Online book resources
Our main resource for the books we record is theProject Gutenberg. It has a huge catalog of public domain e-books, and they do extensive legal checking before releasing their titles. Generally, if it was published before 1923 in the USA, it's public domain in the US, which is good enough for us. Nevertheless, there are also other resources online which are listed here. But bear in mind that the book has to be in the public domain (see CopyrightAndPublicDomain). If you are in doubt, don't start recording until the copyright status is approved by an administrator.
General
Google Books (only use books with full view; doesn't work for everyone outside U.S.)
Live Search Books (only use books with full view; doesn't work for everyone outside U.S.)
Distributed Proofreaders
Distributed Proofreaders acts as a creation source for Project Gutenberg by proofreading, through a network of volunteers, public domain works. Using the Project Search feature, you can sort by title, author, language, genre, etc.
Texts completed and posted to Project Gutenberg (and it is recommended you only use completed works due to the changable nature of works in progress) appear at the bottom of the sorted list(s). NOTE: You must create an account at Distributed Proofreaders to use this feature
Children's Literature
Baldwin Project - all text is online and all works are in the public domain. The About This Text section for each book contains the public domain documentation.
Children's Library offers many ways to search for books. Use the advanced search option for the easiest and quickest way to find what you are looking for!
WorldWide School Books are grouped by genre on this page.
Classic Reader This site offers many different children's books, very helpful
Children's books, scanned at the Internet Archive - need checking for PDness and completeness of book, but a great selection!
Non-English Languages
Bulgarian
Dutch:
Finnish:
French:
German:
Latin:
Romanian:
Russian:
Spanish:
Religious Literature
Special Topics
Literary Gothic:
Fables and Fairy and Folk Tales
http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/ All of Andrew Lang's text for the 12 Colour Fairy Books and http://www.mythfolklore.net/1001nights/ Text from 5 different authors of the 1001 nights.
Female Authors:
A Celebration of Women Authors: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/
Adventure fiction:
19th century adventure fiction: http://www.athelstane.co.uk
The Union Catalog of Pre-1600 Books Online: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/union This list of pre-1600-relevant books is taken from a number of online collections and at the time of adding link, contained 12,502 books.
PD Novellas - Melville House - includes summaries, it's a print resource, but handy for getting ideas!
Short Stories - short-stories.co.uk - need to check copyright / public domainness carefully, but a handy resource.
Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy - The Avalon Project at Yale Law School (documents after 1923 will need a careful copyright check ... please don't start recording until this is agreed.)
Specific Authors
Franz Kafka: http://www.kafka.org/index.php?english_transl
Sarah Orne Jewett: http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/contents.htm
Charlotte Mason: http://amblesideonline.org/CM/toc.html