Billie Letts is the author of numerous highly acclaimed short stories and screenplays, and a former professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Her first novel, Where the Heart Is, won the Walker Percy Award, sold more than three million copies, and became a major motion picture. Her second novel, The Honk and Holler Opening Soon, was named the first “Oklahoma Reads Oklahoma” selection. Her third novel, Shoot the Moon, was both a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Her newest book, MADE IN THE U.S.A, will be released in June 2008. Billie Letts lives in Oklahoma.

Made in the U.S.A. by Billie Letts
384 Pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: 2009-05-04

About the Book:

The bestselling author of WHERE THE HEART IS returns with a heartrending tale of two children in search of a place to call home.

Lutie McFee’s history has taught her to avoid attachments…to people, to places, and to almost everything. With her mother long dead and her father long gone to find his fortune in Las Vegas, 15-year-old Lutie lives in the god-forsaken town of Spearfish, South Dakota with her twelve-year-old brother, Fate, and Floy Satterfield, the 300-pound ex-girlfriend of her father.

While Lutie shoplifts for kicks, Fate spends most of his time reading, watching weird TV shows and worrying about global warming and the endangerment of pandas. As if their life is not dismal enough, one day, while shopping in their local Wal-Mart, Floy keels over and the two motherless kids are suddenly faced with the choice of becoming wards of the state or hightailing it out of town in Floy’s old Pontiac. Choosing the latter, they head off to Las Vegas in search of a father who has no known address, no phone number and, clearly, no interest in the kids he left behind.

MADE IN THE U.S.A. is the alternately heartbreaking and life-affirming story of two gutsy children who must discover how cruel, unfair and frightening the world is before they come to a place they can finally call home.

About the Contest:

Open to US and Canadian address. No PO Boxes please.

Five winners will be chosen on May 15.

A special thanks to Valerie and Hachette Book Group.

Chances of Winning:

+1: What is the most heartbreaking book you have read? Did you read it  

I want to know the answer to this one because I like to cry all over my book. I remember reading this one particular Diana Palmer book just so I can cry at the same places every time. My father once asked me why bother reading if it’s making me miserable. I think I told him not to worry because it’s ‘good tears’.

+1: When you read a book that many of the people you know absolutely love, but you find yourself not liking it, what do you do?

I had to re-started reading the first two chapter of OUTLANDER by Diana Gabaldon. I read it 7 times before it took and then it was a weeks worth of sleepness night trying to finish the book. It’s long, but very  engaging story about Claire and Jaime. I wonder if anyone else does it like I do.

+1: If you could ask this author one question, what would it be?

Tags: Billie Letts

Anita Shreve is the critically acclaimed author of fourteen novels, including Body Surfing, The Pilot’s Wife, which was a selection of Oprah’s Book Club, and The Weight of Water, which was a finalist for England’s Orange Prize. She lives in Massachusetts.

I am very excited to host this giveaway. I usually listened to audio book, and the last Anita Shreve I listened to was A WEDDING IN DECEMBER. It’s a wonderful book about second chances. It’s specially poignant to me as I know someone who divorced their spouse after attending a high school reunion. It happens. This story just makes it more believable. This is not the giveaway book. You’ll win this book pictured below.

Testimony By Anita Shreve
Listen to an excerpt
352 Pages
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Publication Date: 2009-05-05

View the interactive eBook

About the Book:
At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora’s box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices–those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal–that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.

Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her own greatest work, Anita Shreve delivers in TESTIMONY a gripping emotional drama with the impact of a thriller. No one more compellingly explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions

About the Contest:

Open to US and Canadian address. No PO Boxes please.

Five winners will be chosen on May 3.

A special thanks to Valerie and Hachette Book Group.

Chances of Winning:

+1: What do you remember most about high school? Why?

+1: Have you read any of Anita Shreve’s books? Which one is your favorite?

+1: Become an Anita Shreve fan on Facebook

+1: Subscribe to this blog’s feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/thisbookforfree/OLrA

+1: Twitter, stumble or digg this contest: http://thisbookforfree.com/?p=762

+2: Blog about this contest

You must leave on separate comments for each chances of winning. It makes it easy to put the date in random.org. Thank you. Have fun and good luck!

Tags: Anita Shreve

I”m not a baby boomer, but I’m getting up there in age. I can’t believe that I am within walking distance to 40! But, as they said, life begins at 40, right? I am fascinated with make-up. I would apply it every day if I am not on time deficit. My daughter is experimenting with it. She’s only 11, but that’s good. She’ll have plenty of time to figure out colors, etc.

The books you’re going to win, thanks to Anna and Hachette Book Group.

