WEIRD PLACE NAMES

How Did They Name That Town?

Mars, Pennsylvania is home to the moving flying saucer

By LENA KATZ, JustLuxe.com

Aug. 31, 2012

Fact: There are 28 Springfields in the United States, according to the United States Census Bureau--and that's not even the most-recurring place name in the country. But for every uninspired destination name, there's one that's so wacky, you might wonder whether some town official from way-back-when named it on a dare.

In some cases, that's not far from the truth. But family names, language gaps and indigenous species have more to do with the far-fetched place names of middle America. Get your trivia fix right here.

The Town of Duck in North Carolina started off as an Outer Banks waterfowl hunting haven, and now is a charming beach destination that caters to families. Ironically, Duck has only been an official town for 10 years, so the namesake activity had long since disappeared before its inception…replaced by summer concerts in the amphitheater and family outings to Duck's Beach.

The town of Chinchilla, Pa., on the other hand, was named after an animal that never lived there in any quantity. According to a published report in the Northeast Pennsylvania Newsletter, Chinchilla was named by a woman sometime between 1880 and 1890. It might have been a postwoman or a postman's wife, but either way, it was someone who felt the original name—Leach's Flats—had to go. 

 There are varying accounts of how Hell, Mich., comes to have its name. The most popular is that George Reeves, the most notable of the first settlers and owner of the general store, told Michigan state officials who inquired what to name it, "You can name it Hell for all I care."

That was in 1841, and well into its second century, the tiny community of Hell has come to not only accept, but love its name. Businesses include Hell in a Handbasket and Hell's Kitchen—and on the semi-official website, you can buy the honorary title "Mayor of Hell" for a day, for $100.

Nobody is sure how the borough of Mars, Pa., got its name. The best guess from local historians is, it's a shortened version of Samuel Marshall, the forefather who helped bring in a post office. Regardless, town kitsch plays up the interplanetary. There's a flying saucer that moves to different locations around the town—and in case visitors can't find it, a flying saucer stencil on the welcome sign coming into town.

Valentine is barely a blip on the vast landscape of West Texas—except for a few weeks out of the year, when the post office gets inundated with requests to stamp love letters from Valentine. According to multiple sources, it was named by railroad workers after the day they founded it: February 14.

Not only festively named, the town of Santa Claus, Ind., is also cheerily Christmas-themed, with one tag line being "Celebrate Christmas every day of the year." According to the official community website, a child suggested the name during a Christmas Eve town hall meeting in 1852. It would take 80 years before anyone started establishing Christmas-themed shops and attractions to go along with the name, but today, there's Santa Claus Land of Lights, Santa's Candy Castle and the Santa Claus Museum as well as the official Santa Claus Post Office.

Apparently Christmas Eve is a popular time to name towns: Moravian missionaries named Bethlehem, Pa., based on their German patron's Christmas Eve sermon in the year it was settled (1741, according to East Pennsylvania historians).

Were it in any of 49 states, the town of Unalaska would make perfect sense. But there's nothing unalaskan about this town since it's in Alaska. If this seems like an oxymoron, stop thinking in Latin-based languages and look to the language of the indigenous Aleut. They named it Ounalashka ("near the peninsula") and in the 1700s, incoming Russian settlers Westernized it to the current spelling.

Don't go to Happy, Texas, looking for mood enhancement. It got its name because of nearby Happy Draw, a waterway serving cowboys in the mid-1800s. At the turn of the century, there were signs that Happy might boom. It got a post office…but not a railway stop. And thus it remained a small farm town, with a population hovering well below 700. There's not much to see there besides a grain silo and a welcome sign…but the slogan remains, optimistically, "The Town Without a Frown." 

And finally, there's Truth or Consequences, a town name that sounds like a game show…or possibly a Western romance title. Actually it's the latter. The New Mexico town voted to name itself that in 1950, after radio host Ralph Edwards publicly wished that someone would name their town after his program. Edwards came and broadcast his show live there the same year…and according to the Chamber of Commerce, he returned every year for 50 years.

ABC NEWS: http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/

Peter’s Comment

And it doesn't end there. The following is from the pages of my travel adventure, Highway America, available in several eBook formats from Smashwords.

