Have we finally gotten over the idea that summer is for silly books? Fun books, sure, and many are coming — brutally accurate sendups of friendship and dating in New York; novels about cultish clubs devoted to bingeing and “smut”; oddball stories from BoJack Horseman’s genius creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg. But don’t miss the heavier hitters: summer blockbusters from Colson Whitehead, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and Helen Phillips that would rule any season. Here are the 12 we’re most anticipating.
When the title heroine of Dennis-Benn’s luminous second novel gets visa approval, she jumps at the chance to move to New York City, leaving behind all she knows of her home in Jamaica — including her 5-year-old daughter. Patsy reminds us that it’s still radical for a young woman to pursue her own desires and ambitions and sexuality. It’s a bittersweet meditation on ambivalent motherhood and personal satisfaction, as well as the assigned roles we would do anything to break away from, no matter what the cost. --Maris Kreizman
“Hi, Bunny!”squeals the Heathers-esque clique of woman-children in Samantha Mackey’s MFA program. It’s their greeting, their shared nickname, their homage to their own fluffy blankness and docility. Samantha, the Nirvana to their Spice Girls, “is not a Bunny [and] never will be a Bunny,” or so she thinks. When she’s invited to their “Smut Salon,” Samantha caves to her own curiosity, and soon learns that the Bunnies’ plastic shells cover up some truly polluted characters. To call this a dark comedy undersells the richness of its message, and to say it’s a satire misses its realism. Bunny is so sharp it will leave you bloody. --Hillary Kelly
Someone Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory, by Raphael Bob-Waksberg (Knopf, June 11)
This is exactly the kind of book you’d hope the creator of BoJack Horseman would write. Just as his animated show is a bleary-eyed tour de force composed of equal parts depression and fun, Bob-Waksberg’s debut story collection is wonderfully weird, pushing familiar stories to their absurdist limits (e.g., the couple who wants to keep their wedding simple with absolutely no goat-sacrificing). Yet each one has a chewy emotional center and a gut punch worth waiting for. --Maris Kreizman
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong (Penguin, June 16)
We’re living in a golden age of immigrant stories — thanks in part, sadly, to the foul mistreatment and alienation that awaits those who seek our shores. Enter Vuong, the 30-year-old poet and essayist and a former refugee from Vietnam, whose debut novel is told from the perspective of a son writing a letter to his mother which he knows she can never read. More than anything I’ve lately encountered, Vuong’s novel is a burning effigy of The Way We Live Now, sending the idea of “American values” up in flames. --Hillary Kelly
How Could She, by Lauren Mechling (Viking, June 25)
You know those once-original t-shirts that simply list names — “John & Paul & George & Ringo” or, say, “Carrie & Charlotte & Samantha & Miranda?” I’m considering one that reads “Sunny & Rachel & Geraldine & Hillary,” in homage to the four 30-something women Mechling must have plucked straight out of New York City media-land. Smart novels about adult friendship are so, so, so hard to find that this very 2019 novel — preoccupied with the rise of podcasts, the fall of glossy mags, and the writers caught in the middle — is destined to become the book you turn to when you can’t decide whether to hug or throttle your suddenly successful best friend. --Hillary Kelly
Supper Club, by Lara Williams (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, July 9)
If you’ve ever had to suffer through a woman talking about how she’s being “so bad” for eating a chocolate-chip cookie, Lara Williams’s debut — about a group of women who establish a Bacchanalian supper club— will leave you panting and ravenous. Imagine stuffing your face into a Dutch still life and smearing the fruits’ juices all over your friends as you dance to the latest Kraftwerk. That’s what Supper Club will do to you. In its unselfconscious splendor, the supper club (and the book) tackles age-old questions about the female form with a delightfully 21st-century voice. --Hillary Kelly
Three Women, by Lisa Taddeo (Avid Reader Press, July 9)
Best Books To Read In Your 20s
Journalist Lisa Taddeo spent a full decade immersed in the sex lives of three ordinary American woman — Maggie, a teenager involved in a “relationship” with her teacher; Lina, a Midwesterner whose marriage lacks any zeal; and Sloane, a sophisticated Newport restaurant owner whose husband has sometimes unsettling sexual tastes. Taddeo lived in their towns. She drove across the country (six times). She documents their text messages, their sex positions, their basest desires. The result is the most in-depth look at the female sex drive and all its accompanying social, emotional, reproductive, and anthropological implications that’s been published in decades. But it’s also fully immersive: gonzo journalism without the machismo. --Hillary Kelly
The Need, by Helen Phillips (Simon & Schuster, July 9)
