I took day 4 off to read. After all, isn't that the point?
This first one isn't free, but a bargain buy of a children's adventure story (looks to be aimed at the tween crowd, as it is 330 pages in the print version and like all good fairy tales has darker side), a category where it can be a bit harder to find good ebooks: The Legend of Witch Bane by Kevis Hendrickson. It's been getting great reviews and looks like a good one for those whose kid's have been left behind in this weeks reading links.
For the slightly older teens, Harper Collins has a free read of The Vampire Diaries (online only), with the full text of The Awakening and The Struggle. They also have a sneak peak inside The Return: Nightfall, the latest in the series. I've tried their free reader before and mostly it motivated me to go buy the book instead, if it was interesting, as reading 500 pages on a backlit screen would make my eyes bleed. These particular titles are only available in paperback - so if you want real ebook versions of them, make sure to click on the titles, then on the Request on Kindle link below the cover pictures. In the meantime, these free reads will only be online until March 27th, so you'd better read quickly.
Tor has posted a new freebie, Charles de Lint’s Spiritwalk. It's a little late in Read an E-Book Week and the "monthly free read" doesn't quite come out monthly anymore, but free is free (you do have to register and log in before hitting the download links). Spiritwalk (1992) is the sequel to Moonheart (which is available in ereader format at Fictionwise). Spiritwalk is currently out of print, although Tor has a trade paperback reissue scheduled for mid-2010.
If you haven't picked up Mars Girl yet, you should definitely download a copy and be prepared for some laughs. You can get pretty much any format or read it online, along with "Webisodes", small scenes cut from the final book (just like the deleted scenes on most DVD's these days).
The Textile Planet, another humorous science-fiction novel, is now available as a free ebook! Download the PDF version or send an email to get another format (.html, .lit, .lrf, .mobi, and .rtf) direct from author Sue Lange
David Sklar (Shadow of the Antlered Bird) has a number of free fiction and poetry ebooks/ereads and satirical articles available.
Plough Books in England has more than 80 Christian/Spiritual titles in nine languages at no charge. All are in PDF format.
For a change of pace, be sure to get this month's free audiobook (hey, it's a book and it's "e", even if you don't "read" it) from Christian Audio. They have a new free audiobook each month, with your choice of MP3 (Kindle compatible) or WMV format. This month it's Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Unabridged) by Donald S. Whitney. Just use the coupon code (it's MAR2009 this month) and you won't have to enter any other payment info (you do have to create an account and they send you emails each month to notify you of the new freebie).
Book Reviews and Bargain reads for the Amazon Kindle, nook, Kobo, Sony and other ereaders, Kindle Fire, nookColor, Kobo Vox, and other tablets, along with some games, music, technology and computers tossed in now and then.
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Thursday, March 12, 2009
by Kevis Hendrickson. It's been getting great reviews and looks like a good one for those whose kid's have been left behind in this weeks reading links.
. They also have a 
, the latest in the series. I've tried their free reader before and mostly it motivated me to go buy the book instead, if it was interesting, as reading 500 pages on a backlit screen would make my eyes bleed. These particular titles are only available in paperback - so if you want real ebook versions of them, make sure to click on the titles, then on the Request on Kindle link below the cover pictures. In the meantime, these free reads will only be online until March 27th, so you'd better read quickly.Free Ebook: The Treasure of La Malinche
The Treasure of La Malinche by Jeff Hepple.The ordinary life of college professor Margaret de Vega is forever changed when she discovers the six hundred year old memoirs of La Malinche containing the secret to finding the lost treasure of Montezuma. With the aid of retired Special Forces Colonel R.A. Lincoln, Doctor de Vega undertakes her treasure hunt along a rapidly deteriorating United States – Mexican border.
