Feeling strapped for cash after buying a $130 eReader? No problem–try eBookNewser’s Free eBook of the Day column. Today’s free eBook is Hello Kitty Must Die by Angela S. Choi.

The free selection includes everything from new eBooks that are only available for free for a limited promotional time period; public domain classics by authors like Jane Austen and Mark Twain; self-published works from authors looking to find readers from sites like Smashwords and Lulu.com to Kindle eBooks.

We try to vary the devices, so there is a little something for everybody. For more free eBook exploration, check out our list of 10 Websites To Download Free eBooks.

Pride & Prejudice author Jane Austen stars in a new video game called “Word Fighter.” The video embedded above shows two characters from the game, J.D. “The Hero” (an orphan scholar) and Neil “The Rival” (an ivy league graduate student).

According to Pixels, Panels & Playthings, the game’s developers were influenced by Princess Peach Toadstool (from the Super Mario Bros. franchise). Jane “appears to be a very prim and proper lady … but when it’s time to throw down, she’s ready to destroy you.” The game will be available for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices.

Here’s more from the article: “Inspired by Boggle, Scrabble, Words With Friends and Super Puzzle Fighter, the object of the game is for players, as famous authors personified by their literary works, to spell words quickly on separate tile grids. The better the word — based on length and letter value — the more damage you do to your opponent. Special power-ups like attack multipliers and tile shufflers are added to the mix, so it can be anybody’s game.”

Oxford University’s Bodleian Library paid $1.6 million for 68 pages from Jane Austen‘s unfinished manuscript, The Watsons–far exceeding expectations for the auction.

The handwritten manuscript actually includes the author’s editing notes. However, New York’s Morgan Library and Museum owns the first 12 pages of the work.

The AP had the scoop: “Sotheby’s books specialist Gabriel Heaton said the heavily corrected draft ‘has afforded an extremely broad audience an insight into the author’s writing process and reworkings.’ Sotheby’s says it is the only major manuscript by the author still in private hands.”

Jane Austen‘s unpublished manuscript for a novel called The Watsons will be auctioned off at Sotheby’s in London tomorrow.

The manuscript is handwritten by Austen and includes the work alongside her notes and edits. While New York’s Morgan Library and Museum owns the first 12 pages of the work, the rest of the unfinished manuscript will be included in the auction. The Sotheby’s listing describes the pages as loose but kept together in a box. The listing reads: “in total 68 pages plus 6 blanks (these being the versos of the three inserted leaves and the final three pages of the final section), housed in collector’s folding box…”.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the manuscript is expected to fetch between $330,000 and $490,000.

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Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul made a few more enemies in a Royal Geographic Society interview. According to The Guardian, the novelist told an interviewer that he does not consider any female writer to be his equal.

Naipaul (pictured, via) remarked: “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me … My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don’t mean this in any unkind way.”

Angry readers have responded in the article’s comments section and on Twitter. The Guardian to create “The Naipaul Test,” analyzing readers’ ability to guess an author’s gender.

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Today Simon & Schuster released more details, a web video, and excerpts from O: A Presidential Novel–an anonymously written novel about the Barack Obama White House.

Here’s an excerpt: “‘Even though O assumed it wouldn’t happen, he wished The Barracuda, as he liked to think of her, would join the Republican race. O knew they wouldn’t be that lucky, but he had let himself imagine such a contest. He had watched her speak to a rally of her faithful. There she was, thick hair piled up high, chin out, defiant, taunting, flaunting that whole lusty librarian thing, sweet and savory, mother and predator, alluring and dangerous.”

In a letter to readers, publisher Jonathan Karp compared the author’s choice of anonymity to both Jane Austen and Lemony Snicket–a surreal, possibly satirical, pairing. According to The Cutline, the publisher has urged journalists not to comment on the book. What do you think about this mysterious book?

U.K. Google users can see a Jane Austen-themed Google Doodle as they search the web today. The image is embedded above, follow this link to see the image at Google.

Today is Austen’s 235th birthday (she was born in 1775). Other Google Doodles have honored Oscar Wilde, Agatha Christie, and Ahmad Shawqi.

The Guardian has more: “A Regency couple – most likely the novelist’s most celebrated characters, Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice – are pictured taking a stroll through the English countryside, eyeing each other rather coyly, in the illustration on the search engine’s site.” (Via Publishers Weekly)

Ever read Seth Grahame-Smith‘s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and wish you had wrote it first? Now you can enter the Jane Austen parody game with the Bad Austen contest and win $250 in prize money.

Read the complete rules here. Eighty of the 800-word entries will be published in Adams Media’s upcoming compilation,  Bad Austen. Runner-up winners will receive two free copies of the anthology. The judges include Patrice Hannon, Ph.D, Carrie Bebris, and Gregory Bergman. The deadline is March 1st 2011.

Here’s more about the contest: “Our distinguished panelists will then decide which awful scenes to feature in a Bad Austen compilation that will be published in Fall 2011 by Adams Media. You can also vote for your favorite scenes on the site. The top reader-voted scene will receive special recognition in Bad Austen, the book.”

As a controversy rages about the literary legacy of Jane Austen, novelist Stephanie Barron has written a special dispatch from the Jane Austen Society of North America conference.

Barron (pictured) is the author of the Jane Austen Mysteries series. Last week Oxford University professor Kathryn Sutherland made headlines for her analysis of more than 1,000 handwritten Austen pages, uncovering a trail of writing errors.

We’ve reprinted her entire literary op-ed below. Barron wrote: “It’s Sunday afternoon, and the end of the annual Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting–which was rife, this year, with outrage. Six hundred and fifty Janeites in one Portland ballroom, all venting about the same thing: that Kathryn Sutherland’s attempt to promote her online database of Austen manuscript pages has gone decidedly wrong.”
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In 1818, Jane Austen‘s brother Henry Thomas Austen praised his sister, writing: “Everything came finished from her pen.” Since then, Austen has been well known for her highly-polished prose. However, new evidence has surfaced disputing Henry’s claim.

In an interview with NPR, Oxford University professor Kathryn Sutherland explained how she analyzed more than 1,000 handwritten Austen pages and found that they are littered with misspellings and grammar errors. Sutherland quoted Austen’s editor, William Gifford about a draft of Emma:  “It is very carelessly copied. Though the handwriting is excellently plain and there are many short omissions which must be inserted, I will readily correct the proof for you.”

Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility have been re-written by 21st Century editors, adding zombies and sea monsters into the classic stories. In August, Emma received the same treatment from Wayne Josephson with Emma and the Vampires.