EBook-Only:

Gemstar and St. Martin's Press have teamed up to provide the latest (and perhaps final) Robert Ludlum title, The Cassandra Compact.  The ebook edition will be released on May 12th,  four weeks prior to any paper version.

The Cassandra Compact
by Robert Ludlum and Philip Shelby
St. Martin's Press
price not yet set
Gemstar format
 
 

" In Robert Ludlum's The Cassandra Compact, Lt. Colonel Jon Smith, currently working as a medical researcher, is contacted by a Russian colleague with an urgent request that they meet in Venice in ten days. When they meet, however, his colleague is killed almost instantly in a hail of automatic gunfire but not before he passes on to Smith the vital intelligence—someone is out to steal Russia’s store of the smallpox virus. Completely eradicated, smallpox is the deadliest of viruses and could well cause an epidemic of unheard of proportions should it be unleashed on the population at large. Smith, with the help of hiscolleagues at Covert-One, must prevent the virus from being stolen. But his adversaries are several stepsahead of him and now he must find and stop the conspirators before they unleash Armageddon upon the world."-- from publisher's website

At Random, Random House's e-publishing division, continues to release several ebooks each month.  According to AtRandom's website, the titles are available in Glassbook, Microsoft, Peanut Press and Gemstar formats.  However, I have found that a title is not always immediately available in all formats.  The books are also slated to be released in trade paperback as well, but only several months after the ebook release.    Recent publications include::
 

Hair!: Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness
 by Gersh Kuntzman
AtRandom 
$9.95
 
 
 

"Hair! Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness is a social history of one of humanity's most irksome problems: male pattern baldness. 

Throughout the centuries, Man (not his real name) has tried everything to hide, treat and repair baldness, as well as a host of nostrums designed to coax hair growth from the scalp (or, at least, money from the wallets of unsuspecting baldies). Yet we stand on the brink of a truly historic epoch: Two drugs are now federally approved remedies for baldness and more are on the way while surgical techniques continue to improve, and even hairpieces are becoming acceptable again. Will baldness, the stigma it carries, and the profound psychological toll it takes on men soon be things of the past? Will bald men someday be electable? Are these even rhetorical questions?

Gersh Kuntzman takes you from the laboratories of Merck, maker of Propecia, to the operating rooms of the nation's best hair-transplant surgeons, to the rug men working on the cutting edge of artificial hair design. Hair! covers baldness like nothing before." -- publisher's website
 

Lights, Camera, Democracy!
by Lewis Lapham
AtRandom
$9.95

"For fifteen years, Lewis Lapham has written a monthly column in Harper's Magazine, for which he won a 1995 National Magazine Award for his "exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity." This major collection of Lapham's essays defines his distinct view of the way the world really works, through vivid analysis of media, language, culture, and education. Lapham brings an acute eye to the ways of Washington, the manners of the money class, and the stirrings of the global economy. With originality and breadth, he illuminates the quirks and essential truths of the American character. "-- publisher's website

>Lost in Mongolia
by Tad Friend
AtRandom
$9.95
 
 
 
 

"Find yourself in the midst of a heated battle over a sitcom laugh track. Learn to get away with spectacular crimes. Get lost with the reindeer people in the mountains of Mongolia. 

In Lost in Mongolia a collection of Tad Friend's most original, witty, and wide-ranging articles and essays from The New Yorker, Esquire, and Outside we are taken on a cultural tour of global proportions. Friend reports from the entertainment mecca of Hollywood on topics that range from the life and death of River Phoenix to the widespread plagiarism of movie ideas, to why celebrity profiles are always dreadful.  He critiques the larger American culture with articles such as White Trash Nation, In Praise of Middlebrow, and a brief rumination on what it means when your girlfriend steals and wears your favorite shirt. Readers will also journey to foreign lands and American outposts, as Friend goes on the trail of the Marcos dynasty in the Philippines, is harassed in Morocco, and digs up buried treasure in Sun Valley." -- publisher's website
 

Untruth: Why the Conventional Wisdom is (Almost Always) Wrong
by Robert J. Samuelson
AtRandom
$9.95

"In Untruth, Newsweek and Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson explains why our political, economic and cultural debates so routinely traffic in misinformation--popular fads that, like meteors, momentarily burn brightly in public consciousness and then fizzle out. Advocacy groups, politicians and their unwitting allies in the media instinctively create agendas of problems that afflict society and must be "solved".  The problems are often exaggerated and oversimplified, and the result is that the public is misled about what is wrong and how easily it can be made right. 

