24 votes

What are some of the best free ebooks available online?

Project Gutenberg is a great resource for free books, but its 50,000+ titles are intimidating in number (if not outright impenetrable). The same goes for other free ebook aggregators/feeds, of which there are many. There are also lots of authors who offer up their books for free. And, of course, there are tons of free options available in, say, the Kindle store. While it's nice to have so many choices, it hinders discoverability. Individual books get lost in all the noise.

As such, I'd like to know: what are some standout, recommended books that are available to readers for free?

Obvious disclaimer: I am not interested in pirated content.

19 comments

  1. [4]
    iiv
    Link
    Standard Ebooks is a fantastic resource with curated content from Gutenberg. They fix spelling errors and format the book into a modern ebook. I highly recommend them.

    Standard Ebooks is a fantastic resource with curated content from Gutenberg. They fix spelling errors and format the book into a modern ebook. I highly recommend them.

    11 votes
    1. nic
      Link Parent
      Such a wonderfully small selection of classics. I thoroughly recommend reading Frankenstein & Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. No movie adaption has really been able to do them justice. The...

      Such a wonderfully small selection of classics.

      I thoroughly recommend reading Frankenstein & Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. No movie adaption has really been able to do them justice.

      The Importance of Being Earnest & Right Ho, Jeeves are comedic gold, even today.

      The Scarlet Pimpenel & The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyl & Mr Hyde are also amazing.

      4 votes
    2. Eric_the_Cerise
      Link Parent
      Nice. The resource I didn't even realize that I was looking for. Fixes every Gutenberg gripe I've had, plus a few I didn't even think of.

      Nice. The resource I didn't even realize that I was looking for. Fixes every Gutenberg gripe I've had, plus a few I didn't even think of.

      3 votes
    3. kfwyre
      Link Parent
      These are the Penguin Classics of libre books! Beautiful!

      These are the Penguin Classics of libre books! Beautiful!

      2 votes
  2. Crespyl
    Link
    If you're into science fiction, the publisher Baen always has a selection of free novels and annual short story collections in the Baen Free Library. On Basilisk Station the first book of David...

    If you're into science fiction, the publisher Baen always has a selection of free novels and annual short story collections in the Baen Free Library.

    On Basilisk Station the first book of David Weber's "Honor Harrington" space opera series is in there, as are some works by Eric Flint, John Ringo, and plenty of others.

    8 votes
  3. [2]
    skullkid2424
    Link
    Mother of Learning by Domagoj Kurmaic is a fantastic read so far, and is nearing completion. Fantasy/adventure/mystery with a groundhog day-esque scenario. While not in ebook form, someone wrote a...

    Mother of Learning by Domagoj Kurmaic is a fantastic read so far, and is nearing completion. Fantasy/adventure/mystery with a groundhog day-esque scenario.

    While not in ebook form, someone wrote a script to grab the chapters and pack it into an epub+mobi (with approval from the author): https://github.com/frrad/mol-ebook

    5 votes
    1. mftrhu
      Link Parent
      Fictionpress is one of the many websites supported by FanFicFare, so a specific script is not needed. For other websites - and FFF supports a lot of them - kemayo/leech seems promising, but needs...

      While not in ebook form, someone wrote a script to grab the chapters and pack it into an epub+mobi (with approval from the author): https://github.com/frrad/mol-ebook

      Fictionpress is one of the many websites supported by FanFicFare, so a specific script is not needed. For other websites - and FFF supports a lot of them - kemayo/leech seems promising, but needs a little fiddling. It worked out of the box for Wandering Inn, at least.

      2 votes
  4. [4]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. [3]
      mftrhu
      Link Parent
      Just for the record, here is a pretty harsh review of HPMoR, which I stumbled across some time ago. I like HPMoR - it might have helped in keeping me alive - but the review has been... interesting.

      Just for the record, here is a pretty harsh review of HPMoR, which I stumbled across some time ago. I like HPMoR - it might have helped in keeping me alive - but the review has been... interesting.

      9 votes
      1. [2]
        Comment deleted by author
        Link Parent
        1. mftrhu
          Link Parent
          Wait, what?

          Big 'spends multiple days defending slave owners raping their slaves on twitter' Yudkowsky

          Wait, what?

          3 votes
      2. unknown user
        Link Parent
        Holy mother of god, the author weren't joking! That page is 281kB heavy. It's an insane amount of words, considering there's minimal CSS/JS bloat.

        Now, to the review (this is almost certainly going to be long)

        Holy mother of god, the author weren't joking! That page is 281kB heavy. It's an insane amount of words, considering there's minimal CSS/JS bloat.