Plain City can be found in Utah a few miles north of Salt Lake City while Boring is a place in Oregon. On a more positive note Georgia has a Hopeful. The state of Indiana has a Boggstown, Dillsboro, Oldenburg and a Birdseye. In Ohio they have Singing Hills and Dry Run.

To download a free sample of this
e-book click here

A traveler can have Tea in South Dakota but will have to drive almost 2,000 miles to find Toast in North Carolina. A person from Hornytown in North Carolina can find Friendship in populous New York State, Intercourse in Pennsylvania and Climax in Michigan before going back to New York to recover at Sleepy Hollow.

Missouri has its fair share of odd and unusual place names too with Black Jack, Peculiar, and Useful to mention a few.  Utopia is found in Texas but so also is Cheapside and a place called Cut and Shoot. Kentucky has Cranks, Ages, Dwarf and Fancy Farm while Virginia has Rustburg and Goose Pimple Junction. Luck is found in Wisconsin, Shady Cove in Oregon, Flasher bares all in North Dakota, What Cheer takes heart in Iowa, but Dismal is a place in Tennessee. Kill Devil Hills (the actual place where the Wright Brothers first flew) is near Kittyhawk in North Carolina along with Intelligence and Blowing Rock.

Georgia has a Handy, an Enigma and an Experiment as place names. There’s Bad Axe, Michigan; Bayonet Point, Florida; Skull Valley and Surprise, Arizona; Accident, Maryland; Bitter End, Tennessee; Hazardville, Connecticut, Big Ugly, West Virginia and Frog Suck in Wyoming to puzzle over.

Wyoming is a treasure trove of place names and historical sites: Fort Supply, Buckboard Crossing, Names Hill and Register Cliff (where pioneers scratched their names) Muddy Gap, Devil’s Gate, Hell’s Half Acre, Lost Cabin, Lost Springs, Hole-in-the-Wall, Massacre Hill, Recluse, Spotted Horse, Freedom, Medicine Bow, Bitter Creek, Whiskey Peak, Steamboat Mountain, Battle Pass, Teapot Dome, Little America, Wamsutter, Cugwater and Tensleep.

Scattered across the country there is at least one Hookersville, Hawesville, Dogville, Humanville, Idiotville, Nuttsville and a Looneyville. One must assume that these final place names were named not by the actual unfortunate inhabitants but by settlers in neighboring villes, bergs, towns and tons . . . . 

Australia has its share of weird and wonderful place names too and perhaps the most spectacularly unpronounceable one would have to be Boonahnoomoonah which is not actually at a town at all any more since it lost its post office in 1939 but it’s still on most maps. Like the boomerang, I guess the mail kept coming back.

Australia also has a Blow Clear, Bland, Broke, Break O Day, Cheepie, Doo Town, Burrumbuttock, Break-Me-Neck Hill, Come-by-Chance, Damboring, Diehard, Humpty Doo,  Nar Nar Goon as well as a Nowhere Else.

But pride of place for  place names must go to the United Kingdom with Beggars Bush, Boggy Bottom, Scratchy Bottom,  Crackpot, Giggleswick, Titty Ho, Wet Rain and Brokenwind. Yes, I’m still writing about towns – towns to make you laugh, and maybe laugh so hard that you have some broken wind.

And finally, New Zealand can boast the longest single word place name in the world with -
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu. It's a real place and it can be found in the south east corner of the North Island.

THE ASKER TRILOGY

NEW INSECT FOUND

Mystery stick insect discovered

By Matt Walker Editor, BBC Nature 4 September 2012

Conlephasma enigma: a stick insect like no other 

A mysterious new species of stick insect has been discovered living in the Philippines by scientists.

The stick insect is wingless, lives on the ground rather than in trees, and is spectacularly colored, having a green-blue head and orange body.

The insect also vents a foul-smelling spray to deter predators.

The stick insect is so unique that scientists have given it its own genus and do not yet know its relationship to other stick and leaf insects.

It looked so different from any other known stick insect in the world that we immediately realized it was something very special”

"Recently a colleague, entomologist Oskar Conle, showed us some museum specimens of a strange-looking stick insect found several years ago on Mount Halcon, a remote locality in the Philippine island of Mindoro," explains Marco Gottardo, who is studying for a PhD at the University of Siena, Italy.

