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Did you know that the Library has a huge range of free ebooks – 200,000 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, read our Get started guide or 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.)
Math makers: the lives and works of 50 famous mathematicians Math makers: the lives and works of 50 famous mathematicians Thomas Raymen
Mathematics today is the fruit of centuries of brilliant insights by men and women whose personalities and life experiences were often as extraordinary as their mathematical achievements.
This entertaining history of mathematics chronicles those achievements through 50 short biographies that bring these great thinkers to life while making their contributions understandable to readers with little math background.
Pink-slipped: what happened to the women in the silent film industries? Pink-slipped: what happened to the women in the silent film industries? Jane M. Gaines.
Women held more positions of power in the silent film era than at any other time in American motion picture history. Yet they, and the other pioneering filmmaking women, vanished from memory.
Using individual careers as a point of departure, Jane M. Gaines charts how women first fell out of the limelight and then out of the film history itself. Pondering how silent era women have become absent in the abstract while present in reality, Gaines sees a need for a theory of these artists' pasts that relates their aspirations to those of contemporary women.
Woke gaming: digital challenges to oppression and social injustice Woke gaming: digital challenges to oppression and social injustice David J. Leonard
From #Gamergate to the 2016 election, to the daily experiences of marginalised perspectives, gaming is entangled with mainstream cultures of systematic exploitation and oppression.
Whether visible in the persistent colour line that shapes the production, dissemination, and legitimisation of dominant stereotypes within the industry itself, or in the dehumanising representations often found within game spaces, videogames perpetuate injustice and mirror the inequities and violence that permeate society as a whole.
Ironbark Jay Carmichael
Markus Bello's life has stalled. Living in a small country town, mourning the death of his best friend, Grayson, Markus is isolated and adrift. As time passes, and life continues around him, Markus must try to face his grief, and come to terms with what is left.
Stylistically assured and quietly compelling, Ironbark is an elliptical and beautifully evoked contemporary coming-of-age story. Through his protagonist, Markus, newcomer Jay Carmichael depicts the conflict and confusion of life as a gay man in rural Australia and explores how place can shape personal identity by both offering and restricting potential
The new politics of fatherhood: men's movements and masculinities The new politics of fatherhood: men's movements and masculinities Ana Jordan
This book makes a unique contribution to contemporary research into masculinities, men's movements, and fathers' rights groups.
It examines the role of changing masculinities in creating equality and/or reinforcing inequality by analysing diverse men's movements, their politics, and the identities they (re)construct.
The new politics of fatherhood expands scholarly understandings of gender, masculinities, and social movements in the under-researched UK context.
Asleep awake asleep: stories Asleep awake asleep: stories Jo-Ann Bekker
The thirty-nine stories in Asleep awake asleep can be read as a hand-drawn narrative map, charting the course of a country's turbulent history. Together they tell a coming of age and a coming to consciousness story, as Rip - child, adult, journalist, partner, mother - revisits milestones marked, and signposts ignored or unseen.
Set in the suburbs and newsrooms of South African towns and cities and their wilder surrounds, there are vignettes of relationships; tales of political assassinations, murder and betrayal, and questions asked about complicity and reparation.
Walking Gallipoli Stephen Chambers
A walking tour guidebook for travelers and armchair historians interested in visiting the sites of the World War I campaign in Turkey.
Gallipoli was a First World War tragedy, a side show that had ambitious hopes to end the war early. Despite the immense gallantry displayed by those fighting, from the beginning, this grand scale 1915 operation was plagued with mismanagement. Failure in high places betrayed the heroism in the field, resulting in casualties of over half a million.
Those who visit the area today owe to those who served and died a conscious effort to see beyond the heartbreak and futility, to appreciate the what, the how, and the why.
Activating happiness: a jump-start guide to overcoming low motivation, depression, or just feeling stuck Activating happiness: a jump-start guide to overcoming low motivation, depression, or just feeling stuck Rachel Hershenberg
Activating happiness offers powerful, evidence-based strategies to help you conquer low motivation, nix negative moods, and defeat depression by actively making positive choices in small, everyday moments.
You'll find solid strategies based in behavioural activation and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help you break the cycle of avoidance, guilt, shame, and hopelessness that can take hold when you're feeling your lowest.
