This weeks free books include one from Peter Straub.
Free MS Reader Books
lost boy lost girl
by Peter Straub
from Random House

A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son—beautiful, troubled fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill—vanishes from the face of the earth. To his uncle, horror novelist Timothy Underhill, Mark’s inexplicable absence feels like a second death. After his sister-in-law’s funeral, Tim searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help him unravel this mystery of death and disappearance. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother’s suicide, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge. No mere empty building, the house on Michigan Street whispers from attic to basement with the echoes of a long-hidden true-life horror story, and Tim Underhill comes to fear that in investigating its unspeakable history, Mark stumbled across its last and greatest secret: a ghostly lost girl who may have coaxed the needy, suggestible boy into her mysterious domain. With lost boy lost girl, Peter Straub affirms once again that he is the master of literary horror.

The Vor Game
by Lois McMaster Bujold
from Fictionwise

Miles Vorkosigan graduates from the Barrayaran Military Academy with high expectations of ship command, but is disappointed with an assignment as meteorologist to Lazkowski Base, an arctic training camp. His tenure in the windy, snow-covered north is cut short when Miles narrowly averts a massacre between the trigger-happy base commander and mutinous recruits. After a brief stay under 'house arrest', Miles is re-assigned to investigate a suspicious military build-up near a wormhole nexus. Reviving his undercover persona as mercenary Admiral Miles Naismith, his routine information-gathering duty expands to a rescue mission when the Emperor of Barrayar disappears during a political conference on a nearby space station. Miles must use his considerable negotiating skills to avoid a showdown between competing powers for control of the wormhole, find the Emperor... and watch his back for the arctic base commander seeking bloody vengeance.

The Self-Publishing Manual: How to Write, Print and Sell Your Own Book
by Dan Poynter
from Alexandria Digital Literature

The Self-Publishing Manual: How to Write, Print and Sell Your Own Book shows the potential writer how to speed write a book; copyright it; bypass publishers; set up a book publishing company; promote books with book reviews, book signings, feature articles and radio/TV interviews; get a book into bookstores, specialty stores, catalogs and on the Web; and make spin-offs of a book. Nearly every one wants to write a book. Most people have the ability, some have the drive, but few have the organization. Therefore, the greatest need is for a simple system, a road map. The basic plan in this book will not only provide you with direction, it will promote the needed drive and expose abilities you never thought existed. Dan Poynter reveals to you the secrets of his own successful writing, production and promotion

I'm having problems downloading the books again. :( I re-activated my MS Reader and everything, but still no luck. Anybody else having this problem or is it just me again? :confused:

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I got them with no problems. When I get a chance I will email them to you. I had trouble with the books two weeks ago and had to get them with another computer. I have no idea what causes this to happen.

Thanks darkside. :):up:

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This weeks free books

Balance of Power
by Richard North Patterson
from Ballantine Books

President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancée, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington–the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA). Allied with the President’s most determined rival, the resourceful and relentless Senate Majority Leader Frank Fasano, the SSA declares all-out war on Kerry Kilcannon, deploying its arsenal of money, intimidation, and secret dealings to eviscerate Kilcannon’s crusade–and, it hopes, destroy his presidency. This ignites a high-stakes game of politics and legal maneuvering in the Senate, the courtroom, and across the country, which the charismatic but untested young President is determined to win at any cost. But in the incendiary clash over gun violence and gun rights, the cost to both Kilcannons may be even higher than imagined.

How to Find Hidden Real Estate Bargains
by Robert Irwin
from McGraw-Hill

Robert Irwin has been one of the nation’s top real estate authors for more than 20 years. His 1991 bestseller, How to Find Real Estate Bargains, continues to be one of the most popular guides to finding real estate bargains and buying them at rock-bottom prices. Thoroughly updated and revised, this new edition is for reader in the market for a bargain home for himself or herself or as an investment for resale profit. Irwin fills readers in on everything they need to know to quickly decide if a property’s potential payoff outweighs its risks. With nearly 50 percent all-new material, the second edition features new chapters on: All types of repos, including HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FDIC, GSA, and SBA; Property tax, ATF and IRS, probate, bare land, and Recreational property sales; Finding bargain properties in strong markets by working directly with sellers and Using the Web to find the hottest bargains.