The insect was found on the third highest mountain in the archipelago, which is considered one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world.

"We were baffled. It looked so different from any other known stick insect in the world that we immediately realized it was something very special."

Mr Gottardo and colleague Philipp Heller carefully examined the specimen.

"We concluded that it represented an unknown genus and species of stick insect," Mr Gottardo told BBC Nature.

The scientists have published details of the discovery in the journal Comptes Rendus Biologies.

"The new stick insect is wingless, with a stout body and rather short legs," says Mr Gottardo.

The scientists think these features are likely to be special adaptations for living in the low-growing vegetation of a montane rainforest.

Most tree-dwelling stick insects that live in the forest canopy have slender and elongated bodies and legs, thought to provide good camouflage among stick and leaves.

"Another unique characteristic is the spectacular color pattern. [A male] has dark bluish-green head and legs, and a bright orange body with distinctive bluish-black triangle-shaped spots on its back," he adds.

It is more likely that the insect uses these striking colors to warn off predators, rather than as a form of camouflage.

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"In fact we have discovered that the new stick insect has the ability to release a potent defensive spray from glands located behind its head.

"The defensive substance is sprayed when the insect feels threatened, and has a strong distasteful smell, which likely functions to repel potential predators in a similar way to skunks," says Mr Gottardo.

The scientists have named the insect Conlephasma enigma.

"We have named the new stick insect with the specific epithet "enigma" because its systematic position in the tree of life of stick and leaf insects remains a mystery," says Mr Gottardo.

Many of the stick insect's distinctive features are unlike those recorded on other stick insects.

One feature, however, has been seen before. The microstructures of Conlephasma enigma's mouthparts are strikingly similar to those held by another group of stick insects. The problem is that these stick insects live in tropical America, on the other side of the world, raising the question of how two insects so far apart might share a similar trait.

The researchers hope that a more detailed molecular analysis of the stick insect's genetics may shed light on its true identity.

"We also hope that the discovery of this particular new insect species may draw attention into the problem of rainforest conservation in the Philippines, which are home to unique and still poorly known wildlife," Mr Gottardo says.

More on BBC Nature: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature

Peter’s Comment

This is a pleasant surprise reading about the discovery of a new species.

All too often we read about birds, animals and insects becoming extinct or endangered and this can lead to a misunderstanding of the continuing process of evolution.

It is almost certain that the number of species in the world is increasing all the time, rather than decreasing, and that for each species that does disappear there could be ten or more new species to take its place.

AVIATION SECURITY FARCE

Edinburgh Airport passengers
to be body scanned

Body scanning of some passengers is being introduced at Scotland's
busiest airport as part of its security checks.

When passengers are scanned security officers will see a manequin-style diagram on a small screen

Edinburgh Airport bosses said the measure was being implemented from 1 September, following direction from the UK government.

The technology works by detecting concealed threats or contraband.

It will alert security staff through an image which appears as a mannequin-style diagram on a small screen attached to the machine.

All images taken are deleted as soon as they have been assessed.

Passengers will be chosen at random or if an extra security concern is raised, such as activating the metal detector.
Continued below . . . 

The Asker Trilogy

It will be mandatory for selected passengers to undergo the scan and those who refuse will not be able to board their flight.

A member of airport staff will be present throughout the process, which will take place within the security search area.

Gordon Dewar, chief executive of the airport, said the scanner was a "great enhancement" to its security procedures.

"The scan is quick, simple and safe for everyone and does not compromise individual's privacy as the image taken is deleted straight after it is assessed," he said.

"Passengers asked to undergo the scan must comply with the rules as stated by the Department for Transport."

Airport bosses said the scanning takes a few seconds and would not impact on the processing of passengers.

The UK government held a review of aviation security in response to the attempted attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253 to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

A package of additional measures to enhance security was announced, including the use of body scanners. They were introduced in February 2010 at Heathrow and Manchester airports, with the intention to roll out the process nationally.

More on BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

Peter’s Point of View

There is no safer way to travel than with an airline and it has been that way for at least half a century and not just since the increased security after 911.

The increase in aviation security has made no difference to air safety. None at all. The politicians know that, but most politicians are only interested in reality when it doesn’t stand in the way of good old vote-getting hysteria.

