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30 July 2010

Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson has beaten Stephenie Meyer and James Patterson to become the first author to sell more than one million ebooks on Amazon.


The online retailer said yesterday that Larsson, author of the Millennium trilogy, had become the first member of its new "Kindle Million Club", for authors whose work has sold over a million copies in Amazon's Kindle store in the US. The crime novelist is likely to be joined by thriller writer Patterson – Amazon said last week that it had sold over 860,000 of his ebooks – while Twilight scribe Meyer, Sookie Stackhouse creator Charlaine Harris and queen of romantic suspense Nora Robe....

30 July 2010

The biography of Angelina Jolie's writen by Andrew Morton

Put Angelina Jolie's face on a magazine cover and sales will surely rise. Get her to write a memoir and it would be worth millions. But write a book about her, without her cooperation, and you're taking a chance.
Coming a week after the release of her latest film, "Salt," a biography has been published. "Angelina," by Andrew Morton, is out with an announced first printing of 150,000 copies and the promise of a "spellbinding" adventure. Openly billed as "Unauthorized," the book includes in....

30 July 2010

The author Salman Rushdie is one of several leading British writers criticised by the academic Gabriel Josipovici.

The author Salman Rushdie is one of several leading British writers criticised by the academic Gabriel Josipovici.

Their mantelpieces might creak under the collective weight of literary gongs but, according to one leading academic, leading contemporary British authors such as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnesare unworthy of the accolades they receive.

In an outspoken attack, Gabriel Josipovici, the former Weidenfeld professor of comparative literature at....

Hot Books

9 December 2009 Probable Sons

Probable Sons

Le Feuvre Amy -
Instruction & Study

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

9 December 2009 Travels in Peru, On the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras And the Andes, Into the Primeval Forests

Travels in Peru, On the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras And the Andes, Into the Primeval Forests

Tschudi Johann Jakob Von
South America

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

9 December 2009 Lynton And Lynmouth

Lynton And Lynmouth

Presland John
Literature & Fiction

DEVONSHIREThe original Celtic name for Devonshire, the name used by the Britonswhom Caesar found here when he landed, was probably "Dyfnaint," for aLatinized form of it, "Dumnonia" or "Damnonia," was used by DiodorusSiculus when writing of the province of Devon and Cornwall in the thirdcentury A.D. So that the name by which the men of Devon call theircountry is the name by which those ancient men called it who erectedthe stone menhirs on Dartmoor, and built the great earth-camp ofClovelly Dykes, or the smaller bold stronghold of Countisbury. Atleast, conjecturally this is so, and it is pleasant to believe it, forit links the Devon of our own day, the Devon of rich valleys and windymoors, the land of streams and orchards, of bleak, magnificent cliffand rock-guarded bay, of shaded combe and suave, fair villages, in anunbroken tradition of name and habitation with the men of that silentand vanished race.Up and down the length of England, from the Land's End to theNorthumbrian dales, lie the traces of these far-off peoples whose verynames are faint guesses preserved only in the traditions of localspeech. Strangely and suddenly we come upon the evidence of their lifeand death: here a circle of stones on a barren moor or bleak hilltop,there a handful of potsherds or a flint arrowhead; sometimes, indeed,though rarely, the bones of their very bodies, laid aside inearth-barrows or stone coffins for this unknown length of years. Andthere the most unreflective among us feels a sudden awe and wonder atthe momentary vision of the profound antiquity of this land in which welive, and for a few moments all desires and aims seem futile in face ofthis immemorial past.Only for a few moments, though, and then we step from the "DruidCircle," or turn away from the barrow, and the current of our everydaylife takes us up once more.Myself, I agree with Westcote. Westcote is a charming old gentleman ofKing James the First's time, who wrote a book called "A View ofDevonshire in 1630." In Chapter I he discusses the ancient name ofDevonshire much as I have done, but because in the seventeenth centuryyou must have a Latin or a Greek at your elbow to give yourespectability as a writer, he brings forward a formidable array ofauthorities--Ptolemaeus, Solinus Pylyhistor, and Diodorus Siculus.But, having had them make their bow before the reader, he remarks thatall these gentlemen lived "far remoted" from Devonshire, and weretherefore liable to error in the transmission of names; "for, in myopinion," says he, "those that declare the first names of strangecountries far remoted are as the poor which wear their garments allbepatched and pieced, whereof the pieces that are added are much morein quantity of cloth than the garment before, when it was first made."As an example of this error he instances the name of Peru. "When theSpaniards had conquered Mexico, and were purposing to proceed farther,their commander, in his manner, demanded of one of the natives he metwithal what the country was named, who answered, 'Peru,' by which nameit is known unto this day, which in his language was, 'I know not whatyou say.'" --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

9 December 2009 The Halo

The Halo

Betsey Riddle Hutten Zum Stolzenberg
Books

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER THREE IF I doi they will say that I am in love with some man who either won't have me, or is already married, or that I am forced to, by my debts. If I don't—then this will go on indefinitely, and some fine day I shall jump into the carp-pond and drown in four feet of nasty, slimy water." Brigit Mead stood behind the heavy curtains by an open window and whispered the above reflections to herself. It was a trick she had in moments of intense concentration, and the sharp, hissing sound of the last words was so distinct that she involuntarily turned to see that she had not been overheard. No, it was all right, everyone was busy with the preparations for the evening's work, except Joyselle, who sat at the piano and was playing, very softly, a little thing of Grieg's. The great hall looked almost empty in spite of its nine occupants, and the electric lamps threw little pools of light on the polished floor. It might have been a cheerless place enough, for one unintelligent Georgian Kingsmead had added to its austerity of church-like painted windows a very awful row of glossy marble pillars, that stood as if aware of their own ugliness, holding up a quite unnecessary and appallingly hideous gallery. Luckily, however, the late Lord Kingsmead, while not possessing enough initiative to do away with the horrors perpetuated by his ancestors, was a man cf some taste, and had, by the means of gorgeous Eastern carpets, skilful overhead lighting, and some fine hangings, transformed the place into a very comfortable and livable one. A huge fire burned under the splendid carved chimney-piece, and Brigit, turning from the cool moonlight to the interior, watched it with a certain sense of artistic pleasure. It was a dear old house, Kingsmead, and with money—oh, yes, oh, y...