Jeff was kind enough to let me post this free book here for Read an E-Book Week. Just click on the cover and it will download (if you have trouble, try right-clicking and using the Save As... selection). The ebook is in PRC format, so you can just copy or email it to your Kindle or use Calibre to convert to another format. You can also buy the Kindle version at Amazon ($2.39, with free amazon backup/sync), or get a trade paperback for $19.95 from his website. If you like this one (or just don't want to miss out), rush over to Amazon and get The Treasure of La Malinche Volume 2 (The Legacy of La Malinche) as well, as it is currently on sale for $0.99 (trade paperback $19.95 on his website). He also has published Gone For a Soldier, which deals with the Revolutionary war and the 800 page volume has received good reviews.
($2.39, with free amazon backup/sync), or get a trade paperback for $19.95 from 
as well, as it is currently on sale for $
, which deals with the Revolutionary war and the 800 page volume has received good reviews.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Read an E-Book Week, Day 3
More free reads and a few that I hadn't mentioned this week. Mostly non-Kindle formats, although many can be easily converted.
Another author makes a book offer via comments:
Readers can also receive a free e-book by posting a comment on my blog post between now and March 14th. They can choose from among my two novels and five titles from my editing clients (quantities of client books are limited).
Bullying: A Parent’s Primer is a 19 page booklet, free this week if you request it by email (link is mid-way down their page).
CurrClick provides curriculum material for homeschooling and has a free download of St. Patrick: The World's Greatest Missionary, just in time for the upcoming holiday.
Sharing Books specializes in children's books and they are available on a "shareware" basis. Download it - if you like it - pay a donation.
EcoBrain offers e-books and mp3 audios about the environment. They are offering Understanding The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming, Secondary Level as a free purchase from March 8-14. They also offer a companion book, Understanding The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming Inter. Level that is currently marked down to $5.99. Both are educational in nature. NOTE that the files there are watermarked PDF's with cut/paste prohibited; you may not be able to convert them to any other format.
Jean Sheldon has a free download of The Effects of Gravity on the Soul of a Poet, a book of poetry.
If you haven't read Heather Wardell's Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo yet, be sure to grab a copy. Not only are both the PDF and PRC formats DRM free, you are also free to copy them for others, convert them and give out the converted copies and pretty much anything else you want to do with them other than sell them or print them out and bind them as a book (print out and keep looseleaf and you are fine).
Pauline Rowson's Tide of Death, free in PDF format, is a marine mystery and is the first in a series, with a new book coming this April.
The Eye of Alloria by Rae Lori. Also two short free reads on her web site.
One I missed earlier was Steve Jordan's Berserker: The Kestral Voyages. Steve set up the web site for Read an E-Book Week
Wizards.com (of Dungeons and Dragons fame) has up a free PDF copy of Paul S. Kemp's Twilight Falling. It looks like a printers proof, so I doubt it would convert well for the Kindle, but it's still worth reading.
Libby McKinmer has Fox Hollow up as a free PDF this week (it's on the right side of the web page).
A Veneer of Respect: a free e-book by Alex Domokos and Rita Y. Toews. I'm not sure what it's about, as it isn't mentioned on their web site other than the free link. Another free ebook, Looking In... Portraits of the Canadian Soul , is on their Novels page.
The Long and the Short of It has two sections: Romance and Erotica. Both have a selection of free short story reads and on the main page you can request a PDF of past Friday Recipes.
There are a few additional sites changing the books every day: Twilight Times Books has Darrell Bain's e-book Darrell Bain's World of Books all week and an additional free e-book each day. Among the selections will be Jerome and the Seraph by Robina Williams, Behold the Eyes of Light by Geoff Geauterre and No Place for Gods by Gerry Mills. In an unusual move, Rose Dog Books and Red Lead Bookstore change their free reads at 5 PM, just as they close down for the day - so West Coaster better check early or you'll miss that day's books. I suspect that Whitmore Publishing Company is doing the same, as the book hasn't changed since last night. Calderwood Books has A Falling Down Man by James Lally as today's read and a Pirate Adventure coming up tomorrow.
