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“ paradise lost ” by honey homecroft.

🏆 Winner of Contest #248

Calls for help came every day, in every language spoken from Alpha Centauri to Xanoid 10. Meteor. Famine. War!!! Help us, they pleaded. Whoever they was in that particular society that had figured out how to contact us. “Please remain calm,” I used to say. “A unit will be dispatched to your location.” But after our people went Silent, the calls went more like this:  “Hello? We need help.” “We're sorry, but Planetary Assistance is no longer available. Our thoughts are with you during your pending apocalypse. Goodbye.” “Wait —” And I woul...

“ DANGER: UNSTABLE GROUND ” by Madeline McCourt

🏆 Winner of Contest #247

Do not ever step foot on the ground. Charlie had been told this his entire life, but it never really sunk in. He didn’t understand the deep-seated fear everyone else seemed to harbor. He thought it was incredible, a beautiful problem to be solved. Until he was laying on the floor of the lab staring at the ceiling and blinking away tears. The first time Charlie ever saw the ground consume a person he’d been twelve. What the tree-top teachers referred to as “live mummification” was a quick, disturbing process. Dirt crawling over skin to creat...

Introducing Prompted , a new magazine written by you!

🏆 Featuring 12 prize-winning stories from our community. Download it now for FREE .

“ Hearts Are Trump ” by Sarah Coury

🏆 Winner of Contest #246

Uncle Abe and Uncle Will haven’t played cards together in years. If you want to get real technical about it, Uncle Abe and Uncle Will haven’t even shared the same room in years, but that ain’t news to anyone east of Livernois. By now, the entire city of Detroit knows about Abraham and William Haddad—at least those who regularly stop into the family party store for their weekly supply of meats, spirits, and fresh-baked pita. It’s old news. Two bitter brothers broken up over a girl who left town anyway. It’s been ages and the aunties need fres...

“ Everything is Connected ” by Olivier Breuleux

🏆 Winner of Contest #245

Many people don't believe that everything is connected. It's strange. They believe in magnets, in electromagnetic waves, in quantum action at a distance. They believe that the force of gravity makes the Earth revolve around the Sun, and yet they do not believe that the same forces can influence the smaller details of our fate. They believe that it is all up to them. That they have free will. They say that Jupiter can gently pull the Sun, yet it cannot move our infinitely smaller souls.A paradox.The stars are difficult to read, for sure. The ...

“ The Party ” by Kerriann Murray

🏆 Winner of Contest #244

My phone buzzed. I rolled over to look at the text my cousin Maya had just sent. Can you send photo you took of all the girls in costume last night? xoxo My head was throbbing. Hanging out with Maya was fun, but she was eight years younger than me and she and her friends loved to do shots. I needed to stick with beer only if I didn’t want the hangover. That’s what I'd do next time. I opened my photos app to find the picture Maya had requested. It was a group shot I had no memory of taking. It wasn’t everyone who’d been at the party - just th...

“ Ke Kulanakauhale ma ke Kai, or The City by The Sea ” by Thomas Iannucci

🏆 Winner of Contest #243

Ke Kulanakauhale ma ke Kaior,The City by the Seaby thomas iannucci Author’s Note: In this story I use Hawaiian words, as the story is set in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. However, I do not italicize them, as I am from Hawaii, and so these words are not foreign to me. Growing up there were many English words unfamiliar to us in school, and they were never italicized; I would like this same standard to be applied to Hawaiian, which is, for better or for worse, also now a language in the United States. Mahalo for your kokua. “The city by the sea,...

“ Do Not Touch ” by Niamh O'Dea

🏆 Winner of Contest #242

Jen lived by the unwritten rules of being single but wanting a child. Don’t look at children. Don’t engage with children. Don’t talk about children. Don’t let other people talk about their children. And don’t, for the love of all that is holy, tell anyone you long for a child. A nearby suitor could be eyeing you up, biting their bottom lip at the sight of your untoned bum, lusting after your wide midriff, admiring your conical legs. They could be subconsciously sliding you through their mental mold of their dream woman, seeing you slot in j...

“ When I Read Beckett ” by Liz Grosul

🏆 Winner of Contest #241

…in…in this room…cursed room…loved?... cursed…. where she slept…half-grown in her hometown t-shirt…shorts…no shorts…t-shirt worn with holes…on the floor…he having thrown it…under the bed…dust collected and swept and settled again…. and again…who?... he… not she?...gracious!...there for the first time…assuredly last time…no boys in the room, father said…keep out!...nodded her head… but in the room…blue light hugging the window…scotch tape…peeling off the paint whether chipped or freshly laid or…exhumed…he found her in the— no, not found…held…...

“ Lost and Found ” by Jonathan Page

🏆 Winner of Contest #240

On my last shift as a lighthouse keeper, I climbed the seventy-six spiral iron stairs and two ladders to the watch room, the number of steps the same as my age. The thwomp and snare of each step laid an ominous background score. Something wasn’t right. At that very moment, Richie Tedesco was pointing a fire extinguisher at the burning electrical panel in the engine room of his boat a few miles offshore.The placard in the watch room read “Marge Mabrity, Lightkeeper—First lighted the depths on March 2nd, 1985, and hasn’t missed a night.” Alrea...

“ Metonymia ” by Gem Cassia

🏆 Winner of Contest #239

“God is dead.” “Which one?” “I meant it as more of a blanket statement, but if we’re getting into specifics, I guess I mean the one that I killed.” [When | the | god | of | cause-and-effect | is | slaughtered | in | cold | blood | everyone | knows | who | to | blame.]“People aren’t too pleased about that, you know.” “I’ve heard.”[Everyone | has | heard.]<...

“ Five Turns of the Hourglass ” by Weronika L

🏆 Winner of Contest #238

I tow my dead father with me to the scorched heart of a desert. His body guilts down my shoulders, heavier each time he doesn't tell me that I took the wrong turn, that I need to straighten my elbows, that I never do anything the right way so why does he even bother. My jeep sputters and chokes under our weight as it brings us to the parking lot in front of the hotel. Vipassana, reads the sign above the glass door, melted open at the hinges. The Silent Retreat. Heat slaps me across the face. I backpack my father around my waist and march to ...

