Free Ebook Roundup

The heat of summer is settling in and it looks like Amazon is taking a short break from introducing new free titles. Perhaps they just want to give us time to get caught up in our reading? Currently, I count 40 full books, a tv script, one graphic novel, 10 business book chapters and 4 rather odd entries marked "Test: Please do not purchase" (from their bestselling ratings, though, some of them have been making more sales than some of the free business chapters, on and off), all currently free in the Kindle store.

Just because they are taking a break, however, doesn't mean that there are not free reads to be found. This one isn't for Kindle, as it has DRM, but Books on Board has Lessons in Love by Kate Davies for free in several formats (Adobe Epub is the only one they are charging for) and the DRM free version Mobipocket works just fine in Calibre or on your Kindle. This one is a Samhain title and their previous freebies have been Kindle exclusives, but this one doesn't appear to be available in the Kindle store (at least, not yet).

St. Bride's College, Cambridge, England, 1905. When Jonty Stewart takes up a teaching post at the college where he studied, the handsome and outgoing young man acts as a catalyst for change within the archaic institution. He also has a catalytic effect on

Ruth Ann Nordin recently made available two new novels, Meant To Be, a time travel romantic comedy, and Eye of the Beholder, a historical romance. These join the other free novels on her web site, bringing the total to five (plus a link to another free book on the same page).

Meant To Be
While on a train heading west, Ted Jacob and Megan Crane are thrown back into the past, with no idea of why or how they got there. They get off the train at Fargo, North Dakota. To their dismay, they are in April 1898.

To their horror, the people insist that Ted and Megan marry at once! But Ted and Megan don't even know each other, and despite their protests, the preacher declares them man and wife.

Eye of the Beholder
Mary Peters despairs that she will never get married. At nineteen, she has no prospects of finding a husband, so she takes matters into her own hands and becomes a mail-order bride. When she arrives in Omaha, Nebraska to meet the man she's due to marry, he takes one look at her homely appearance and rejects her.

But fate has other plans for Mary.

At the bottom of the page, there is a link to a free novel from Melanie Nilles, A Turn of Curses ($0.99 Kindle). You can download it there, or follow the link to Melanie's web site - there you'll find not only the free book, but a description of another novel she has out on Kindle, Starfire Angels ($3.99), as well as a serialized novel Legend of the White Dragon, currently up to chapter 43.

Nineteen year old Selina has a life many would love–praised, served, and spoiled. The only problem is she didn't choose that life, because it comes with a heavy price. She will soon die, like all Healers, when the mark of Y'dom completes its pattern around her neck, and hers is nearly complete. Her gift of healing powers are sought after by all, including the ruling prince of a neighboring kingdom to heal his ailing father. Seeing this as her last chance for adventure, she makes the journey to Vastorn.

En route she encounters Faldon, the fallen leader of the feyquin, and his band of rogues. Cursed by a demon and swearing vengeance on the human who shares his curse, Faldon does all he can to stop Selina from completing her journey. But he also knows how to save Selina, if she survives the night mares.

Wesley Allison is offering a free download of his book on Smashwords, Princess of Amathar. You have to use a coupon code after adding the book to your cart, RE32Y, which is valid until August 30. One nice thing about Smashwords - once you purchase a book, almost all of them are downloadable in multiple formats and none have DRM, making it easy to get a version for your e-reader.

Transported to the artificial world of Ecos, Earth man Alexander Ashton struggles to understand the society of his new friends the Amatharians. As he does so, he finds himself falling in love with their princess and being thrust into a millennium-long war with their mortal foes the reptilian Zoasians. Princess of Amathar is a sword-swinging novel of high adventure.

Another one free on Smashwords is The Life & Times of a Boomer Baby, by L.K. Campbell, who recently had her book A Soldier's Love as a free download to celebrate her birthday (it's now $1.99).

Personal anecdotes about growing up on a farm in the rural south during the 1960s. These sometimes humorous and sometimes poignant stories give a picture of life before cell phones, home computers, satellite T.V. and all those other things we think we can't live without.

