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Gabriel Weston

How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands? What is it like to cut into someone else's body? What is it like to stand by, powerless, while someone dies because of the incompetence of your seniors? How do you tell a beautiful young man who seems perfectly fit that he has only a few days left to live? 
 
Gabriel Weston worked as a surgeon in the big-city hospitals of the twenty-first century; a woman in a world dominated by Alpha males. Her world was one of disease, suffering and extraordinary pressure where a certain moral ambiguity and clinical detachment were necessary tools for survival. Startling and honest, her account combines a fierce sense of human dignity with compassion and insight, illuminating scenes of life and death the rest of us rarely glimpse. 
 
Direct Red won the 2010 PEN/ Ackerley Prize and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2009.

Direct Red

A Surgeon's Story

Molly Case

The hand of a stranger offered in solace. A flower placed on a dead body as a mark of respect. It is these moments of empathy that define us as people. 
 
Nobody knows this better than a nurse. In How to Treat People, Molly Case documents these extraordinary moments of human connection and compassion. In rich, lyrical prose, she introduces us to patients going through the most extreme experiences. And when her father is admitted to the high dependency unit on which she works, Molly confronts care in a whole new way, when two worlds - the professional and the personal - suddenly collide.

How to Treat People

A Nurse at Work

Christian Donlan

'My daughter took her first steps on the day I was diagnosed - a juxtaposition so perfect, so trite, so filled with the tacky artifice of real life that I am generally too embarrassed to tell anybody about it.' 
 
Shortly after his daughter Leontine was born, Christian Donlan's world shifted an inch to the left. He started to miss light switches and door handles when reaching for them. He would injure himself in a hundred stupid ways every day. First playful and then maddening, these strange experiences were the early symptoms of multiple sclerosis, an incurable and degenerative neurological illness. 
 
Multiple sclerosis is a fiercely destructive disease, yet it is also, as Donlan starts to discover, a perversely creative force. As his young daughter starts to investigate her environment, he too finds himself exploring a strange new landscape - the shifting and bewildering territory of the brain.

The Unmapped Mind

A Memoir of Neurology, Multiple Sclerosis and Learning How to Live

Tom Templeton

We ask so much of our doctors. 
 To heal. To trust. To care. To listen. 
 To tell a man he'll die tomorrow. To help a man who doesn't want to live. 
 To look into a parent's panicked eyes as their daughter fights for breath. 
 To watch a 103-year-old woman slip away. 
 
 Doctors know our deepest secrets, our private worries and our most vulnerable moments. In this breathtaking memoir of patients he has helped, lost, and those who have changed him forever, Dr Tom Templeton weaves a profound and moving portrait of humanity, asking us to treat all with compassion.

34 Patients

The profound and uplifting memoir about the patients who changed one doctor’s life

Georgie Edwards

‘I am one of the old school and believe that a woman’s place is within the home … However, I cannot, I will not, condone unfairness amongst females. I suggest that in due course you send your Matron a letter of thanks. You had after all a most unusual reference.’ 
 
In 1949, Staff Nurse Georgie Edwards is asked to chaperone medical students undertaking their practical exams when suddenly the penny drops. Georgie wants to learn to diagnose and treat too. 
 
Against the odds, she wins herself a place to study medicine at London’s St Bartholomew’s Hospital and she sets about becoming not a consultant ‘who sweeps by’ but a doctor who listens and cares. Yet Georgie wants to fall in love and start a family as well as have a career – is this one dream too many for a woman in the 1950s? 
 
Warm and full of humour, The Best Medicine is Georgie’s fascinating memoir of her early years as a nurse and doctor.

The Best Medicine

The True Story of a Nurse who became a Doctor in the 1950s

Adrian Tinniswood

Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was the greatest architect Britain has ever known. But he was more than that. A founder of the Royal Society, he mapped the moon and the stars, investigated the problem of longitude and the rings of Saturn, and carried out groundbreaking experiments into the circulation of the blood. His observations on comets, meteorology and muscular action made vital contributions to the developing ideas of Newton, Halley and Boyle. 
 
His Invention So Fertile presents the first complete picture of this towering genius: the Surveyor-General of the King's Works, running the nation's biggest architectural office and wrestling with corruption and interference; the pioneering anatomist; the mathematician, devising new navigational instruments and lecturing on planetary motion. 
 
