Photo via: Barnes & Noble

A dust up up between Amazon.com and a book publisher has resulted in the mysterious removal of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" from the Kindle electronic book reader.

David Pogue at The New York Times reports that Amazon.com "caved" after the book publisher decided that it didn't want to distribute the titles via the Kindle. The problem? 

Kindle customers had already purchased the books, though Pogue notes that Amazon.com credited their accounts for the books.

Pogue writes:

"This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

"As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table."

This is the second piece of negative PR for Amazon.com this week, following news that a Seattle man had sued the company over a cracked Kindle screen.

Earnings are out next week. Maybe that will patch things up.