to make sense of a senseless crime in a place where we least expect such violence: the quiet, rural heartland. Both a mystery story and an evocative snapshot of a place and time, "A Killing in Iowa" is a stunning debut by a gifted new writer.

$2 at Amazon.

I have one digital copy to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you if you win. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick a winner Sunday night.

I have five copies of ZOMBRE #2: The Magic Forest to give away

UPDATE: goetz825, mr_denney, obirin, firdaustsla, and faceforbreakfast won and should have received an email from me.

Below is the cover and a few sample pages from Ansis Purins's ZOMBRE #2: The Magic Forest:







The Comics Journal says it has "beautiful cartooning and design," and Evan Dorkin liked it, too.

I have five copies to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment in this post. One comment per person, and this contest is open worldwide. I'll pick five winners Sunday evening.

Win a copy of Barbarians: A Handbook for Aspiring Savages

UPDATE: Adam won and has been emailed.




Barbarians: A Handbook for Aspiring Savages by Byron Clavicle, Grute Skullbasher, Benjamin Chadwick, and featuring approximately 100 illustrations by Joshua Kemble:

Sick of our spineless twenty-first century, with its fat-free cow milk, electric cars, and websites about spoiled chihuahuas? Wishing you could get what you want, when you want it? Perhaps you dream of trading in that restrictive tie for a liberating loincloth, then setting your office aflame? Ask yourself this: “What Would a Barbarian Do?” With this primitive procedure, great men have altered the course of history (and hilarious B movies) for thousands of years.

Return to the simplicity of yore with this back-to-basics primer on bloody vengeance, furry pants, swordplay, and savage cuisine. Let renowned scholar Dr. Byron Clavicle and bona fide barbarian Grüte Skullbasher teach you how to crush your enemies, settle rent disputes, find a proper name and title that will put you atop the Yor Scale of Name Masculinity, and snare a chain-mail-bikini-wearing Amazon! With just twenty-thousand calories a day and a commitment to pillaging and plundering, you can join the rampaging hordes, negotiating with only your battleax as you destroy civilization!

Available at Amazon.

I have one copy to give away. For a chance to win, comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you. One comment per person, and this contest is open only to USA residents. I'll pick the winner Sunday evening.

Win a copy of Joan Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion

UPDATE: TK Won and has been emailed.



Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion by Sara Davidson:

Before the full catastrophe of life struck her broadsides, the writer Joan Didion led a shining, privileged life. She was one of the most admired American writers, reporting in novels and literary journalism from the center of the national story. Her beloved husband, John Gregory Dunne, a highly-regarded writer himself, was her most trusted confidante and collaborator. An already inseparable couple, they looked forward to spending even more time together as they grew older. Their only child, Quintana, had negotiated the rapids of adolescence and was now grown up and married.

Then, famously, disaster struck. Within less than two years, her husband and daughter were dead. At seventy, Didion found herself alone. Her flinty self-reliance faced its stiffest test. Would her old pioneer code of “bury the baby and keep going” be sufficient? There to witness how Didion found her way was the writer Sara Davidson, the author of the best-selling Loose Change. She and Didion met in 1971 when Davidson, then a young reporter, phoned her idol, looking for wisdom on how to live as a woman and a writer. Didion invited her to supper, and so began a friendship that has lasted forty years.

It’s a friendship with its share of amusing moments. At a Hollywood party, Davidson witnessed Didion reject an overture from Warren Beatty, then at the height of his womanizing powers. “This is all I want, right here,” he told Didion, staring into her eyes. “I don’t have to be on the set until ten Monday morning.” “This is not…feasible,” Didion responded, smiling shyly.

Over the years, Didion and Davidson compared notes on marriage, men, parenthood, and careers. But most of all, they talked about writing, with Didion sharing more than four decades worth of insights acquired as far back as Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) and as recently as Didion’s newest work, Blue Nights (2011).

Joan is a loving, intimate portrait of a deeply private writer. It is a treasure trove of Didion’s no-nonsense wisdom about the art of literature and life, and about the power of endurance—and now, surrender. Although Didion says she has gotten no wiser with age, Joan belies that.

The Kindle Single is available Amazon.

I have one copy to give away. For a chance to win, comment on this post and include your email so I can contact you. One comment per person, and this contest is open only to USA residents. I'll pick the winner Sunday evening.

Official Batman: Arkham City Strategy Guide (+ a giveaway)

UPDATE: Jorge won and should have received an email from me.





Batman: Arkham City has received near perfect scores, and is the type of enormous game you'll spend hours and hours exploring. The official strategy guide features a reversible poster (Harley Quinn and Catwoman), six villain lithographs (including the excellent Mr. Freeze design), and instructions for finding all of Arkham City's secrets. 41% off at Amazon.

As I mentioned last week, there's also an official Map App to help you explore the city.





I have one app to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and make sure your comment includes your email so I can contact you. One comment per person, and this contest is limited to USA residents. I'll pick a winner Tuesday night.

Win the Batman Arkham City Official Map App

UPDATE: Amanda won and has been contacted.

Batman Arkham City is getting near perfect scores, with the main complaint being that there's too much to do and (for my taste) too many moves to learn. There's an official Map App to help you explore the city:

FEATURES:
***Find every Riddler Trophy for Batman & Catwoman
***Solve every Riddle
***Track your progress as you bag more than 350 collectibles
***Interactive maps for every area in the game

This officially licensed map app for Batman: Arkham City serves as the perfect digital companion to the game. This app features scrollable, zoomable maps for every area in the game, complete with locations of all the Riddler Trophies and solutions to all the Riddler's Riddles -- more than 350 collectibles in all!

Each map has a tracking feature that allows you to toggle on and off the icons for collectibles you've found and those that await discovery.

I have one to give away. For a chance to win, simply comment on this post and make sure your comment includes your email so I can contact you. One comment per person, and this contest is limited to USA residents. I'll pick a winner tonight.