What are the best contemporary free serif fonts to use for ‘anything other than a headline or ad’? Who knows. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

After much contemplation, fiddling and cross-checking my preferred free serif book/article fonts that look good in single and multiple column format and also when justified are:

Literata Book
Linguitics Pro
Lora and
Droid

Also, bundled but not free, are:
the Microsoft Office Georgia and
old Apple OS bundled New York