Useful Links: Books
PRPL Libguide Booklists
- PRL If You Like...Lists on the WebIncludes If You Like lists for: Big Little Lies, Mary Higgins Clark, Michael Connelly, The Da Vinci Code, Downton Abbey, Janet Evanovich, Vince Flynn, Gone Girl, Carl Hiaasen, Tony Hillerman,The Hunger Games, Jhumpa Lahiri, Stieg Larsson, Louise Penny, and Stuart Woods . Also: Literary Fiction and Spy Fiction and links to lists at other libraries.
- PRPL Fiction by ThemesKidnappings, Memory Problems, Unusual Narrators
All About Books
- Goodreads From 'About Us': Goodreads is the largest site for readers and book recommendations in the world. We have more than 14,000,000 members who have added more than 470,000,000 books to their shelves. A home for casual readers and bona-fide bookworms alike, Goodreads users recommend books, compare what they are reading, keep track of what they've read and would like to read, find their next favorite book, form book clubs and much more. Goodreads was launched in January 2007.
- Online Books Page While not the place to look for current bestsellers, this page offers links to over 20,000 free books on the Web. Searchable by author or title, Online Books also allows the user to browse online books by their Library of Congress call number category, from Philosophy, Psychology, and Religion to Law, Education, or Technology. Each category has a limited number of subheadings, depending on the particular subject. A list of links to online journals and other serials is also provided.
Book Discussion Groups
- LitLovers Reading Guides Our 2,500 Reading Guides include Discussion Questions, Book Reviews, Author Bios, and Plot Summaries.
Genre Reading
- The SF Site The Home Page for Science Fiction and Fantasy
- Unbound Worlds Penguin/Random House speculative fiction site
Book Reviews
- Book Page If you missed picking up a free print copy of the monthly BookPage at the library, you can find its book reviews here online. Click on the Print Edition tab at the top left of the page to explore the content of the print editions. From there, you may also click on the icon to Browse the Current Edition to see the print edition page by page. You may browse for books on the website by genre or by author and BookPage also offers four free email newsletters: Book of the Day (weekdays), BookPageXTRA (twice a month), Children’s Corner (twice a month), and BookPage Top 10 (monthly).
EBooks
- 20 Best Websites to Download Free Ebooks Looking for more free downloadable ebooks for your computer or portable reader than you can find in the RCLS Digital Download Center? The websites on these lists compiled by Hongkiat.com and their readers offer free access to hundreds of downloads. The websites vary in content and format, so do some exploring to find the sites that offer the most in the format you need.
- 20 Best Websites to Download Free Ebooks (Part 2) Looking for more free downloadable ebooks for your computer or portable reader than you can find in the RCLS Digital Download Center? The websites on these lists compiled by Hongkiat.com and their readers offer free access to hundreds of downloads. The websites vary in content and format, so do some exploring to find the sites that offer the most in the format you need.
- Project Gutenberg : Free eBooks Project Gutenberg offers over 45,000 free ebooks for downloading or reading online: free in the United States because their copyright has expired. (They may not be free of copyright in other countries.) The site also includes some audio books—human-read and computer-generated. You may browse by Author, Title, Language or Recently Posted titles or, if you already know what book you want to read, you may search the book catalog for author, title, or subjects. Check out Project Gutenberg’s Top 100 page at http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top to see what other people are downloading—Pride & Prejudice has been very popular.
- Digital Children's Book Selections at Library of Congress In honor of the 100th anniversary of the first Children’s Book Week, the Library of Congress has made digital versions of 70 classic children’s books free and open to the public. Titles available include “Deslow’s Humpty Dumpty,” “Stories from Hans Anderson,” “The Secret Garden” and “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” “This special collection presents children’s books selected from the General and Rare Book Collections at the Library of Congress,” the collection’s “About” page says. “The collection includes classic works that are still read by children today, and lesser-known treasures drawn from the Library’s extensive collection of historically significant children’s books.” Some of the titles available can be downloaded as PDFs. Because all the books in the selection were published in the United States and England before 1924, they are no longer under copyright and may be used in any way.
Audiobooks
- Lit2Go Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed for use as a read-along or as supplemental reading material for your classroom.
- LIbriVox Free public domain audiobooks -- Read by volunteers from around the world.