The Gathering Storm
by Winston Churchill
from RosettaBooks

The Gathering Storm is the first volume of The Second World War and in some ways a continuation of The World Crisis, Churchill's history of World War I. The Gathering Storm is his attempt to come to grips with the terrible circumstances that gave rise to Nazi Germany and a second, even more destructive world conflict. As he notes in his preface, Churchill was perhaps the only person who held such prominent positions of power in both world wars, so he is remarkably well-qualified to tell the tragic story of war to peace to war. The Gathering Storm considers the stipulations and consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the capitulation at Munich and the entry of the British into the war. This is the first volume of his Noble-Prize winning six-part chronicle of World War II. The volume is pervaded by Churchill’s somber feeling that the Second World War was largely a senseless and avoidable conflict, but it sets the stage for the heroism and glory that are to follow. Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 due in no small part to this awe-inspiring work.

I was actually able to download this week's books. :)

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http://www.screenwriterstore.co.uk/i...af?_P=DOW10043

If there is any interest this site has free screenplays by e-mail. I'm an aspiring screen writer so I love this site.

http://www.microsoft.com/reader/prom.../free_shop.asp
Forgot to post this weeks books. They will be gone on Friday.
Its worth checking out this weeks free books because it includes Bill Byrson's excellent book A Walk in the Woods.

A Walk in the Woods
by Bill Bryson
from RosettaBooks

Bill Bryson decided in 1996 to walk the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail. Winding from Georgia to Maine, this uninterrupted "hiker's highway" sweeps through the heart of some of America's most beautiful and treacherous terrain. Bryson risked snakebite and hantavirus to trudge up unforgiving mountains, plod through swollen rivers, and yearn for cream sodas and hot showers. This amusingly ill-conceived adventure brings Bryson to the height of his comic powers, but his acute eye also observes an astonishing landscape of silent forests, sparkling lakes, and other national treasures that are often ignored or endangered. The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson's hilarious first travel book, chronicled a trip in his mother's Chevy around small-town America. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951, he lived in England for almost two decades. He now lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife and four children. His other notable bestsellers are I'm A Stranger Here Myself, In a Sunburned Country and, most recently, A Short History of Nearly Everything. A Walk in the Woods is a laugh-out-loud account of an outrageously rugged hike by a beloved comic author.

The Company
by Robert Littell
from Overlook Press

The Company, the magnum opus of acclaimed espionage novelist Robert Littell is a mesmerizing, dazzlingly plotted epic that tells the life and death struggle of two generations of CIA operatives during a long Cold War. Littell's book spans nearly fifty years of postwar espionage, offering perspectives on excursions as varied as the Rosenberg trial, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the alleged 'assassination' of Pope John Paul I in 1978 and the great winding down of perestroika. “A gold mine for true conspiracy theorists Robert Littell's The Company reads like a breeze and is guaranteed to suck you right back into the Alice-in-Wonderland world of spy vs. spy.” Former Newseek journalist Robert Littell is the bestselling author of thirteen novels, published in twelve languages around the world. The New York Times bestseller, The Company, is his most recent.

Savage Night
by Jim Thompson
from ereads.com

First class criminal Carl Bigelow has a difficult job ahead of him. How can he kill one-time hoodlum Jake Winroy without making it look like a hit? The man is about to turn evidence in to the authorities, threatening to bring the law down on the powerful crime syndicate that runs the city. Allowing Jake Winroy to live could be very bad for the career of Carl's boss, not to mention several prominent but corrupt Long Island politicians. Luckily for Carl, Winroy's beautiful wife is bored with his drunken behavior and anxious to become a widow. It seems that she could easily be implicated in the plot by her eagerness to take up with Carl, the handsome young hoodlum. Jim Thompson was born in 1906 in Anadarko, Oklahoma. He sold his first story to the True Detective at the age of fourteen and went on to write twenty-nine novels, dozens of short stories and two screenplays.

thanks for the update darkside! :up:

