yRead

yRead is a plain and simple word processor that gives you the possibility to open .txt, .rtf and .html files to view their content. It features a speech-to-text tool and it's designed to locate free ebooks in the Project Gutenberg online library.

Installing yRead is a fast and easy job that doesn't require special attention, thanks to the fact that it contains only familiar options.

Once finished, you are greeted by a normal window with a neatly organized structure, representing yRead's interface.

You can immediately start writing or typing text in the main frame, click a button to hear it read aloud by the Microsoft Anna voice, adjust the speed, pause the speech anytime, as well as increase or decrease the font size.

In order to look up an ebook on Project Gutenberg, you can enter a keyword and view results, along with the title, URL and file name for each book. It can be downloaded with one click. Unfortunately, this feature didn't work in our tests.

Overall, yRead seems to be a straightforward software program for opening text files to read them aloud. Too bad the search feature for the Project Gutenberg website didn't work in our evaluation. Nevertheless, you can give yRead a shot and see for yourself whether it meets your requirements or not.