If the increase in aviation security had been matched by a further increase in the safety of flying, then surely the politicians would now be legislating to widen the security net to include all others forms of transport.

Taxis, buses, trucks, trains and private vehicles are all manifestly less safe, from a security point of view, than flying. Terrorists use taxis, buses, trucks, vans, trains and private cars much more frequently than aircraft. They always have done and they always will.

In fact more bombs are exploded in surface vehicles each year than the total for the whole of aviation history. Aviation security has become a farce.

Meanwhile we will not be safe on the ground until we have to go through security to board a bus or taxi, drive a truck or van, take a ride on a cycle, walk on a sidewalk, enter a shop, have lunch in a park, sail a boat, send mail, cook a meal, look at a stranger or get out of bed in the morning. Does that sound ridiculous?  It certainly does, but it just goes to prove how ridiculous aviation security has become.

But politicians everywhere, if they genuinely believe in what they are doing and to be consistent, should be spreading the security net with all possible haste to include all of the above transport modes worldwide. And to make absolutely certain that the terrorists are stymied, we should take a lesson from 911, and all forms of ground transport and every kind a ground service and facility should be immediately grounded until everyone can comply, if the politicians genuinely believe.

Personally, I’d rather forget the farce and just get on with life. I think Harold MacMillan was right when he said, “The people have never had it so good.” Unfortunately for MacMillan, the British public, typically, didn't want good news and so they dumped him.

CARS AND TRUCKS

Beware! These machines can hurt you.

Don't play chicken with them

In 70% of car versus truck collisions the car driver is at fault.

FROM THE DRIVER'S SEAT

Seen on the road

"If we both keep right one of us is bound to get through"

A self-explanatory road sign

He's training to be a truck driver

Don't look down - or up

Snow doubt about it - he should get a parking infringement

INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT BUT NO FLIGHTS

Hamilton, New Zealand to lose
international air services

By Nikki Preston

5:30 AM Wednesday Aug 15, 2012

Hamilton, New Zealand could be without an international air service
when Virgin Australia pulls out in October

An urgent search is being made for a new international carrier to fly from Hamilton Airport to stop it losing its international status after a fourth airline pulled out.

Virgin Australia, which formerly operated in New Zealand as Pacific Blue, is cancelling its Hamilton to Brisbane service from October 27.

Virgin Australia New Zealand executive general manager Mark Pitt said demand for the service had decreased, and it was losing money.

Analysis by the airline showed improved road access to Auckland and the downturn in the local economy contributed to the poor performance of the route, he said.

But Hamilton City Council politicians - whose council has a 50 per cent stake in the airport - are calling on the airport to look for a new airline.

Councilor Ewan Wilson, founder of the airport's first international carrier, Kiwi Air, said the airport could lose its international status for good if a new carrier was not found before Virgin Australia left.

Kiwi Air, founded by Ewan Wilson in 1994,
operated this Boeing 737 on trans-Tasman services

The airport was embroiled in a legal battle in 2009 to get Customs and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's services reinstated when Air New Zealand scrapped its international service. Virgin Australia did not start flying the route until five months later.

A Customs Service representative said the service learned of the airline's decision only yesterday afternoon and wanted to understand the implications for the service and staff before commenting.

Hamilton deputy mayor and former airport board member Gordon Chesterman said having no international carrier would affect revenue from car parking as well as the duty-free business.

"With Virgin pulling out this will send a signal to other carriers that Hamilton is a highly risky business.

"Yet the truth is that 20 per cent of all people flying out of the Waikato and Bay of Plenty have flown to Australia from Hamilton and that 80 per cent continue to fly from Auckland."

House of Travel commercial director Brent Thomas said the biggest barrier for Hamilton Airport was frequency of flights and cost . . . .

Full story in New Zealand Herald

Peter’s Comment

Hamilton is New Zealand’s fourth largest city and the center for the country’s highest density farming and tourism region. There is no logical reason why the city and surrounds cannot support international air services.

Public awareness may be a major factor. Indeed I have flown Auckland to Brisbane unaware that there was a direct flight from Hamilton. My next trip to Brisbane was from Hamilton (about the same distance from where I live) and I found it more convenient for parking as well as proceeding through departure and arrival formalities. The airfare was comparable to flying from Auckland.