BOBBI BROWN LIVING BEAUTY
By Bobbi Brown with Marie Clare Katigbak

Bobbi Brown began the trend toward natural-looking cosmetics with a simple philosophy: Women want to look and feel like themselves, only prettier and more confident. Today, top editors at elite fashion magazines–including In Style, Vogue, Allure, and Harpers Bazaar–revere her, and celebrities and millions of regular women throughout the world swear by her beauty advice. Now Bobbi Brown has written THE book redefining beauty for women over 40, BOBBI BROWN LIVING BEAUTY. In this refreshing look at beauty and aging, Bobbi offers specific makeup tricks for a stunning face–showing how makeup can solve most of the flaws that many women go under the knife to fix. In fact, the right makeup can create an even skin tone, lift the cheeks, plump a smile…even take years off any woman’s face. The key is to use makeup to enhance each woman’s best features and showcase her natural beauty. With step-by-step makeup instructions and quotes from beautiful women like Marcia Gay Harden, Vera Wang, Susan Sarandon, and Lorraine Bracco, Bobbi Browns natural, celebratory approach to aging will enlighten and inspire women everywhere.

HOW NOT TO LOOK OLD
By Charla Krupp

Charla Krupp knows that aging sucks! So she’s here to help. It’s every woman’s dream: looking hip, sexy, fresh, and pretty–whether you’re in your 30′s, 40′s, 50′s, or 60′s. Now it’s every woman’s necessity: looking younger will help you hold onto your job and your partner–particularly when everyone around you seems half your age. It’s about making the ultimate “to-do” list of LITTLE beauty and fashion changes that pay off BIG TIME.

The Giveaway:
There will be 5 winners.
Drawing will be held on April 20.
Contest available to US and Canadian addresses. No PO boxes allowed.

Chances of winning:
+1 in answer to this question: What is your beauty regimen for morning and night?
+2 if you blog about this giveway and leave the link in the comment. If you don’t have a blog, mention it in your bulletin board and leave me the link to the board in the comment below.
+1 when you link to me in your sidebar, whether text or the button. If you’ve already linked here, mention that too.
+2 e-mail 5 friends about this contest and send a copy to me at thisbookforfree at gmail dot com. Mention in the comment that you’ve done this just to make sure I don’t overlook it.

Good luck and have fun with the 4 ways to win both copy for yourself.

Tags: Bobbi Brown, Charla Krupp

Girls in Trucks
by Katie Crouch
Paperback
272 Pages,
Published by: Back Bay Books
List Price: $13.99
Published in 2009
ISBN-10: 0-316-00212-7

About the book:

Sarah Walters, the narrator of GIRLS IN TRUCKS, is a reluctant Camellia Society debutante. She has always felt ill-fitted to the rococo ways of Southern womanhood and family, and is anxious to shake the bonds of her youth. Still, she follows the traditional path laid out for her. This is Charleston, and in this beautiful, dark, segregated town, established rules and manners mean everything.

But as Sarah grows older, she finds that her Camellia lessons fail her, particularly as she goes to college, moves North, and navigates love and life in New York. There, Sarah and her group of displaced deb sisters try to define themselves within the realities of modern life. Heartbreak, addiction, disappointing jobs and death fail to live up to the hazy, happy future promised to them by their Camellia mothers and sisters.

When some unexpected bumps in the road–an unplanned birth, a family death–lead Sarah back home, she’s forced to take another long look at the fading empire of her youth. It takes a strange turn of events to finally ground Sarah enough to make some serious choices. And only then does she realize that as much as she tried to deny it, where she comes from will always affect where she ends up. The motto of her girlhood cotillion society, “Once a Camellia, always a Camellia,” may turn out to have more wisdom and pull to it than she ever could have guessed.

Giveaway:
Thanks to Hachette Book Group and Valerie for letting me host this giveaway.

There will be five winners.
Drawing will be held on April 25.
Contest available to US and Canadian addresses. No PO boxes allowed.

Chances of winning:
Leave a comment here answering one of these questions, because I want to know more about you.
What keeps you reading? (as in after you have had a bad book, what makes you go and try another one?)

Do you remember the first book that you read?

When you hit a reading funk, whick book do you read to get out of it?

Or, answer all three in separate comments and get three chances to win.

Tags: Katie Crouch

Do-Over!: In which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments
by Robin Hemley
Hardcover
336 Pages
List Price: $23.99
Published in 2009
ISBN-10: 0-316-02060-5

About the book:
Robin Hemley’s childhood made a wedgie of his memory, leaving him sore and embarrassed for over forty years. He was the most pitiful kindergartner, the least spirited summer camper, and dateless for prom. In fact, there’s nary an event from his youth that couldn’t use improvement. If only he could do them all over a few decades later, with an adult’s wisdom, perspective, and giant-like height…

In the spirit of cult film classics like Billy Madison and Wet Hot American Summer, in DO-OVER! Hemley reencounters paper mache, revisits his childhood home, and finally attends the prom–bringing readers the thrill of recapturing a misspent youth and discovering what’s most important: simple pleasures, second chances, and the forgotten joys of recess.

About the giveaway:
Thanks to Hachette Book Group and Anna for this giveaway.
-There will be five winners on April 16
-Only residents of the U.S. or Canada are eligible to win
-No P.O. Boxes

How to win:
+1 = leave a comment to answer this question: What is your most embarrassing memory from childhood?
+1 = link your sidebar about this particular book giveaway
+2 = if you blog about this contest in 7 sentences or more
+1 = twitt about this contest

Tags: Robin Hemley