If you are using this to troubleshoot your Google Books issue, proceed at your own risk. I'm not responsible to any damages. This is what worked for me.
This morning I tried to buy a book on my Android phone and after the purchase I tried to open the book. Shortly after I got an error saying:
"Couldn't retrieve part of book from server. Try again later."
How annoying right? So I tried again later. Same error. So I started poking around. Maybe I can download a sample of a random book... nope same error. Well I felt a little bit better knowing it wouldn't download a sample and my purchased book.
That leads to an issue with either Google, my phone, my connection on my phone, or the Google Books app. I then opened http://books.google.com/ and found my book that I purchased and I was able to open it and read it. So that leaves my phone, my connection on my phone, or the Google Books app. Then I verified I could browse the Internet on my phone and I could. Also tried wifi on and off. Still the same error. Well, I then started with the Google Books app. I "force stop" the app, "clear data", then tried to open the app. That was a complete fail and all my offline books where gone, as I expected from clearing the data.
The last thing to do was to "uninstall updates". Uninstall updates was located where the uninstall button should be. I think my Google books version was 2.x.x ( I think 2.3.5 but not sure ). So I uninstalled updates. The version of Google Books is now 1.3.5 and that did the trick. I was able to view all my books, purchased and sampled, and re-download all my books offline including the new book I just purchased. Hope this helps someone...