Free Book (PDF) - Virtual Justice

Virtual Justice ($15.13 Kindle), by Greg Lastowka, is free as a PDF directly from the author.

Book Description
Tens of millions of people today are living part of their life in a virtual world. In places like World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Free Realms, people are making friends, building communities, creating art, and making real money. Business is booming on the virtual frontier, as billions of dollars are paid in exchange for pixels on screens. But sometimes things go wrong. Virtual criminals defraud online communities in pursuit of real-world profits. People feel cheated when their avatars lose virtual property to wrongdoers. Increasingly, they turn to legal systems for solutions. But when your avatar has been robbed, what law is there to assist you?

In Virtual Justice, Greg Lastowka illustrates the real legal dilemmas posed by virtual worlds. Presenting the most recent lawsuits and controversies, he explains how governments are responding to the chaos on the cyberspace frontier. After an engaging overview of the history and business models of today's virtual worlds, he explores how laws of property, jurisdiction, crime, and copyright are being adapted to pave the path of virtual law.

Virtual worlds are becoming more important to society with each passing year. This pioneering study will be an invaluable guide to scholars of online communities for years to come.

Click HERE for the free download.

Free Book (PDF) - Vampire Lover

Vampire Lover ($2.39 Kindle), by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom, a paranormal romance novella from Harlequin, is free from Books on Board, in PDF format only. It is DRM-free, however, so you can read it as-is on most readers or email it to your Kindle for conversion.

Book Description
Kelsie Connor is looking for a big headline to jumpstart her career as a journalist--like proving the existence of vampires and werewolves. She's always felt that Others exist, though she's never met one herself. So on the night of the Blood Moon, Kelsie goes looking for a werewolf...but meets a vampire instead. A vampire who makes her blood run hot and makes her feel things she never imagined a body could feel.

Hayden Flann had been secretly watching Kelsie for some time, drawn to her by a powerful bloodlust and equally strong sexual attraction. But Hayden recognizes that he and Kelsie are connected by more than passion. Little does she know that Hayden is not just her lover--he's also her enemy, born to seduce her before he kills her....

Click HERE for the free book. When you click on Buy Now, be careful to then add the "Adobe Digital Editions" version to your cart, as it is the only free format. Then continue thru checkout and download the PDF.

Free Book (PDF) - GOG

GOG - An End Time Mystery ($5.59 Kindle), by Dan Richardson, is free from Wowio this month.

Book Description
After her husband Nick goes missing in Egypt, sheltered art curator Carina Wilde flies out to find him in a land devastated by a man-made flood two years earlier — a fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy of Ezekiel, many believe.

Stumbling upon the secrets he uncovered, she becomes a fugitive pursued by despots, religious fanatics, looters and occupying powers. Her only allies are an orphan scavenging the ruins of Cairo, and a Suez bar-girl whose relationship with Nick is just one of the questions Carina is forced to confront…

A dark satire for an age when the righteous and ruthless shape our world, Gog - An End Time Mystery is written with a rare insight into Egyptian life, Middle Eastern geopolitics, and disinformation.

You can also download a Hayes FM radio interview with Dan Richardson hosted by Paul Goodwin. Among the topics discussed are how Dan began writing travel guides, the experiences that went into his Egyptian thriller, Gog – an End Time Mystery, and how a novel can tell you things about a country that a Rough Guide can’t.

Click HERE to get the free book.

Free Book (ADE/PDF) - The Bourgeois Virtues

The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce ($13.50 Kindle), by Deirdre N. McCloskey, is free from the University of Chicago this month.

Book Description
For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us.

McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations.

High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.

Click HERE to sign up for the free book. You'll need to enter your email address, then check your email for the link to download the book. Mine arrived within seconds and it appears I have an entire year to download the book (you get a .ACSM file, which, when opened, will load the PDF book inside of Adobe ADE). This is a DRM'd PDF that is not compatible with the Kindle.

Two Free Short Stories from Rainbow EBooks

This weekend's two free gay-themed downloads from Rainbow EBooks are both short stories and both are PDF only and are free reads for Halloween Weekend only.

The Kiss of Death, by Victor J. Banis
Which is the bigger crime: murder, or not being true to yourself?