“ Love.edu: Courtship and Coincidence in Modern Academia ” by Eliza Levin

🏆 Winner of Contest #237

Thursday, Jan 18 2:12 PMTo: [email protected]: [email protected]: Your (Brilliant) Paper on Mirrors/Jane EyreDear Professor Rhodes,I hope this email finds you well. I must confess that, although we have never met, I am a longtime admirer of your work—I was actually at your talk on Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell last year, which I greatly enjoyed.I write to you today to express my sincerest compliments on ...

“ Frozen Lemonade ” by Jennifer Fremon

🏆 Winner of Contest #236

Trigger warning: Contains underage sexual content, mentions of assaultYou know the movie Dirty Dancing? The one where Baby goes off to that fancy resort with her parents for the summer, and in the beginning she is a good, sweet girl who loves her daddy, and then by the end she is still a good sweet girl who loves her daddy but now she is kinda sexy too and can dance like a pro and is totally in love with that beautiful dance teacher. Why doesn’t anyone talk about how that teacher is clearly much, much older than Baby, and despite Patrick Swa...

“ KILLER IN THE WILLOWS ” by Kajsa Ohman

🏆 Winner of Contest #235

KILLER IN THE WILLOWSJust do it, so the T-shirts say. Just pick up the gun, pull the trigger—but maybe aim first, aim at the upper sternum and then pull the trigger, congratulating yourself that at last, in your long, passive life, you have shot somebody dead. So she did, and thus she became a murderer. She slipped through the night after that and disappeared into the willows to wash off any blood that spattered onto her clothing. The willows were thickl...

“ 6:47 PST ” by David Pampu

🏆 Winner of Contest #234

What has four faces, eight arms, and can’t tell time? The clock tower at Union Station. Four clocks on the tower and none of them run? I mean, what’re the odds? I peer up at the time and shade my eyes. It’s 6:47 pm. Always is, always will be. And all anyone knows is that on a Monday the world was a loud, frantic place and Tuesday it wasn’t. Tuesday? Really? The world should’ve ended on a Saturd...

“ Vegan Hamburgers ” by Ariana Tibi

🏆 Winner of Contest #233

Vegan Hamburgers February 1st 11:11pm WOW. I cannot believe that just happened. I went to AJ’s studio and almost walked out with a record deal. I was sober, too. He started rolling a joint and offered me some but I immediately said no. Last week, I had drinks at Lighthouse Studios and the executive was totally judging me when...

“ The Lantern of Kaamos ” by Jonathan Page

🏆 Winner of Contest #232

The melting Arctic is a crime scene, and I am like CSI Ny-Ålesund. Trond is the anonymous perpetrator leaving evidence and clues for me to discover, like breadcrumbs leading back to him. “Jonna,” he had said, the day we first met at the research institute, “If you are going to make it up here, don’t lock your doors.” It seemed like a life philosophy, rather than a survival tip.It is ironic. Out on Kings Bay, the coal miners came first, then the science outposts. Trond was already out here mining the Arctic when I was sti...

“ No Junior League ” by Mary Lynne Schuster

🏆 Winner of Contest #231

You are sure you want to do this?   Running away. Starting over.  It’s not as easy as people think. You have to give up everything.  Oh, that part’s easy. Everyone thinks we are all traceable, that you can’t really hide. But, see, everything is tied to your identity. Your papers. If you change those, you are a different person.  Fingerprints? If they’re in the system, if yo...

“ The Lop-it-off-a-me List ” by Ethan Zimmerman

🏆 Winner of Contest #230

The Lop-it-off-a-me List Count money in the envelope one more time. Make sure Marcel has his itinerary. Ask Alex if she will come by to feed Odin. Buy extra cat food and litter so Alex doesn't have to. Give her the spare key next time I see her. Kiss Odin and tell her she is the best cat in the world, even if she has always been destructive...

“ The Gingerbread Cookies ” by Aaron Chin

🏆 Winner of Contest #229

The Gingerbread Cookies Let’s go downstairs and bake some cookies, like mother used to make. The warm smell sits right at home in your nostrils, invading them like wild ax-murderers hacking and slashing their way through endless miles of human bodies that stand in the way of their inhumane, carnal desires. Shhh, shhh, but that’s too dark. It’s Christmas after all. So let’s go down...

“ Cooking Lessons ” by Molly Jenkinson

🏆 Winner of Contest #228

“That’s it petal, just push down a smidge more and it should cut right the way through it.” Mam’s standing above me as I’m trying to hack through the biggest potato the world’s ever seen. I’m sweating bullets at this point but she’s having none of it. “Can’t you just do it, Mam?” I’m absolutely knackered. I’ve been stabbing at this thing for (no joke) fifteen minutes but she just will not take...

“ The Winters of My Discontent ” by Warren Keen

🏆 Winner of Contest #227

I didn’t wake up on November 29th, 2023. The day prior I remember vividly. I drove two hours into western Minnesota to replace some fuses in a pad-mount transformer. Easy job when you bring the right fuses. I wasn’t prepared to stand outside in the freezing cold all day waiting for them. Waiting is the coldest thing you can do. I had checked the weather that morning, but I refused to acknowledge that it was lo...

“ Forthright Thursday ” by Chris Campbell

🏆 Winner of Contest #226

8:45PM Thanksgiving Day – GLOVES OFF: My mother, Mary, and her sister Alice were engaged in a wrestling match on the dining room table. Aloysius – my father - and Alice’s plus one; Jack, attempted to pry them apart, but both women had locked themselves into each other’s hair with vice-like grips, despite both their hands being splattered with custard trifle remnants. All I could do as an observing teenager was sit with mouth agape while holding my new Super 8mm silent movie camera, recording the whole scene. It was typical behavio...

“ The Day Alfred Googled Himself ” by Olivier Breuleux

🏆 Winner of Contest #225

Everyone has Googled themselves at one time or another in their lives. Even you, dear reader, I'll bet. Why did you do it? Curiosity? Validation? Finding your own LinkedIn profile? When Alfred did it, his reason was self-pity. He was nobody, he had nobody, and he had nothing. His immediate family had died years prior. His extended family did not remember he existed, nor did he remember the...

