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.

● The SchriftOhr Editions

We also prepare editions of our own: public-domain classics set with unusual care, made for reading, for listening, and for reading together in a circle. Free, no account, yours to keep.

Every edition begins with a public-domain source, often an original scanned book. We set the text properly — adding chapter divisions where the source had none, and clearing away what scanning and re-keying leave behind — so the book reads well on the page and sounds right read aloud.

The Pilgrim's Progress — John Bunyan free EPUB download A man named Christian, a burden on his back and a book in his hand, flees the City of Destruction for the Celestial City. The road runs through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, the Valley of the Shadow of Death and the dungeons of Doubting Castle. Part Two follows his wife Christiana and their children along the same road — the most widely read allegory in the English language.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle proofing copy — free EPUB The twelve stories that made Sherlock Holmes, as they ran in the Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1892 — a king’s photograph, a pawnbroker paid to copy out an encyclopaedia, a stepfather who is not what he seems, and a whistle in the night at Stoke Moran. Set from the Harper & Brothers printing of 1892, with Sidney Paget’s plates and a colour plate at the head of every Adventure. This is a proofing copy — corrections welcome.

The Mortification of Sin in Believers — John Owen proofing copy — free EPUB Owen preaching to Oxford undergraduates in 1656 on eight words of Paul: if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. The most searching book in English on how sin is actually killed, and on the several ways a man deceives himself that it has been. Set from the 1668 printing. This is a proofing copy — corrections welcome.

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment — Jeremiah Burroughs proofing copy — free EPUB Sermons on Paul’s "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content" — learned, Burroughs insists, and therefore teachable. He takes contentment apart: what it is, what it is not, the excellence of it, and the many ways a discontented heart argues with God. Set from the 1649 printing. This is a proofing copy — corrections welcome.

Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ — John Owen proofing copy — free EPUB Owen’s last work, in two parts: the glory of Christ in his person, office and grace, and then the same meditations applied to the unconverted and to saints under spiritual decay. Set from two independently keyed copies of the London printing of 1691, collated against each other — neither copy is the whole book. Spelling and capitalisation modernised; Scripture left exactly as printed. This is a proofing copy — corrections welcome.

The Sovereignty of God — A. W. Pink proofing copy — free EPUB Pink sets out what Scripture says of God’s rule — in creation, in salvation, in reprobation, and over the human will — and then answers the objections plainly, one at a time. Set from the 1918 first edition, Bible Truth Depot, Swengel, and carrying all three appendices that the abridged later edition leaves out. This is a proofing copy — corrections welcome.

Tales of the Covenanters — Robert Pollok free EPUB download Three tales from the years of persecution in Scotland, when soldiers hunted the Presbyterians who would not renounce their covenant. Helen of the Glen, Ralph Gemmell and The Persecuted Family follow ordinary households — children, shepherds, mothers — caught between the dragoons and their consciences.

Tales of the Covenanters — Ellen Jane Guthrie free EPUB download The covenanting martyrs told as a series of short tales, each tied to the place that remembers it: Bothwell Bridge, Peden's Stone, the murder at Inchdarnie — and the persecutors, Culzean and the Laird of Lag, whose names the hunted did not forget.

Treasure Island — Robert Louis Stevenson free EPUB download An old seaman dies at the Admiral Benbow with a map in his sea-chest, and Jim Hawkins ships aboard the Hispaniola to find what it marks. So does a one-legged cook named Long John Silver — the most companionable villain in English fiction — and half the crew are his.

The Swiss Family Robinson — Johann David Wyss free EPUB download A father, a mother and their four sons — Fritz, Ernest, Jack and Franz — are wrecked on an island when the crew abandons ship. What follows is a family building a world: salvaging the wreck, taming the land, making a home in a tree, and turning every difficulty into a lesson.

The Mystery at Dark Cedars — Edith Lavell free EPUB download Money is vanishing from a miserly old woman's shuttered house, and her orphaned niece is blamed for it. Mary Louise Gay — sixteen, and a detective by vocation — decides the obvious suspect is the wrong one, and sets out to prove it.

The Mystery of the Fires — Edith Lavell free EPUB download A month at Shady Nook with her chum Jane, and Mary Louise Gay means to do nothing but swim and canoe. Then a bungalow burns, and another, and the little summer colony begins eyeing its neighbours. The girl detective is on holiday; the fires are not.

The Mystery of the Secret Band — Edith Lavell free EPUB download Christmas is coming, and Mary Louise Gay is handed her first real assignment — two weeks of work away from home, and her father's trade at last. Then the robberies begin: a midnight visitor, an abandoned house, a blow in the dark, and a band nobody can name.

The Sugar Creek Gang Goes North — Paul Hutchens free EPUB download The gang heads north for a camping trip, hoping to see their friend Snow-in-the-face again. What they find instead is a kidnapping — and Bill Collins and the rest set about solving it between the tents and the timber.

The Sugar Creek Gang Digs for Treasure — Paul Hutchens free EPUB download Camping in the north woods, Bill Collins and Little Jim turn the shore into Robinson Crusoe's island and go hunting imaginary treasure. Then the game stops being a game: there is a kidnapper, a ransom, and money nobody can find.

The Green Tent Mystery at Sugar Creek — Paul Hutchens free EPUB download Three boys walking home past an abandoned cemetery on the darkest night of the summer see a light out among the stones, and somebody digging. What the Sugar Creek Gang turns up keeps them 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.