In William C. Dietz’s Mars Prime, thousands of colonists head towards Mars aboard the Outward Bound. But one person on the ship is different. Inside that crew member’s head, there are a half-dozen voices, a half-dozen personalities normally bickering and disagreeing. Today, though, just as the ship is about to leave Earth’s orbit, they all agree on one thing—they have to kill to keep their secret safe.

That’s dangerous for Rex Corvan, because secrets are the thing he was born to seek out. Rex is Earth’s greatest reporter. He’s equipped with a probing intelligence and a video camera for a right eye. Rex and his wife Kim are traveling on the Outward Bound to document its trip outward to the frontier of Mars.

The story of colonization quickly takes a backseat to this unknown, zero-gravity serial killer. As Rex and Kim find clues to the murderer’s identity in the ship’s A.I., they become targets themselves. Will the ship reach Mars before the many killers in one body reach them?

E-Reads is the proud publisher of over a dozen great works of science fiction by William C. Dietz.  Visit his E-Reads author page for a full selection.

With The Man Who Loved Mata Hari E-Reads continues its reissue program of the thrillers of Dan Sherman.  And if you love spy fiction overlaid on a historical backdrop, you’re in for a big treat.  This is about the greatest female spy who ever lived.

When struggling painter Nicholas Gray first sees Margaretha Zelle, it’s in a poor photograph. But, something draws him to her. All men are drawn to Margaretha–her mysterious eyes, her effortless sensuality. In another life, she will become known as Mata Hari.

As a dancer, she becomes famous. As a seductress, she becomes legendary. Soon, Mata Hari is crisscrossing Europe, collecting generals, aristocrats and businessmen as her lovers. But, staying behind in Paris, only Gray truly loves her. He watches from afar as her shifting alliances and brushes with power entangle her in a world of espionage and danger. Can Gray save her before the trap springs shut?

Dan Sherman brings his mastery of modern suspense to this thrilling story of the world’s most legendary femme fatale. Blending history with fiction, The Man Who Loved Mata Hari has earned its author comparison to John La Carré and Graham Greene. It will ensnare readers with its tale of the woman who held all of Europe spellbound.

Watch Dan Sherman’s author page for news of newly posted thrillers.

“I read a book once.”

That was what my father said to me many years ago when I told him I had taken a job in the publishing business.  His wit was so dry he was affectionately known among his friends as “The Great Stone Face,” and to this day I don’t know whether or not he was pulling my leg.  On the other hand, I don’t remember ever seeing him with a book in his hands.

But that’s all right. In his line of business he didn’t really need books. You would think, though, that if he ran a bookshop it would have been something of a disadvantage. It isn’t one for Sam Husain, who runs one in London. In fact he’s the chief executive of the city’s most famous one, Foyles. “I do not think I have ever really read a book from cover to cover,” he admitted to Deirdre Hipwell of The Independent. “But Husain, who has headed the store for more than three and a half years, argues that the measure of success of his job does not depend on a love of literature,” writes Hipwell.

Apparently so. He more than quintupled Foyles’ profits in the one year from June ’09 to June of this year, £80,625 to £434,588 in the year to 30 June.

What’s his secret? The former accountant analyzed sales per square foot of store space and got rid of stock that didn’t cover the cost of £150 to £200 per sq ft. It may come as a surprise that that’s how booksellers measure success, but when you can make a big multiple of your cost per square feet by populating your shelves with flat screen televisions, alligator handbags or pantyhose, you will appreciate why bookstores are an endangered species.

Obviously Sam Husain is an avid reader, but it’s not books that he reads but store traffic patterns, and that’s good news for Foyle’s. Read The bookseller who doesn’t read novels

Richard Curtis

Another prominent e-book publisher, Smashwords’ Mark Coker, has checked in with Galley Cat’s Jeff Rivera with ten predictions for the coming year. Here are the headlines.

1.Ebook sales rise, unit consumption surprises

2. Agents write the next chapter of the ebook revolution

3. More big authors reluctant to part with digital rights

4. Self Publishing goes from option of last resort to option of first resort among unpublished authors

5. Big 6 publishers increase ebook royalties

6. Ebook prices to fall

7. The customer is king- Readers will decide which books become hits, not publishers.

8. International ebook market explodes, causing publishers to rethink territory rights restrictions

9. Discoverability becomes HOT

10. Big 6 publishers refuse to abandon DRM

For the juicy details check out Galley Cat: Predictions for 2011 from Smashwords Founder

And compare Coker’s to those of E-Reads founder Richard Curtis.

As he did last year, Galley Cat‘s Jeff Rivera invited literary agent and E-Reads’ President Richard Curtis to make some predictions in the book and e-book industry for the coming year. He produced ten, and here’s one that will raise a few eyebrows:

The Big Six publishers will raise their current royalty rate over the standard 25% they currently offer.

To read all ten, visit Publishing Predictions for 2011 from Richard Curtis

The rabbis and Jewish scholars who created that fountain of wisdom called the Talmud could not have imagined the force called electricity and the challenges it would one day create for modern Jews.  Yet the same logic and common sense that used scripture to guide the perplexed of the fifth century or the twelfth is now being applied to the use of modern electronic devices – such as the Kindle.

When electricity was discovered and harnessed, Jews applied the strictures against working on the sabbath to electric appliances and determined that activating them was a form of work. Today, observant Jews will not flip a light switch, turn on a stove burner or press an elevator button. (Some hospitals and other institutions visited by Jews on the sabbath have elevators that automatically stop on every floor.)

