Read an eBook Week 2011

If you were around last year, you know that Read an eBook Week is a great time to pick up some free or heavily discounted ebooks, both from indie authors and from some of the smaller ebookstores that you might not normally visit. This year, when the eBook celebrates it's 40th anniversary, should prove no exception. Click the banner above to go to the main website or follow the links below to find some of today's free selections. Don't forget to look at their contest to win one of three Kobo Reades, while you are there.

• Smashwords, of course, leads the way with free and discounted books from indie authors. Many are outright free (download and be sure to back these up), while others are discounted by 25% to 100% using the special coupons codes for this week (each will have the appropriate coupon code shown next to the Buy button). These will remain in your Smashwords library after purchase, so you can redownload them at any time. I picked up a novella from Margaret Lake, Sweet Savage Charity, and will be browing thru the list all week to see what else I can uncover. I know that Melanie Nilles has three books at 100% discount and most of the others marked down, for example.
• Bewrite Books is giving away any two titles in their catalog, to anyone who buys one ebook (or printed book) this week, from ANY bookstore or publisher. You can't get easier terms than that. Details are in their blog (quite a ways down the page), but those who buy that one ebook from BeWrite will find a bonus in their free book order.
• Omnilit/AllRomance has a number of free reads on their site (which are free most of the time, although the list does change now and then)
• Drollerie Press has six free stories up for downloading
• CurrClick! has a free curriculum book on Graphs today (and more on their Free Stuff page.
• TriFuel, Sunday Scholar and MindsetSports are very similar sites, with several free downloads on each.
• Twilight Times Books has a number of books free this week and i looks all of them are free today (the page says some are not, but I downloaded at least a PDF of each one; perhaps more formats will be available later.
• The free book at Dorrance changes daily, so be sure to click each day this week. Today's link isn't working, but you can get it by clicking HERE.
• ireadiwrite, Rose Dog Books and Red Lead Books also have a new free book daily.

If you scroll down to the Authors section of the RAEBW partners page, you'll find links to a number of books that are located on individual author websites, while a number of the Book Sellers/Publishers also have a free download available (although it can sometimes take a bit of digging to find them)

Free Book - Fortress on the Sun

Fortress on the Sun ($5.99 Kindle), by Paul Cook, is this month's free book from Phoenix Pick. Click HERE for the free download. Enter coupon code 9992371, then once past the newsletter subscription page, download the DRM-free format of your choice.

Book Description
Ra is a 21st century prison camp that also acts as facility for harvesting metals—from the Sun. The prisoners have all been banished here for extreme crimes, but none of them remembers anything from their past. As a lethal disease slowly spreads through the camp and the prisoners are abandoned, Ian Hutchings must find a way out if he and his people are to survive. But dark secrets lurk, and as they try to survive both the illness and the inferno they live on, they will discover a truth even stranger than their own circumstances.

Paul Cook's The Engines of Dawn is also on sale, currently $4.99 on Kindle.

Book Description
The great engines of the Enamorati have enabled humanity to travel the stars, but at what cost?

Little is known of the jealously guarded engines while a complacent humanity slowly losses its edge and becomes increasingly dependant on mysterious alien technologies.

However, when an engine failure strands a university ship, Professor Ben Bennet and a group of students challenge the status quo and start discovering hidden secrets that threaten the future of humanity itself.

While you are on the Phoenix Pick page, you should also take a look at Lest Darkness Fall and Related Stories, which contains a number of short stories by Frederik Pohl, David Drake, S.M. Stirling and Alexei and Cory Panshin, in addition to the out of print Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp. On sale for $4.99, this one will be $9.99 when it reaches the Kindle store. The book is DRM-free when purchased from Phoenix Pick, so you can convert it as needed; get the Mobi version to send to your Kindle without conversion and the EPUB for any other reader (I'd only get the PDF as a last resort, as it will have the most problems if you need to convert to another format).

Book Description
Rarely do books have such a great influence on a genre as Lest Darkness Fall has had on science fiction. Frequently quoted as one of the ‘favorite’ books of many of the masters of the field, this book by L. Sprague de Camp helped establish time-travel as a solid sub-genre of science fiction.

An indication of the influence and longevity of the book is by the number of best-selling writers who have written stories in direct response to, or influenced by, Lest Darkness Fall. This new volume also includes three such stories by Frederik Pohl, David Drake and S. M. Stirling written over a period of forty-three years—a testament to the timelessness of the book.

Similar, thematically, to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the book tells the tale of Martin Padway who, as he is walking around in modern Rome, is suddenly transported though time to 6th Century Rome.

Once in ancient Rome, Padway (now Martinus Paduei Quastor) embarks on an ambitious project of single-handedly changing history.

L. Sprague de Camp was a student of history (and the author of a number of popular works on the subject). In Lest Darkness Fall he combines his extensive knowledge of the workings of ancient Rome with his extraordinary imagination to create one of the best books of time travel ever written.

Ellery Queen Mysteries on DVD

If you are a big mystery buff, you may want to check out the Ellery Queen Mysteries DVD set, which is Amazon's Deal of the Day today.

Book Description
From the creators of Columbo and Murder, She Wrote… Match wits with Ellery Queen (Jim Hutton) in all 22 digitally restored, uncut and unedited episodes of this classic NBC series following the exploits of the famed writer as he assists his father, Inspector Richard Queen (David Wayne), in solving the mysteries that baffle the New York City police force.

