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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Royal Seduction
Jennifer Blake
Angeline’s virtue was intact before she met the prince of Ruthenia...before he mistook her for her cousin, his brother’s mistress and the only witness to his murder...before he exacted his punishment for k...

China Quest
Elizabeth Lane
It is 1861 and Hong Kong is the most exotic, remote place on earth for a westerner like Serena Rose Bellamy Bolton. She is as greedy for love as she is for treasure. For Jason Frobisher, Hong Kong is just ano...


Lens of the World
R.A. MacAvoy
This is the story of Nazhuret, an outcast, the dwarfish offspring of unknown parents. Yet his story is a great one, filled with surprising rewards and amazing adventures. By the hands of Powl, mentor, madma...

Mastering the Business of Writing
Richard Curtis
One of the most comprehensive guides currently on the market, MASTERING THE BUSINESS OF WRITING is an insider's guide to the business of being a professional writer. All aspects of the publishing industry ar...


The Green Millennium
Fritz Leiber
Hugo and Nebula award-winning Fritz Leiber is a science-fiction grand master with an unparalleled ability to discern the stranger side of the universe. THE GREEN MILLENNIUM is set in a futuristic human societ...

Heiress
Janet Dailey
In Heiress, two sisters meet at the funeral of one of the most prestigious men in the country, Dean Lawson, their father. Abbie Lawson, the dutiful genteel daughter bred in the lap of luxury and, Rachel Farr, ...


Dangerous Games
Michael Prescott
Maverick FBI special agent Tess McCallum (nicknamed "Super Fed" by an adoring media) (the central investigator in previous novel, Next Victim) is back and she’s got a new partner, one she doesn’t wa...

Sex and Violence in Hollywood
Ray Garton
This breakout thriller by the master of horror was previously released only as an oversized Subterranean Press hardcover edition. Sex and Violence in Hollywood will take its place on the shelf next to othe...


Aspen Gold
Janet Dailey
Kit Masters, born and brought up on an Aspen ranch, left to pursue an acting career in Hollywood but she is a woman with a strong sense of family, loyalty, and integrity and had deep ties to the land where ...

Dirty Tricks
George Alec Effinger
In these eleven short stories by speculative fiction master George Alec Effinger, New York's populace must deal with the realities of a bi-polar existence; patients' brains are cut to tiny pieces in a clinica...


Hair Raiser
Nancy J. Cohen
Not just your average South Florida beachcomber, Marla's now a volunteer for Ocean Guard, a coastal preservation group. She's even in charge of their upcoming Taste of the World fundraiser. But when chef Pi...

The Harder They Fall
Jill Shalvis
The good doctor Hunter Adams’ steady life is suddenly wracked by a whirlwind. Trisha Malloy, vixen, lingerie saleswoman and magnet for disaster, has entered Hunter’s life and begun to destroy everything. H...


EMT Rescue
Pat Ivey
These are the trying, true stories of the mobile emergency medical technicians who often are the only thing standing between any one of us and death. Author Pat Ivey uses her extensive first-hand experiences a...
Two representatives of Aptara, the digital solutions company, have offered a terrific scenario of a typical school room of the future in which everybody’s using a tablet. It’s just what we imagined when we first laid eyes on a tablet back in 2003.
Here’s the opening passage of Aptara’s scenario developed by John Ott and Eric Freese:
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Welcome to class. Take your new tablet— your only textbook this semester— out of your backpack. It’s about the same size, but lighter and thinner than your old textbooks. It’s also battery-powered, similar to a big touch-screen, like your iPhone.
Use that touch-screen and download the first chapter of your first lesson. That’s right—your lesson is an app. Plug in your earbuds and tap the screen to begin the introductory video.
Cool, the presenter is that famous scientist from the cable show…
Now the video goes into full documentary mode; scenes from real life. Major ideas from the lesson appear as text at the bottom of the screen; so do vocabulary words. Now the presenter is back and he’s working out a big idea step-by-step on the whiteboard…
Video over. Time to read…
**************************************
Has anyone figured out the flaw in this projection? Consider: with digital technology you don’t have to go to class – because there’s no class to go to. You can “attend” school in your bedroom, living room, dorm room, bathroom or car.
Digital technology is the great disintermediator. Among the things it disintermediates is place. There is no school room, at least not one with geographical coordinates. It exists in the cloud. In Gertrude Stein’s immortal phrase, there is no there there. Unfortunately, Stein used it to characterize Philadelphia, but it’s the mot juste for a virtual school room.
University trustees had better begin thinking about discounting tuition for students auditing classes from their bathrooms…
Aptara’s complete article can be seen on the Digital Book World website, and if you haven’t signed up to receive DBW’s newsletter, do log on. You’ll be at least one light year more informed than your neighbors.
Richard Curtis