        3 votes
  5. spit-evil-olive-tips
    Link
    Google's book about Site Reliability Engineering is freely available: https://landing.google.com/sre/books/ I'd highly recommend it for anyone working in the software / tech industry, or anyone...

    Google's book about Site Reliability Engineering is freely available: https://landing.google.com/sre/books/

    I'd highly recommend it for anyone working in the software / tech industry, or anyone who doesn't but wants to know about what goes on behind the scenes to make Google Search, Gmail, etc "always work".

    4 votes
  6. [2]
    mbc
    Link
    Check and see if your library is a member of Overdrive/Libby. If it is, download Libby immediately. There are so many e-books and audiobooks on there to borrow. It's changed my life, no hyperbole....

    Check and see if your library is a member of Overdrive/Libby. If it is, download Libby immediately. There are so many e-books and audiobooks on there to borrow. It's changed my life, no hyperbole. The only downside is that it's a popular app so you may have to wait a while if you want to read a popular book. That's OK though, because Libby will automatically check your book out for you once it is ready. And, in the meantime, you can filter by available books and read something else while you wait.

    4 votes
    1. Crocodile
      Link Parent
      Same here. I wish I found out about Libby sooner. Checking out eBooks is extremely easy, and there client is pretty good as well. My reading tremendously increased after I got it. All you need is...

      Same here. I wish I found out about Libby sooner. Checking out eBooks is extremely easy, and there client is pretty good as well. My reading tremendously increased after I got it. All you need is a library card.

      1 vote
  7. unknown user
    Link
    Projecto Adamastor is a repository of public-domain work in Portuguese, not unlike Standard Ebooks or Project Gutenberg. My Portuguese is not good enough yet to just dive in and read, so I can't...

    Projecto Adamastor is a repository of public-domain work in Portuguese, not unlike Standard Ebooks or Project Gutenberg. My Portuguese is not good enough yet to just dive in and read, so I can't make specific suggestions, but worth checking out if you can read Portuguese.

    4 votes
  8. moocow1452
    Link
    As far as Audiobooks go, a lot of public domain stuff is available on https://librivox.org/ . It's all volunteer based, so quality is variable, but it's all free to look for. Also of interest is...

    As far as Audiobooks go, a lot of public domain stuff is available on https://librivox.org/ . It's all volunteer based, so quality is variable, but it's all free to look for.

    Also of interest is the old Podiobooks collection on Scribl, and the books should be available as podcasts on a podcatcher of your choice. I liked the Quarter Share series, Shadowmagic, and Playing for Keeps, (it's been a while, so I've probably got some nostalgia fog and they may all be duds upon further review.) Scribl is hard to navigate, but the original podcasts were all right.

    3 votes
  9. [2]
    mftrhu
    Link
    There's a lot of good fanfic, even if finding it requires some digging, and plenty of web serials. They are not quite books, but something like Worm, Mother of Learning, or The Wandering Inn, will...

    There's a lot of good fanfic, even if finding it requires some digging, and plenty of web serials.

    They are not quite books, but something like Worm, Mother of Learning, or The Wandering Inn, will keep you occupied for a while. I am liking the latter very much - LitRPG, people from Earth end up in a fantasy world, one is an innkeeper with a skeleton barmaid - but it's long.

    2 votes
    1. synergy-unsterile
      Link Parent
      Speaking of web serials, I recommend Worth the Candle by cthulhuraejepsen (aka Alexander Wales).

      Speaking of web serials, I recommend Worth the Candle by cthulhuraejepsen (aka Alexander Wales).

      Worth the Candle is about Juniper Smith, a teenage boy from Kansas who gets sucked into another world that closely resembles the ones that he made as a Dungeon Master for his friends. Part of the entertainment of reading it is in the exploration, so I won't say too much more, but in contrast to what's typical to the genre, there's not all that much in the way of power fantasy, and there's quite a lot of backstory for Juniper, which happens within the text largely as flashbacks to D&D gaming sessions (which I've been told are one of the highlights). Mixed in with the personal stuff are princesses, elves, and zombies.

      4 votes
  10. Hypersapien
    (edited )
    Link
    Check out Unsong. Basically its Talmudic magic meets modern capitalism. The ebook can be found here And it even has a subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/unsong

    Check out Unsong. Basically its Talmudic magic meets modern capitalism.

    The ebook can be found here

    And it even has a subreddit
    https://www.reddit.com/r/unsong

    1 vote