I’m puzzled as to why Virgin chose only to operate to Brisbane when Australia’s two largest cities are closer. Virgin may have put themselves out on a limb by not operating services from Hamilton to Sydney and Melbourne also. Three regular services and marketing to suit would have struck a chord with travelers that would have been hard to resist.

Hamilton will need to beat out a path to the door of Air New Zealand, Qantas, Tiger and Jetstar, or an entirely new player to fill the gap left by Virgin. 

BILL GATES

Inventing a Toilet for
the 21st Century

August 14, 2012 | By Bill Gates   Posted on the gates notes

Bill Gates. The geek who changed the world
and wants to change it again

I announced the winners today of the foundation’s Reinvent the Toilet Challenge—a competition designed to encourage breakthroughs in clean, affordable sanitation.

Today I attended what has to be one of the oddest summer fairs ever. A year ago, the foundation launched an initiative to tackle the problem of sanitation in the developing world. We called it there invent the Toilet Challenge. This week in Seattle, the foundation is holding a Reinvent the Toilet Fair, where we have brought together about 200 grantees, partners, and others who are passionate about creating safe, effective, and inexpensive sanitation services for people without access to flush toilets.

The fair brought together people from a wide range of disciplines—inventors, designers, investors, advocates, academics, and government officials—all thinking about innovative ways to solve this long-standing problem. While at the fair, I awarded prizes to three universities we challenged a year ago to come up with solutions for capturing and processing human waste and transforming it into useful resources. The winners included: first place to California Institute of Technology in the United States for designing a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity, second place to Loughborough University in the United Kingdom for a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water, and third place to University of Toronto in Canada for a toilet that sanitizes feces and urine and recovers resources and clean water. A special recognition was awarded to Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) and EOOS for their outstanding design of a toilet user-interface.

Toilets are extremely important for public health, and – when you think of it – even human dignity. For most of us living in the developed world, we often don’t give them much thought.

In 2009, during a trip to South Africa I met with a health expert working to improve access to sanitation for the poor people of Durban. Most of the poor people in Durban (and elsewhere) are denied the convenience and health benefits of flush toilets because they don’t have access to water.

The flush toilets we use in the wealthy world are irrelevant, impractical and impossible for 40 percent of the global population, because they often don’t have access to water, and sewers, electricity, and sewage treatment systems. Worldwide, there are 2.5 billion people without access to safe sanitation—including 1 billion people who still defecate out in the open and more than 1 billion others who must use pit latrines.

Beyond a question of human dignity, this lack of access also endangers people’s lives, creates an economic and a health burden for poor communities, and hurts the environment.

Food and water tainted with fecal matter causes diarrheal diseases that kill 1.5 million children every year - more than the annual deaths from AIDS and malaria combined . . . .

Full story on the gates notes: http://www.thegatesnotes.com

Peter’s Comment

What a marvel Bill Gates has been for the world.

He has certainly had his critics over the years, but I really wonder about that. It has even been said that he has only turned to charity to ease his conscience about the way he has conducted his business affairs.

I prefer to think that here was a young man who had a vision and a plan to do some good in parts of the world that were almost beyond help, and that Microsoft was simply a means to that end.

Whatever the plan, there is certainly good work waiting to be done in many parts of the world.

In 1994 while traveling overland from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean via China and Pakistan I saw public toilets in remote areas that one located by searching the horizon for the largest swarm of blowflies. In Pakistan we ate in a restaurant high in the Karakoram Range where a stream flowed through the restaurant carrying everything imaginable from higher up in the village.

You’re on to it, Bill.

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS

Should You Trust Online Reviews?

Yes and no.  http://www.slate.com

By Ray Fisman|Posted Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2012,

Are they genuine hotel guests, staff, or actors?  Photo by Creatas/Thinkstock.

The Internet has fundamentally changed the way that buyers and sellers meet and interact in the marketplace. Online retailers make it cheap and easy to browse, comparison shop, and make purchases with the click of a mouse. The Web can also, in theory, make for better-informed purchases—both online and off—thanks to sites that offer crowd sourced reviews of everything from dog walkers to dentists.