It also shows us the man behind the legend. Wren was married and widowed twice, he fathered a mentally handicapped child, quarrelled with his colleagues and fell foul of his employers. He scrambled over building sites and went to the theatre and drank in coffee-houses. The book explores what it was like to be at Oxford during the Commonwealth, as a generation struggled to make sense of a society in chaos; it recreates the tensions which tore apart the court of James II; it brings to life the petty jealousies that formed an integral part of both the building world and scientific milieu of the Royal Society. 
 
Above all, His Invention So Fertile makes clear to the general reader and the art historian just why Wren remains a cultural icon - both a creation and a creator of the world he lived in.

His Invention So Fertile

Maggie Aderin-Pocock

'I'd toast the moon and look at the sky... I think it draws us to it; we wonder what lies beyond.' 
 
Maggie Aderin-Pocock’s destiny was always written in the stars. From the age of three, inspired by The Clangers, her dream was to go into space. Throughout a chaotic childhood, ricocheting between divorced parents and acrimonious custody battles, she attended thirteen schools in fourteen years – but while her environment regularly changed, her fascination with the Universe did not. It became enmeshed in her desire to succeed as a scientist even when her school careers advice was to become a nurse. 
 
Starchild is Maggie’s emotionally honest and revealing memoir, telling a story of education and prejudice, adversity and ambition, motherhood and the moon – all recounted in her characteristically warm and relatable style. From being the only Black woman on her physics course at Imperial College London, to her groundbreaking work on the James Webb and Gemini telescopes, to starting her own public speaking company and sharing the wonders of science with thousands of children every year, Maggie’s story will inspire you to never give up on your dreams.

Starchild

My Life Under the Night Sky

Leah Hazard

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, from the co-host of the podcast WHAT THE MIDWIFE SAID 
________________ 
No sleep for twenty hours. No food for ten. 
And a ward full of soon-to-be mothers... 
 
Midwives are there for us at some of the most challenging, empowering and defining moments of our lives. From heart-wrenching grief to the pure joy of a new-born baby, midwife Leah Hazard has seen it all. 
 
But life on the NHS front line, working within a system at breaking point, is more extreme than you could ever imagine. 
 
Moving and compassionate, funny and unexpected, Leah shares her experiences in this extraordinary love letter to new mothers and fellow midwives everywhere. 
_____________________ 
'The stories in Hard Pushed highlight the bravery of our midwives, and the women they care for.' CHRISTIE WATSON, author of The Language of Kindness 
 
'Heart-rending, inspiring and funny, Hard Pushed brings alive the world of midwifery in all its complexity and radiates love and respect for women.' PROFESSOR LESLEY PAGE CBE, former president of the Royal College of Midwives 
 
'It is Leah Hazard's capacity to love and give so personally to the many thousands of women she has worked with which imbues this book with its power.' JULIA SAMUEL, author of Grief Works 
 
'Not only powerful but well written too . . . a worthwhile addition to a genre fast becoming as crowded as a busy maternity unit.' DAILY EXPRESS 
 
'A riveting read: heartwarming and heartbreaking' SHEENA BYROM OBE, midwifery consultant and author of Catching Babies 
 
'A beautifully written, intimate portrait of the extraordinary work that midwives carry out each and every day.' CAROLINE ELTON, author of Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors

Hard Pushed

A Midwife’s Story

Charlotte Raven

Edward Wild

'Searingly honest and important' RACHEL CLARKE 
 
Honest, intelligent and unsentimental, Patient 1 is a startling self-portrait written with wit and vulnerability, and a unique testament to the power of hope in the face of illness. 
 
Charlotte Raven had never heard of Huntington's Disease when, in her mid-thirties, she discovered that her father was suffering from the illness. Life for her and her young family would never be the same again. 
 
Frank and fearless, this is her memoir of coming to terms with this inherited neurodegenerative disease and its impact on her body, mind and memory. It is at once an act of self-preservation and a kind of reckoning: with the illness, with the person she once was and with the person she is now. 
 
 In an afterword, Raven's doctor Ed Wild - one of the country's leading experts in Huntington's - explains how doctors and patients like Charlotte are working together in the hope of one day eliminating this disease altogether. 
 
