Online Books

We know that many people are looking for free online books for adults and kids. Many are looking for the latest bestselling fiction that may be available on the Internet for reading for FREE. A few years ago, James Patterson appeared on a TV advertisement that promotes one of his books. Jokingly, he says that if people do not purchase the book, he will kill off the very popular main character, Alex Cross. What is almost as amusing is the thought that well-known, bestselling authors and their publishers will put the most recent novels on the Internet for free. It is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that current, very popular fiction and nonfiction books ("bestsellers") will appear on the World Wide Web without a FEE. It is simply one of those facts of life that many authors want to make some money for their labor, although for many it can be a labor of love.

The Online Books Page is located at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/aboutolbp.html

"The Online Books Page is a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet. It also aims to encourage the development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of all.

This website includes an index to hundreds of thousands of online books. You should not need a special electronic reader to read the book.

There are more directories that will lead you to more online free texts.

The Online Books Page was founded, and is edited, by John Mark Ockerbloom, He is a digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. He is solely responsible for the content of the site. The site is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, who provide the server, disk space, and network bandwidth for the site. They also employ the editor, and support him in his various digital library activities (of which this is but one)."

Project Gutenberg is located at https://www.gutenberg.org/.

Here is some information that they state on their website:

"Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 60,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, , iPhone, Android or other portable device.

We carry high quality ebooks: Our ebooks were previously published by bona fide publishers and digitized by us with the help of thousands of volunteers.

All our ebooks can be freely downloaded: Choose between ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.

No fee or registration is required, but if you find Project Gutenberg useful, we kindly ask you to donate a small amount so we can buy and digitize more books.

Over 100,000 free ebooks are available through our Partners, Affiliates and Resources."

The Literature Network at http://www.online-literature.com/author_index.php features free online books but also very good biographies of many of the authors. Many class assignments require biographies and this website can be a help for those assignments.

Bibliomania at http://www.bibliomania.com/ provides free online books as well research information about specific subjects, such as literary criticism. This is a good site to find books for leisurely reading and books for research help.

International Children's Digital Library at http://en.childrenslibrary.org/.
I do not have enough words to describe this ASTONISHING website. You have to look at it for yourself. "The goal of this foundation is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world.  Ultimately, the Foundation aspires to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature from the world community." Basically, this non-profit organization is digitalizing children's books in all kinds of countries and providing reading in all kinds of languages. The digital images not only present the text, but also present the rich colors of the pages and illustrations. Please visit this website if you are looking for kids and children's books to view online for free.

The Public Bookshelf at http://www.publicbookshelf.com/ does a good job of presenting romance novels as well as fiction from other genres. However, once again, we must say that these ARE good reads, but just not the most recent bestselling good reads.

Public Literature.org located at http://publicliterature.org/ has collected free online books in fiction, nonfiction, and sci fi. Many of these are the classics.

FullBooks.com is located at http://www.fullbooks.com/

Children's and Kids Books Online for Free

Some of the websites listed on this web page will provide online children's books for free. There does not appear to be a lot of websites that provide online children's / kid's books for free. The following website is an exception.

International Children's Digital Library at http://en.childrenslibrary.org/.
I do not have enough words to describe this ASTONISHING website. You have to look at it for yourself. "The goal of this foundation is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world.  Ultimately, the Foundation aspires to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature from the world community." Basically, this non-profit organization is digitalizing children's books in all kinds of countries and providing reading in all kinds of languages. The digital images not only present the text, but also present the rich colors of the pages and illustrations. Please visit this website if you are looking for kids and children's books to view online for free.