Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 984 KB | Retail
Overview: A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community

In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island’s shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can’t shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.

The arrival of two English ethnographers who hope to study the island culture, then, feels like a boon to her—both a glimpse of life outside her community and a means of escape. The longer the ethnographers stay, the more she feels herself pulled towards them, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued and exoticized.

With shimmering prose tempered by sharp wit, Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person’s ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized. O’Connor paints a portrait of a community and a woman on the precipice, forced to confront an outside world that seems to be closing in on them.
Genre: Fiction > General Fiction/Classics


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The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim
Requirements: .M4A/.M4B reader, 546 MB
Overview: Religion is at the heart of man’s societies. ‘For a long time,’ Durkheim writes early on in his book, ‘it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin.’ Durkheim decided to examine how and why this phenomenon functioned and evolved - by looking specifically at simple societies and their religions, rather than at religions in more complex or developed societies. By examining the religious belief systems, their stories and their structures from sociological and anthropological perspectives, he set out to explore the way religions emerged from the group and what they represented for the group. All judgments on the religious content were suspended. What were the practices, the ethics, what were the beliefs, and how did they reflect and interact with the society from which they sprang?
Genre: Audiobooks > Non-Fiction


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The Menopause Cookbook - 1st Edition, 2024
Requirements: .PDF reader, 80.5 MB
Overview: Indulge in guilt-free sweet treats with 50+ delicious recipes to boost your health in Lifestyle Bookazine. Discover the Menopause Cookbook with the best foods to relieve symptoms, manage weight, build muscle, and soothe insomnia. Beat the heat with cool-down classics to help with hot flushes.

Genre: Magazines & Newspapers


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Greatest Gaming Icons - 6th Edition, 2024
Requirements: .PDF reader, 160.2 MB
Overview: It’s amazing to think that in the space of four decades, the videogame industry has become one of the biggest on the planet. Nowadays, games are made by hundreds of people and can cost millions to make, but in the early days things were very different. Many games were born in the bedrooms of school kids all around the world, who were just tinkering away with the new computers, while others were made by small teams who realised that there was money to be made in this emerging new market. Keen businessmen and sharp developers quickly cottoned on to the fact that their games did a lot better when they had identifiable characters at their core, and throughout the Eighties and Nineties numerous videogame heroes (and heroines) were born. Some would have a few hits and fade into obscurity, while others would regularly turn up in long-running franchises and earn firm fan bases or become the mascots of companies. And then, of course, there are the likes of Sonic, Mario, Lara Croft and Pac-Man, huge characters who are recognised by gamers and non-gamers alike and have become huge celebrities in their own right. The following book will look at 50 of these colourful characters and either chart their origins or revisit their first game appearances. Some have now faded, while others are stronger than ever, but each and every one of them had a part in shaping the industry we appreciate today. Enjoy the book.
Genre: Magazines & Newspapers


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