“ Goldfish ” by Mallory Jones

🏆 Winner of Contest #224

4 pm Miss Lucy and Dr. Singh are letting me visit my house tonight! Normally I get to go home for twelve hours on holidays, and an aide comes with me to monitor my equipment, but today is different. It’s not a holiday, it’s not my birthday, it’s not even the weekend— but I’m going home! Mommy says Lily will be home too even though she goes to college in Iowa. She’s coming home just for me for my ...

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Short Stories from Reedsy Prompts

Short stories may be small, but they are mighty! With the weight of a novel stripped away, great short stories strike directly at the heart of their topics. Often maligned as the novel’s poor cousin, the short story medium has produced some of the most beloved works of fiction. From the eerily-accurate predictions of Ray Bradbury to the spine-chilling thrills of Stephen King and the wildly imaginative worlds of N.K. Jemison, some of the best authors in the business have made their mark writing short stories .

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A Trip to the Tap

Illustrated by Phumle April, Written by Sindeka Mandoyi

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , All FKB Books , BookDash , Conservation , Creative Commons , Culture , Editable Files , Grade K and Pre K , Toddlers

Oluhle is excited to go to the tap and fetch water, she will see her friends there, but what happens when she can’t find her bucket? Illustrated by Phumle April Written by Sindeka Mandoyi Designed by Nadene Kriel Sample Page from A Trip to the Tap   Download the full book by selecting one of …

Punctuation Guide for Kids

Categories: Age 6-9 years , All FKB Books , Children , English Language , Grade 1 to Grade 3 , Non-Fiction

A short guide to all the common punctuation marks – period, exclamation mark, question mark, comma, semi-colon, ellipsis, quotation marks, apostrophe, colon. This book was brought to you by Vappingo online proofreaders. Sample Page from Punction Guide by Vappingo  

The Conical Hat

Author: Ram Babu Subedi Illustrator: Promina Shreshtha

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , All FKB Books , Beginner English , Creative Commons , Culture , Grade K and Pre K , Read along video , Room to Read , Toddlers

A short story about conical hats and all their important uses. Great for young children, learning to read, and ESL. Sample page from The Conical Hat Author: Ram Babu Subedi Illustrator: Promina Shreshtha Brought to us by Room to Read. Read along with Kiwi Opa:  

Let’s Count Legs

Author: All Children Reading Cambodia Illustrator: Measa Sovonnarea

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , All FKB Books , Animals , Beginner English , Counting , Grade K and Pre K , Insects , Read along video , Storyweaver-Pratham , Toddlers

A fun counting book featuring the numbers 2,4,6, and 8. Brought to us by The Asia Foundation and Storyweaver. Author: All Children Reading Cambodia Illustrator: Measa Sovonnarea Sample Page from Let’s Count Legs Read along with Kiwi Opa in the video of Let’s Count Legs:    

The Pottering Pig

Author: Rohit Kulkarni Illustrator: Priya Kuriyan

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , Age 6-9 years , All FKB Books , Animals , Beginner English , Creative Commons , Grade 1 to Grade 3 , Grade K and Pre K , Humour , Read along video , Storyweaver-Pratham , Toddlers

The pottering pig causes all sorts of chaos, but did she break the potter’s pots? A cute whodunnit, when the Pottering Pig is accused of a crime she may or may not have committed. Author: Rohit Kulkarni Illustrator: Priya Kuriyan Sample Page from The Pottering Pig: Brought to us by Pratham Books. Read along with …

Three Billy Goats Gruff – CKF

Core Knowledge Foundation

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , All FKB Books , Animals , Children , Core Knowledge Foundation , Creative Commons , Editable Files , Fable , Grade 1 to Grade 3 , Grade K and Pre K , moral , Toddlers

This classic tale is told with some beautiful imagery combined with some comprehension questions. Creator: Core Knowledge Foundation See more from CKF on FKB here: https://freekidsbooks.org/publisher/core-knowledge-foundation/ This book is also available in an editable version (created using Open Office): https://freekidsbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Three_Billy_Goats_Gruff-Landscape-Book-CKF-FKB.odt Sample Page from Three Billy Goats Gruff:    

Snowy Owl – Haiku for older children

Gabriel Rosenstock

Categories: Age 10-13 years , Age years 13+ , All FKB Books , Gabriel Rosenstock , Grade 4 to Grade 6 , Grade 7+ , Intermediate English , Older Children , poetry , Young Adult

Gabriel Rosenstock is back with a great collection of inspiring bilingual Haiku set to thought provoking artwork and photographs, including some issues on child labour in the US. Sample Page from Snowy Owl Gabriel Rosenstock See more from Gabriel Rosenstock on FKB For more about Haiku, see here: https://vcbf.ca/event/about-haiku/. It is noted that while Japanese …

Monster’s Day Out

Danielle Bruckert

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , Age 6-9 years , All FKB Books , Beginner English , Children , Creative Commons , Danielle Bruckert , Free Kids Books , Grade 1 to Grade 3 , Grade K and Pre K , Monsters , Toddlers

A sequel to the popular There’s a Monster this book explores, in rhyme, a day at the playground with Monster. Sample Page from Monster’s Day Out See also: There’s a Monster eBook More by the Author – Danielle Bruckert And, more books about Monster’s on FKB  

Happy Train

Author: Humayan Rashid Illustrator: Mehedi Haque

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , All FKB Books , Creative Commons , Grade K and Pre K , Intermediate English , Room to Read , Toddlers , Trains , Transport

A train travels through the country side, first she is very happy, but then getting farther and farther from home and seeing strange people and animals she becomes worried and scared. Fortunately someone comes to help. A great story about exploring emotions. Author: Humayan Rashid Illustrator: Mehedi Haque Sample Page from The Happy Train: Another …

Croak – the tale of a frog

Author: Kavitha Punniyamurthi, Illustrator: Ekta Bharti

Categories: Age 6-9 years , All FKB Books , Animals , Children , Creative Commons , Grade 1 to Grade 3 , Humour , Intermediate English , Storyweaver-Pratham

There’s a frog in the classroom, but can Masterji see it? Or does he think the children are pulling a prank on him? Find out in this beautifully illustrated story ideal for early grades. Author: Kavitha Punniyamurthi, Illustrator: Ekta Bharti Originally published by Pratham Books on their Storyweaver Platform. Sample Page from Croak  