Untruth is the first collection of Samuelson's insightful assaults on the conventional wisdom. Included are columns arguing that campaign contributions have not corrupted politics, that the "service economy" is not turning America into a nation of hamburger flippers, and that the Internet isn't the most important invention since the printing press." -- publisher's website

Digitopia: The Look of the New Digital You
by Richard DeGrandpre
AtRandom
$9.95
 
 
 
 

"The year is 2001. The internet has us swimming in  information. New digital media like DVDs, MP3s, PlayStations, and DTVs are revolutionizing the entertainment industry. The e-economy has redefined the>
marketplace. E-books are now available at the click of a button. And life is... what? Faster? Better? Richer? Healthier? Happier?

In twenty-five original and provocative essays, DeGrandpre questions whether we as individuals or as a society have adequately considered the implications of a fully-wired world, and finds considerable historical evidence that our digital culture will lead us to a time that has, literally, no place. The name of this placeless place is of course Digitopia." -- publisher's website

EBook-Enhanced Titles:

On February 20th, Harper Collins Publishers announced the creation of their ebook division, PerfectBound.  Ebook titles will be released in Gemstar, Microsoft Reader and Adobe formats, and available from several on-line retailers, including Amazon.com, Contentville.com, Powells.com, Ebooks.com and Chapters.ca.  The following ebook-enhanced titles are the first releases of PerfectBound:

Pride Before the Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the Microsoft Era 
by John Heilemann
Harper Collins>
$15.96
 
 

ebook edition contains in-book links to U.S. v. Microsoft legal documents, including the Bill Gates deposition

"John Heilemann's Pride Before the Fall uncovers the secret history of the antitrust trial that shook an economy: United States v. Microsoft.  Drawing on years of reporting - including extensive interviews with Gates and other top Microsoft executives, Justice Department trustbuster Joel Klein, superlitigator David Boies, Intel chief Andy Grove, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, and scores of lesser-known but pivotal players -Heilemann lays bare the chaotic confluence of forces that shattered Microsoft's aura of invincibility and the climate of fear that held an industry in thrall." -- from dust jacket
 

Soul Mountain
by Gao Xingjian
Harper Collins
$15.96
 
 

ebook edition includes author's Nobel Prize acceptance speech "The Case for Literature"

"Soul Mountain probes the human soul with an uncommon directness and candor. Interwoven with a myriad of stories and countless memorable characters - from venerable Daoist masters and Buddhist nuns to mythical Wild Men, deadly Qichun snakes, and farting buses - is the narrator's poignant inner journey and search for freedom.

Fleeing the social conformity required by the Communist government, he wanders deep into the
regions of the Qiang, Miao, and Yi peoples located on the fringes of Han Chinese civilization and discovers a plethora of different traditions, history, legends, folk songs, and landscapes. Slowly, with the help of memory, imagination, and sensory experience, he reconstructs his personal past. He laments the impact of the Cultural Revolution on the ecology - both human and physical - of China."-- from dust jacket

Faithless: Tales of Transgression
by Joyce Carol Oates
Harper Collins
$19.95
 
 

ebook edition contains "Dark Work", an interview with the author

"In this collection of twenty-one unforgettable stories, Joyce Carol Oates explores the mysterious private lives of men and women with vivid, unsparing precision and sympathy. By turns interlocutor and interpreter, magician and realist, she dissects the psyches of ordinary people and their potential for good and evil with chilling understatement and lasting power.  In "Faithless," two adult sisters recall their mother's disappearance when they were children. In "Ugly," a bitterly angry young woman defines herself as ugly as a way of making herself  invulnerable to hurt and in so doing hurts others. In "Lover," a beautiful young woman locked into an obsessive love affair seeks her revenge in a bizarre, violent manner. In "Gunlove," a woman in thrall to a powerful erotic fetishism recounts in brief, deadpan vignettes a history of her relations with firearms. Intense and provocative, Faithless is a startling look into the heart of contemporary America from the modern master of the short story." -- from publisher's website
 

Sharpe's Trafalgar
by Bernard Cornwell
Harper Collins
$19.95
 
 

ebook edition includes an exclusive short story "Sharpe's Skirmish" by the author

"A dazzling nautical adventure that finds Bernard Cornwell's beloved ensign Richard Sharpe in the middle of one of history's most spectacular naval engagements: the battle at Cape Trafalgar off the coast of Spain.

The year is 1805, and Richard Sharpe, having completed his tour in India (Sharpe's Tiger; Sharpe's Triumph; Sharpe's Fortress), is headed back to England, where he will join a newly formed regiment, the Green Jackets. Traveling aboard Captain Peculiar Cromwell's East Indiaman cargo ship, the Calliope, is the lovely Lady Grace Hale, whose regal presence may provide intrigue and distraction from what promises to be an otherwise uneventful voyage home."-- from publisher's website
 

The Nightmare Room "eOmnibus"
by R.L. Stine
Harper Collins
$19.95
 
 

ebook format will include "story-specific materials" not in print edition

Collection of six novels and one short story for young adults.  For a multimedia introduction to the book, go to R.L. Stine's "The Nightmare Room" website at  http://www.thenightmareroom.com/