Free Books From Amazon

E-Book Freebies

If you do a little legwork, it's possible to never pay Amazon for an e-book. This is important because Kindle books on Amazon can be up to $14.99 (sometimes even more). The biggest bookseller in the world also offers free books! There are several ways to find them.

World Book Day

What It Is: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has marked 23 April as World Book and Copyright Day, also known as World Book Day. The day is celebrated in over a hundred countries around the world. 

The Offer: Each year, in honor of World Book Day, Amazon offers ten free books from non-US authors. The selection includes several different genres. 

The Fine Print: "This free Kindle book giveaway started at 12 a.m. (PDT) April 13, 2022 and ends at 11:59 p.m. (PDT) on April 27, 2022. Customers who are eligible to purchase Kindle books on Amazon.com can download one or more of the ten featured Kindle books subject to the terms and conditions of Amazon.com Services LLC. Offer does not apply to physical goods, digital magazines, audiobooks (including Audible companions for your Kindle book purchase), print books, or digital subscriptions such as Kindle Unlimited. Amazon reserves the right to modify or cancel the offer at any time. Offer is non-transferable and may not be resold."

To Get There: Starting the middle of April, go to the Amazon Kindle Books page. World Book Day will usually be a large splash at the top of the page. Click on that and you'll get to the selection of free books.

Prime Reading

The Offer: For Amazon Prime members only, Prime Reading gives access to a rotating catalog of ebooks and audiobooks. There is also one free pre-release ebook every month from editors' picks. Magazines and audiobooks are also included.

The Fine Print: Prime Reading books are loans, not purchases. You can keep a borrowed book as long as you want, but the maximum you can borrow at one time is ten books. If you try to borrow your 11th book, the site will take you to the "Return a title to continue" page. There you can select one to return so you can borrow a new one.

To Get There: Go to the Amazon Kindle Books page. Select Prime Reading from the menu at the left.

Free Books

The Offer: Every day, hundreds of Kindle books are offered for free on Amazon to any Amazon user, and no Prime membership or Kindle Unlimited is required. These are usually the first book in a series, and the later books aren't free. 

The Fine Print: Be careful before you click to "buy"! Make sure that the listing says "Kindle Edition $0.00" as shown at left. If you're not a Kindle Unlimited member, carefully look at the price for books with the Kindle Unlimited sticker, as shown at right. Those have a big $0.00 but smaller print says "Free with Kindle Unlimited membership. Or $xx to buy."

To Get There: Don't use the Amazon search box to search for "Free Kindle Books." That will give you Kindle Unlimited books, which aren't necessarily free if you don't have Kindle Unlimited. Sneaky! Instead, go to this link free Kindle books.  

Kindle Unlimited

The Offer: "Unlimited Reading. Unlimited listening. Any device." Usually $9.99 per month, but occasionally there are special offers. Usually at least one month free is offered with the purchase of a new Kindle.

The Fine Print: Go to the Kindle Unlimited Terms of Use page to see all of the terms and conditions. 

The Catch: Not everything is available on KU! The selection is large - over two million titles - but your favorite authors and/or current sellers may or may not be included. I recommend going to the Kindle Unlimited eligible list and searching for your favorite authors.

• Search for "Stephen King," and you'll get a bunch of books by some poseur named "Stephen R. King," not books by the best selling author from Maine.

• Search for "Blake Crouch" (who is a very hot sci-fi author), you'll find a lot of his older books but none of his current best sellers.

• Search for "Colleen Hoover"  and you'll find a ton of her books on Kindle Unlimited. If you like cheesy romance books, you're in business! (To be fair, millions of people LOVE Colleen Hoover, and that's great. She's just not for me.)

To Get There: If you're not already a member, go to the Kindle Unlimited sign-up page. If you just want to see what books are available, go to the Amazon Kindle Books page. Then click on the "Kindle Unlimited eligible" box in the left-hand menu. 

Children's Odyssey

This Tender Land

by William Kent Krueger

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This Tender Land is the tale of Odie and his brother Albert, and their friends Mose and Emmy. The majority of the story is about their journey as they escape from the abuse they received at The Lincoln Indian Training School in 1932 Minnesota. 

