E-Books and Recommended Reading

Additional information about Libby/Overdrive and Palace Project is available on the Our Collection page, including detailed information about the databases and guides on how to use them. Otherwise, just download their app from your device's app store and follow the app's instruction to gain access. To see other e-book databases that don't require a library card, scroll down this page. 


Sites to Help You Figure Out What to Read Next

Gnooks - Discover New Books
It will ask you which authors you like and then think about which other authors you might like too.

Your Next Read
Search for a book you like, and this site will recommend other books and authors you may like.
 (Please note this site is only an archive.)

What Should I Read Next
Enter a book you like and the site will analyze its huge database of real readers’ favorite books to provide book recommendations and suggestions for what to read next.

Literature Map
Type in the name of an author you like, and you will be provided with a map of authors with similar styles. You can keep clicking on author names and make new maps.

Whichbook 
Enables millions of combinations of factors and then suggests books which most closely match your needs.        

TasteDive
 Look up an author and find similar writers, as well as different author recommendation lists. 

YALSA Book Finder
Find great teen books for ages.

GoodReads 
Share what titles or genres you’ve enjoyed in the past, and they’ll give you recommendations. This site also provides reviews from people all over the world.    

Family Video Game Database
This focuses on video games and board games, and it help you find games for all ages.

   New York Times Bestseller Lists
Authoritatively ranked lists of books sold in the United States, sorted by format and genre.

And the Library Staff will be happy to help you find any title you would like to read.


Sites to Help You Find the Book/Movie Title You Can’t Remember


What’s the Name of That Book???
A goodreads group page that will help you find the book you are looking for. 

Name That Book
Have you forgotten the name of a book you once read? This group is here to help you find it again.

Whats That Book & Find My Movie & Tip of My Tongue
Reddit threads to help you find the title of the book/movie you can’t remember. 

What Is My Movie
Use your own words, or search with titles, actors, directors, genres etc. We find movies for you to watch. 


Sites that List Content Warnings


Does the Dog Die?
Crowdsourced content warnings for movies, tv, books and more; includes more categories than animal deaths/harm.

Unconsenting Media
It only compiles triggers for TV and film, and focuses on sexual violence.

Common Sense Media
This reviews and provides ratings for media and technology with the goal of providing information on their suitability for children; it can provide detailed commentary on a number of common triggers.

Trigger Warning Database
You can search the database by either content warnings or by the particular title/author.

Book Trigger Warnings
A site dedicated to helping readers feel more prepared, better informed, and safer with their books.

TV Tropes
While the site is dedicated to just listing the tropes involved in a piece of media (book, film, tv show, fanfiction, or more), seeing tropes listed can help.

Free E-Book and E-Audiobook Sites


Besides Overdrive/Libby and Palace (which has a huge collection of e-books and e-audiobooks to download), here are some sites that do not require a library card (though it is extremely easy and free to get one):

Biblioboard has hundreds of self-published e-books by local, CA, and other Indie authors.
Bibliomania has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays, in easy formatting to make it accessible to the visually impaired using screen readers and speech synthesisers.
The Chronicles of Now offers short fiction torn from today’s headlines; well known authors are commissioned to write short stories inspired by news of the day.
DigitalBooks offers audiobooks, e-books, and podcasts in a number of genres, including YA and Children's.
enki offers open access to a large range of e-books; includes graphic novels and kids’ comics. (may be CA-based only)
Epic Stream has a list of where to find the over 450 volumes of manga being made available to read for free online.
Free Classic AudioBooks, as the name suggests, provides audiobooks for classic books.
Free Computer Books provides books on computers/coding, mathematics, technical books, and more, as well as lecture notes. This site only provides links, the books are hosted on multiple other sites.
Free eBooks.net offers five free books per month of fiction, nonfiction, academic, textbooks, and (children and adult) audiobooks.
Ghost City Press offers pdfs of their annual Micro-Chapbook Series; poetry.
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, and offers a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
International Children’s Digital Library is a digital library of outstanding children’s books from around the world and in hundreds of languages.
Internet Archive is a library of fiction, popular books, children’s books, historical texts, and academic books based on a wide range of interests. Includes archives of old radio shows too.
Internet Sacred Text Archive is a large collection of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric.
Learn Out Loud offers a selection of over 10,000 free educational audio and video titles.
Librivox provides free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers from around the world.
Loyal Books has free public domain audiobooks and e-books.
Many Books has more than 50,000 free ebooks in a number of genres; you can also search for books in multiple languages.
MIT Press is a publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design.
The Online Books Page provides a searchable database to a long list of authors and books that have fallen into Public Domain. Maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, it also highlights a celebration of women writers.
Open Bookshelf covers the Digital Public Library of America aggregating openly-licensed books and making them available for free to download; includes languages other than English.
Open Culture eBooks provides a list of 800 free eBooks, as well as links to free movies, audiobooks, textbooks, and online courses too.
Planet eBook provides a list of all the free eBooks published by Planet eBook.
Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks, featuring the world’s great literature here, with a focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired.
ProPlay offers the text of professionally-produced stage plays.
Questia is a library of more than 5,000 free books filled with classics, rarities, and textbooks; they also offer tutorials for writing research papers.
Standard E-Books is a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks.
Storynory offers audio streaming of fairytales, myths, classics, and original works.
Textbook Revolution offers free education material, listed by subject and license.
Tor posts original fiction, comics, poetry, book excerpts, and reprinted stories.


Free E-Books


Roadmap to Resilience by Donald Meichenbaum, Ph.D. is recommended by PC Behavioral Health to offer help in dealing with COVID19.

A Disabled Hiker’s Guide to the Redwoods: This PDF guide provides accessibility overviews for eleven redwood parks and four giant sequoia parks in California. Syren Nagakyrie created this guide with Save The Redwoods League. Syren conducted in depth reviews using ADA/ABA guidelines and personal and professional experience. They visited eight featured redwood parks and conducted thorough research on seven additional parks.

Aiden Tyler, Quaran-Teen, was a new and original story being updated in real time, illustrated, and read aloud by Rex Ogle each week during March 24 - June 2, 2020.

Mind the Gap by M. Mukwende, Dr. P. Tamonv, and M. Turner is a clinical handbook of signs and symptoms in black and brown skin created between Dec 2019 and May 2020.

Smart Pop Books offers one new free essay/chapter from one of their nonfiction titles (based on pop culture TV, books, and film, with a particular focus on science fiction and fantasy television and literature) every Mon - Fri.