If you grabbed the ereader formatted books over at Zumaya Publications, you may want to head back over there. They've added a title Better Than Chocolate that wasn't there previously. These are not easily converted to other formats, but can be read on your computer. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, the fire up Stanza and look for the Ebook Week entry in the online catalog. Not only are many of the other free reads there, but this entire list from Zumaya has it's own entry. Better yet, there is a bonus read you only get there: Kingdom Come by David Lynn Anderson. And for those that will only read on the iPhone - you'll miss out on Better than Chocolate, as that's only on the web download page. For those who haven't used Stanza before, there is an excellent tutorial, featuring this weeks free reads, over on Lexcycle.
All Romance E-Books claims to have "a wide variety of e-books", but nearly all are erotica (there are some "young reads", but even those are for older teens). However, they do have about 80 free reads. I find their web site a little annoying (the car will time out on you while browsing, making you log back in a lot). These reads are also available thru Stanza for you iPhone - but the ordering is less integrated than many others, using the web site in Safar (and you can't see what you are doing when typing in your login info). Still, the short nature of the free reads is a natural for the short reading time that most will use their iPhone for. Note that once you have purchased a book, you can't purchase it again and that you can only download a book in ONE format (even if several are available). So you must decide ahead of time where you'll be doing your reading (or grab the HTML, if available, so you can convert it yourself -- although the effort required seems a bit much for short stories you'll probably delete after reading). If you want something a bit milder in nature, check out the free reads at Wild Rose Press (there are 64 of them).
Olive Tree Software has a number of biblical related ebooks: several versions of The Bible, including translations in a number of other languages, devotionals and commentaries. If you read just the free material on this one website, it would keep you busy for years (of course, to read it all, you'll need a years of language study as well). The only problem is that their materials appear to only be available in PDB format. They have loaders for many of the PDA's and phones out there, including the iPod/iTouch, but no mobi or HTML files that would let you easily ocnvert them for the Kindle. Additionally, these PDB files can't be read with the current ereader software, which is version 3.0.3, as they require 3.0.4 or above, which appears to be limited to handheld devices. Still, if you have a smartphone, PDA or iPhone, they have a large collection.
If you are hunting for a good multi-format reader (software) for your computer, you may want to check out Calibre (version 0.5 just released this week). It reads most non-DRM formats (but not ereader PDB) and will let you convert several older formats to more modern ones. It even understands screen size differences amongst reader hardware and lets you customize things like the margins around text. It's also quite useful for fixing the metadata on mobi/prc files, which have the author names missing or don't sort correctly. The program is completely free (although the author does accept donations).
Another author makes a book offer via comments:
Readers can also receive a free e-book by posting a comment on my blog post between now and March 14th. They can choose from among my two novels and five titles from my editing clients (quantities of client books are limited).
Lillie Ammann
http://lillieammann.com
http://lillieammann.com
Bullying: A Parent’s Primer is a 19 page booklet, free this week if you request it by email (link is mid-way down their page).
CurrClick provides curriculum material for homeschooling and has a free download of St. Patrick: The World's Greatest Missionary, just in time for the upcoming holiday.
Sharing Books specializes in children's books and they are available on a "shareware" basis. Download it - if you like it - pay a donation.
EcoBrain offers e-books and mp3 audios about the environment. They are offering Understanding The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming, Secondary Level as a free purchase from March 8-14. They also offer a companion book, Understanding The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming Inter. Level that is currently marked down to $5.99. Both are educational in nature. NOTE that the files there are watermarked PDF's with cut/paste prohibited; you may not be able to convert them to any other format.
Jean Sheldon has a free download of The Effects of Gravity on the Soul of a Poet, a book of poetry.
