New in the public domain · 2026
The class of 1930.
On 1 January 2026, US copyright expired on books published in 1930. Here are 12 of the best, free as EPUB and as Margin edition PDFs for e-ink tablets.
Every year on 1 January, a new year’s worth of books, films and music enters the public domain in the United States: anything published 95 years earlier, once its copyright runs out at the end of the year. The 1930 class includes Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and Carolyn Keene’s The Secret of the Old Clock.
These books are public domain in the US. Most of their authors died less than 70 years ago, so in the UK, the EU and many other countries they’re still in copyright, and downloads are only available to readers in the United States.
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
Sam Spade, a dead partner and a jewelled bird everyone will kill for. The hard-boiled novel that defined noir.
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner
The Bundren family carries their mother’s coffin across Mississippi to bury her, told in fifteen voices.
The Murder at the Vicarage
Agatha Christie
Miss Marple’s first novel: the most disliked man in St Mary Mead is found shot in the vicar’s study.
The Castle
Franz Kafka, translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir
A land surveyor arrives in a village to work for the castle, and can never reach it. Kafka’s last, unfinished novel.
Not Without Laughter
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes’s first novel follows a Black boy growing up in small-town Kansas, with blues, family and ambition.
Strong Poison
Dorothy L. Sayers
Lord Peter Wimsey falls for Harriet Vane, a mystery writer on trial for poisoning her lover, and has thirty days to save her.
Vile Bodies
Evelyn Waugh
Waugh’s wild satire of London’s Bright Young Things, all parties, motor races and broken engagements.
Swallows and Amazons
Arthur Ransome
Four children borrow a dinghy, camp on an island in the Lake District and go to war with two pirate girls.
Cimarron
Edna Ferber
The Oklahoma land rush of 1889 and the boom town that grows from it, through one restless husband and the wife who stays.
Giant's Bread
Agatha Christie
A young composer torn between love and his music. Agatha Christie’s first novel under the name Mary Westmacott, and no murder in it.
The Secret of the Old Clock
Carolyn Keene
The very first Nancy Drew mystery: a missing will, a rich family and a clue hidden in a clock.
The Hidden Staircase
Carolyn Keene
Nancy Drew investigates a haunted mansion and finds the secret passage behind its ghostly noises.
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Public Domain Day 2027
On 1 January 2027, books from 1931 join the public domain in the US. We’ll typeset the best of them for e-ink. Leave your email and we’ll write once when they’re ready, and when new templates arrive.