Did you know about the incredible literary resource of books.google.com? Search for a title, and you can see previews of any book that Google has scanned into their databases, and download the full text of any book under a creative commons license or in the public domain. That means, for instance, you can find high quality scans of books from the 2nd edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, to the whole story of Peter and Wendy: Margaret Ogilvy by J. M. Barrie, that is, Peter Pan and a biography of Barrie's mother. It's a great way to get the feel of a book, or a version of a book, before you commit to it. I always suggest using creative commons resources, so you might also consider using a site like Creative Commons: Books , which is a list of books released under a creative commons resources. Another source of public domain books is Project Gutenburg, and LibriVox that reads Project Gutenburg books aloud.