Rhiannon, by Neil Plakcy
In a bar in Miami, Junior falls for a woman who seems to have the right combination of mystery and allure. What he's about to find out is that Rhiannon has more secrets than he knows.

Free Book (PDF) - The Clockwork Girl

Wowio is giving away a copy of The Clockwork Girl ($4.95 Kindle), by Sean O'Reilly, if you'll "Like" them on Facebook, then click on their Offer tab. This is a graphic novel, so not that many pages (roughly 100), but it is huge (10MB at Amazon and 52MB from Wowio).

Book Description
A nameless robot girl has recently been given the gift of life from her creator, while exploring the wonders of an ordinary world she meets an amazing mutant boy and they share a friendship that must overcome their warring families.

Click HERE to get the free book. You'll need a Facebook account and you'll need to click that you Like them first. If you've done that in the past, you'll see the download link right away and need do nothing extra.

Free Cookbook Plus Raise Money for Meals on Wheels

For every copy of The Celebrity Pasta Lovers' Cookbook that is downloaded thru today, Barilla Pasta will donate one dollar to Meals On Wheels Association of America. Be sure to let all your friends know (even if they don't eat pasta or cook); it appears that just going to the page triggers the donation, but to be sure, go ahead and download the book. The booklet isn't very big, just 32 pages, but has several interesting looking recipes sprinkled thru the pictures and celebrity profiles and quotes.

Book Description
Download our new limited edition cookbook featuring exclusive Mario Batali recipes, inspired by the favorite dishes of Julianne Moore, Jimmy Fallon, Meryl Streep, and more! Available through October 15th.

Free Book (PDF) - The Painted Darkness

In case you missed The Painted Darkness ($2.99 Kindle), a novella by Brian James Freeman, when it was free direct from the publisher over the summer, you can pick it up as a free download from Wowio this month. In addition, the Wowio Edition contains some extras not found in the hardcover (no idea if they are in the Kindle version):

• A Wowio exclusive: a reading of the book’s first chapter by Pod of Horror host Mark Justice.
• An interview with Ray Bradbury: “We Have Too Many Inventions!”
• $5.00 discount coupon valid on an order for the trade hardcover edition of The Painted Darkness for a limited time only (presumably direct, not via Amazon).

Book Description
When Henry was a child, something terrible happened in the woods behind his home, something so shocking he could only express his grief by drawing pictures of what he had witnessed. Eventually Henry's mind blocked out the bad memories, but he continued to draw, often at night by the light of the moon.

Twenty years later, Henry makes his living by painting his disturbing works of art. He loves his wife and his son and life couldn't be better... except there's something not quite right about the old stone farmhouse his family now calls home. There's something strange living in the cramped cellar, in the maze of pipes that feed the ancient steam boiler.

A winter storm is brewing and soon Henry will learn the true nature of the monster waiting for him down in the darkness. He will battle this demon and, in the process, he may discover what really happened when he was a child and why, in times of trouble, he thinks: I paint against the darkness.

But will Henry learn the truth in time to avoid the terrible fate awaiting him... or will the thing in the cellar get him and his family first?

Written as both a meditation on the art of creation and as an examination of the secret fears we all share, The Painted Darkness is a terrifying look at the true cost we pay when we run from our grief—and what happens when we're finally forced to confront the monsters we know all too well.

Click HERE for the free download. It'll be a Secured PDF, but loads in Adobe Reader 9 (ADE isn't required).

Free Book (ADE/PDF) - Loving Little Egypt

You may have missed the one-day only free book yesterday from the University of Chicago yesterday, but you have most of the month to get Loving Little Egypt ($9.99 Kindle), by Thomas McMahon.

Book Description
In the early 1920s, nearly blind physics prodigy Mourly Vold finds out how to tap into the nation's long distance telephone lines. With the help of Alexander Graham Bell, Vold tries to warn the phone companies that would-be saboteurs could do the same thing, but they ignore him. Unfortunately, his taps do catch the notice of William Randolph Hearst, who hires Thomas Edison to get to the bottom of them—and the chase is on!

Click HERE to sign up for the free book. You'll need to enter your email address, then check your email for the link to download the book. Mine arrived within seconds and it appears I have an entire year to download the book (you get a .ACSM file, which, when opened, will load the PDF book inside of Adobe ADE). This is a DRM'd PDF that is not compatible with the Kindle.

