Where to find books

Ask for EPUB

EPUB is the format to look for. An EPUB holds the text of a book rather than a picture of its pages, so the words can reflow: SchriftOhr can set them in the size and font you like, paginate them for your screen, follow along while a voice reads, and let you highlight a sentence and keep it.

SchriftOhr opens PDF and Markdown too, and plays audiobooks. But a PDF is a fixed photograph of a printed page — it cannot reflow, and text pulled back out of one is often ragged. When a book is offered in more than one format, take the EPUB.

Buy the book, not the platform

Most ebooks sold online are wrapped in DRM — a lock that ties the file to one company's app and one account. You paid for the book, but what you can do is rent-shaped: it opens in their reader and nowhere else, it cannot be moved to another app, and if that company closes the shop or your account, the book can go with it.

A DRM-free book is different. You download an actual file, it is yours, and it opens in whatever you like — including SchriftOhr. That is ordinary personal ownership: read it on any of your devices, keep a backup, hand it to the app you prefer.

So look for the words DRM-free, or plain language about downloading an EPUB, before you buy. Publishers who sell direct are usually the ones who do it. If a store only ever says "read in our app," that is the tell.

Some stores now let you download a book you bought as a plain DRM-Free EPUB, when its author or publisher chose to sell it without the lock. If you are offered that download, take it: the file opens here like any other. And if you write or publish, choosing DRM-free when you are given the choice is what lets your readers keep what they paid for.

The SchriftOhr Editions

We also make books of our own, for reading, for listening, and for sharing with family. Many are classics we love, each set with care: the author's full text, real chapters, clean pages. Some begin with an old printing that we set again from the ground up. Others are new: stories drawn from old sources few readers can find today, retold for families and young readers.

Every edition is free, with no account and no tracking. Download it, keep it, and open it in SchriftOhr or any EPUB reader.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes · Arthur Conan Doyle Free EPUB · proofing copy The twelve stories that put Baker Street on the map. A king who needs a photograph back, a pawnbroker paid to copy out the encyclopaedia, a speckled band and a whistle in the night at Stoke Moran. Our edition follows the 1892 Harper printing and keeps Sidney Paget's drawings, with a colour plate opening each story. Proofing copy: corrections welcome.

The Pilgrim's Progress · John Bunyan Free EPUB The most widely read allegory in English, and still the best companion for the road. Christian sets out from the City of Destruction with a burden on his back, and the way to the Celestial City runs through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair and Doubting Castle. In Part Two his wife Christiana and their children follow after him. A book for every age in the house.

The Mortification of Sin in Believers · John Owen Free EPUB · proofing copy Short, sharp and searching. Owen preached these sermons to Oxford students in 1656 on a single verse, Romans 8:13, and they remain the book many readers are handed first when a sin will not let go. He is just as clear on the ways we fool ourselves that the fight is over. From the 1668 printing. Proofing copy: corrections welcome.

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment · Jeremiah Burroughs Free EPUB · proofing copy Contentment, Burroughs says, is learned, which means it can be taught. In these sermons on Philippians 4:11 he shows what true contentment is and is not, and answers one by one the excuses a restless heart makes. A Puritan classic that reads as if it were written this week. From the 1649 printing. Proofing copy: corrections welcome.

Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ · John Owen Free EPUB · proofing copy Owen's last work, and two books in one. The Meditations dwell on the glory of Christ in his person, his office and his grace; the Discourses that complete them turn that glory toward the unbeliever and toward the Christian whose love has grown cold. Read together, each makes the other richer. Spelling is modernised; Scripture stands as printed. Proofing copy: corrections welcome.

The Sovereignty of God · A. W. Pink Free EPUB · proofing copy Plain words on a hard subject. Pink sets out what Scripture says of God's rule over creation, salvation and the human will, then takes the usual objections one at a time. This is the full 1918 first edition, with the three appendices that later abridgements cut. Proofing copy: corrections welcome.

Treasure Island · Robert Louis Stevenson Free EPUB The pirate story all the others borrow from. A dying sailor at the Admiral Benbow, a map in his sea-chest, and young Jim Hawkins bound for the island aboard the Hispaniola, alongside a ship's cook named Long John Silver who is far better company than he ought to be. Wonderful read aloud.

The Swiss Family Robinson · Johann David Wyss Free EPUB Shipwrecked with each other and whatever they can save from the wreck, a father, a mother and four boys make a home on an unknown island, treehouse and all. Inventive, hopeful and full of practical wonder, and a family read-aloud for generations.

The Mystery at Dark Cedars · Edith Lavell Free EPUB Meet Mary Louise Gay, sixteen and set on being a detective. Money is vanishing from a miserly old woman's shuttered house, and the orphaned niece takes the blame. Mary Louise is sure they have the wrong girl. A good old-fashioned mystery for young readers.

The Mystery of the Fires · Edith Lavell Free EPUB A month at Shady Nook with her friend Jane, and Mary Louise means to do nothing but swim and canoe. Then a bungalow burns, then another, and the summer neighbours begin eyeing one another. She is on holiday. The fires are not.

The Mystery of the Secret Band · Edith Lavell Free EPUB Christmas is coming, and Mary Louise has her first real case: two weeks away from home, working at her father's trade at last. Then come the robberies. A midnight visitor, an empty house, a blow in the dark, and a gang nobody can name.

The Sugar Creek Gang Goes North · Paul Hutchens Free EPUB Bill Collins and the gang head north to camp, hoping to see their friend Snow-in-the-face again. Instead they walk into a kidnapping. Boyhood adventure with a warm heart and a plain faith, the way the Sugar Creek books always are.

The Sugar Creek Gang Digs for Treasure · Paul Hutchens Free EPUB Little Jim and Bill play Robinson Crusoe on the lakeshore and dig for make-believe treasure, until the game turns real: a kidnapper, a ransom, and money nobody can find.

The Green Tent Mystery at Sugar Creek · Paul Hutchens Free EPUB Walking home past the old cemetery on the darkest night of summer, three boys see a light among the gravestones and somebody digging. Just scary enough, and it keeps the Sugar Creek Gang busy until autumn.

Free libraries

Thousands of books have passed into the public domain, and these three give them away as proper EPUB files, no account required.

Worth buying

For books still in copyright, these publishers sell you a file to download and keep, in EPUB, straight from their own shop — which is exactly what makes them work here.

Buying direct from a publisher usually costs about what the big stores charge, and the difference is what you end up holding: a file, rather than permission.

Getting it into the app

On an iPhone or iPad: download the EPUB in Safari, then open it with SchriftOhr — either from the download, or from the Files app with Share → SchriftOhr. The app offers to add a copy to your Library, so the book stays with you afterwards instead of depending on that download still being there. Say yes and it is on your shelf for good.

On a Mac: drop the file anywhere in the window, or use Choose Book. Keep a folder of books? Library → Folders → Add a Folder of Your Own reads them where they lie — nothing is moved, renamed, or deleted.

Once a book is in your Library it follows you: start it on the Mac, carry on from your phone at the same sentence.