Item category 1: Society & Culture

Drawing on oral history interviews conducted nationwide with abortion-providing doctors, nurses, counsellors and managers, women's health workers, academics and community activists, Baird brings a critical feminist analysis to create a sophisticated historical narrative of abortion provision over...

On the evening of Halloween in 2015, Morgan Hehir was walking with friends close to Nuneaton town centre when they were viciously attacked by a group of strangers. Morgan was stabbed, and died hours later in hospital. He was twenty years old and loved making music with his band, going to the foot...

Should I be upfront with someone I'm interested in that I'm ace or aro? How do I get people to respect my boundaries around intimacy? What if I don't want intimacy at all? It is selfish to pursue a relationship if I don't want romance? These questions are not only a source of deep anxiety and fru...

This book documents the complex, drawn out and harsh legal procedures and historically racist and toxic immigration culture that await people arriving by plane and subsequently seeking refugee status in Australia. This story has hitherto been under-represented because of the more notorious offsho...

Take a moment to listen and you will hear the word 'value' at the core of many of the conversations around you - whether this applies to yourself, others, the community or in business. We should all be 'adding value', 'being authentic', 'connecting with people', however, often when you look up cl...

“The first letter I received after being arrested in 1999 was from Rabia… As someone connected to me, my family, my community, my lawyers, and my investigation, there is no one better to help tell my story, and no one that I trust more to tell it, than Rabia.” —Adnan Syed. On February 28, 2000, A...

Today's students are hammered with high expectations for their academic studies. Basic life skills are mostly not taught in classrooms, so graduates are on their own to figure out how to live successfully in the everyday world. Without any guidance, where do you start? Adulting 101 is a clever, c...

For 25 centuries, the animal stories which go by the name of Aesop's Fables have amused and instructed generations of children and adults alike. They are still as fresh and poignant today as they were to the ancient Greeks who composed them. This beautifully illustrated edition contains some of t...

The greatest collection of fables ever written, updated for our turbulent times. A witty, scatological illustrated version of the world's most celebrated fables, allegedly written by a slave in the fifth century BC. A book for our times: as Gebler notes, Aesop has two subjects -- the exercise of ...

Aesop's Illustrated Fables features more than 400 fables, beautifully illustrated with engravings and colour plates by Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane, and Ernest Griset. It includes all of the classic fables whose titles and morals have become part of our common cultural vocabulary, among them The ...

Africa south of the Sahara is a land of wide-ranging traditions and cultures. This collection offers a hefty cross-section of evocative tales, from the Yoruba people of west Africa to the San people of southern Africa. Legends of the gods, origin stories, trickster exploits, animal fables and par...

'I just want to warn you. You're going to dive to the end of the cave. You're going to see these kids. They're all looking healthy and happy and smiley. Then, you're going to swim away, and they're probably all going to die.' In June 2018, for seventeen days, the world watched and held its breath...

When a bestselling author and a much-esteemed painter meet at a party, they soon cook up the idea to collaborate and make a book about the life cycle of a woman. From birth onwards, no topic is skirted around.

Artificial intelligence not only powers our cars, hospitals and courtrooms: predictive algorithms are becoming deeply lodged inside us too. Machine intelligence is learning our private preferences and discreetly shaping our personal behaviour, telling us how to live, who to befriend and who to da...

Would you kill for love? True-crime master Ron Franscell tells the grisly story of Alice and Gerald Uden, a loving couple who murdered at least four people, and live happily ever after—while cops try for decades to piece together a petrifying tale of murder and secrets. The appalling details are ...

Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us -- and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide...

The story of Edward Rulloff, a serial murderer who was called 'too intelligent to be killed' and the array of 19th-century investigators who were convinced his brain held the key to finally understanding the criminal mind. Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer, some have called him ...

Seen any ghosts on your smartphone lately? As we're compelled to capture, store and share more and more of our personal information, there's something we often forget. All that data doesn't just disappear when our physical bodies shuffle off this mortal coil. If the concept of remaining socially ...

This is the true story of the Devils of the Bassa Modenese -- the most notorious Satanic Panic investigation in the history of Italy. In 1997 a six-year-old boy questioned by authorities relayed disturbing stories of abuse. The more he talked, the more people were implicated in his shocking revel...

We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we're so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look? Fuelled by a childhood fascination w...

Lesbian and bi culture is ever-changing. Journalist Daisy Jones unpicks outdated stereotypes and shows how, over the past few years, the style and shared language of queer women has slowly infiltrated the mainstream. (Think less hemp sandals, IKEA trips and nut milks and more freedom, expression,...

He was a college All-American who became the youngest player in the NFL and later a Super Bowl veteran. He was a star tight end on the league-dominant New England Patriots, who extended his contract for a record $40 million. Aaron Hernandez's every move as a professional athlete played out in the...

From the bestselling author of Hallelujah Anyway, Bird by Bird, and Help, Thanks, Wow, comes a new book about the place hope holds in our lives. "I am stockpiling antibiotics for the Apocalypse, even as I await the blossoming of paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen," Anne Lamott admits at...

Sweden, a country which defies the laws of economic gravity. A land with high wages, strong unions, generous welfare. A dream location for business. Coming out on top for childcare, equality and quality of life. You're even less likely to die of cancer there. Perfect. Or is it? Based on more than...

In a modern world that has been taken over by experts and professionals, Andy Merrifield argues that we have lost our amateur spirit and need to rediscover the radical and liberating pleasure of doing things we love.

Amazon Unbound is an unvarnished picture of Amazon's unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, revealing the most important business story of our time.

Colorado, 1976. When Reverend Mike Fuller and his beautiful wife Sharon arrive in the sleepy town of Rocky Ford, local residents think something's off about the new couple. The God-fearing minister is gruff and cold, while charismatic Sharon has her husband wrapped around her finger. It isn't lon...

In this hard-hitting work of non-fiction, real heroes from across the spectrum of US policing tell their unforgettable stories. Straight from the harsh streets, American Cops is a first-person account of the days and nights of America's police force. Protect: These men and women are our eyes. Our...

On September 5th, 1934, a young beachcomber made a gruesome discovery on the shores of Cleveland's Lake Erie: the lower half of a female torso, neatly severed at the waist. The victim, dubbed 'The Lady of the Lake,' was only the first of a butcher's dozen. Over the next four years, twelve more bo...

TRUE CRIME. From New York Times-bestselling author Nick Bilton comes a true-life thriller about the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht, aka the Dread Pirate Roberts, the founder of the online black market Silk Road. In 2011, Ulbricht, a 26-year-old libertarian idealist and former Boy Scout, launched ...