'Insightful, frank and often moving...Raven writes with humour...and no small amount of courage' Guardian 
 
Shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize 2022

Patient 1

Forgetting and Finding Myself

Ping Fu

Ping Fu was born on the eve of China's Cultural Revolution; aged just eight she was taken from the arms of her loving family. She suffered appalling treatment and was denied an education. For ten years she lived in bleak dormitories, while protecting her younger sister from Mao's Red Guards. 
 
She survived, even succeeding in gaining admission to university. Yet, her education brought unwanted political attention and she was forced into exile. Arriving in the United States, speaking just three words in English, she set about making her fortune ... 
 
Bend, Not Break tells the incredible personal story of a journey from imprisonment to freedom, from the dogmatic anticapitalism of Mao's China to the high-stakes world of technology start-ups in the US. It is a tribute to one woman's courage in the face of cruelty, and a valuable lesson on the enduring power of resilience.

Bend, Not Break

From Mao's China to the White House

Samantha Cristoforetti

‘I read a lot of writings by astronauts in my research for Orbital, but this was my go-to. It's written with clarity, generosity, humour, humility and heart’ Samantha Harvey 
 
'Today I woke up on Earth. And I will fall asleep in space' 
 
In space the sun rises and sets 16 times a day. You fly over every sea, every mountain and desert, every city and every port. The most ordinary things -- eating, sleeping, brushing your teeth or cutting your hair -- have to be relearned, until they become familiar again. This is the story of Samantha Cristoforetti's incredible journey to becoming an astronaut, and her journey beyond Earth. 
 
Her voyage as an apprentice astronaut began when she was in her early thirties: five years of intense training around the world, from Houston to Japan to the legendary Star City in Russia. Countless hours spent in centrifuges, spaceship simulators and under water for spacewalk practice. Then, one day, a rocket was waiting for her on the launch pad. And after eight minutes of wild ascent, she was on orbit, crunched up with her two crewmates in a tiny spaceship that took them to the International Space Station. 
 
With honesty and warmth, Cristoforetti chronicles the two hundred days she spent on the ISS, the joys and challenges of being in an extraordinary place, from the sublime sight of seeing Earth for the first time to more unusual concerns, such as mastering the art of floating. How do you find your bearings when there is no up and down? What is it like to run in weightlessness? And how do you cook in space? 
 
This is an enthralling, inspiring and surprisingly down-to-earth story about what it really takes to pursue your dreams.

Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut

Jeanne Marie Laskas

The brilliant young forensic pathologist had no idea that the body on the slab in front of him would change his life, and ultimately change the world. 
 
The body belonged to legendary American Footballer Mike Webster, whose mental health had rapidly declined - he had ended up treating his back pain with a Taser and using Superglue to fix his rotting teeth. 
 
Dr Bennet Omalu found that Webster's psychosis was no accident. His autopsy unearthed evidence of a trauma-related disease - the consequence of years of head clashes in games. He knew it would kill scores of other sportsmen unless something was done, and believed the NFL would welcome the discovery. Instead America's most powerful corporation tried to destroy him. 
 
Taut and gorgeously told, this is the intensely personal story of one man's fight against a multibillion dollar colossus. A man who stood up for what was right, whatever the cost.

Concussion

Ben Platts-Mills

In Tell Me the Planets, Ben Platts-Mills shares stories about his remarkable work with survivors of brain injury, offering a rare glimpse into the world as seen through their eyes. We meet charismatic Danny, whose criminal past has left him paralysed down one side, but who now helps others worse off than himself; Sid, whose memory for the present lasts only moments; and Liah, who is caught in a battle with the care system threatening to make her homeless. But above all this is the story of the extraordinary friendship between Ben and Matthew, who suffered neurological damage during an operation to remove a cerebral cyst. It is a journey that takes them to the frontiers of science and to the limits of human resilience: when they discover that the cyst is growing again, Matthew is left with an impossible decision to make.

Tell Me the Planets

Stories of Brain Injury and What It Means to Survive

Benji Waterhouse

‘This is honestly my dream book… Fascinating’ FERN BRADY 
 
‘Fearlessly honest, funny and uplifting’ JO BRAND 
 
‘Very funny and deeply sympathetic. Really excellent’ HENRY MARSH 
 
Most of the psychiatric cases in this book are Benji’s patients. Some of them are his family. One of them is him. 
 
Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality. 
 
Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures? 
 
This is an eye-opening medical memoir – from both sides of the doctor’s desk. The perfect read for fans of This Is Going to Hurt, Unnatural Causes and The Prison Doctor.

You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here

A Psychiatrist’s Life

Duncan Harding

A likeable young girl burns her family home to the ground 
 
A man has no memory of the night he killed his wife 
 
A teenager’s visions have murderous effect 
 
One question binds the cases of Dr Duncan Harding, Britain’s top forensic psychiatrist: Why? 
 
Growing up in a violent home, Harding became a doctor to be good and kind. His journey brought him to psychopaths, to the limits of his compassion and to the darkest corners of his own troubled past. 
 
But he’s never turned away nor given up hope. Mesmerising, insightful and redemptive, The Criminal Mind is his unforgettable story.

The Criminal Mind

Sue Black

WINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 
'Gripping from the start, Written in Bone is superb' - Dr Richard Shepherd, author of Unnatural Causes 
'No Scientist communicates better than Sue Black' - Val McDermid, author of Still Life 
'Macabre, authoritative and fascinating.' - The Sunday Times 
 
Our bones are the silent witnesses to the lives we lead. Our stories are marbled into their marrow. 
 
Drawing upon her years of research and a wealth of remarkable experience, the world-renowned forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of revelation. From skull to feet, via the face, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she shows that each part of us has a tale to tell. What we eat, where we go, everything we do leaves a trace, a message that waits patiently for months, years, sometimes centuries, until a forensic anthropologist is called upon to decipher it. 
 
Some of this information is easily understood, some holds its secrets tight and needs scientific cajoling to be released. But by carefully piecing together the evidence, the facts of a life can be rebuilt. 
 
Limb by limb, case by case - some criminal, some historical, some unaccountably bizarre - Sue Black reconstructs with intimate sensitivity and compassion the hidden stories in what we leave behind. 
 
Praise for Sue Black: 
 
'Sue Black has a rare ability to make blood and bones come alive. A marvellous writer. Ruth Davidson, SMP 
'The corpse whisperer ... Is it okay for Black, or us, to enjoy this quite so much?' 
'Fascinating' - Spectator 
'Gripping' - Guardian 
'Moving' - Scotsman 
'Engrossing' - Financial Times

Written In Bone

hidden stories in what we leave behind

Scott Kelly

*As featured on BBC Breakfast, Radio 5Live and Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2* 
 
From the Nasa astronaut who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station – what it’s like out there and what it’s like now, back here. Enter Scott Kelly's fascinating world and dare to think of your own a little differently. 
 
As soon as you realize you aren’t going to die, space is the most fun you’ll ever have... 
 
The veteran of four space flights and the American record holder for most consecutive days spent in space, Scott Kelly has experienced things very few of us ever have and very few of us ever will. 
 
Kelly's humanity, compassion, humour, and passion shine as he describes navigating the extreme challenge of long-term spaceflight, both existential and banal. He touches on what’s happened to his body, the sadness of being isolated from everyone he loves; the pressures of constant close cohabitation; the catastrophic risks of colliding with space junk, and the still more haunting threat of being absent should tragedy strike at home. 
 
From a natural storyteller Endurance is one of the finest examples the triumph of the human imagination, the strength of the human will, and the boundless wonder of the galaxy. 
 
* 
 
What readers are saying... 
 
'Takes you up into space and lets you be a part of astronaut life' 
'Tough to put down! Tells a side you don't often hear or read about for that matter' 
'Mind blowing . . . up there with Ernest Shackleton for me' 
'My husband said it is the next best thing to going into space yourself' 
'Six stars!'

Endurance

A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

Camilla Pang

A scientist’s journey from observation to discovery is anything but straightforward. It is littered with failure, unexpected diversions and joyous realisations. Science helps us to understand ourselves in a world where we often feel like strangers - but what we know about the world around us, what has already been explored and discovered, is only half of science's story. 
 
Dr Camilla Pang will look at some of the biggest mysteries facing science today and how some of the best cutting-edge scientists can illuminate our own approaches to observation, hypothesis, exploration, troubleshooting and discovery in our lives. 
 
Breakthrough explores the frontier between what we do and don’t know about the world: where knowledge meets mystery, complexity overwhelms certainty, and the vastness of our universe unspools the logic of science's established laws. 
 