Odie and Albert are orphans when they come to Lincoln. They are the only white kids at the boarding school. Their friend, Mose, is mute because someone cut out his tongue when he was just a baby. Although Mose can't speak, he eloquently communicates with ASL. Odie and Albert know signing since their late mother was deaf. 

The headmistress of the Lincoln Indian Training School is Mrs. Thelma Brickman, who is called The Black Witch behind her back. She regularly sends Odie (and sometimes Albert) to the "Quiet Room," which is actually a jail cell in an old stockade. A common punishment is withholding food.

"No kid was allowed to speak his Native tongue. It was a strict tenet of the Indian boarding school philosophy, which was 'Kill the Indian, save the man.' "

The four kids run away from their abusive captors by paddling down the nearby Gilead river in a canoe. They encounter both wonderful and terrible people on their journey. At one point, they are made to perform forced labor by an alcoholic farmer they call One-Eyed Jack. They temporarily join up with the Sword of Gideon Healing Crusade, a traveling tent revival. Each stop along the way has hard lessons for the children. They press onward to their goal: to find their Aunt Julia in St. Louis.

Eventually, Odie makes the last leg of the journey by himself, because the other three elect to stay with the Crusade. Sister Eve of the Healing Crusade tells Odie what she knows each of the children is looking for. 

“You’re the easiest of all, Odie. The only thing you’ve ever wanted is home.”

Odie, whose real given name is revealed when he reaches Saint Louis, finds his Aunt Julia and realizes that she is not at all what he expected. 

"With every turn of the river since I’d left Lincoln School, the world had become broader, its mysteries more complex, its possibilities infinite."

This Tender Land is a beautifully written story about hope, love, and forgiveness.

"Of all that we’re asked to give others in this life, the most difficult to offer may be forgiveness."

Ferry to the Afterlife

Under The Whispering Door

by TJ Klune

Rating ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

I approached this book reluctantly because I'm always wary of super-popular things. The book seemed like it would be too cutesy for my taste, just based on the whimsical illustration on the cover. 

This is the story of Wallace Price, a partner in the law firm he founded. Wallace is - almost comically - a jackass in the early chapters. His character is the MOST self-centered human being possible. He has no regard for other people and concerns himself only with how he looks (he loves his expensive suits) and with winning cases. He views a crying secretary as an inconvenience, not caring in the slightest what she's upset about.

Wallace drops dead of a heart attack and wakes up at his funeral. He is shocked that only a few people are in attendance, that no one appears to be sad about his passing, and no one can see or hear him. His law partners are there, gossiping about what an unpleasant guy he was. His ex-wife gives a "eulogy" consisting entirely of ranting about how much she hated him. 

He is surprised when one of the attendees, a young woman he doesn't recognize, is able to see him. She tells him that her name is Mei. She explains that she is his Reaper and she's there to take him where he belongs. 

“What is…?” He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat. “What’s happening?” 

She said, “What’s happening is that you lived your life. You did what you did, and now it’s over. At least that part of it is. And when you’re ready to leave here, I’ll take you to Hugo. He’ll explain the rest.” 

“Leave,” he muttered. “With Hugo.” 

She shook her head before stopping herself. “Well, in a way. He’s a ferryman.” 

“A what?” 

“Ferryman,” she repeated. “The one who will help you cross.”

Mei escorts him to Charon's Crossing Tea Room and Treats (the whimsical building pictured on the cover) and introduces Wallace to Hugo, the proprietor. Any references to Greek mythology end here, unfortunately. It's just the name Hugo gave to his tea shop.

The rest of the story is Wallace's redemption. He starts out as the worst person in the world and gradually becomes a better person. 

I rated this book three and a half stars because of the entertaining story. There's an unexpected and very sweet queer love story. The chapter concerning a self-proclaimed psychic named Desdemona had me laughing uncontrollably. I took away stars because it took too long to redeem Wallace, and the story dragged quite a bit as result. In addition, the Greek mythology aspect was hinted at but not explored.  

Time Loop

Sea of Tranquility

by Emily St. John Mandel

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

When I was two or three chapters into reading Sea of Tranquility, I was shocked by how much it reminded me of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Both books jump from time period to time period with different points of view in each section. Both books have recurring elements that appear in the different periods, hundreds of years apart.