This is the last week for free ebooks from Microsoft. Its The Americans series from Daniel J Boorstin and I believe its a very good series of books. These are available until the 21st. The link for these books and other sales on Ebooks is available here http://msreadernews.com/

The Americans: The Colonial Experience
by Daniel J. Boorstin
from RosettaBooks

In this first installment of his groundbreaking trilogy, The Americans, Daniel Boorstin explores the foundations of American institutions and the American psyche. A history not of famous men, wars and negotiations, but of ideas, cultural formations and the materials of everyday life, The Colonial Experience challenges us to think differently about history. It earned him the Bancroft Prize in 1959. The opening chapters of The Colonial Experience discuss the peculiar characteristics of some of the original colonists: the Puritans, the Quakers, the settlers of Georgia and Virginia. In Boorstin's account, the emigration to the new world produced a unique environment in which the traditions of the old were set in dynamic tension with the opportunities and uncertainties of life in a new world.

The Americans: The National Experience
by Daniel J. Boorstin
from RosettaBooks

Covering the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War, The Americans: The National Experience, the second volume of Daniel Boorstin's award-winning trilogy, examines the realities of everyday life for the early pioneers as well as for those living in the established population centers on the Atlantic coast. Daniel J. Boorstin’s second volume of the trilogy The American: The National Experience won the Francis Parkman Prize. He graduated from Harvard University with highest honors and received his doctorate from Yale University. He was the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and for twelve years served as the Librarian of Congress. In 1989, he received the National Book Award for lifetime contribution to literature. Boorstin lives with his wife and editor, Ruth F. Boorstin, in Washington, D.C.

The Americans: The Democratic Experience
by Daniel J. Boorstin
from RosettaBooks

The third installment of his popular and widely-respected trilogy, The Americans: The Democratic Experience examines the formation of a distinctively American character. Covering the period between the Civil War and the moon landing, the book discusses the realities of everyday life for the intrepid souls filling in the frontiers, for the emigrants coming from Ireland, Italy and elsewhere, and for those already living in the growing population centers on the Atlantic coast. Most interestingly, Boorstin convincingly relates those foundational experiences to the unique character of present-day American institutions and practices. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Americans: The Democratic Experience is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand present-day American culture.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.htm
 

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/04...CLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Accelerando a novel by Charles Stross

Here are some links to sites with free e-texts.

I realise that some may have been posted before &/or there is likely to be repetition across the various sites:

http://etext.virginia.edu/ebooks/
http://etext.virginia.edu/ebooks/staffpicks.html

http://www.etext.org/index.shtml

http://arthursclassicnovels.com/arthurs/free.html

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/meta/authors.html

Re: One-and-only free "e-text" thread
 

In case it has not been mentioned before, Cory Doctorow gives away his works in e-format.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/30/cor...1doctorow.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...-cory-doctorow

There's a link to the download site at the end of the Forbes acticle.

Re: One-and-only free "e-text" thread
 

There's probably loads of info in the thread that needs checking but...

... here's something fairly current that I stumbled across:

• http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/books/inf1/index.htm

Simon Morden's "Heart"
 

http://www.simonmorden.com/books/heart/heart-ebooks/

Free but you can donate via Paypal. It's a pet project of the author using his first/out-of-print novel to see how e-publishing works.

Re: One-and-only free "e-text" thread
 

Hi all! My political thriller about a plot to steal the presidential election is now available for free on amazon.com. It's only free for today and tomorrow (October 3rd and 4th). Please check it out. Here's the link:

The Faithless

Re: One-and-only free "e-text" thread
 

Kinda sad that this thread hasn't been used for the past five months, but I have a short story (science fiction/time travel) available for free March 7th and 8th on Amazon. Here's the link:

Present Perfect

Re: One-and-only free "e-text" thread
 

Perusing the Online SF Encyclopedia just now I happened across a reference to a now defunct but apparently much-admired online 'zine which has an archive containing free fiction and non-fiction (including Bruce Sterling's Schism Matrix columns) here:

• http://www.infinitematrix.net/archive/archive.html

I think it looks like a wonderful resource. As is the aforementioned SFE.