The stability of science was originally a safety blanket for her survival with Autism; after becoming a scientist herself, Camilla quickly realises that it is the complete opposite. Scientific research, much like life - beset by new technology and ubiquitous information - is constantly changing. Part of its curse but also of its beauty. 
 
There's a scientist hidden inside all of us. Science's greatest gift to us is not formulae but enabling the urge to discover that makes us truly human.

Breakthrough

How to Think Like a Scientist, Learn to Fail and Embrace the Unknown

How to Think Like a Scientist, Learn How to Fail and Embrace the Unknown

Peter Scott-Morgan

Peter, a brilliant scientist, is told that he will lose everything he loves. 
 
His husband. His family. His friends. His ability to travel the world. All will be gone. 
 
But Peter will not give up. He vows that this will not be the end and instead seeks a completely new beginning . . . 
 
Peter has Motor Neurone Disease, a condition universally considered by doctors to be terminal. It will destroy his nerve cells and he is told that within an average of two years, it will take his life too. 
 
But, face-to-face with death, he decides there is another way. Using his background in science and technology, he navigates a new path, one that will enable him not just to survive, but to thrive. 
 
This is the astonishing true story behind the primetime Channel 4 documentary, about Dr. Peter Scott-Morgan who will become the first person to combine his very humanity with artificial intelligence and robotics to become a full Cyborg. His discovery means that his terminal diagnosis is negotiable, something that will rewrite the future. And change the world. 
 
By embracing love, life and hope rather than fear, tragedy and despair he will become Peter 2.0.

Peter 2.0

The Human Cyborg

John Davidson

From the remarkable man whose life inspired the heartstopping film, ‘I Swear’, a book that offers extraordinary insight into what it’s like to live with a severe form of Tourette’s syndrome: a fascinating, complex condition that’s more common than most of us think ( 1 in 100 schoolchildren have the condition) , and yet is chronically misunderstood. 
 
Born in the 1970s on the Scottish Borders, John’s was ten when his tics first arrived, as if from nowhere. Previously a happy, popular, football-mad boy he was labelled disruptive, rude, and even mad. As his condition progressed, from blinks and jerks to involuntary rude and obscene shouting, John was bullied, rejected - alienated from his family and a society that had no idea what to make of him. 
 
Hospitalized and drugged for months, it was only an extraordinary and transformative friendship, and John’s dogged optimism, that turned his life around, making I Swear an inspirational story of triumph over adversity. 
 
Through John’s eyes, we see Tourette’s not just as a medical condition, but as a lens through which we can all better understand the importance of human connection. And how essential, as well as ultimately rewarding, it can be to keep going and never give up.

I Swear

My Life with Tourette’s

Fredrik Sjöberg

Stories just begin. We rarely know where and almost never why. It doesn't matter. Nothing is certain any longer. I just want to shut my eyes, point at random and say, as a sort of experiment, that once, when I was sixteen years old, I spent a whole night singing romantic songs in the top of a pine tree. That's where it may have started. 
 
In this follow-up to The Fly Trap, Sjöberg continues to explore the pleasures and trials of those who spend their time tracing the smallest details of the natural world. In these two tales, he calls on his childhood memories and experience as a hoverfly collector, and follows the trail of long forgotten entomologists before him who left their native Sweden for the United States. From Stockholm to the Grand Canyon, Sjöberg contemplates the richness of life and the strange paths it leads us on.

The Art of Flight

Les Pringle

This is a re-issue of Blue Nights and Long Nights ISBN 9780552158527. 
 
Card-playing corpses, unfaithful husbands and 'flying' ladies - life as an ambulance driver in the 1970s was certainly varied ... 
 
At the age of twenty-three, Les Pringle decided to escape from office life, broaden his horizons and become an ambulance driver. Little did he realize how broad those horizons would turn out to be. 
 
Filled with warmth and humour, Dial 999! takes us back to a time when lonely old ladies could call 999 and have a cup of tea waiting when the drivers turned up for a chat; when learning to drive the ambulance meant going out for one test drive and managing not to hit a pedestrian; and every day brought a glimpse into other people's lives. 
 
Gripping, poignant and darkly funny, Dial 999!is an affectionate, warm-hearted look at a world gone by.

Dial 999!