A Day at the Carnival

Author: Syamphay Fengsavanh, Illustrator: Nivong Sengsakoun

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , All FKB Books , Animals , Beginner English , Family , Grade K and Pre K , mouse , Room to Read , Toddlers

Three brothers, Little Mouse, Littler Mouse, and Tiny Mouse go out for a day to the carnival, they have a really great time, but safety must come first, and it’s important to look out for each other. Luckily they are keeping track! Author: Syamphay Fengsavanh, Illustrator: Nivong Sengsakoun, Translator: Alisha Berger Originally published by Room …

Supercow IV – In a Minute…

Kiwi Opa and Danielle Bruckert

Categories: Age 6-9 years , All FKB Books , Animals , Behaviour , Children , Creative Commons , Danielle Bruckert , FKB Make a Difference , Free Kids Books , Grade 1 to Grade 3 , Intermediate English , Kiwi Opa , Read along video

A little girl and her mother walk through the park, but her mother is very distracted. Can Supercow help? Another book in the popular Supercow series. By Kiwi Opa and Danielle Bruckert Sample Page from Supercow IV – In a Minute… Other books in the Series: The Adventures of Super Cow Supercow Volume II: The …

Books for Benjamin

Author R.G. de Rouen, Illustrator Uliana Barabash

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , Age 6-9 years , All FKB Books , Children , Grade 1 to Grade 3 , Insects , Intermediate English , Toddlers

A worm yearns for reading, will he find the answer to his passion? Sample Page from Books for Benjamin         This book is also available in hard cover, paperback, and kindle edition on Amazon Author R.G. de Rouen Illustrator Uliana Barabash See more from the author at R.G. de Rouen’s Website. Books …

Rat Cat – Early Reader

Author: Dropti Sharma Illustrator: Rajeev Verma 'Banjara'

Categories: Age 2-5 Years , All FKB Books , Animals , Beginner English , Cats , Early Reader , Grade K and Pre K , mouse , Toddlers

Rat Cat is a very short book with cute illustrations featuring Cat and Rat. Perfect for building confidence in early readers! Sample Page Author: Dropti Sharma Illustrator: Rajeev Verma ‘Banjara’ See more Eary Readers on FKB in our Early Readers Section    

Hippo Naughty Hippo

Adaption Danielle Bruckert, Illustrations Megan Andrews

Categories: 5 minutes or less bedtime stories , Age 2-5 Years , All FKB Books , Animals , Creative Commons , Danielle Bruckert , Free Kids Books , Grade K and Pre K , Toddlers

What is Hippo doing? And is she really naughty? Find out in this cute, beautifully illustrated text for young children. Repetition and simple language can also be useful for learn to read age. See also Elephant, Naughty Elephant in this series. Sample Text from Hippo, Naughty Hippo What is Hippo doing, can you guess? Hippo, …

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Wattpad - Read & Write Stories 17+

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Wattpad. Where stories live. Discover the world's most-loved social storytelling platform. Wattpad connects a global community of 97 million readers and writers* through the power of story. Download it today to start reading or writing original stories. Get your story discovered Have your own story to tell? Get it discovered through the power of community and technology on Wattpad. Share an original story on Wattpad and share it with our community who are there to cheer you on throughout your writing journey. Think your story could be the next blockbuster? Wattpad Studios discovers untapped, unsigned, and talented writers on Wattpad and connects them to global multi-media entertainment companies. Read original stories Discover stories in over fifty languages from writers around the world! Whatever you’re into reading—romance, science fiction, mystery, comedy, action adventure, fantasy, young adult fiction, or fanfiction—it’s all on Wattpad. So whether you’re looking for more LGBT meet-cutes, cyberpunk fairy tales, or new technothrillers to devour, you’ll find it all, and so much more, on Wattpad. Connect with a community of story-lovers When you join Wattpad, you become a member of an international community of story-lovers. Connect with other passionate readers & writers, comment directly in stories as you read them, and support writers as they create and share their original stories. You can even read together and share your library or create reading lists so your friends always know what you’re reading. Start your own free library Save your favorite stories to keep them with you wherever you go. Hooked on a story? Simply sync your account to easily pick up where you left off, whether you’re on your laptop, tablet, Kindle or iPhone. Read the stories that inspired blockbusters If you’ve streamed Light as a Feather on Hulu or read New York Times best-seller Anna Todd’s series After, you may not know—these stories were first discovered on Wattpad. Join the platform the entertainment industry scours to find its next big hit, and start reading tomorrow’s box-office sensation today. *As of July 2023 Wattpad Premium: - Subscribe to Wattpad Premium for uninterrupted ads-free reading and first access to new features – Payment will be charged to iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase – Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period – Account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period, at the cost of the chosen package – Subscriptions may be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user's Account Settings after purchase - For full terms of service, visit https://www.wattpad.com/terms - For our privacy policy, visit https://www.wattpad.com/privacy – Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable Already a Wattpad fan? Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to stay up-to-date on your favorite writers, stories, contests, and more! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wattpad/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wattpad/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/wattpad

Version 10.61.0

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706.4K Ratings

Editors’ Choice

With 70 million monthly readers, Wattpad forms a communal experience around the love of writing. Offering words to new readers and a platform to writers, Wattpad creates a kinship between authors and their fans that has never been more intimate.

Amazing. Just, amazing.

I’ve had this app for over two years now, and I haven’t thought to write a review until now. It has so many amazing books, some have been published as actual books, some just written for fun. You can completely enjoy it with some short adds or you can pay for premium and get no adds and a few different features. I’ve had it for so long, and sadly can’t do premium, even though it is pretty inexpensive; but it’s still an amazing experience. There are also some stories that you have to use coins for, and you can buy coins or get three a day by watching videos, and each chapter is three coins. There are so many more books that are completely free though, so paying isn’t required at all. I also love having the comments on each paragraph of the story and being able to share my thoughts and read others opinions on the books. The one and only complaint that I have is that there isn’t a feature to like a comment on a book. I’ve seen a few people who have the same problem, we don’t want to comment on something, we just want to let them know that their comment made us laugh. It’s a very small complaint though, and it doesn’t affect the experience on Wattpad. All in all, this app is great for exploring books, and writing as well. It’s very easy write and publish chapters and books on the app. It’s perfect for writers who just want to have some fun or who want to explore an interest in writing. Would 100% recommend this to all book lovers and writers.