Now consider the Kindle. Though it’s commonly referred to as an electronic device is it an electric one? The prevailing Jewish wisdom is that it is, and reading a book on it is the equivalent of turning on an electric light. But there’s more…

Because the screen of a reading device is not a fixed medium – it is a blank matrix on which words are produced by running a tiny electric current through it – orthodox Jews believe that the act of turning a page is a form of writing.  And writing is prohibited on the Sabbath.  But there’s still more…

Even if one were to read the Torah – the core Jewish scripture – on the Kindle on the sabbath, it would still be unacceptable. Why?  Because Kindles, one modern orthodox rabbi pointed out in an article in The Atlantic, “in epitomizing our weekday existence, aren’t appropriate for the Sabbath.”

Thus blogger Morris Rosenthal’s brainstorm – “a special Kindle that can bypass Sabbath prohibitions by disabling its buttons, turning itself on at a preset time, and flipping through a book at a predetermined clip” – would not get past rabbinical scrutiny. You can read scripture on your e-book six days a week, but on the seventh you have to give it a rest and read the p-book instead. Sorry, Kindlach, you’re out of luck.

Of course, you don’t have to be Jewish to put your Kindle down on the sabbath. Many moderns of all faiths observe Internet Sabbath, a day off from the frenzy of electronic communications and social media. Blogger Nat Friedman tried it a year ago and wrote “After just a few minutes, it felt like a vacation.” Somewhere a rabbi is smiling with satisfaction.

Read People of the E-Book? Observant Jews Struggle With Sabbath in a Digital Age by Uri Friedman. And here’s a fascinating Wikipedia entry on use of electricity and appliances on the Sabbath.

Richard Curtis

You don’t associate Ray Garton with detective fiction, but you’re in for a special treat: Garton out-Spillanes Mickey Spillane with this gutty private eye novel with an irresistibly intriguing title, Murder Was My Alibi

“She walked into my office smelling like a meadow of flowers and looking like one long night of trouble.”

Myron Foote is a private detective on the wrong side of the tracks who doesn’t like to be on the receiving end of violence but is sometimes a little too quick to hand it out to others. From his dumpy little office on the edge of the red light district, he works bottom-of-the-barrel divorce cases…until a gorgeous redhead walks into his life and offers him $105,000 to pose as her uncle Percy. It sounds simple. Too simple. But who could turn down that kind of money? Or that kind of redhead?

The job takes him down a dark path littered with lies and secrets, blackmail and murder…a path that leads straight into Cynthia Thacketer’s arms…and into a deadly trap. Soon, all that stands between Foote and life in prison is an alibi he cannot use.

Ray Garton keeps the pace brisk and the action intense in this hard-boiled modern noir that will have you guessing until the final gunshot.

Can’t get enough Ray Garton noir?  Visit his author page for a banquet of dark fiction.

Take one cup of Java, add two heaping tablespoons of electronic ink, stir some solid state electronic components, drop it into a plastic frame and let it simmer. Does that sound a little like Grandma Sadie’s matzoh ball recipe?

Actually, it’s how you make a Kindle. Why the matzoh ball analogy?  Because, according to David Shamah writing for a website called Israel 21c, the Kindle was created in Israel.

Who knew?

It was “largely developed in the heart of Israel’s high-tech center in the Herzliya Industrial Zone on the central coast,” writes Shamah. “‘Four years ago, Amazon contacted Sun (which was acquired by Oracle last year) in California and said they wanted a small device that could be used to read e-books,’ says Lilach Zipory, the leader of the team that helped to develop the Kindle application. ‘They had already acquired the software to run it, but were looking for the right technical design, and especially a platform to run the software on.’”

Funny, Kindle, you don’t look Jewish. Read Amazon’s Kindle: A Made-in-Israel story

Richard Curtis

“To grandmother’s house we go” may bring a sentimental tear to most eyes, but for Ray Garton it brings a flood of disturbing memories that he has memorialized in a blog. If you seek a bracing antidote to the cloying cliches of holiday recollections and are curious to know what makes horror writers different (read strange), here’s an excerpt from Garton’s blog.

“Granny and Papa lived in a trailer park. Over the years, there have been a lot of trailers in my family on both sides. A lot. You can follow that to whatever conclusion you like … and you’ll probably be right. As a boy, I looked forward to visiting to Granny and Papa’s trailer. They had a dog named Nipper who was always on a leash tied to a tree in the front yard. Nipper was a big dog with long legs and a coat of tightly curled white hair. I’m not sure what kind of dog he was – he was rather odd looking and reminded me of a horse. Whenever we visited Granny and Papa, Nipper got very excited, and when he got excited, it seemed he looked directly at me. He didn’t exactly bark, but he made happy whining and yelping sounds as he rose up on his hind legs, waving his forelegs at me as if beckoning me to come play. I always fell for it. I was like Charlie Brown every time Lucy held the football for him to kick. No matter how many times I’d gone through the routine before, no matter how many times it always ended the same way, when I saw Nipper waving at me with his front paws and making those excited sounds, I couldn’t resist. I rushed toward him, a chubby little boy eager to play with a happy dog. And each and every time, Nipper would wait until I was just close enough, and then he would drop down on all fours, lower his head and the fires of hell would flare up in that dog’s eyes as his black lips peeled back over yellowed fangs and a sinister growl rumbled up from subterranean depths to let me know that if I took one step closer – C’mon, kid, one more step, just one more, c’mon – he would take great delight in gnawing on my windpipe while I thrashed around in the final convulsions of my life. Then I would spin around and run away in terror.

“I never learned.”

You can read it in its entirety here, and while you’re at it you can read his Christmas Greeting from an Atheist.

If you’d like learn how a nasty childhood becomes the stuff of fiction, visit Ray Garton’s E-Reads author page and sample some of his books. Not sure which one to start with? Can’t go wrong with Live Girls.

Richard Curtis