Averil Mansfield

'A great read. I am honoured to have worked with such a legend' David Nott 
'A role model for women' Independent 
'A wonderful read' Julian Fellowes 
'Remarkable' Lauren Laverne 
'Charming' Guardian 
 
We were occasionally expected to travel by ambulance to a serious case and would always have a kit of tools and drugs ready for emergency calls. On one occasion, we were responding to a man who had fallen into the hold of a grain ship and broken his leg. I was expected to go down a pole into the ship to administer analgaesia before he could be rescued. The 'audience' of shipworkers delighted in telling me that there were rats the size of dogs down in the grain. The other problem was that this was the era of the mini skirt, and you can imagine what that meant. Following the incident, I instituted the purchase of some 'Casualty Officers Emergency Dungarees' as an addition to the kit. 
 
Averil Mansfield established herself as a pioneer in every sense of the word when she qualified as a surgeon in the early 1970s. At the time just two per cent of her colleagues were female, and she was often met with surprise, bordering on disbelief and amusement, when telling people what she did. But time and again, Averil proved herself more than capable of the role which had been her greatest dream since the age of eight. After a formidable operating career in Liverpool and London, during which she made many enduring friendships, she went on to became the UK's first ever female professor of surgery. 
 
Life in Her Hands is the remarkable story of a truly trailblazing woman. Averil's account shines light on a medical and societal world that has changed beyond measure, but which - as she shows through her experiences - still has a long way to go for the women finding their place within it.

Life in Her Hands

The Inspiring Story of a Pioneering Female Surgeon

Sara Wheeler

Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959) was one of the youngest members of Captain Scott's final expedition to the Antarctic. Cherry undertook an epic journey in the Antarctic winter to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin. The temperature fell to seventy below, it was dark all the time, his teeth shattered in the cold and the tent blew away. 'But we kept our tempers,' Cherry wrote, 'even with God.' 
 
After serving in the First War Cherry was invalided home, and with the zealous encouragement of his neighbour Bernard Shaw he wrote a masterpiece. In The Worst Journey in the World Cherry transformed tragedy and grief into something fine. But as the years unravelled he faced a terrible struggle against depression, breakdown and despair, haunted by the possibility that he could have saved Scott and his companions. 
 
This is the first biography of Cherry. Sara Wheeler, who has travelled extensively in the Antarctic, has had unrestricted access to new material and the full co-operation of Cherry's family.

Cherry

A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Ruth McKernan

Science is just one way of looking at life. As a neuroscientist working at the forefront of medical research it is Ruth McKernan's way. When her father, Billy, succumbed to a mystery illness and slipped from consciousness into coma, Ruth watched his life ebb away with a mixture of love and terror. She struggled for control by using her scientific knowledge to analyse his medical condition. 
 
In this moving account of her father's last year, love, grief and hope are intertwined with a crystal-clear scientific explanation of the way our brains and bodies work. The result is an inspired blend where the contrasting view of scientist and daughter ultimately unite.

Billy's Halo

Jim McCaul

'Face to Face is not just a brilliant introduction to one of the most exacting areas of modern medicine, it's a humbling glimpse of humans at their best.' Sunday Times 
 
So much of our identity and sense of self is vested in the face we see in the bathroom mirror every morning. Now imagine that face so ravaged by cancer, an accident, a gun shot wound or a car crash that it is barely recognizable. Think how it might feel if, after surgery, the person you remember, but had given up all hope of seeing again, is looking back at you from the mirror once more. 
 
Over the years, maxillofacial surgeon Jim McCaul has helped countless people make this journey. His extraordinary book follows the stories of some of the patients he has saved from terrible illness and life-changing injuries – and some he wasn’t able to help. We follow the epic and complex surgical procedures his job requires him to perform daily, where the margin for error is to all intents and purposes zero. 
 
Face to Face is a journey through the most high-tech and complex of microsurgical procedures as well as the facial reconstruction techniques pioneered during the First World War. But at its heart are the human stories of the patients for whom treatment is often quite literally a matter of life and death. 
 
