I’ve been looking for good free reads for my Kindle. I have a lot of downtime at my job and a pulpy, fast read keeps me from going crazy with boredom. So I’ve been looking for genre fiction mostly- I know there’s tons of free classics out there but for my purposes I like fast paced popcorn reads. However a lot of self-published stuff is terrible, mostly for want of editing. I’ve found a few good freebies (as well as inexpensive-ies) and I’m hoping other people have too.
These are the ones I’ve found so far, and are all free today at least:
LZR-1143-Perspectives, a collection of 6 short stories about a zombie outbreak. Good zombie horror.
The Plagiarist by Hugh Howey, which I haven’t read but I was so excited to see was free because his Wool Omnibus was by far the best thing I’ve read this year. If you’re an Amazon Prime member you can read Wool for free through their borrowing program.
A Princess of Mars, which I haven’t read either but I’m pretty stoked about because it’s the first in the John Carter series, which has been on my list for way too long.
Starfish by Peter Watts released via creative commons. One of the best SF stories I’ve read in a long, long time. His other books are also creative commons.
On Amazon, I ran across this collection of "50 Classic Page-Turners." This particular edition is not free, and I don’t know how well it’s formatted, but if you click the link you can look at the list of works included, and you can find editions of the individual works elsewhere that are free. Anyway, I haven’t read all the books on the list, but some of them, at least, certainly do qualify as fast-paced popcorn reads.
You can also find free SF at the Baen Free Library. I can personally only vouch for enjoying Murray Leinster’s Med Ship and Lois McMaster Bujold’s Warrior’s Apprentice and The Mountains of Mourning; perhaps others can tell us if there are other volumes there that are particularly worth reading.
As Thudlow mentioned, lots of free stuff at Baen Free Library. I recommend Wizards Baneby Rick Cook, 1632 by Eric Flint, and Pyramid Scheme by Flint and Dave Freer.
I should probably let someone who has an iPad answer this, but I’ll note that there is a Kindle App for iPad (and probably other e-reader apps too, I would assume); so anything you can read for free on a Kindle, you can read for free on an iPad.
Yes, download the free Kindle app to your iPad, then follow the instructions to sync it to your Amazon account. Then you can go to the Kindle store at the Amazon website and “purchase” any of the many free books available there. When you purchase a book from the Kindle store, there is an option for where to send it–you choose to send it to your iPad. Then when you next open the Kindle app on your iPad, the book will download to it.
There’s also “Three Men on the Bummel”, which is the follow-up. Perhaps a bit more polished, but somehow a little less magical at the same time, or so it seemed to me. There’s also more JKJ there for anyone else who (like me) is a fan.
I second both “Princess of Mars” and “the Lost World”, both of which I recently read for free on my Kindle. I’m in the middle of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea right now—almost exactly at the half way point, but I can’t say I’d recommend it right now. Does anyone know if this ever gets any better?
I’ve also downloaded some free Conan stories and H.P. Lovecraft stories as well. Most of this stuff I read as a teenager and was glad to be able to read it now for free, having gotten rid of a lot of my copies over the years in the interest of space.
They’re hysterical, Cumberdale. It’s sort of a creeping hilarity; often it just seems silly but by the time you’ve read a bunch of it, you’re breathless with goofy giggling. The sermon-betting story in Jeeves is great.
Thanks for the Kindle App for iPad info! I think I might already have that app on the phone.
I read the first Geek Mafia book for free from FeedBooks, and liked it enough to buy the second.
Cory Doctorow offers several of his novels as free downloads. I’m not sure if Makers is still free, but I loved that book like mad. It was magical and sad and scary and hopeful and made me an instant Doctorow fan.
Similarly, the guys at Machine of Death offer their book (a collection of stories based on the premise that there is a machine that will tell you how you’re going to die… Lots of funny, lots of poignant, lots of thought-provoking stuff) as a free download.
Oh, and Ellen, if I figured it out I’m sure you can! I think I got the kindle app from the iPad app store first, and it walked me through the (relatively simple) process.