Love this app, but...

This is an awesome app to read stories and fanfics, but the one thing at the moment that I don’t like is the new limit to read offline without premium. I liked how before you could read any story offline, but you couldn’t update the new chapter, but it’s better then having a limite on stories to read and sometimes get to read the story if they did update a new chapter without internet. I would like it if wattpad were to take away the limitation on offline stories, for its better that way and I can read more when I’m on a business trip or on an airplane I can read lots of stories without limitations. I have had this app for maybe 2 years and I never had a complaint, but with the limited offline stories it had caused me some troubles, also once I was in a business trip and I went to read and there was no internet connection or anything. But I had my offline books and one of them updated, though the thing was I couldn’t read it and it told me I have to have an internet connection to upload the new chapter, which irritated me cause this was supposed to be an offline story that I can read without anything and after that I couldn’t read until 2 hours later once I got internet. In a couple of day I will be traveling and some parts of the place that I’m going does not have internet connection, but I want to still be able to read, but I can’t afford premium so I’m just asking please get rid of the limited offline books they’re troublesome.

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Stories of Books and Libraries (Everyman's Library Pocket Classics Series) Hardcover – March 7, 2023

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• Print length 496 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Everyman's Library
• Publication date March 7, 2023
• Dimensions 4.88 x 1.35 x 7.46 inches
• ISBN-10 0593536274
• ISBN-13 978-0593536278
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Everyman's Library (March 7, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593536274
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593536278
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World Animal Day on October 4 seeks to protect animals and their habitats. Learn about all sorts of beings that live among us with 10 gems from our catalog. Before there were humans, strange animals roamed the planet. George Langford weaves palaeontological research about prehistoric elephants, squirrels or horses into his Stories of the First […]

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A Family Story About Colonialism and its Aftereffects

Claire Messud tells a complicated and ambivalent tale about her French family’s history in Algeria.

To tell a story is to place a frame around wayward events. The storyteller points to scenes unfolding within the frame and says, This is important. The implication is that what transpires beyond those borders is less consequential, or not so at all. Susan Sontag offered a similar assessment in one of the final speeches she gave before her death: “To tell a story is to say: This is the important story. It is to reduce the spread and simultaneity of everything to something linear, a path.”

In the United States, many of our recent cultural battles about history are actually conflicts over where to place the frame. Does the American story start with a group of English pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in 1620? Or with the arrival of slaves at the British colony of Virginia a year before? Should we merely admire an ancient artifact we encounter in a museum, or extend our imagination to consider how it came to be there in the first place? In many fields—artistic, historical, political—people find themselves on opposite sides of a widening divide: those who believe that the frames we’ve inherited capture reality effectively, and those who believe that they must be expanded, adjusted, or perhaps jettisoned altogether.

Claire Messud’s latest novel, This Strange Eventful History , can be read in the context of this cultural shift. In many ways, it is a traditional tale, a multigenerational narrative that stretches from 1927 to 2010, and takes place across multiple continents, following the life and times of the Cassars. They are a French family from Algeria, part of the large expatriate community that arrived with the colonization of the country starting in 1830 and became known as pieds-noirs . (The novel, as Messud reveals in her author’s note, is based on her own family history.)

The pieds-noirs owed their presence to a conflict between France and Algeria tracing back to 1827. As a character in Messud’s novel puts it: “Basically, France owed a good deal of money to Hussein Dey, the Algerian leader, and rather than pay it, especially after he insulted us by hitting our consul with a fly whisk, we invaded the country.” The Indigenous population endured brutal treatment from the French (famously documented by Frantz Fanon in A Dying Colonialism ) and eventually instigated a revolution in 1954. The conflict raged until 1962, when Algeria achieved independence.

Read: The patron saint of political violence

This Strange Eventful History is set, at least initially, against this backdrop, and its contours suggest a story that has been told by many artists, such as Graham Greene in The Heart of the Matter and Sydney Pollack in the film adaptation of the memoir Out of Africa : an elaborate narrative about the travails of a relatively privileged colonial family whose members feel both connected to and estranged from the distant metropole. In these stories, the native people, living just beyond the borders of the frame, remain unacknowledged, or appear intermittently as background characters. Yet at the outset of her book, Messud hints at her intention to gently expand the limits of her novel to include perspectives that are not central to her story but nevertheless shape the lives and world of her main characters. Throughout this unfailingly ambitious work, Messud oscillates between modes, from a saga about a family that is defined by the loss of their adopted home to one that, in fits and starts, moves beyond the confines of its frame.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of This Strange Eventful History is Messud’s seeming ambivalence about how to start it. The prologue announces her theory of storytelling through Chloe, the novel’s narrator and the character who serves as Messud’s stand-in. In a formulation that seems to contradict Sontag’s, Chloe says: “A story is not a line; it is a richer thing, one that circles and eddies, rises and falls, repeats upon itself.” She then describes how this perspective complicates her work: “And so this story—the story of my family—has many possible beginnings, or none … all and each a part of the vast and intricate web. Any version only partial.”

Messud passes back and forth before several possible doors through which she might enter her novel, all of them entryways to potentially rich and meaningful stories. The door that she spends the most time considering opens to her family’s remorse about its past and origins:

I could begin with the secrets and shame, the ineffable shame that in telling their story I would wish at last to heal. The shame of the family history, of the history into which we were born. (How to forget that after attending the birth of his first grandson, my father, elderly then, tripped on the curb and fell in the street, a toppled mountain, and as he lay with the white down of his near-bald head in the gutter’s muck he muttered not “Help me” but “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”?)

It’s an arresting scene; the elderly man, brought low by gravity and maybe guilt as well, seems to be arriving at a kind of end-of-life awareness—if not comprehension of his direct culpability for the history into which he was born, then, perhaps, a flicker of understanding that his relative comfort might have come at the expense of others. Yet Messud-as-Chloe does not elaborate, and quickly moves on. This is emblematic of her approach throughout the novel; she does not focus solely on the story of the colonizers or the colonized, but does something more subtle. During the period of French rule in Algeria, the Indigenous population was subjected to appalling abuse (in A Dying Colonialism , Fanon describes “the overrunning of villages by the [French] troops, the confiscation of property and the raping of women, the pillaging of a country”). Messud’s decision to foreground the struggles and sorrows of the Cassars amid these circumstances doubles as a recognition of how humans metabolize suffering: Our particular experiences assume paramount importance, while political events are often folded into our personal dramas.

