Sony Corp., the world's second-largest maker of consumer electronics, will allow users of its reading device to access more than half a million of Google Inc.'s online books.

The public-domain books on Google's book-search service can be accessed through Sony's eBook site and downloaded onto its Reader device at no charge, Tokyo-based Sony said in a statement on PR Newswire Thursday.

The service, starting the same day, includes works such as Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" and Anna Sewell's "Black Beauty," raising the number of titles available on the eBook store to more than 600,000, Sony said.