Can anyone recommend some particularly good, stirring fiction I could read online or download for free, perhaps through something like Project Gutenberg? I’m after Good Semi-Trash, really. I’m all for literature but my brain is knackered. The trouble is I just want some good, easy-to-read stories with a decent twist or a fascinating premise, and while there are plenty of guides to such things, few are arranged according to the work’s availability online. And while there’s plenty of literature available online, it’s tough going establishing just where I can find my kind of thing.
For example, a recent thread recommended the short story He Walked Around The Horses. This sounds like exactly the sort of thing I want to read, but I’m now awaiting delivery of the out-of-print book from the US and am fifteen quid lighter for it, too. If you know of any similarly fantastic stories, available more easily, I’d be very grateful for a link or suchlike.
Somewhere, I found a wonderful, wonderful Roald Dahl story about a bloke returned from a wartime flight raid over Europe, slowly recovering in hospital. That was brilliant, a beautiful twist. For once I realised the twist just at the pace the story intended me to. Can’t remember where I found it, it doesn’t seem to have been Bibliomania or Project Gutenberg.
Ignoring the decent twist part of your request and focusing on the Good Semi-Trash element, how about Autumn?
It’s a pretty damn good zombie novel, set in the UK and reads like James Herbert ripping off 28 days later - but it was published before the movie came out.
If you like Speculative Fiction, Baen has a free library of electronic books at webscriptions.net, you have to register for it but they have 30 or so current novels online or downloadable. I am a regular subscriber and have their whole ebook catalog=) <and no, dont ask me for copies, you can get like 5 books for $15US…deal with it>
Project Gutenberg has[ul]
[li]the stories of Ambrose Bierce (his most famous is "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge but there are many others)[/li][li]the stories of Saki (if you want, I can recommend specific titles, but he wrote lots of good short stories, many of them twisty)[/li][li]stories by Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes + others)[/li][li]G. K. Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown mysteries (and other stuff, but that’s a good starting place)[/li][li]W. W. Jacobs’ famous “The Monkey’s Paw” (and others, but that’s the only one I’m familiar with)[/li][li]Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan (and other stuff)[/li][li]works of Jack London[/li][li]stories by O. Henry (who is, of course, particularly known for his twists)[/li][li]works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, if you want early science fiction[/li]and lots more.
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I am in the middle of reading Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson. I got it for free from Project Gutenberg, after trying unsuccessfully to buy it through Amazon. Anyway, it is very entertaining, light reading and it was free! Recommended
Well if it’s sci-fi you’re after laddie, trip the link to the Baen Free Library where you can read entire books by the likes of David Weber, Eric Flint, Mercedes Lackey, Larry Niven, John Ringo, and a host of others. The downloads range from HTML to RTF and are 100% free. About 2 years ago, Baen started including CDs of collected works from their authors with copies of their hardcover books (my first was the Honorverse disk) and included the note “Feel free to copy and distribute this disk” (or words to that effect).
Pretty cagey on their part; They figure that you will get interested reading off your computer and go out and purchase the physical copies. See, i like to read in bed, under a tree on a spring day, in the bath, etc. and even a laptop is not too conducive for the total relaxation effect. I can, however, get an idea of whether or not i like an author before plunking down my hard-earned by perusing the Baen site. I have to honestly say, neither Baen nor the authors have lost any money on my account since adopting this practice, rather to the contrary; i have bought entire works by authors that i may have passed upon had i not had the opportunity to preview their work.
Kudos to Baen and the authors who have donated to the cause.
