World Book Day is a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and (most importantly) it’s a celebration of reading. In fact, it’s the biggest celebration of its kind, designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries all over the world.
This is the 15th year of World Book Day, and on 1st March children of all ages will come together to appreciate reading. The main aim of World Book Day in the UK and Ireland is to encourage children to explore the pleasures of books and reading by providing them with the opportunity to have a book of their own. Schools will receive packs of Book Tokens and age-ranged World Book Day Resource Packs full of ideas and activities, display material and more information about how to get involved in World Book Day.
But World Book Day isn’t just about children, it’s about writers and readers too, and this year writing.ie brings you three books that you can download free to your Kindle in celebration of World Book Day. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the Kindle app for your computer or iPhone or android phone by clicking these links – the classics are all available free on Kindle, from Jane Austen to Mark Twain, so you’ve nothing to lose.
Due to the complexities of time zones, if these books aren’t free when you pop over to Amazon to download, they soon will be, so do call back! They are all also available through the Kindle Owners Lending Library for readers to borrow.
Vanessa Fox-O’Loughlin is originally from St. Albans in Hertfordshire but has lived at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland for (almost) more years than she lived in the UK. Founder of Ireland’s leading Publishing Consultancy and the Irish national online writing resources magazine www.writing.ie, she makes time for writing by juggling her dedicated husband, two children, three cats and two fish. Sometimes it gets messy. Represented by Curtis Brown, London, Vanessa writes crime and romance and is on the board of Irish PEN and is the Irish adviser to the Alliance of Independent Authors.
True Colours: Can you ever forget your first love?
Alex Ryan knows going back to Dublin will be difficult, but she has no idea of the hidden dangers that await her.
With her father in hospital after a mysterious accident and a new design client demanding her attention, when Alex finds herself in the offices of Venture Capital Ireland the last person she expects to meet is Sebastian Wingfield, heir to Lord Kilfenora and the Wingfield fortune – the one man in Ireland she is desperate to avoid.
Equally shocked at her unexpected appearance, Sebastian is torn between hating Alex for vanishing so inexplicably from his life sixteen years ago, breaking his heart completely, and admitting he still loves her.
But Sebastian is to marry his best friend’s sister, Caroline Audiguet-O’Reilly, in eight weeks time.
As the wedding plans unfold, unknown to any of them, a vengeful shadow has infiltrated Sebastian’s inner circle and is set on ruining him – whatever it takes.
There is no escaping the past, and the night Alex meets Sebastian at Kilfenora House, more than just their true colours are finally revealed.
True Colours will be available for a limited period at 99c/ $1.22 after World Book Day.
Orna Ross is a bestselling Irish author, living in London. She writes novels, poems and creative nonfiction. Orna has enjoyed publication by Attic Press and Penguin as well as independent self-publishing. She is Founder and Director of The Alliance of Independent Authors.
In 1923, Dan O’Donovan, an Irish Free State soldier, was found dead in the notorious sinking sands at Mucknamore. Was he a victim of the civil war that tore this village apart ? Or lured to his death for other, more personal, reasons?
Now it is 1995 and Jo Devereux has returned to Mucknamore from San Francisco, pregnant and troubled, to uncover the silence that surrounds this event in her family history.
In excavating an astonishing story of love and revenge and the price her people paid for freedom, Jo comes to realise how this mysterious murder which has haunted three generations affected her own life, especially her relationship with Rory O’Donovan, Dan’s great-nephew, and her first love.
Could a reluctant mission to redeem the past give Jo the key to her future?
‘Before The Fall’ is a sweeping multi-generational tale set in rural Ireland, London and San Francisco. ‘Magnificent… A hauntingly captivating read.’ The Sunday Independent. ‘Epic in Scope… I couldn’t put it down’ www.thebookbag.co.uk
Sally Clements lives and writes in the Irish countryside near Dublin. Always a voracious reader she found the jump into writing a natural one, as it is the thing she likes to do more than anything else!
She writes romance and crime. The romance grows from her love of characters, and their journey to their happy ever after, with lots of conflict and adventures along the way. And her crime satisfies her love of complex characters and compelling plots, with more often than not a twist in the tail.
Her first romance, Catch Me A Catch, was a contender for the 2011 Joan Hessayon Award in the Romantic Novelists Association in London. and was published by The Wild Rose Press. Other books by Sally Clements include Bound to Love, a collection of short stories called New Beginnings,Marrying Cade and newly released in Feb The Morning After.
The Morning After is a spicy romance where one photo changes everything…
A mortifying incident in her youth has shaken sense into Cara Byrne. No more bad-boys. No more getting arrested. Instead, hard work and good behaviour has earned her a job teaching at the local Boys Secondary School, and a proposal from a worthy man. So what if he doesn’t exactly light her fire – surely passion is overrated?
When her friend since childhood, Ethan Quinn, storms back into the small Irish village he left to pursue a career as a Hollywood action hero, she’s stunned to discover she’s as susceptible to his lethal charm as every woman in the world. And when a compromising photograph floods the media of them in a clinch, her almost fiancé reveals his true colours, CarEthan starts trending on twitter, and she loses her job, could anyone blame her if she accepts his invitation to hide out at his Malibu beach house?
Ethan loves women, but never lets his girlfriends into his heart. He’s failed at being there in the past, and won’t put his heart on the line for anyone, ever again. But Cara’s a different matter – and when passionate attraction is added to his friendship with the one person he’s always confided in, he’s thrown for a loop. Cara’s lost everything, and like it or not, he’s responsible. There’s no fighting the attraction that blazes between them – but when the month long affair is over, will he ever be able to let her go?
So what else is happening for World Book Day in Ireland?
Ireland’s leading Children’s Book Publisher The O’Brien Press have produced a fantastic bilingual flip book exclusively for World Book Day Ireland. In Marco Moves In, meet Patrick, whose best friend is a grizzly bear recently escaped from the zoo! Flip over toBrogá Thomáis: Ní Maith le TomásBróga: cad a dhéanfaidh Mamaí agus Daidí? The World Book Day children’s book is also available in Braille from National Council for the Blind of Ireland.
Marco Moves in is laugh out loud funny and had both my children in stiches!
A grizzly bear walked all the way from the zoo to my front door and not a single person noticed him. I suppose it helped that it was night, and that he was wearing a big black duffle coat with an enormous hood that covered his hairy head. He knocked on the front door three times, loud knocks that shook the house.
Patrick makes his unexpected guest at home, while keeping him hidden from the neighbours, police and his very distractable mum!
“It can be a struggle to find books that will engage six-to-eight year olds, but one sure to capture their imaginations is Gerry Boland’s debut, Marco Moves In” – Sunday Independent
by Una Leavy
Is fuath le Thomáis bróga a chaitheamh. Is maith leis a bharraicíní beaga. Is breá leis siúl ar an bhféar agus ar na duilleoga. Ach, cad faoin sneachta? Cad a dhéanfaidh sé ansin?
Tomás just HATES wearing shoes! He has such fun with his bare toes, walking on the grass and leaves.
But then the snow comes…
(c) Vanessa O’Loughlin March 2012
