E-Reads™ is
...a trail-blazing reprinter of out-of-print genre and general fiction and nonfiction by leading authors. Our books are available in all e-book formats and paperback. Read the latest publishing news and provocative blogs by top commentators in the traditional and digital publishing fields.

Empress of Light
James C. Glass
In this sequel to SHANJI, Kati has used the light of creation to win a war bringing her to the throne as Empress of her planet, and she has forged new alliances with former enemies. Her daughter Yesui is born w...


Hôtel Transylvania
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Since 1978, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has produced about two dozen novels and numerous short stories detailing the life of a character first introduced to the reading world as Le Comte de Saint-Germain. We first mee...

Mother's Choice
Elizabeth Mansfield
It's a Mother's Duty To Protect Her Daughter
Cassandra Beringer would never allow her daughter Cicely to repeat her mistake and marry a man twenty years her senior--even if he is the handsome Viscount Inge...


Pock's World
Dave Duncan
In this thrilling story of adventure and suspense by master storyteller Dave Duncan, five flawed individuals must decide the fate of an entire world.
On the outskirts of the Ayne Sector sits Pock’s Worl...

Time Slave
John Norman
Dr. Brenda Hamilton--a Ph.D. mathematician from Cal Tech--is beautiful, though she does not know her true beauty. She is a woman, though she does not know her true womanhood. Deep within herself she is sensu...


Sunday in Hell: Pearl Harbor Minute by Minute
Bill McWilliams
Using long established historical records and contemporary journals as well as recently-released war-time documents, Bill McWilliams has created a brand-new minute-by-minute narrative of the Day that Will ...

Lord of the Fire Lands
Dave Duncan
Raider and Wasp have spent five years at Ironhall studying to become Blades, expert swordsmen whose talents stand unmatched. Magic both enhances the Blades' fighting skills and binds them in lifelong duty....


Miscalculations
Elizabeth Mansfield
His Woman Of Affairs
Jane Douglas had a sharp wit, a brilliant mind, and an extraordinary knack for numbers. As financial advisor to Lady Martha Kettering, she was able to provide for herself, her sister ...

The Girl With the Persian Shawl
Elizabeth Mansfield
An Arrogant Spinster, a Dashing Rake, and an Unsigned Painting
The Girl With Persian Shawl was a strangely bewitching masterpiece that had hung in the Rendell household for generations. Kate Rendell graci...


A Thousand Deaths
George Alec Effinger
While George Alec Effinger’s Budayeen novel WHEN GRAVITY FAILS is perhaps his most famous work, his lesser known novel THE WOLVES OF MEMORY remained his favorite. In it, he introduced readers to Sandor Couran...
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Highland Conqueror
Hannah Howell
Lady Jolene Gerard is running out of time--each moment she remains within the walls of Drumwich Castle she is in jeopardy. Her only chance lies with a prisoner chained to the dungeon walls, a Scotsman who, in ...

The Stoned Apocalypse
Marco Vassi
Marco Vassi was possibly the greatest erotic writer of his generation. His first publisher at Olympia Press, Maurice Girodias, compares his talent for prose to Henry Miller’s writing. His sexual explorat...


On Wings of Joy
Trudy Garfunkel
In this engaging history of dance, readers are introduced to the major performers, choreographers, and composers who influenced the development of ballet. Beginning with the birth of the art in the sixteenth-...

Tarnsman of Gor
John Norman
Tarl Cabot has always believed himself to be a citizen of Earth. He has no inkling that his destiny is far greater than the small planet he has inhabited for the first twenty-odd years of his life. One frost...


The Coroner's Lunch
Colin Cotterill
Dr. Siri Paiboun, one of the last doctors left in Laos after the Communist takeover, has been drafted to be national coroner. He is untrained for the job, but this independent 72-year-old has an outstanding ...

The Prince of Midnight
Laura Kinsale
A tarnished legend driven into exile deep within the depths of a crumbling French castle was once the Prince of Midnight. Now he is just a forgotten shadow. She is seeking the hero but finds herself weary o...


Surrender in Moonlight
Jennifer Blake
Jennifer Blake, one of America's romance queens, once again conquers readers with a scintillating tale of love and treachery. From the bloody battlefields of the Civil War-torn South to the lush and exotic isl...