In Cloud Atlas, a comet-shaped birthmark appears somewhere on the body of each narrator and serves as the thread that ties them together. Gradually the reader comes to realize that each of these different characters carries something from their predecessor. Depending on your personal beliefs, you could describe it as the character's "essence" or their "soul." The book is not explicit about this and leaves it to the reader to discover.

In Sea of Tranquility, a common element is a person whose unlikely name is Gaspery-Jacques Roberts. He shows up in each of the time periods, which are 1912, 2020, and 2203. Does he represent something spiritual as in Cloud Atlas? Nope. He's a time traveler who's been sent from the year 2401 to examine an anomaly in time. 

As in every time travel book that was ever written, the time traveler must take extraordinary pains to not corrupt the timeline lest disastrous consequences ensue. Not following this rule is criminally punishable in 2401. To no one's surprise, Gaspery corrupts the hell out of the timeline, including warning a character of her impending death. He winds up marooned in his past and finds out what caused the time anomaly he was sent to investigate.

This is an interesting book, and the descriptions of life in each of the time periods (especially the ones in the future) are delightful. Ultimately, Sea of Tranquility is a much more practical book than Cloud Atlas, which is more spiritual and dreamy. I rated Sea of Tranquility four stars because I feel that Cloud Atlas is a superior book.

Too many genres at once

Where The Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owen

Rating ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

I have such mixed feelings about this book. It's a huge bestseller, and thousands of people say it's "the best book I ever read." I enjoyed reading it, and the ending was heartwarming. But it has some issues.

The main character, Kya, is born in 1945 into a family of "marsh trash," uneducated people who live in a shack in the North Carolina coastal marsh. Her father is abusive, and her mother leaves when Kya is small. Her older siblings all leave shortly thereafter. Kya, the youngest, is left with her alcoholic and neglectful father. Eventually, he leaves too, and Kya is all alone as a small child.

She is forced to dig and sell mussels in order to survive. She exchanges her mussels for grits and other food items at the tiny store owned by a black family. The owner, who is called Jumpin', and his wife Mabel are some of the only people who show any kindness to Kya. 

She hides when anyone comes near. She successfully avoids the truant officer for a long while, but finally goes to school. The other kids unmercifully bully her, and she never goes to school again after that first day.

Over the course of several lonely years, Kya gets to know some people who come to the marsh. A boy named Tate befriends her and eventually teaches her to read. Inevitably, she falls head over heels for Tate. 

This is where the book goes off the rails. With Tate's encouragement, Kya publishes several books with her drawings and observations of the shells, insects, and plants of the marsh. I found this hard to believe. Kya goes from illiterate to acclaimed author in very short order. She becomes incredibly accomplished as an artist, poet, writer, and naturalist. 

I couldn't figure out what genre this book was trying to be.

 - Nature text - Author Delia Owens is a naturalist. This is her first novel, but she has written many nonfiction books about nature and ecology. It feels like the author superimposed her own life onto Kya's.

 - Woman's fiction - The majority of the plot is about Kya coming into her own as a woman. She learns how to provide for herself, first at a subsistence level, and then with her writing. She learns how to stand up for herself and how to trust other people in her life. 

- Romance - The other major part of the plot is Kya's attempt to bond with young men she encounters, with some terrible results. Finally, Kya's romantic dreams are realized. The "happily ever after" ending was sweet but felt like it came out of a harlequin romance.

- Courtroom drama - There's even a murder subplot with the related jail and courtroom scenes. 

The weird thing is that any one of these could have been a great book. With all these things smashed into one book it just turned into a big jumble.

Even More Library Cards

Out-of-State Library Cards

In my post, Using Multiple Library Cards I showed you how to greatly expand the number of library books available to you. I gave references for a few libraries where you can get an out-of-state library card. I only scratched the surface!

Facebook user Angela Holsbeck compiled this big list of other libraries that issue e-cards. Most of these libraries charge a fee for out-of-state users. Depending on the offerings of your local (i.e. free) library, it may be worth it for you to pay for access to a faraway library.