Messud eventually chooses an entry point—she opens in 1940 with a character named François, who is based on her father, writing a letter to his own father, who lives in Greece. François has recently traveled from Greece to Algeria with his younger sister, Denise; his mother; and his aunt. His father, a French naval officer, sent them away because of the rapidly accelerating conflict between the Allied and Axis powers. The children have never lived in Algeria, though their parents consider it home. As his mother makes clear to a young François, “This was where his family belonged, and where they had been from for a hundred years.”

In the next section, the novel dashes ahead several years; François, as a college student in Massachusetts, reminisces about his childhood in Algeria, a place he too now considers home. For the most part, This Strange Eventful History proceeds accordingly, skipping years and darting across the map, charting the stories of its central characters’ lives as they move around the world; as they get married, have children, and contend with life’s various trials.

Read: A redacted past slowly emerges

Yet there are notable moments when Messud widens her frame. In the following chapter, we meet an older Denise, now a law student in Algiers. One day, she writes to François in America about how she and her friends were recently struck by a car as they were gossiping outside a coffee shop. As Messud describes it:

The car attacked her from behind like a shark, a blue Deux Chevaux, it mounted the curb and took a bite, as it were, and then slipped back into the ocean, back onto the road—but the car wasn’t going fast —it could really have injured her if it had been going fast, right? It was perfectly calibrated—the speed, the silence, the suddenness—as if the driver had planned the whole thing, maybe a joke, but maybe to terrify, or terrorize her, if you’d rather, to make her afraid just to walk down the street laughing with her friends. To make her afraid to be. Why would someone do that? To Denise, who wouldn’t hurt a fly?

Denise is initially unsure whom she sees in the passenger seat of the departing car, but she suspects it is a “Berber girl from the provinces” whose name she cannot remember. By the time she recalls the girl’s name, however, she wonders if she is thinking of the right person: “Zohra, yes, Zohra, the name came back to her even as her certainty evaporated; maybe it hadn’t been her?” Only years later, after Zohra achieves notoriety as a resistance fighter, does Denise “insist that she had definitely seen Zohra Drif in the Deux Chevaux that morning.”

Messud’s decision to include this anecdote is essential for many reasons. First, the sudden appearance of the blue car represents a literal incursion into the blithe and serene reality that Denise and her friends inhabit, untroubled by the profound anguish of their Indigenous Algerian neighbors, such as Drif herself (the real Drif, now in her 80s, spoke with The Washington Post in 2021 about her time as a resistance fighter). It also represents a narrative incursion into the story of a pied-noir family that, despite its own desire for freedom and happiness, largely seems unable to recognize the struggles of Indigenous Algerians to achieve the same. And it is notable that Denise remains unsure about Drif’s presence at the scene of the crash until Drif’s fame motivates Denise to become the star of her own personal drama, an innocent who survived an “early salvo of the insurgency” with “only torn stockings and a constellation of bruises.” In her self-mythologizing, Denise narrows the “spread and simultaneity” of narrative possibilities—including the possibility that Drif wasn’t there—until she is the only person staring at us from the frame.

Messud’s strange and eventful novel leaps across space and time occasionally and subversively, including episodes that reveal the larger backdrop against which the lives of her characters take shape. Throughout, Messud seems to be transmitting a message to her readers about our contemporary relationship with stories: As our understanding of history becomes more complicated and nuanced, so too must the stories we tell about the past, and the way we tell them.

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Cancer stalked his family. It took years to find the culprit.

In “A Fatal Inheritance,” Lawrence Ingrassia weaves together personal history and scientific discovery.

When Regina Ingrassia died at 42, leaving four children, her death seemed cataclysmic but random. “She was one of 318,500 Americans who died of cancer in 1968,” Lawrence Ingrassia, her second-oldest child, writes. “It was tragic, but what was there to say?”

There would be much more to say, sadly. “Cancer was far from done with my family,” Ingrassia writes in his new book, “A Fatal Inheritance.” Eventually, he would lose two sisters, a brother and a nephew to malignancies that seemed to strike out of the blue. It would take years for researchers to be able to answer fundamental questions about the killer that stalked his family.

Part memoir, part medical mystery, Ingrassia’s deeply reported book interweaves two narratives. One is the poignant and distressing story of his family, and others, who were repeatedly menaced by something they knew nothing about. The other is the often stirring account of scientists who worked tirelessly to unravel the mystery. Ultimately, researchers identified an inherited cancer syndrome and, eventually, the culprit behind it.

“A Fatal Inheritance” is not a beach book; reading about the agonized families can be both painful and frustrating, given there still is no cure for the disorder. But readers will be rewarded with a detailed look at the high — and all-too-human — stakes of cancer research. And the anecdotes about the scientists, by turns inspirational and competitive, leaven the stories of heartbreak.

Ingrassia, a former high-ranking editor at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, wisely sets his narratives within the broader framework of cancer research, with its various fads and preoccupations. At the time of his mother’s death, few scientists were focusing on an inherited susceptibility to cancer; viruses were viewed as much more likely to cause the disease. But at the National Cancer Institute, two young epidemiologists — Frederick Pei Li and Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr. — were beginning to focus on what would be their lives’ work — studying the fatal predisposition that seemed to run in some families.

Piquing their interest was an unusual case that Li heard about at a dinner party: A young father, named Ned Kilius, was undergoing treatment for leukemia in Baltimore at the same time his 10-month-old son, Darrel, was being seen for a rare soft-tissue cancer in his arm. The patients’ doctors did not see a connection. But Li and Fraumeni were intrigued, constructing a detailed medical history of the Kilius clan that showed an unusually high rate of malignancies. The work was central to their seminal 1969 paper that suggested the discovery of a previously unknown inherited cancer syndrome. The paper got little attention. But in subsequent years, Li and Fraumeni found additional cancer-prone families, and the disorder came to be known as Li-Fraumeni syndrome .