Demon Knight
Dave Duncan
The Scottish outlaw Toby Strangerson, known as Longdirk, has used gramarye, dark magic, to defeat the Fiend and save Europe from abject slavery--but he has also made himself the most feared and envied man ...


No Quarter Asked
Janet Dailey
Janet Dailey wrote her first novel, No Quarter Asked in 1974 after her husband, Bill, urged her to back up her claim that she could write a better romance novel than the ones she had read. The book was accep...

Dangerous Masquerade
Janet Dailey
Every novel in this collection is your passport to a romantic tour of the United States through time-honored favorites by America’s First Lady of romance fiction. Each of the fifty novels is set in a diff...


The Dream Compass
Jeff Bredenberg
Rulers of old nearly destroyed the planet. And the new "boss" may finish the job.Any day now, The Monitor will unleash his deadly secret upon a war-addled planet. What brutal dictator worth his salt would pa...

Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse
Kaleb Nation
What if your mother was a criminal? What if her crime was magic? What if magic ran in the family?
Bran Hambric was found alone in a locked bank vault when he was six years old. He doesn't have a clue ho...


Appointment in Jerusalem
Max I. Dimont
Biblical historian Max Dimont, author of the classic JEWS, GOD, AND HISTORY, explores the mystery surrounding the predictions Jesus made about his fate. Examining the gospel, Dimont recreates the drama in thr...

Suspicion of Guilt
Barbara Parker
Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana make a combustible mix on many levels. Passionately attracted to each other on a personal level, they are equally passionate defenders of their clients even when their int...
Pardon me, but do you have any legal training? I’m thinking of suing someone. My lawyer thinks I’m a crackpot, so I need a second opinion.
Listen to this:
About twenty years ago when I was a volunteer 4th grade teacher I created an adventure aimed at teaching children about government. I instructed the kids to pretend to be on a cruise ship that is blown off course by a storm. They ended up shipwrecked on a tropic island, and in order to survive they had to develop a government.
Fifteen years later, Lost was launched on television and guess what? It’s about a passenger jet that crashes on a topical island. Obviously, to cover their trail they changed my cruise ship into an airplane. Other than that it’s my exact same idea. And look at the similarities! In my story the kids have to organize; On Lost they have to organize. In my story the kids have to eat disgusting things – same as on Lost. So, I’m thinking of suing the producers of Lost for copyright infringement. Do I have a slam-dunk case or what?
Actually, I hadn’t thought of suing until I read that an author named Jordan Scott has brought a lawsuit against bestselling Twilight author Stephenie Meyer alleging copyright infringement. According to Gil Kaufman of MTV. com, Meyer allegedly plagiarized something called The Nocturne written by Scott when was fifteen. She posted it one chapter a time on her website. Here’s what Kaufman writes about Scott’s claim: “Though Scott’s book is set in 15th-century France and details a love affair between a young sorcerer and a teenage girl and Meyer’s book chronicles a doomed teenage love triangle between a human, a vampire and a werewolf set in modern times, Williams said the plot lines and some developments — detailed in more than a dozen examples in the suit — match too closely to be a coincidence.”
My case is at least as airtight as Scott’s. But my lawyer doesn’t want to touch it, even on a contingency basis. Here are some of his reasons why.
- Except for fifteen or twenty copies I ran off for my students, I never published my school project.
- The producers and television network had no access to my material. I never submitted my project to them. I never submitted it to anybody. I have no idea how the network got its hands on my property.
- I never registered copyright in my story.
- There is no similarity between the “fixed expression” of my story – the characters, the plot sequence, the narrative or the dialogue – and the characters, plot, narrative and dialogue in Lost.
So that leaves the idea itself, and it’s as plain as the nose on your face that the core idea for Lost is identical to my idea. But my lawyer tells me you can’t copyright ideas.
I’m really frustrated because I could really use the money and I figure if a cockamamie lawsuit like Jordan Scott’s has a shot, so does mine. You don’t think I’m a crackpot, do you? Do you?
Richard Curtis
Yes, you are a crackpot. Your lawyer is right about copyrighting an idea. If they could, any SciFi movie could be sued by anyone who had thought of traveling to outer space.
Had you written the characters of Lost, or dialog or secret organization with time travel maybe…
BTW: you could be sued for stealing the idea from Lord of the Flies. Shipwreck, Kids, Government, sound familiar?