In a Web-enabled world, it should be harder for careless or unscrupulous businesses to exploit consumers. Yet recent studies suggest that online reviewing is hardly a perfect consumer defense system. Researchers at Yale, Dartmouth, and USC have found evidence that hotel owners post fake reviews to boost their ratings on the site—and might even be posting negative reviews of nearby competitors.

The preponderance of online reviews speaks to their basic weakness: Because it’s essentially free to post a review, it’s all too easy to dash off thoughtless praise or criticism, or, worse, to construct deliberately misleading reviews without facing any consequences. It’s what economists (and others) refer to as the cheap-talk problem. The obvious solution is to make it more costly to post a review, but that eliminates one of the main virtues of crowdsourcing: There is much more wisdom in a crowd of millions than in select opinions of a few dozen.

Of course, that wisdom depends on reviewers giving honest feedback. A few well-publicized incidents suggest that’s not always the case. For example, when Amazon’s Canadian site accidentally revealed the identitiesof anonymous book reviewers in 2004, it became apparent that many reviews came from publishers and from the authors themselves.

Technological idealists, perhaps not surprisingly, see a solution to this problem in cutting-edge computer science. One widely reported study last year showed that a text-analysis algorithm proved remarkably adept at detecting made-up reviews. The researchers instructed freelance writers to put themselves in the role of a hotel marketer who has been tasked by his boss with writing a fake customer review that is flattering to the hotel. They also compiled a set of comparison TripAdvisor reviews that the study’s authors felt were likely to be genuine. Human judges could not distinguish between the real ones and the fakes. But the algorithm correctly identified the reviews as real or phony with 90 percent accuracy by picking up on subtle differences, like whether the review described specific aspects of the hotel room layout (the real ones do) or mentioned matters that were unrelated to the hotel itself, like whether the reviewer was there on vacation or business (a marker of fakes). Great, but in the cat-and-mouse game of fraud vs. fraud detection, phony reviewers can now design feedback that won’t set off any alarm bells.

Just how prevalent are fake reviews? A trio of business school professors, Yale’s Judith Chevalier, Yaniv Dover of Dartmouth, and USC’s Dina Mayzlin, have taken a clever approach to inferring an answer by comparing the reviews on two travel sites, TripAdvisor and Expedia . . . .

Full article on Slate.com: http://www.slate.com

Peter’s Comment

Fake reviews of products and services may be much more common than many people think.

Think about it this way: You shop at the same supermarket regularly and sometimes you tell the staff or your friends that you like the service or the prices. But how often would you go to the supermarket website and post a favorable comment? Probably never.

However, on some websites reviews, always favorable, take up most of the space and are the main focus – apart from getting your money. I regard those sites with suspicion. Most notable are the website that promise $10,000 a month working from home, part time, with no experience needed.  One such site has ‘feedback’ from a lady with the same name, previously unemployed and commenting from Auckland, Melbourne and a dozen of cities around the world. She is a fake and so is the company behind the website.

Book reviews by professional book reviewers I regard as genuine, but also purely a matter of opinion. A good book to one person may be trash to another reader. It depends on personal taste. It should also be remembered that professional book reviewers only review books from traditional publishers as a general rule. But we live in a world where self-publishing, also known as indie-publishing, is fast becoming the norm and many books now go to market without reviews.

My first book, published in 1966 by a traditional publisher, received a favorable review in several newspapers and at least one magazine. By contrast my next six books, all indie-published, have not been reviewed by any major newspaper and published comments from readers have been rare.

But that does not mean that these books have not been selling or that readers didn’t enjoy them.  The comments come person to person, always favorable and usually with a request for the next book, or all the remaining books. A large number of my current readers have a complete set, not including the first book which sold out forty years ago.

Readers of this blog appear to fall into a different category with a small number of readers leaving nice comments which I greatly appreciate. It makes it all worthwhile. I always publish comments exactly as they are written. I don’t edit them. The only comments not published are those that blatantly seek free advertising for a commercial business and those that are written so poorly that even Albert Einstein would have declared their meaning beyond discovery. Fortunately there are very few of those.

My books are available in print or electronic versions. The e-book versions are available at prices that are only a fraction of the print price. Each has a free sample that can be downloaded to an e-reader device or PC and one book, Nathaniel’s Bloodline, can be downloaded in its entirety completely free.

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