In 1990, scientists discovered the cause of the cancer syndrome — a mutation in a gene called p53 that normally suppresses tumors but, if defective, can allow cancer to grow uncontrollably. If a parent has the mutation, a child has a 50 percent chance of inheriting it, drastically raising the risk of cancer.

Only about 5 to 10 percent of cancers are caused by inherited cancer disorders, Ingrassia writes, and Li-Fraumeni syndrome is among the rarest. But research into the condition has provided important insights into cancer mechanics in general.

While lucidly describing the science involved, Ingrassia keeps the focus on the beating heart of the book — the patients, many of whom were stricken at a young age, often more than once. Darrel Kilius, who as a baby had survived the soft-tissue cancer by having part of his right arm removed, was battered by tumors in his 20s and died at 29.

The Ingrassia family fared no better.

In the 1980s, Lawrence writes, his younger sisters died at 24 and 32. His nephew Charlie was diagnosed at 2 with the first of three different cancers. In 1997, Charlie’s father — Paul Ingrassia, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires — developed early-stage lung cancer at 46. (I knew Paul, as we both worked at the Journal, but was never aware of his health situation.)

Sometimes, the brothers wondered why their family was so unlucky. Had their father, a research chemist, inadvertently carried toxic chemicals home on his clothes? They were unaware of Li-Fraumeni syndrome — as were many doctors — and genetic testing outside of studies was years away.

But in late 2014, the mystery was finally resolved. Paul underwent genetic testing and was positive for the p53 mutation, a huge blow. His brother, tested later, was negative, a big relief. When Lawrence emailed his brother about the fortuitous result, Paul quickly responded, “Great news!!!”

There are other moments of grace and courage. In 2019, while Paul battled pancreatic cancer, his son Charlie fought bone cancer that required the amputation of his leg. A week before Charlie died at 39, he renewed his Chicago Cubs baseball tickets. A few months later, 69-year-old Paul called friends from the ICU to say goodbye.

Today, Ingrassia writes, there are a few glimmers of hope for people with the disorder. Intensive screening is detecting some cancers early enough to save lives. And the gene-editing technology CRISPR might someday be a useful tool for treating the condition.

But that is far down the road. When Paul was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he received harsh chemotherapy, not a high-tech game changer.

Still, Paul was not one to complain, his brother writes. Accepting a prestigious journalism award for lifetime achievement a few years before he died, Paul deadpanned, “I often think my biggest lifetime achievement is simply having a lifetime.”

Laurie McGinley is a former health reporter and editor at The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

A Fatal Inheritance

How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery

By Lawrence Ingrassia

Henry Holt. 320 pp. $29.99

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COURTROOM INSIDER | The James and Elena story, Chad Daybell’s books and what’s next

Nate Eaton, EastIdahoNews.com

Tonight on ‘Courtroom Insider,’ a closer look at the James and Elena story and how it mirrored the lives of Chad and Lori Daybell. Plus Chad’s books and what can we expect this week during the trial.

Watch in the video player above.

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My octopus teacher's craig foster dives into the ocean again in 'amphibious soul'.

Barbara J. King

The film My Octopus Teacher tells the story of a man who goes diving every day into the underwater South African kelp forest and forms a close relationship there with an octopus. That man — the diver, and also the filmmaker — was Craig Foster, who delighted millions of nature lovers around the world and took home the 2021 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Now in a new book, Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World , Foster describes the entire ecosystem of the Great African Seaforest at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and the transforming role it has played in his quest to seek wildness. As the book's amphibious title hints, Foster is as much (maybe more) at home in the ocean as he is on land.

Foster's incredible engagement with seaforest creatures comes through beautifully in this account. Every day for months, he recounts, he "visited the crack in the rock where a huge male clingfish lived," and the fish became quite calm in his presence. "Returning to the same places, watching for subtle changes, and continuing to ask questions replenishes my curiosity," he writes.

Foster's profound tie to place reminds me of birders who closely attend to nature in their own yard or local park. Indeed, Foster underscores that any of us can find wildness where we live: "We can all develop a more playful relationship with nature, whether that means collecting crisp leaves or smooth rocks to use in our artwork or watching the squirrel perform acrobatics outside our window."

Nature's healing power is a focus for Foster and an immensely personal one. Before he had any thoughts of My Octopus Teacher , he was burned out on long grinding hours of film-making work. He found relief in cold immersion, both in the ocean and in a home-made box containing icewater. Later though, after the immense global attention to the octopus film and therefore to him, he suffered from insomnia so pronounced that some nights he managed only 10 minutes of sleep. His body and mind were breaking down and felt a strong pull to find his way back to the wild.

Filmmaker Finds An Unlikely Underwater Friend In 'My Octopus Teacher'

To become fully immersed in the story of his quest for wild healing, it's necessary to go with Foster's flow and accept his constant, near-mystical reverence for "our ancestors." I read with a wild-seeking heart his belief that modern-day humans can recover an ancestral link to wild creatures — but also, inescapably, I read with an anthropologist's sensibilities. Is it possible to replicate "humanity's natural state?" Is there a singular way to describe our ancestors' experiences with animals? Given the long sweep of human evolution, which ancestors exactly?

Might there be a hint of romanticizing the past here? Foster writes of "our nonviolent origins" and adds that it was "only with the advent of agriculture that the reciprocity with the wild that we'd enjoyed for some 300,000 years began to break apart — and with it, our psyches." Yet there's serious anthropological scholarship that argues warfare began 200,000 or 300,000 years ago, far longer ago than the start of agriculture around 12,000 years ago.

A stronger thread in the book is the powerful connection to nature that comes with tracking. At first, I thought Foster meant looking only for animal tracks in the dirt, mud, or snow, but his definition is more comprehensive, and eye-opening: "any clue left by any creature or plant, sand or rock." Running water also may leave a track, or lightning hitting a tree.

For an amphibious soul, the height of joy comes with underwater tracking: Foster taught himself to see tracks of mollusks in the sand atop the back of a stingray, or an octopus's predation marks on a shell. How magnificent to see the undersea universe in such detail! Once again, Foster broadens out from his own experience to encourage the rest of us: "Just start small and chip away," Foster advises. In addition to looking for ground tracks, "seek out marks on plants, trees, rocks, or walls."

Foster's writing is rooted in his own learning from an array of mentors, including Indigenous individuals, and in a wish to share and spread his joy in nature. A spirit of generosity suffuses the book.