Free Book (ADE/PDF) - Awake in the Dark (One Day Only)

Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert ($9.99 Kindle), by Roger Ebert with foreword by David Bordwell, is free today (only) from the University of Chicago.

Book Description
Roger Ebert has been writing film reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times for over forty years. In fact, no critic alive has reviewed more movies than he has. Yet his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now. With Awake in the Dark, both fans and film buffs can finally bask in the best of Ebert’s work. The reviews, interviews, and essays collected here present a picture of his numerous contributions to the cinema and cinephilia. From The Godfather to GoodFellas, from Cries and Whispers to Crash, the reviews in Awake in the Dark span some of the most exceptional periods in film history.

In addition, the extraordinary interviews gathered in Awake in the Dark capture Ebert engaging not only some of the most influential directors of our time—Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Werner Herzog, and Ingmar Bergman—but also some of the silver screen’s most respected personalities, including actors as diverse as Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Warren Beatty, and Meryl Streep.

America’s most celebrated film critic, Ebert is a writer whose exceptional intelligence and bursts of insight have shaped the way we think about the movies. Awake in the Dark will be a treasure trove not just for fans of this seminal critic but for anyone desiring a fascinating and compulsively readable chronicle of film since the late 1960s.

Click HERE to sign up for the free book. You'll need to enter your email address, then check your email for the link to download the book. Mine arrived within seconds and I'd recommend downloading the book today as well (you get a .ACSM file, which, when opened, will load the PDF book inside of Adobe ADE). This is a DRM'd PDF that is not compatible with the Kindle.

Free Book (PDF) - Being Young

Being Young ($9.99 Kindle), by Astrid Young, is a free download from Wowio this month.

Book Description
Neil Young is known as one of rock’s great artists, his influence extending far beyond his own generation. Being Young looks at a lifetime of love, humor, disappointment, and proud moments, picking up where Scott Young’s book Neil and Me left off in 1984. The book is a testament to a Woodstock-generation rocker whose independence and determination have seen him through his life as a prolific musician who is still producing to this day.

Being Young by Neil Young’s sister, Astrid Young, offers a fresh perspective on one of rock’s most recognized cultural icons. Astrid goes deep inside the motivations that shaped their family unit, exploring all the ways it came apart and how, in the end, a tenacious and undeniable kindred spirit was able to pull it back together. The story is in part a celebration of the legacy of a family that many of us grew up feeling we knew and in part the meaningful and intimate reflection of one who experienced it all.

Astrid Young started writing creatively at an early age. A musician by trade, her career has taken her around the world, both on her own and singing backup for her brother Neil Young. Astrid lives in Toronto.

This PDF eBook includes a new chapter from the updated print edition plus a bonus, WOWIO-exclusive video interview with Astrid Young (you’ll need recent versions of Adobe Reader and QuickTime to view the video within the eBook).

Click HERE for the free download. There are about three different places you can click to get the book once there; it'll be a Secured PDF, but loads in Adobe Reader (ADE isn't required).

Free Book (PDF) - Major Karnage (Tonight Only!)

Major Karnage ($9.95 Kindle), by Gord Zaja, is free direct from Wowio, tonight only.

Book Description
DON'T TALK TO HIM ABOUT THE WAR!!!!

It has been 20 years since The War, and Major John Karnage has finally settled into retirement: locked up in an insane asylum, with an explosive device embedded in the back of his neck to curb his violent tendencies.

Karnage and his troopers have been deemed unfit to live in normal society. Like a bit of old chewing gum stuck under a coffee table, the world has left The War and its scarred, unstable veterans behind. The military has been disbanded and World Peace has descended upon the Earth. Its inhabitants live happy, profitable lives under the global rule of the benevolent Dabney Corporation. All is tea and roses in this new, sanitized world . . .

Until a terrifying threat from beyond the stars rears its squiggly head! An invading armada of aliens threatens to destroy the Earth, and it's up to Major Karnage to stop them—as long as he doesn't accidentally blow his own head off first.

Click HERE to get the free book. You'll need to "like" Wowio on Facebook (so, you'll need an account on FB), then you'll see the download link after the curtain opens.