Guest Stars include: Don Ameche, Dana Andrews, Tom Bosley, George Burns, Joan Collins, Troy Donahue, Anne Francis, Eva Gabor, Larry Hagman, June Lockhart, Robert Loggia, Roddy McDowall, Ed McMahon, Sal Mineo, Donald O'Connor, Dean Stockwell, Dick Van Patten, Vincent Price, Cesar Romero, Betty White, and many more!

Amazon Review
The case of the missing TV series has finally been cracked, but why Ellery Queen lasted only one season (1975-76) and fell into obscurity is a real mystery. Based on the evidence in this six-disc set, this loving homage to the classic murder mystery created by Richard Levinson and William Link was, like their Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, nonviolent and intelligent television of the first order. Set in the 1940s, Ellery Queen stars boyishly charming Jim Hutton, one of the screen's most likable leading men, as the famed mystery writer and sleuth who helps his father, Inspector Richard Queen (David Wayne), solve the most baffling of cases. The pleasures this series affords are anything but guilty. Each intriguing episode begins with the preview of a murder, a roundup of the suspects (Was it the jealous wife? The dictatorial director?), and an irresistible challenge to viewers to "match wits with Ellery Queen and see if you can guess whodunit." Before revealing the killer, Ellery breaks the fourth wall to ask if we amateur sleuths at home have the mystery figured out, offering last-minute clues such as, "Once you figure out how, you'll know who." As with Burke's Law, each episode of Ellery Queen is packed with enough Hollywood legends, venerable character actors, and TV faves to fill The Love Boat. "The Adventure of Veronica's Veils" features George Burns as the victim ("I didn't die of natural causes," he announces via a filmed presentation following his demise), William Demarest, Don Porter, comedian Jack Carter, Hayden Rorke (Dr. Bellows on I Dream of Jeannie), and John Hillerman in his recurring role as radio detective Simon Brimmer, forever trying to one-up Queen. Queen himself makes it a point "to be observant and pay attention to details," particularly for that "dying clue which makes absolutely no sense." You'd be advised to do the same. The intricately plotted stories turn on the most arcane of clues and circumstances, as in the pilot episode "Too Many Suspects," in which solving a fashion designer's murder hinges on the reenactment of a TV news broadcast (maybe that explains the one-season run). An interview with Link, not very lively, but interesting, is included as a bonus feature. --Donald Liebenson

Eight Free Books from Copia

There's a new bookstore in town and it combines the social networking features of Goodreads or LibaryThing with the ability to buy books. Copia's books are in EPUB format (ADE-DRM'd), but you must install their reader in order to download books (when you install it, skip the third step, where you authorize your Adobe login if you PC already has Adobe Digital Editions installed). To bribe you into creating an account (which is free) and installing their reader (required to download the books), Copia is giving every new account holder seven free books, all published by Rosetta Books:

• A Passage To India ($7.39 Kindle), by E. M. Forster
• Brave New World ($6.29 Kindle), by Aldous Huxley
• The Graduate ($7.99 Kindle), by Charles Webb
• Red Alert ($9.99 paperback), by Peter George (the novel "Dr. Strangelove" was based on)
• Shoeless Joe ($7.99 Kindle), by W. P. Kinsella (the novel "Field of Dreams" was based on)
• Slaughterhouse-Five ($5.24 Kindle), by Kurt Vonnegut
• Midnight Cowboy ($7.99 Kindle), by James Leo Herlihy

You can also add fifteen free Harlequin books (that are free in pretty much all the ebookstores), if you wish to do so. I did discover one in the list that hasn't been free on Kindle (although you can get the PDF from Harlequin's website):

• Passion to Die For ($1.77 Kindle), by Marilyn Pappano

When you create an account, you'll have to give them an email address, but other than your name, no other personal information and no credit card info (until you start purchasing non-free books). Click HERE to get started. For each book, click on Get This Book, then on Download Later (since it won't download automatically, anyway). After you've added all the books to your library, start the Copia reader (the links to download it are on their site). First, log in (remember, skip the Adobe activation if you already have ADE installed) and then Sync; once your booklist is showing, double click on each one to download (you can open then, then, but I skipped this part as well).

After they are all downloaded, exit the Copia reader and open Adobe Digital Editions. Click on the down arrow next to Library, then Add item to Library (or just press Ctrl-O). Find the books (under My Documents\Copia Library), click the first one and shift-click the last, to highlight them all, then click on OK. Now the books will all be in Adobe ADE and you can sideload them to the EPUB reader of your choice.

March Black Friday Sale: $5 Magazines

Tiger Direct has been having Black Friday every month (or week) and it looks like Amazon has decided to join them in using the phrase for any big sale, regardless of the time of year. Today thru Sunday, March 6, they are having Black Friday Magazine Madness, with a number of print magazines on sale for $5 for a year's subscription. These do include auto-renewal, but all that means is that as your subscription gets close to the end, you'll get an email from Amazon that it will auto-renew (at whatever rate is currently in force, just like most magazines subscriptions that send you letters in the mail to renew). If you don't want to renew, you follow the link and cancel the renewal.

I looked thru the selection and all of them are the type of magazine that the Kindle just doesn't handle well (at least, not yet). Gardens, wildlife, photography, aviation, boating, surfing, the Carribean, Bahamas and Florida are amongst the topics. I also saw several Science magazines that would be nice for kids as well as adults (and several on parenting and working mothers). Most of these are magazines with lots of glossy pictures that won't translate well to eInk. Although I doubt anyone pays the up to $60 list price quoted on some of them, I also don't think you'll find a better deal than the five bucks Amazon is asking. That, no doubt, doesn't even cover the postage for delivery.

A second magazine sale is also going on at Amazon, with $5 off the regular subscription price. That leaves a number under $10 (and Redbook is only $3).