Closing out today's roundup is Raising Atlantis ($6.39 Kindle) by Thomas Greanias. The publisher is having a sweepstakes to promote his newest novel, Atlantis Revelation ($9.99), giving you a chance on a special issue Ipod Touch in addition to the book in PDF form.

" BURIED UNDER TWO MILES OF ICE. In Antarctica, a glacial earthquake swallows up a team of scientists...and exposes a mysterious monument older than the Earth itself. In Peru, archaeologist Dr. Conrad Yeats is apprehended by U.S. Special Forces...to unlock the final key to the origins of the human race. In Rome, the pope summons environmental activist Dr. Serena Serghetti to the Vatican...and reveals a terrifying vision of apocalyptic disaster. In space, a weather satellite reveals four massive storms forming around the South Pole...and three U.S. spy satellites disappear from orbit. These are the end times, when the legends of a lost civilization and the prophecies of the world's great religions lead a man and a woman to a shattering discovery that will change the fate of humankind. This is the ultimate voyage, a journey to the center of time, as awe-inspiring as the dawn of man--and as inevitable as doomsday. This is RAISING ATLANTIS.... "

Click HERE for the sweepstakes and PDF download. The link for the book is on the right part of the sweepstakes page, so be sure to grab it first, then enter the contest.

More Free Weekend Reading - PDF's

Continuing yesterday's theme, there are plenty more free PDF's out there for your weekend reading (I suspect several weekends worth, just in these two post alone). The first is a buy one, get one free offer from R.W. Ridley, author of The Takers: Book One of the Oz Chronicles ($0.99). If you purchase the first book (which is under a dollar on Kindle), you can email him at member (at) rwridley.com and ask for Book Two (which is not yet available on Kindle) and he'll send it to you in either DOC or PDF format (your choice, just tell him which). It's on the honor system, no need to send your receipt.

Takers (Book One)
The first volume in The Oz Chronicles recalls both Stephen King’s The Stand and L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. When 13-year-old Osmond “Oz” Griffith wakes from an illness on the floor of his closet, he discovers the world overrun by man-eating monsters, the Takers, and it’s largely his fault. In an effort to make things right, he gathers a band of survivors (a baby, an aged mechanic and a talking gorilla, among others), and sets off down his version of the yellow brick road, leading to the Atlanta Zoo. Along the way, he learns that his destiny was written by Steve, a boy from his past. Afflicted with Down Syndrome, Steve created new worlds, replete with battles between good and evil, in the comic books that served as his sole refuge from the teasing of Oz and his friends. Steve’s untimely suicide leaves only the comic books as clues to vanquishing the Takers.

Ed Dunlop, a minister perhaps best known for his Terrestria Chronicles series, has several young adult/children's books with a Christian theme available on his web site. These are mostly his Jed Cartwright series, set in the 1860's, each with a specific lesson/moral. Further down the page, you'll find Phantom Pilot (aimed at older youth) and two Sherlock Jones books.

Book One - Jed Cartwright and the Midnight Escape
Orphaned by the fever of 1860, twelve-year-old Jed Barrett and his sister Mandy are sent to an orphanage. When a local farmer makes plans to adopt Jed but not Mandy, the two children run away to St. Louis so as not to be separated. Surviving many perils and setbacks, the runaways reach their destination and eventually are adopted by the wealthy Jake Cartwright family.
Theme: forgiveness and salvation.

Click HERE for the free downloads

King's Property, by Morgan Howell, The Briar King, by Greg Keyes, and The Brass Bed, by Jennifer Stevenson, have all been available as free downloads for the Kindle and in the Sony store for a while. The Suvudu free library page has now been updated and you can get these all as PDF's, just click HERE.

Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution ($34.95 hardcover), by Michael Rubin, is available, for a limited time, on the author's web site, as three PDF's. I did a quick conversion on part one and it looks pretty good, including the photographs. If you want to recombine it as one book, you'll need to do that with a PDF tool first, or be prepared to do some a little extra work in MobiPocket Creator to include all three in one book definition.

Book Description
The inside story of George Lucas, his intensely private company, and their work to revolutionize filmmaking. In the process, they made computer history. Discover the birth of Pixar, digital video editing, videogame avitars, THX sound, and a host of other icons of the media age. Lucas played a central role in the universe of entertainment technologies we see everyday.

