A Different Light Bookstore, standing proud and tall in three of the gayest neighborhoods in the U.S.-the Castro, Chelsea, and West Hollywood-probably sells almost every book ever written by or about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. But if you don't live near any of these three great neighborhoods, don't fret, because A Different Light sells its entire store online (except for the wonderful window displays). Use the search engine to find a particular author or book title, or browse through the (as yet, incomplete) sections to see what the store has to offer on a particular topic. I ordered a competitively priced copy of media-darling Scott Heim's Mysterious Skin through the site's secure server, and it came the very next day, complete with the author's autograph! Now that's what I call icing my cake. - Jeff Titterton
Do you love to read, but seem to spend all of your free time in the car or cleaning the house? Try the Audio Book Club, which will read books to you-on cassette, that is. The site uses all of the selling gimics employed by mail-order clubs: Join and get your first four books for only $0.99-with an obligation to buy four more books at regular club prices over the next two years; get up to 70% off thousands of titles-mostly bargain-bin books you don't want; and get savings of 25% on any second audio book and 35% on any third audio book in an order-which won't count towards your four-book enrollment commitment. You know the routine, so don't expect to get a deal here. But if you want good audio books and you don't fall for obvious marketing ploys, the site offers an extensive selection of quality books, such as the Charles Dickens and Toni Morrison novels I ordered over the secure server and received in the mail less than a week later. - Jeff Titterton
Part of newspaper-publishing giant Knight-Ridder, NewsLibrary lets you search the entire archives of 25 newspapers, including The Miami Herald and San Jose Mercury News. Searching the archives is free: Choose the paper and key words you want to search, and then browse through the annotated list of stories the database retrieves to see which ones you want to read. From here on in you have to pay: Each full-text story you download will cost you $1. This may sound expensive, but trust me, if you're in the middle of a research paper, or if your work requires you to efficiently find information from newspapers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the NewsLibrary service will save you loads of research time and money. - Jeff Titterton
Oh, please-now somebody wants us to pay to read bad writing on the Internet. If you're stupid enough to pay Mind's Eye Fiction to read its "professional short stories," then you deserve the mediocre fiction you get in return. A lesson in obscure business plans, the site lets you read the first half of any of its stories for free; then, if you want to read the end of the story, you have to pay in one of two ways: with your wallet or your time. If you want to pay with your wallet, each story will cost you about $0.18 to read, with a minimum purchase of 22 stories. You can pay through a variety of mechanisms, including cybercash, credit card, and a 900 number. If you don't think it's worth $5 to read 22 stories, you can also pay with your time by reading through interactive advertisements. I won't bore you with the horrid details of that experience. - Jeff Titterton