Molly is alone with her toddler daughter and baby son when she hears a strange noise in the hall. Is it an intruder, or one of the many figments that have left her second-guessing the world around her since she became a mother? Spoiler alert: This time she isn’t imagining things, but the mystery of just who is lurking under that papier maché deer-head mask is more terrifying than any garden-variety home invader. Plotted like a thriller but seemingly born of a ménage à trois betweeen an Italo Calvino novel, a mommy blog, and Shirley Jackson’s “domestic memoirs,” here is the next novel mothers will be passing around like illicit candy. --Hillary Kelly
The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, July 16)
Whitehead has a knack for dragging the dirtiest bits of our country’s racially repugnant past into the glaring light. His new novel is based on the history of The Dozier School for Boys, a brutal Florida institution where more than a hundred burial sites have been discovered over the past half decade. In Whitehead’s reimagining, Elwood Curtis, a black teenager in the Jim Crow South, lands in the Nickel Academy, where he slowly discovers just how expendable the school — and the region writ large — find boys like him to be. Once again, the author of the Pulitzer-winning The Underground Railroad reckons with a past that is definitely not even past. --Hillary Kelly
Trick Mirror, by Jia Tolentino (Random House, August 6)
It isn’t hyperbolic to say that New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time — writing about feminism, vaping, popular music, religion, and sexual assault with equal amounts of ease and insight. In her debut essay collection, the writer unveils nine new pieces that help cement her place in the essayist canon. She’s an expert in the sweet spot where contemporary politics and youth culture meet and make out. --Maris Kreizman
The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa (Pantheon, August 15)
First it’s small things — bells, ribbons, stamps — that disappear from the cloistered Japanese island where an unnamed novelist toils over her next book and worries about her community’s increasing isolation. With the objects go the memory of them: “It doesn’t hurt,” the protagonist’s mother explains to her, “and you won’t even be particularly sad.” Eventually, the “disappeared” things — paper, springtime — grow in scale and value, and the narrator struggles to avoid the clutches of the titular Memory Police. An unfortunately zeitgeisty novel about censorship, oppression, and the gradual compression of experience under autocratic regimes, this is a deeply traumatizing novel in the best way possible. --Hillary Kelly
Fleishman Is In Trouble, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Random House, August 18)
For years, journalist Taffy Akner has written swoon-worthy profiles, portraits of celebrities ranging from Gwyneth Paltrow and Jonathan Franzen to Tonya Harding that combine superhuman levels of empathy with a special talent for vivisecting a person and everything she stands for. So it’s no wonder that Akner’s debut novel features blistering observations about unforgettable characters, some of whom are more flawed than others. Fleishman Is in Trouble subverts the narratives that Great Male Writers have been putting out for centuries, and does so with authority and grace. --Maris Kreizman
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Introduction
Find Free Books
Tech To Make Life Easier
Connect To Entertainment
Fix It Yourself
Ever thought of creating a library with thousands of free books? You'd never have to spend a dime. It sounds impossible, but it's not! Free books, on nearly any subject you can think of, are all over the web, ready to be read, downloaded, and shared. All you need to do is speed up your reading so you have enough time to get through all of them!
A huge quantity of books previously unavailable to the public were released starting in 2019 to the public domain, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Because of an amendment to that act, works published between 1923 and 1977 can enter the public domain 95 years after their creation. Many of the sites listed in this article can get you access to the tens of thousands of books (and movies, songs, and cartoons) available under this act. Downloads should be free and without retribution under U.S. copyright law. Keep an eye on your favorite sites; they will update regularly with these now legal-to-download books.
Here are the top 20 sites where you can find and download a wide variety of completely free books online, anything from romance novels to computer technology manuals.
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Read Print
What we like
Easy to search and offers lots of ways to find free books
Eve api keys. Free account gives you access to a personal page to manage your bookshelf and interact with the community
Comprehensive quotation database
What we don't like
Only has classic books and those with Creative Commons licenses
No way to download free books directly from this site
Read Print is an online library where you can find thousands of free books to read. The books are classics or Creative Commons licensed and include everything from nonfiction and essays to fiction, plays, and poetry.