If you haven't read Heather Wardell's Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo yet, be sure to grab a copy. Not only are both the PDF and PRC formats DRM free, you are also free to copy them for others, convert them and give out the converted copies and pretty much anything else you want to do with them other than sell them or print them out and bind them as a book (print out and keep looseleaf and you are fine).Pauline Rowson's Tide of Death, free in PDF format, is a marine mystery and is the first in a series, with a new book coming this April.
The Eye of Alloria by Rae Lori. Also two short free reads on her web site.
One I missed earlier was Steve Jordan's Berserker: The Kestral Voyages. Steve set up the web site for Read an E-Book Week
Wizards.com (of Dungeons and Dragons fame) has up a free PDF copy of Paul S. Kemp's Twilight Falling. It looks like a printers proof, so I doubt it would convert well for the Kindle, but it's still worth reading.
Libby McKinmer has Fox Hollow up as a free PDF this week (it's on the right side of the web page).
A Veneer of Respect: a free e-book by Alex Domokos and Rita Y. Toews. I'm not sure what it's about, as it isn't mentioned on their web site other than the free link. Another free ebook, Looking In... Portraits of the Canadian Soul , is on their Novels page.
The Long and the Short of It has two sections: Romance and Erotica. Both have a selection of free short story reads and on the main page you can request a PDF of past Friday Recipes.
There are a few additional sites changing the books every day: Twilight Times Books has Darrell Bain's e-book Darrell Bain's World of Books all week and an additional free e-book each day. Among the selections will be Jerome and the Seraph by Robina Williams, Behold the Eyes of Light by Geoff Geauterre and No Place for Gods by Gerry Mills. In an unusual move, Rose Dog Books and Red Lead Bookstore change their free reads at 5 PM, just as they close down for the day - so West Coaster better check early or you'll miss that day's books. I suspect that Whitmore Publishing Company is doing the same, as the book hasn't changed since last night. Calderwood Books has A Falling Down Man by James Lally as today's read and a Pirate Adventure coming up tomorrow.
If you grabbed the ereader formatted books over at Zumaya Publications, you may want to head back over there. They've added a title Better Than Chocolate that wasn't there previously. These are not easily converted to other formats, but can be read on your computer. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, the fire up Stanza and look for the Ebook Week entry in the online catalog. Not only are many of the other free reads there, but this entire list from Zumaya has it's own entry. Better yet, there is a bonus read you only get there: Kingdom Come by David Lynn Anderson. And for those that will only read on the iPhone - you'll miss out on Better than Chocolate, as that's only on the web download page. For those who haven't used Stanza before, there is an excellent tutorial, featuring this weeks free reads, over on Lexcycle.
All Romance E-Books claims to have "a wide variety of e-books", but nearly all are erotica (there are some "young reads", but even those are for older teens). However, they do have about 80 free reads. I find their web site a little annoying (the car will time out on you while browsing, making you log back in a lot). These reads are also available thru Stanza for you iPhone - but the ordering is less integrated than many others, using the web site in Safar (and you can't see what you are doing when typing in your login info). Still, the short nature of the free reads is a natural for the short reading time that most will use their iPhone for. Note that once you have purchased a book, you can't purchase it again and that you can only download a book in ONE format (even if several are available). So you must decide ahead of time where you'll be doing your reading (or grab the HTML, if available, so you can convert it yourself -- although the effort required seems a bit much for short stories you'll probably delete after reading). If you want something a bit milder in nature, check out the free reads at Wild Rose Press (there are 64 of them).
Olive Tree Software has a number of biblical related ebooks: several versions of The Bible, including translations in a number of other languages, devotionals and commentaries. If you read just the free material on this one website, it would keep you busy for years (of course, to read it all, you'll need a years of language study as well). The only problem is that their materials appear to only be available in PDB format. They have loaders for many of the PDA's and phones out there, including the iPod/iTouch, but no mobi or HTML files that would let you easily ocnvert them for the Kindle. Additionally, these PDB files can't be read with the current ereader software, which is version 3.0.3, as they require 3.0.4 or above, which appears to be limited to handheld devices. Still, if you have a smartphone, PDA or iPhone, they have a large collection.
