Get nine free e-books for your phone, PDA, or PC

I've made no secret of my love of e-books. I read 'em on airplanes, in bed at night, in line at the post office, and so on. But I do have a complaint: They're not priced substantially lower than their dead-tree counterparts.

That's why I'm tickled about this: e-bookseller eReader is offering nine Random House works of fiction absolutely free.

These aren't bargain-bin titles from no-name authors, either. The collection includes three crime-noir novels from Charles Huston, all of which earned 4.5 stars from Amazon readers; The Whiskey Rebels, a brand-new (and well-reviewed) historical novel by David Liss; and The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death by Laurie Notaro, a 4.5-star collection of essays.

Amazingly, there's no catch here--just add the books to your shopping cart and check out. The eReader software that's required to view the books is available for Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone, and iPod Touch, as well as Windows and Mac systems.

I can't speak highly enough of my experience using eReader on my iPhone. In fact, I'll go so far as to say the iPhone makes a way better e-book reader than the Amazon Kindle. Agree? Disagree? Let your opinions fly in the Comments. Meanwhile, grab these freebies while you can. I'm not sure when this "holiday special" expires.

Update: Users of the Stanza iPhone/iPod Touch app can download this same batch of free books directly to their devices.