Free registration at Read Print gives you the ability to track what you've read and what you would like to read, write reviews of books you have read, add books to your favorites, and to join online book clubs or discussion lists to discuss great works of literature.
You can access the books on Read Print without joining, however, you won't have access to the other features mentioned above.
Finding Free Books On Read Print's Website
There are several ways you can find what you're looking for at Read Print:
A keyword search for book titles, authors, or quotes.
Search by type of work published; i.e., essays, fiction, non-fiction, plays, etc.
View the top books to read online as per the Read Print community.
Browse the alphabetical author index.
Check out the top 250 most famous authors on Read Print.
For example, if you're searching for books by William Shakespeare, a simple search will turn up all his works, in a single location.
Reading Books at Read Print
Once you've found a book you're interested in, click Read Online and the book will open within your web browser. You also have the option to Launch Reading Mode if you're not fond of the website interface. Reading Mode looks like an open book, however, all the free books on the Read Print site are divided by chapter so you'll have to go back and open it every time you start a new chapter.
If you find a free book you really like and you'd like to download it to your mobile e-reader, Read Print provides links to Amazon, where the book can be downloaded. However, when downloading books from Amazon, you may have to pay for the book unless you're a member of Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
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ManyBooks
What we like
Selection includes more than just classics and Creative Commons books
Great categorization makes finding what you love easier
What we don't like
Appears some functionality may not be available on the new site
Some areas haven't been updated in more than a year
ManyBooks is one of the best resources on the web for free books in a variety of download formats. There are hundreds of books available here, in all sorts of interesting genres, and all of them are completely free. One of the best features of this site is that not all of the books listed here are classic or creative commons books.
Finding Free Books on Many Books
ManyBooks is in transition at the time of this writing. A beta test version of the site is available that features a serviceable search capability. Readers can also find books by browsing genres, popular selections, author, and editor's choice. Plus, ManyBooks has put together collections of books that are an interesting way to explore topics in a more organized way.
In addition to these basic search options, you can also use ManyBooks Advanced Search to pinpoint exactly what you're looking for. There's also the ManyBooks RSS feeds that can keep you up to date on a variety of new content, including: All New Titles By Language.
Reading Books at ManyBooks
All of the free books at ManyBooks are downloadable — some directly from the ManyBooks site, some from other websites (such as Amazon). When you register for the site you're asked to choose your favorite format for books, however, you're not limited to the format you choose. When you find a book you want to read, you can select the format you prefer to download from a drop down menu of dozens of different file formats.
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The Literature Network
The Literature Network: This site is organized alphabetically by author. Click on any author's name, and you'll see a biography, related links and articles, quizzes, and forums. Most of the books here are free, but there are some downloads that require a small fee.
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Free Computer Books
Free Computer Books: Every computer subject and programming language you can think of is represented here. Free books and textbooks, as well as extensive lecture notes, are available.
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Librivox
Librivox.org is a dream come true for audiobook lovers. All the books here are absolutely free, which is good news for those of us who have had to pony up ridiculously high fees for substandard audiobooks.
Librivox has many volunteers that work to release quality recordings of classic books, all free for anyone to download. If you've been looking for a great place to find free audio books, Librivox is a good place to start.
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Authorama
Authorama.com features a nice selection of free books written in HTML and XHTML, which basically means that they are in easily readable format. Most books here are featured in English, but there are quite a few German language texts as well. Books are organized alphabetically by the author’s last name. Authorama offers a good selection of free books from a variety of authors, both current and classic.
Authorama offers up a good selection of high-quality, free books that you can read right in your browser or print out for later. These are books in the public domain, which means that they are freely accessible and allowed to be distributed; in other words, you don't need to worry if you're looking at something illegal here.
How Do I find Free Books to Read Here?
Authorama is a very simple site to use. You can scroll down the list of alphabetically arranged authors on the front page, or check out the list of Latest Additions at the top.
Once you find something you're interested in, click on the book title and you'll be taken to that book's specific page. You can choose to read chapters within your browser (easiest) or print pages out for later.
Why Should I Use Authorama?
If you're looking for an easy to use source of free books online, Authorama definitely fits the bill. All of the books offered here are classic, well-written literature, easy to find and simple to read.