Different libraries use different apps to connect with their e-book users. The most common apps are:

• Libby –Available as a website so you can access it easily on your laptop or desktop
• Overdrive
• Hoopla

Harris County (Texas) Public Library

FREE

*Libby - Overdrive*

(This is for their iKnow digital access card. Fill out the application with your address and you will receive an email copy of your library card.)

Kenton County (Kentucky) Public Library

$50/year

*Libby - Overdrive - Hoopla*

It says to call for out-of-state cards, but I talked to them and they said to fill out the application as normal and select "Other" under "card type." They will contact you in 1-3 business days about your card application, asking you to set up payment to complete your account.)

Orange County (Florida) Library System

$75/3 months or $125/year

*Libby - Hoopla*

Brooklyn (New York) Public Library

$50/year

(As of May 2020, their digital library contained 114,069 ebooks and 30,974 audiobooks!)

*Libby - Overdrive*

Monroe County (New York) Library System

$25/year

*Libby*

Queens (New York) Public Library

$50/year

*Libby - Overdrive - Hoopla*

Charlotte (North Carolina) Mecklenburg Library

$45/year per household or $35/year for ages 62+

*Libby - Hoopla*

Chapel Hill (North Carolina) Public Library

$65/year

*Libby*

Houston (Texas) Public Library

$20/6 months or $40/year

*Libby - Overdrive - Hoopla*

 

Fairfax (Virginia) County Library

$27/year

*Libby*

 

Enoch Pratt (Maryland) Free Library

$50/year

*Libby - Overdrive*

 

Westchester (New York) Library System

$75/year for under 64, $35/year for ages 65+

*Libby - Overdrive - Hoopla*

 

Omaha (Nebraska) Public Library

$6.25/month, or $25/4 months, or $75/year

(You must call for assistance if you are not able to pick up your out of state card in person)

*Libby - Overdrive*

 

Fauquier (Virginia) Public Library

$15/year

*Libby - Overdrive*

 

Tacoma (Washington) Public Library

$33.50/6 months, or $67/year

*Libby - Overdrive - Hoopla*

 

Detroit (Michigan) Public Library

$100/year

The application can be submitted online, but payment for the non-resident card must be sent through U.S. mail accompanied by a printout of the online form.

*Libby - Overdrive - Hoopla*

 

Ridiculous Premise 101

The Good Daughters

by Joyce Maynard

Rating ⭐

This is the story of two women, Ruth Plank and Dana Dickerson. They were born at the same time in the same hospital and still live near each other.

Ruth is an artist who feels out of place with her boring, solid, farming family (the Planks, get it?). Dana is most at home with her hands in the soil and loves helping plants grow. Shocking: Dana feels out of place with her free-spirited, artistic family.

Gee, do you see where this is going? This is a hard book to keep reading once you figure out its ridiculous premise. To make matters worse, once the premise manifests itself, it just gets worse. I won't go into details, but trust me, it doesn't matter. You'll figure it out a few chapters in.

This is one of the books that caused me to swear off Kindle Unlimited. **LIGHT DAWNS** If a book is any good, why would they let you read it for "free"?

I Couldn't Do It

The Orphan Collector

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Rating: Did Not Finish

I finished two chapters of this book and stopped. Maybe it's because the last book I read was so brutal (See my review of Tender Is The Flesh), I could not stand to read the horrible things in this book. 

The Orphan Collector takes place in 1918 at the start of the Spanish Flu pandemic. The descriptions of illness and death were bad enough. What got to me was the character of Bernice, who despises immigrants and thinks they are the cause of the flu and her personal economic woes.

Now the entire city was teeming with large ghettos housing every type of foreigner she could think of, and they were stealing jobs from real Americans

I heard enough of that kind of racist thinking during the previous presidential administration, thank you very much. I don't need to spend my free time reading a book with the main character with those beliefs. 

Fava beans and chianti?

Tender is the Flesh

by Agustina Bazterrica

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

****************

Trigger Warning: If you have a sensitive stomach or are triggered by disgusting and/or immoral practices, do not read this book.

****************

Written in Spanish by Argentinian author Agustina Bazterrica and translated by Sarah Moses, Tender is the Flesh is the story of Marcos Tejos. 

