42 free excerpts in Penguin's holiday sampler

PENGUINESAMPLER

If you're one of the thou­sands of peo­ple who got a new e-read­er for Christ­mas, Pen­guin has a morning-after gift for you. Sure, the pub­lish­er called it the Pen­guin Hol­i­day eSam­pler, but I'd say it works just fine post-holiday.

Hol­i­day or post-, there are excerpts from 42 books in the sam­pler, which can be down­loaded for free for Nook, iPad, Kin­dle, Kobo and Sony e-read­ers. Like what you're read­ing, and it's easy to buy the whole book.

What's there to like? Clas­sics such as Jack Ker­ouac's "On the Road" and John Stein­beck's "The Grapes of Wrath." Mod­ern best­sellers "The Help" and "Eat Pray Love." There are books for kids, includ­ing Judy Blume's "Tales of a Fourth-Grade Noth­ing"; for young adults, includ­ing "Matched" by Ally Condie; and for their atten­tive par­ents, includ­ing "Bat­tle Hymn of the Tiger Moth­er" by Amy Chua. There are also mys­ter­ies from Sue Grafton, Patri­cia Corn­well and Clive Cus­sler and romance from Nora Roberts.

Those are all books that have already hit shelves, some quite a long time ago ("On the Road" has been around for 50 years). But there is also some­thing for those who want a taste of the future: excerpts of six books that will be com­ing out in 2012. Those include the humor book writ­ten by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel, "Lunatics," and Eliz­a­beth George's next Inspec­tor Lyn­ley novel, "Believ­ing the Lie.".......

42 free excerpts in Penguin's holiday sampler
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/12/penguin-holiday-sampler.html