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Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is one of the largest sources for free books on the web, with over 30,000 downloadable free books available in a wide variety of formats.
Project Gutenberg is the oldest (and quite possibly the largest) library on the web, with literally hundreds of thousands free books available for download. The vast majority of books at Project Gutenberg are released in English, but there are other languages available.
If you already know what you are looking for, search the database by author name, title, language, or subjects. You can also check out the top 100 list to see what other people have been downloading.
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International Digital Children's Library
International Digital Children's Library: Browse through a wide selection of high quality free books for children here. Check out Simple Search to get a big picture of how this library is organized: by age, reading level, length of book, genres, and more.
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eBooks and Text Archives
Ebooks and Text Archives: From the Internet Archive; a library of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books. The free books on this site span every possible interest.
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Questia Public Library
Questia Public Library has long been a favorite choice of librarians and scholars for research help. They also offer a world-class library of free books filled with classics, rarities, and textbooks.
More than 5,000 free books are available for download here, alphabetized both by title and by author.
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Wikisource
Wikisource: Online library of user-submitted and maintained content. While you won't technically find free books on this site, at the time of this writing, over 200,000 pieces of content are available to read.
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Wikibooks
Wikibooks is an open collection of (mostly) textbooks. Subjects range from Computing to Languages to Science; you can see all that Wikibooks has to offer in Books by Subject.
Be sure to check out the Featured Books section, which highlights free books that the Wikibooks community at large believes to be “the best of what Wikibooks has to offer, and should inspire people to improve the quality of other books.”
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Bibliomania
Bibliomania: Bibliomania gives readers over 2,000 free classics, including literature book notes, author bios, book summaries, and study guides. Free books are presented in chapter format.
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The Open Library
The Open Library: There are over one million free books here, all available in PDF, ePub, Daisy, DjVu and ASCII text.
You can search for ebooks specifically by checking the Show only ebooks option under the main search box. Once you've found an ebook, you will see it available in a variety of formats.
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Sacred Texts
Sacred Texts contains the web’s largest collection of free books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric in general.
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SlideShare
Another site that isn't strictly for free books, Slideshare does offer a large amount of free content for you to read. It is an online forum where anyone can upload a digital presentation on any subject.
Millions of people utilize SlideShare for research, sharing ideas, and learning about new technologies. SlideShare supports documents and PDF files, and all these are available for free download (after free registration).
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Free eBooks
Free eBooks offers a wonderfully diverse variety of free books, ranging from Advertising to Health to Web Design. Standard memberships (yes, you do have to register in order to download anything but it only takes a minute) are free and allow members to access unlimited eBooks in HTML, but only five books every month in the PDF and TXT formats.
A VIP membership here (at $39.95 for a full year or $49.95 for a lifetime membership) gives you unlimited access to any book you want, in any format.
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The Online Books Page
The Online Books Page: Maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, this page lists over one million free books available for download in dozens of different formats.
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Almost Free Books - World Public Library
World Public Library: Technically, the World Public Library is NOT free. But for $8.95 annually, you can gain access to hundreds of thousands of books in over one hundred different languages. They also have over one hundred different special collections ranging from American Lit to Western Philosophy. Worth a look.
They also have what they call a Give Away Page, which is over two hundred of their most popular titles, audio books, technical books, and books made into movies. Give the freebies a try, and if you really like their service, then you can choose to become a member and get the whole collection.
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Not Quite Free Books - Scribd
Scribd offers a fascinating collection of all kinds of reading materials: presentations, textbooks, popular reading, and much more, all organized by topic. Scribd is one of the web’s largest sources of published content, with literally millions of documents published every month.
However, Scribd is not free. It does offer a 30-day free trial, but after the trial you'll have to pay $8.99 per month to maintain a membership that grants you access to the sites entire database of books, audiobooks, and magazines. Windows vista lite download. Skyrim se achievements mod enabler cheats. Still not a terrible deal!
Additional Resources for Free Books
In addition to the sites referenced above, there are also the following resources for free books:
WorldeBookFair: for a limited time, you can have access to over a million free ebooks.
WorldLibrary:More than 330,000+ unabridged original single file PDF eBooks by the original authors.
FreeTechBooks: just like the name of the site, you can get free technology-related books here.
FullBooks.com: organized alphabetically; there are a TON of books here.
Bartleby eBooks: a huge array of classic literature, all available for free download.