Marcos lives in a near-future dystopian society. A virus sweeps the world and infects every animal. Every single animal is destroyed. Humanity turns to cannibalism as a food source. Humans are mass-produced, slaughtered, and sold as "special meat." Marcos works for a "processing plant," where the humans are slaughtered and prepared for sale. The process is presented in gruesome detail, but to the participants, it's just another process. 

"He’s surprised it’s so quiet. El Gringo tells him they’re isolated in incubators from when they’re little, and later on in cages. He says their vocal cords are removed so they’re easier to control. 'No one wants them to talk because meat doesn’t talk,' he says."

Just outside the plant where Marcos works are a group called Scavengers. These are the poorest of the poor who wait for the scraps of "special meat." Thus it becomes clear that there are three classes of people: the privileged, the meat, and the scavengers. 

We learn that Marcos is unhappy. His wife leaves him after the death of their infant son. He has to slaughter his beloved pet dogs because all animals became illegal. His father is in a nursing home, suffering from dementia. His sister is self-obsessed and brainless. Marcos goes through his life in a sort of fog. As I was reading about him, I began to think that the horrors that Marcos participated in were driving him mad - or at the very least, would cause him to rebel in some way. (Spoiler: Not so much)

A supplier gives Marcos a special gift - a female specimen of the best quality. He tells Marcos he can sell the specimen for a tidy profit, or he could slaughter her for her high-quality meat. Marcos decides to keep her, raising her like a prize calf. They develop a kind of relationship, and he moves her from the barn into his house. Marcos names the female "Jasmine." They regularly have sex and Jasmine becomes pregnant. He hides her away because having sex with "meat" is highly illegal. 

Each situation Marcos finds himself in is more brutal and terrifying than the last, including a human-skin tannery and a human game reserve. He visits an abandoned zoo and finds a litter of abandoned puppies. He bonds with the pups and gives each the name of a member of the Rolling Stones. On his next visit to the zoo, some delinquents have gotten ahold of the pups and Marcos watches them murder each one. 

The unrelenting violence and perversion continue to the end of the book. The ending is shocking and unexpected but completely in keeping with the events leading up to it. 

This is an incredibly disturbing and grotesque book. I rated it four stars because it is so thought-provoking. It brings up the cruelty in our own society, factory farming, societal privileges, and more. 

Manage Holds

How to Manage Library Holds

The only thing I’ve found that I don’t like about Libby is that it’s too efficient.

If three people are waiting for a particular book and the library’s borrowing period is three weeks, Libby will give an estimate of nine weeks as the wait for that book. The thing is, most people return their library books early. So that nine weeks could turn out to be two weeks or some other length of time.

When I am deciding which books to place on hold, I try to space them out. I try to select a variety of books with short hold times and other books with longer hold times. The catch is that you never know how long the hold period will really be.

Invariably, just when you’re really involved in a book, you’ll get a notice from Libby that the book you’ve been waiting for is now available. This is what the notice looks like:

Click on "Borrow" and it will take you to the "You are borrowing [title]" screen. If you need a book right now or if you’re one of those people who likes to have two or more books going at one time, then go for it! All you need to do is click the big "Borrow!" button to borrow the newly available book. 

Note that this screen tells you how many days your borrowing period will be. It also shows a facsimile of the library card for the library from which you're borrowing.

If you're not ready to borrow the book right now, click on the < Your Holds button at the top of the screen. This action will NOT borrow the book and will leave it on your Holds shelf, which looks like this:

 

From here, you can Borrow, Manage Hold, or Deliver Later. 

Click Borrow if you want to Borrow right now. Click Manage Hold if you want to go to the screen where you can Cancel the hold. (It's the "never mind, I don't want it" button). 

Click Deliver Later if you want to borrow this book at some time in the future. This will take you to a screen saying "You are scheduling [title] for later delivery."

The cool thing here is the slider. It defaults to the minimum extension, usually seven days. You can move the slider left and right until you find your desired number of days. 

Keep in mind that this is not a guarantee of when you'll receive the book. It depends on how long the other library patrons keep the book. It's kind of like letting someone go ahead of you in line at the supermarket - but you don't know how many items they have.

If you're happy with the number of days you selected, click "Update Hold!"

That action will take you back to your holds shelf, and it will show the new estimated date.