Our books
The authors of WORTPALAST Verlag write in a wide variety of formats. What they share in common: social relevance, depth, and a cosmopolitanism that inspires reflection.
What WORTPALAST Verlag publishes is intended to bring people together, connect them through content, and help them develop into a community that makes diversity, equality, and inclusion tangible. It is essential that we continually look into the darkness and move through it. Because that is where the light is most visible.
Zuzana Ríhová
The secret of transformation
" Sit down and write. It's that simple. And this simplicity torments him day and night. "
The Kafkas' mood is cheerful. The mother is pleased that her son has gained weight in the sanatorium, and the father enjoys reading his inspection reports from the family's asbestos factory.
Meanwhile, Franz fulfills his parents' expectations in an exemplary manner, but his thoughts revolve solely around his own writing. Yet he would rather not think about it, as he senses that he is failing even more in this than in his role as a son.
Visits to brothels with Max provide the much-needed distraction. He now wants to invite his cousin from Berlin, a certain Felice. A refreshingly different perspective on Kafka's "Metamorphosis."
Zuzana Ríhová
The secret of transformation
" Sit down and write. It's that simple. And this simplicity torments him day and night. "
The Kafkas' mood is cheerful. The mother is pleased that her son has gained weight in the sanatorium, and the father enjoys reading his inspection reports from the family's asbestos factory.
Meanwhile, Franz fulfills his parents' expectations in an exemplary manner, but his thoughts revolve solely around his own writing. Yet he would rather not think about it, as he senses that he is failing even more in this than in his role as a son.
Visits to brothels with Max provide the much-needed distraction. He now wants to invite his cousin from Berlin, a certain Felice. A refreshingly different perspective on Kafka's "Metamorphosis."
Thomas Stefflbauer
Faxed
Dystopia Berlin - Volume 1
"Finally, the butterflies crept back into my stomach and dissipated enough for me to breathe again. Sunaia's words echoed in my ears: "Molecular disintegration. The odds are one in a million.""
Berlin 2028 - Charlie Yussuf has everything he needs: a successful career as an encryption expert and a life with Sunaia, a brilliant physicist and the love of his life. But a failed experiment with her teleporter throws him twenty years into the future.
Not only that. He finds himself in the body of his hated brother, whose impending disintegration sets off a race against time. He has only a few days to contact Sunaia and reverse the process. But as CEO of a world-leading corporation, Sunaia has her own worries and enemies. Unexpected allies help the two in their fight against political intrigue and the Russian underworld. Their goal? A life together in the quicksand of a bleak future.
First volume of stories
Would you like to pet my rabbit?
" The receiver fell onto the hook and clicked into place like a lock with no key."
If anything can warm us in these cold times, it's stories that open doors within ourselves and give us access to the unfamiliar, the unexpected, the unread. This debut publication from the very young Berlin-based publisher WORTPALAST achieves precisely this.
Five authors invite you to glimpse into imaginative moments, and they make a promise: Not everything in this book is meant to be understood, but often primarily felt:
When ladybugs ponder whether they turned off the stove, unnamed animals discuss people's abilities, to-do lists grow longer as they are completed, or intercoms become transmitters of emotions, then you are in the middle of a wondrous world that you want more of with every page you read.
Second volume of stories
Radio silence and other conversations
"Daddy is still in the water!" she heard Marc's weak voice, "Daddy is still in the water!"
The second volume of stories in the WORTPALASTES is a risk in times of polarization: It is an attempt to reconcile the absurdities of inner worlds with often frighteningly banal external realities.
Machos in muscle shirts clash with environmentally conscious mothers at the ALDI supermarket around the corner. Ravens from fairytale forests cross the paths of women who transform into animals on nighttime excursions. Adam and Eve settle scores with God, and ladybugs forget to turn off the stove even though they don't have one.
Through their writing and stories, eleven people come together who aren't afraid to celebrate the rise and fall of love stories. In fact, many things mingle here: the serious with the satirical, the real with the imagined, the retrospective with the utopian.
GS Quinn (D) · R. Wayth · (SK) · Mariana MB Borges (BRA)
Growing Pains - Short Stories & Poems
"Caleb's daring rescue of his pill bug colony was accentuated by his mothers' voices piercing through their apartment like two ambulance sirens."
If eyes are windows to the soul, then books are gateways. Instead of squinting through smudged glass to catch a tiny glimpse, we stride over the doorstep, led by the hand of an eager narrator, exploring and turning pages and soaking in words that paint a worldview entirely different from our own.
Behind the cover of growing pains lies not one gateway, but dozens of them. Across their thresholds, waiting: A new star appears in the sky and bewitches a blind girl; time stretches out endlessly in the minutes before a proposal; a psychic predicts not one, but countless of her futures; a book thief steals the heart of a librarian; a lifetime passes between fried cauliflower and roasted duck; and caramel cake leads to an identity crisis.
Simply, a glimpse isn't enough. Inside the pages of growing pains reside three voices, twenty-eight works, and a unique narrator for each of them holding out their hand in invitation.
"He had already circled the barrel twice and still hadn't found a door."
The third volume of stories in the Word Palace marks a new beginning: In the midst of an age of artificialities that far too many consider intelligent, it operates (almost) without technology. It is written by real people, and yet (or perhaps precisely because of this) the collected stories thrive on false statements. This, in turn, is only too human:
The search for truth, for honesty, is deeply rooted within us. Nevertheless, we always succeed in creating our own truths. Contradictions, parallel worlds, and inconsistencies are cultivated more or less consciously. Thus, apparent false statements often reveal a bit more truth than intended. Thus, the protagonists fight with giants, against age, oblivion, and death, with the
The pitfalls of everyday life and unfulfilled wishes, despite one's own observations and always connected with the question of what one can ultimately rely on.
Third volume of stories
false statements
New releases in autumn 2025
Thomas Stefflbauer
Hands don't lie
"She knew men like him. Unobtrusive beyond recognition, but one wrong word and the smooth facade could turn into open hostility."
Before his eyes, a boy suddenly jumps to his death. This haunts him. Then this journalist shows up and asks questions. Everything points back to the past, to this woman, his old summer love at the lake. But she disappeared ten years ago—why?!
The answers lie where people don't like curious strangers: in the mountains, in the villages, in the lake.
New releases in autumn 2025
Thilo Mutter
Mr. Volansky goes on the streets
"Sometimes we have to leave ourselves to become who we really are," she said with a warm smile to Volansky
What does a star cartoonist do when, due to an unfortunate coincidence, he finds himself on the street overnight and suddenly has to meet himself?
“Mr. Volansky Goes on the Street” is the record of a transformation that will have a profound impact and will sweep many others away—but first and foremost, you, the reader…