If you are hunting for a good multi-format reader (software) for your computer, you may want to check out Calibre (version 0.5 just released this week). It reads most non-DRM formats (but not ereader PDB) and will let you convert several older formats to more modern ones. It even understands screen size differences amongst reader hardware and lets you customize things like the margins around text. It's also quite useful for fixing the metadata on mobi/prc files, which have the author names missing or don't sort correctly. The program is completely free (although the author does accept donations).
Monday, March 9, 2009
Women's Adventure Magazine is a new offering on the Kindle. This is a bi-monthly magazine (the price is $1.25 monthly, but it is delivered every other month). and the current issue is Jan 7th. From the best guess and looking at the calendar, if you start your trial subscription today, you should end up getting two issues (Jan and March, which is due any time). It's hard to tell from a single issue if you'll really end up liking the magazine. The January issue is mostly about winter sports, but has a fairly large feature article on the poor selection when dating in winter resort towns ("The odds are good, but the goods are odd") and another on places to vacation in order to escape the snow and cold. There are several other articles, some just oriented to a female audience (retreats and chocolate, anyone?), while others do involve outdoor adventure (top women ski jumpers). With any luck, the next issue will come this week and I'll be able to tell if I'll keep the subscription past the trial period. Remember, you can trial any magazine, newspaper or blog for 14 days, at no charge. But with a bimonthly magazine, you need to be careful when you start the trial, if you want to be able to compare a couple of issues before shelling out for a subscription.
is a new offering on the Kindle. This is a bi-monthly magazine (the price is $1.25 monthly, but it is delivered every other month). and the current issue is Jan 7th. From the best guess and looking at the calendar, if you start your trial subscription today, you should end up getting two issues (Jan and March, which is due any time). It's hard to tell from a single issue if you'll really end up liking the magazine. The January issue is mostly about winter sports, but has a fairly large feature article on the poor selection when dating in winter resort towns ("Women's Adventure is the only sports, travel, fitness, and lifestyle magazine published specifically for active women. Published bi-monthly, Women's Adventure is for women who choose to thrive in the wild. Every edition inspires, informs and invigorates. Experience the thrill and excitement of adventure and personal challenge in today's modern world.
The Kindle Edition of Women's Adventure Magazine contains most articles found in the print edition, but will not include all images. For your convenience, issues are auto-delivered wirelessly to your Kindle at the same time the print edition hits the newsstand.
Read an E-Book Week Update
This in from an author, via a comment to an earlier post:
David Bowles is giving away a free copy of Spring House if you leave him a comment (on his March 9th blog post) by Friday.
Wild Rose Press has 64 free ebooks posted (all Romance and pretty much short stories). They are also holding a contest to win a free Sony Reader. They are in the process of moving to a new site and name, White Rose Publishing, specializing in Christian Romance. There are not as many free reads there, but I did find six today.
Books for a Buck has a couple of new ebooks for $1 this week: Frag Limit and The Glove of Shadows. You can also get the entire book Private Lies this week for free (multiple formats).
I am offering a free ebook of Book I of my trilogy, When Women Were Warriors. You can download it here.
Catherine M. Wilson
http://www.whenwomenwerewarriors.com/
http://www.catherine-m-wilson.com/
http://www.catherine-m-wilson.com/
David Bowles is giving away a free copy of Spring House if you leave him a comment (on his March 9th blog post) by Friday.
Wild Rose Press has 64 free ebooks posted (all Romance and pretty much short stories). They are also holding a contest to win a free Sony Reader. They are in the process of moving to a new site and name, White Rose Publishing, specializing in Christian Romance. There are not as many free reads there, but I did find six today.
Books for a Buck has a couple of new ebooks for $1 this week: Frag Limit and The Glove of Shadows. You can also get the entire book Private Lies this week for free (multiple formats).
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