Ebookshelf

Did you know that the Library has a huge range of free nonfiction ebooks – 16,000 and counting! – which you can either read online or download for up to seven days?

To get started, browse our latest selection of ebooks and watch this space for new additions. You can also scan the list of past Ebookshelf titles or browse for even more free ebooks! For tips and advice, watch our video on using ebooks.

To access ebooks from home, you need to be a State Library member with a Victorian home address. (Terms and conditions of use apply.)

Mental: Everything you ever knew you needed to know about mental health

Steve Ellen and Catherine Deveny
Black Inc, 2018

In Mental, practitioner and professor of psychiatry Dr Steve Ellen and popular comedian Catherine Deveny combine forces to demystify the world of mental health.

Sharing their personal experiences of mental illness and an insider perspective on psychiatry, they unpack the current knowledge about conditions and treatments. Punctuated with anecdotes and real-life stories, the book covers everything from depression and anxiety to schizophrenia, personality disorders and substance abuse.

Whether you have a mental illness or support someone who does, Mental offers clear practical help, empowering you with an arsenal of tips and techniques to help build your resilience.

Australian animation: An international history

George Hurrell's Hollywood: Glamour portraits 1925–1992

Mark A Vieira
Running Press 2013

The creator of the Hollywood glamour portrait, featuring his signature use of bold contrast and seductive poses, George Hurrell (1904–92) was a maverick artist who photographed movie stars during Hollywood's most exalted era.

This lavishly illustrated book spans Hurrell's career, from his beginnings as a society photographer to his finale as the celebrity photographer who was himself a living legend.

The ultimate work on this trailblazing artist, the book presents a fabulous montage of fact and anecdote, light and shadow, and includes more than 400 portraits of stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable and Gary Cooper.

Uberworked and underpaid: How workers are disrupting the digital economy

Trebor Scholz
Polity Press, 2016

In this rich, accessible and provocative book, one of network culture's toughest critics chronicles the role of workers in the 'sharing economy' in the age of digital labour.

Scholz exposes the uncaring reality of contingent digital work, which is thriving at the expense of employment and worker rights, inspiring readers to rethink unions and build a better future of work.

A call to action, Scholz argues that it is time to stop wage theft and 'crowd fleecing', to rethink wealth distribution, and address the urgent question of how digital labour should be regulated and how workers can act in solidarity to defend their rights.

The history of landscape design in 100 gardens

Solar system maps: From antiquity to the Space Age

Conspiracy and populism: The politics of misinformation

Spotify teardown: Inside the black box of streaming music

Maria Eriksson, Rasmus Fleischer, Anna Johansson, Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau
MIT Press, 2019

Spotify was originally praised as an innovative digital platform that disrupted the world of music. Increasingly, it resembles a media company in need of regulation, raising questions about the ways in which cultural content is now typically made available online.

In Spotify teardown, five researchers disassemble this innovative digital platform and contest the claim that digital culture thrives on disruption. They reveal how they engaged in a series of interventions, which included establishing a record label for research purposes and earned them a stern letter from Spotify accusing them of violating its terms of use.

Thus, this fascinating book itself became an intervention into the ethics and legal frameworks of corporate behaviour.

Close to home: Selected writings

Growing up Aboriginal in Australia

Anita Heiss (ed)
Black Inc, 2018

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This groundbreaking collection showcases diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question, enlightening, inspiring and educating readers about the lives of Aboriginal people in Australia today.

Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart – sometimes calling for empathy, often challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.

Contributors include Tony Birch, Deborah Cheetham, Adam Goodes, Terri Janke, Patrick Johnson, Ambelin Kwaymullina, Jack Latimore, Celeste Liddle, Amy McQuire, Kerry Reed-Gilbert, Miranda Tapsell, Jared Thomas, Aileen Walsh, Alexis West and Tara June Winch.

The geography of friendship

Sally Piper
University of Queensland Press, 2018

In this haunting novel, three young women set off on a hike through the wilderness, anticipating the adventure of a lifetime. Over the next five days, it becomes clear that they are not alone and the freedom they feel turns to fear.

As their friendship is tested, each girl makes an irrevocable choice, the legacy of which haunts them for years to come.

Fast-forward and Samantha, Lisa and Nicole are now in their forties, and estranged. They decide to revisit their original hike in an attempt to salvage what they lost, but as geography and history collide, they are forced to come to terms with the differences that have grown between them and the true value of friendship.

1968 and global cinema

Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi (eds)
Wayne State University Press, 2018

Addressing a notable gap in film studies, this book considers the interplays among social movements globally and their impact on cinema in the late 1960s.

The essays cover a breadth of cinematic movements that were part of the era's radical politics and independence movements. Focusing on history, aesthetics and politics, each contribution illuminates conventional understandings of the relationship of cinema to the events of 1968.

The volume is organised chronologically, highlighting the shifts and developments in ideology in different geographic contexts and considering the lasting impact of 1968 and related cinematic new waves into the 1970s.

Luggage

Beautiful revolutionary

Laura Elizabeth Woollett
Scribe Publications, 2018

It's the summer of 1968, and Evelyn Lynden is a woman at war with herself. Minister's daughter. Atheist. Independent woman. Frustrated wife. Following her conscientious-objector husband Lenny to California, Evelyn wants to be happy with their new life.

Yet as the world is rocked by social upheaval and warfare, she finds herself disillusioned with Lenny's passive ways – and anxious for a saviour. Enter the Reverend Jim Jones, the dynamic leader of a revolutionary church called Peoples Temple. As Evelyn grows closer to Jones, her marriage is just the first casualty of his rise to power.

This meticulously researched, elegantly written and utterly engrossing novel explores the allure of the real-life charismatic leader who would destroy so many.

Doctor Hugh: My life with animals

Hugh Wirth and Anne Crawford
Allen & Unwin, 2012

From his time as a young country vet to running his own busy practice in suburban Melbourne, the late Hugh Wirth (1939–2018) treated all manner of animals and taught three generations of Australians how to care for their pets through his weekly ABC radio show.

As the indomitable national chief of the RSPCA, he took on everyone, from perpetrators of animal cruelty to animal rights activists, public service mandarins and even his own profession.

Written in Wirth's unmistakable tell-it-as-it-is voice, his memoir will delight, enrage, inform, entertain and teach every one of us how to care for and understand the rights of animals in our modern world.

Netflix and the re-invention of television