Around 30 fans gathered in Carrickfergus for the midnight release of A Court of Splintered Harmony, the sixth book in Sarah J Maas's ACOTAR series, after a five-year wait. The event featured activities and celebrated the romantasy genre's growing cultural impact.
6 min readDictionary.com names "maxxing"—short for maximising—as its 2026 Word of the Year, reflecting American culture's obsession with optimisation. The term surged 19 times in digital media and spawned variations like "looksmaxxing" and "proteinmaxxing" across Gen Z social platforms.
5 min readA secretive debating club in 1920s Tredegar helped shape Aneurin Bevan's drive for power, leading him to found the NHS and revolutionise housing for ordinary people.
8 min readAda Goodrich Freer's 1897 investigation of Scotland's most haunted mansion, Ballechin House, established the template for modern paranormal inquiry and influenced horror fiction for generations, though her credibility was later questioned by the Society for Psychical Research.
7 min readAudiobooks surpassed physical book loans in Northern Ireland this year, with Freida McFadden's thrillers and self-help titles dominating borrowing across all formats. Harry Potter remains popular among younger readers nearly 30 years after its debut.
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