Though they can only be read on the web, 700 formerly expensive and sometimes out-of-print books from University of California Press are now available for free.
The public list (which contains 700 books) is available
here.
If you're interested in poetics and/or criticism, this is a motherlode of prose. I recommend
The Collected Essays of Robert Creeley and
ABC of Influence, by Christopher Beach.
Fans of Mark Twain might be interested in
Dangerous Intimacy, which tells the following story:
Quote:
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Shortly after his wife's death in 1904, Twain basked in the attentions of Isabel Lyon, his flirtatious - and calculating - secretary. Lyon desperately wanted to marry her boss, who was almost thirty years her senior. She managed to exile Twain's youngest daughter, Jean, who had epilepsy. With the help of Twain's assistant, Ralph Ashcroft, who fraudulently acquired power of attorney over the author's finances, Lyon nearly succeeded in assuming complete control over Twain's life and estate. Fortunately, Twain recognized the plot being woven around him just in time.
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