Books and Reading

The following Web sites help readers find new books or enhance their reading experience in a variety of ways: with reviews, e-books, award lists, lists of favorite or "best" books, background information, and search tools that allow one to search for books by genre, plot line, character type, setting, time period, etc. These sites are useful for individual readers as well as members of book discussion groups.

General Sites

• AllReaders.com - Search for books by plot, character or setting
• Bookspot  - Contains reviews, lists & suggestions-great for book discussion groups
• Bookwire - A comprehensive site with info on every aspect of books and publishing
• NoveList - find books that "read alike" available to Maine residents only
• Overbooked - Advice for readers - check out their summer reading lists

Reviews & Recommendations

• American Library Association Notable Books - Best fiction & nonfiction since 1993
• AwardWeb -- A large list of all sorts of award-winning books
• Bestseller Lists 1900-1998 - A century of the Publisher's Weekly's bestsellers
• Black Issues Book Review - Books of interest to African Americans and others.
• New York Times Book Review - Influential reviews from 1980- free sign-up required
• New York Review of Books - Reviews & articles back to 1963 with great links
• 100 Best Books of all time - A list by the London Guardian
• Review Sources - Extensive list of magazines & newspapers with online reviews 

Genre Fiction

Historical Fiction

• Soon's Historical Fiction - A huge list of writers, reading lists, articles and more

Horror

• Dark Echo - Focuses on horror books, new releases, reviews, reading lists, e-zines

Mysteries

• Historical Mystery Homepage -Listed by author and  time period

• The Mystery Reader - Reviews, news, interviews and an archive of mystery titles

• MysteryGuide.com - With author interviews, sub-genre lists, and book reviews

Romance

• All About Romance - Lists, controversies, articles, reviews and reader's awards

• The Romance Reader - Loaded with thousands of reviews, articles & interviews

• Romantic Times - The definitive romance site and shopping center

Science Fiction

• Locus Online - The Web version of the popular SciFi mag - a great source

• SF Site - Twice monthly mix of reviews, articles, excerpts & reading lists

Maine

• Maine Antiquarian Booksellers - Find all the used book dealers in Maine
• Maine Libraries Online - Find Maine's Libraries on the Web
• Maine Writer's and Publisher's Alliance - Site of Maine's writers' organization
• Maine Writers Index - List of 271 Maine writers bios from the Waterboro Library 
• Portland Public Library's Brown Bag Lecture Series - Maine's writers' forum

Booksellers

• Abe Books - Find and purchase out-of-print books online from thousands of stores 

• Alibris - Another Web used and out-of-print bookseller

• Amazon.com -You can buy books, new and old, from this e-commerce pioneer

• Maine Antiquarian Booksellers - Find all the used book dealers in Maine

E-books

• Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts - A large list of freely-available electronic books

• Bartleby.com - Electronic publisher of free literature, reference, and poetry titles

• Electronic Text Center (Univ. of Virginia) - A large collection of e-books

• IPL Online Texts - A collection of 20,000 online texts from Internet Public Library

• Project Gutenberg -Site that makes the texts of books available on the Web

• netLibrary - A collection of E-books made available by the Maine Legislature

5 Monument Square, Portland Maine 04101    207 871-1700    email: reference@portland.lib.me.us