Click HERE for the download.

Last, get The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wine, Second Edition (2nd Edition) (out of print) as a free download from BestDealsMagazines.com. It's the complete book (11M, 547 pages), but not one I'd try to convert for the Kindle - there are just too many graphics and too much special formatting for it to work well. Read it on you PC or on your DX. You will have to create an account (use a throwaway address, if you don't want to be on their mailing lists). Click HERE for the download.

Free Weekend Reading - PDF's

I've found several PDF's available for free download lately and I'm combining them into one post. First, two from Simon & Schuster. They ask for your email address, zip code and birthdate, but none of the info is validated, so just enter anything you wish (and leave today's date as the birthdate). Uncheck the box to receive their email updates (unless you used your own email address) and click submit and the download link is displayed immediately. The first one is A Knight to Remember, by Karin Tabke. They are promoting her latest book, Master of Craving ($5.59), the third book in her Blood Sword Legacy series. Click HERE for the download.

Next up, get Uglies ($7.19), by Scott Westerfeld. The newest in his children's/young adult's series, Leviathan is schedule for release in November, so you have plenty of time to get caught up, if you start now.

Book Description
"Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that? Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there. But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever."

Click HERE for the download.

The third PDF is direct from the author, In Over Her Head ($24.95 paperback), by Elsie Russell. Visiting her web site is worth the time, just to see the samples of paintings.

Book Description
The debut of Penny Bell's's musical composition, featuring the use of mysterious extremely low frequency waves takes a tragic turn when several concert-goers die in their seats during the performance. The once-bright horizons of Penny's career collapse, and she retreats to a dank Soho basement apartment lit only by the glow of computer monitors and electronic displays. There, using herself as a guinea pig, she sets out to unlock the secrets of her beautiful and deadly symphonies. A series of strange coincidences intrude upon her solitary quest. Her neighbor, the erotic performance artist Ula Nova's, disappears after her studio is broken into. And then Ula's charming and damaged young choreographer appears, and sweeps Penny off to Europe to search for the diva, plunging Penny into a seedy and unfamiliar world of jet set artists and international intrigue where the threads of every encounter always seem to lead back to those ELF waves and their pint-sized progenitor.

Click HERE for the download.

Free Book: A Soldier's Love

It's L.K. Campbell's birthday and she is making one of her novels, A Soldier's Love, available as a free download to celebrate. The offer says "24 hours" and the first reference I found was yesterday evening, but it is free as of this momemt. Download it now and if you have an account at Smashwords (which is free), you can add it to your library and you should be able to download it again at any time. There are several formats and the one for the Kindle is clearly marked - just save it to your computer and copy to the Kindle's \documents folder or save it there in the first place, or email it to your Kindle account (not the @free.kindle.com address; no conversion is needed for this one) for wireless delivery.

Book Description
Katie McNeill is a shy clerk at the University of Maryland when in the fall of 1941, she finds herself caught between two very different men. One is Army officer, Ron Miller. The other is Jimmy Garrett, a young student determined to win Katie. On Sunday, December 7, all three of their lives are changed forever when innocence is lost and the future becomes uncertain.

B1G1F on Kindle: Brian Haig

From August 1st-August 31st, 2009, buy Brian Haig's Secret Sanction ($6.39) and receive a free download of Mortal Allies ($6.39). Secret Sanction is the first novel by Brian Haig, military strategist and son of former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, but he's written quite a few since.

This one works like the other B1G1F offers from Amazon - only click and order Secret Sanction; Mortal Allies will also appear in your library and on your Kindle, but you don't click the buy button for it (I don't believe it appears on your receipt/order summary either, which I don't like).

Secret Sanction
Word of Honor meets A Few Good Men in this gripping thriller that pits the Green Berets, the CIA and the U.S. government against a top Army lawyer conducting an investigation everyone wants quashed.

Mortal Allies
Army lawyer Sean Drummond has gotten himself in way over his head-with a case that challenges his deepest fears and a co-counselor who challenges just about everything else.