It's probably thanks to an octopus that Amphibious Soul is out in the world. Foster invites us now to recognize the intrinsic value of the Great African Seaforest ecosystem as a whole — and of all ecosystems that enshrine wildness.

Barbara J. King is a biological anthropologist emerita at William & Mary. After writing about animal grief and love, and how all of us may bring about greater compassion for animals, she is now writing about cats for her 8th book. Find her on X, formerly Twitter @bjkingape

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Welcome to Title Search, the Book Review’s hidden-text puzzle. This edition celebrates sports, and the titles of 13 such books — including history, biography and memoir — are hidden below within an unrelated text passage. As you read along, tap or click the words when you think you’ve found a title (including any punctuation like question and exclamation marks). Correct answers stay highlighted. When you uncover each title, the answer section at the bottom of the screen grows to create a reading list with more information and links to the books.

A new literary quiz lands on the Books page each week and you can match wits with previous puzzles in the Book Review Quiz Bowl archive .

It had already been a season on the brink of true disaster for the proud Tigers fans and today wasn’t going well. The opposing pitcher struck eight men out in the first three innings and the Tigers had only just managed to find a way to first base after a “ball four” call.

“Can’t anybody here play this game?” sighed Barkley, the manager, to Coach Prime in the dugout. “I know they’re going all in, but we need to move forward here.”

Prime ignored him, as he was watching the guy who had taken two bases after a massive outfield error and was coming home to score. “Oh, this big cat has at least one life left,” he replied.

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The complicated, generous life  of Paul Auster, who died on April 30 , yielded a body of work of staggering scope and variety .

“Real Americans,” a new novel by Rachel Khong , follows three generations of Chinese Americans as they all fight for self-determination in their own way .

“The Chocolate War,” published 50 years ago, became one of the most challenged books in the United States. Its author, Robert Cormier, spent years fighting attempts to ban it .

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Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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What does progress look like on a planet at its limit?

Putting endless growth above our wellbeing and the environment is no longer viable

I n the 20th century, the definition of progress seemed clear. It was growth, measured in terms of national income, or gross domestic product (GDP). And that growth was to be endless, an ever-rising curve. No matter how rich a nation already was, its politicians and economists would consistently claim that the solutions to its problems – from poverty to pollution – depended on yet more growth.

But this promise has not been delivered on. It is clearly time to reimagine the shape of progress and, with it, the policies that could bring about prosperity for a fractured humanity on a destabilised planet.

First, it’s useful to recognise the appeal of growth. It is, after all, a wonderful, healthy phase of life, which is why people the world over love to see children, gardens and trees grow. No wonder the western mind so readily accepted it as the shape of economic progress, too, and simultaneously adopted the very 20th-century mantra that “more is better”, both personally and nationally.

Yet if we look to nature, it’s clear that nothing succeeds by growing for ever: anything that seeks to do so will, in the process, destroy itself or the system on which it depends. Things that succeed grow until they are grown up, at which point they mature, enabling them to thrive, sometimes for hundreds of years. As the biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus reminds us, a tree keeps growing only up to the point that it is still capable of sending nutrients to the leaves at the outermost tips of its branches, at which point it stops. Its pursuit of growth is bounded by a greater goal of distributing and circulating the resources that nurture and sustain the health of its whole being.

Although we can easily appreciate the limits of growth in the living world, when it comes to our economies, we have a harder time. Thanks to the availability of cheap fossil fuel-based energy in the 20th century, rapid economic growth came to be seen as normal and natural, indeed as essential. Its continuation over many decades led to the creation of institutional designs and policies – from credit creation to shareholder dividends to pension funds – that are structurally dependent on growth without end. In other words, we have inherited economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive.

This requirement has become so locked into economic theories, political narratives and public expectations that, over recent decades, we’ve witnessed desperate and often destructive measures designed to reboot growth when it becomes elusive. Governments deregulate finance in the hope of unleashing new investment, but often end up unleashing speculative bubbles, house price hikes and debt crises instead. They promise corporations that they will “cut red tape” but end up dismantling legislation that was put in place to protect workers’ rights, communities and the natural world. They privatise services – from water to hospitals – turning public wealth into private revenue streams that often undermine the very services they claim to provide. They add the environment into the national accounts as “ecosystem services” and “natural capital”, assigning it a value that looks dangerously like a price. And, despite committing to keep global heating “well below 2C”, they open up new avenues for fossil fuel exploration, while failing to make the scale of transformational public investment needed for a renewable energy revolution.

Instead of pursuing endless growth, it is time to pursue wellbeing for all people as part of a thriving world, with policymaking that is designed in the service of this goal. This results in a very different conception of progress: in the place of endless growth we seek a dynamic balance, one that aims to meet the essential needs of every person while protecting the life-supporting systems of our planetary home. And since we are the inheritors of economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, a critical challenge in high-income countries is to create economies that enable us to thrive, whether or not they grow.

Tackling and reversing inequality needs to be at the heart of a new eco-social contract. Not only does this bring benefits in terms of improving life satisfaction; it helps us reduce the size of our national ecological footprints, via the well-documented links between greater fairness and more moderate consumption. It’s also important politically: one of the most damaging consequences of growth-driven inequality is the concentration of wealth and economic power in the hands of a few. This power can all too easily be converted into influence over elections and the policymaking process, ensuring the preservation of a system that advantages the already wealthy.

When we turn away from growth as the goal, we can focus directly on asking what it would take to deliver social and ecological wellbeing, through an economy that is regenerative and distributive by design. There are many possibilities – such as driving a low-carbon, zero-waste industrial transformation, with a green jobs guarantee, alongside free public transport, personal carbon allowances, and progressive wealth taxes. Policies like these were, only a decade ago, considered too radical to be realistic. Today they look nothing less than essential.

This is an edited extract from a foreword to The Poverty of Growth by Olivier De Schutter (Pluto). Kate Raworth is the author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (Random House Business).

Further reading

Less Is More : How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel (Windmill Books, £10.99)

Edible Economics : The World in 17 Dishes by Ha-Joon Chang (Penguin, £10.99)

Prosperity Without Growth : Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow by Tim Jackson (Routledge, £19.99)

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