'Fascinating and life-affirming ... Jim McCaul confides in us the joys and the agony of facial surgery.' Dr Richard Shepherd, bestselling author of Unnatural Causes

Face to Face

True stories of life, death and transformation from my career as a facial surgeon

Hannah Jackson

Sunday Times bestseller 
 
Lessons to live by, without getting up with the lark 
 
Hannah Jackson (aka The Red Shepherdess) grew up in the Wirral, and hadn't set foot on a farm until she was 20-years-old. But she'd always loved animals and on a visit to the Lake District, she saw a lamb being born and had a light bulb moment - a burning desire to succeed as a farmer - and never looked back. 
 
In Tales of a Shepherdess, Hannah gives us a unique insight into farm life and the values it has taught her that we can use in our everyday lives to change ourselves and our world for the better - from connection, communication and community, to leadership, patience and resilience. Hannah will show us how becoming a lambing and farming contractor in a male-dominated and traditional world taught her grit and determination; how training her loyal sheepdog Fraser taught her to trust; and how sometimes failure can teach us more about ourselves than success. Hannah's journey also teaches us how we should find what sets our hearts on fire and throw everything into it. 
 
Hannah's simple and universal wisdom, practical advice, and words of encouragement will inspire you to achieve your goals, follow your dreams and focus on what's really important in life.

Call Me Red

A shepherd’s journey

Mark Bostridge

Whether honoured and admired or criticized and ridiculed, Florence Nightingale has invariably been misrepresented and misunderstood. As the Lady with the Lamp, ministering to the wounded and dying of the Crimean War, she offers an enduring image of sentimental appeal and one that is permanently lodged in our national consciousness. But the awesome scale of her achievements over the course of her 90 years is infinitely more troubling - and inspiring - than this mythical simplification. 
 
 From her tireless campaigning and staggering intellectual abilities to her tortured relationship with her sister and her distressing medical condition, this vivid and immensely readable biography draws on a wealth of unpublished material and previously unseen family papers, disentangling the myth from the reality and reinvigorating with new life one of the most iconic figures in modern British history.

Florence Nightingale

The Woman and Her Legend: 200th Anniversary Edition

A K Benjamin

What does it take to care for a stranger? Really care. 
 
The Case for Love is a reflection on a career treating patients with brain trauma - people whose thoughts and feelings are largely unknowable - and how and why those treatments failed. 
 
It is a reconstruction of three haunting cases in which the patients were tragically misunderstood - and an attempt through the power of the imagination to understand and make amends. 
 
It then describes the author's abandonment of his career and his tumultuous quest for healing and redemption. 
 
It is also a story of intimate relationships, pets, fatherhood and heartbreak, culminating in a moment of psychedelic transcendence and rebirth. 
 
It is about the overpowering need for connection - and how, increasingly, we are trapped in ourselves. 
 
It is a meditation on empathy and an act of atonement. 
 
It is a unique, hybrid work of clinical case study and pure invention that destroys the boundary between fact and fiction in order to bring us face-to-face with the shocking, liberating truth. 
 
__________ 
 
Praise for Let Me Not Be Mad 
 
'Imagine a gonzo Oliver Sacks communing with Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose, R.D. Laing and the spirit of Kafka's 'The Country Doctor', and you still won't quite have the flavour of this wild and strikingly original book' William Fiennes 
 
'Stunning: clever, troubling, restless, honest, dishonest; one of the best portraits of madness and clinical practice I've read' Olivia Laing 
 
'A perfectly extraordinary - not to mention extraordinarily perfect - tense Hitchcockian psychodrama. I have rarely read a more haunting and enthralling account of a descent into madness. An important, profound and fascinating book' Stephen Fry 
 
'Blackly comic, warmly compassionate, a unique take on the human mind offering uncomfortable universal truths' Stewart Lee 
 
'A slow-burn belter of a book ... terrific ... so finely described, the result has the terse force of a classic short story' Roddy Doyle 
 
'Exhilarating ... dazzling ... a miraculous feat' Guardian

The Case for Love

My Adventures In Other Minds

Rana el Kaliouby

A captivating memoir that chronicles one woman's mission to humanise technology and what she learns about humanity along the way. 
 
Now more than ever, we find ourselves unable to express our true feelings through technology. Rana el Kaliouby discovered this when she left Cairo, a newly-married, Muslim woman, to take up her place at Cambridge University to study computer science. Many thousands of miles from home, she began to develop systems to help her better connect with her family. She started to pioneer the new field of Emotional Intelligence (EI). She now runs her company, Affectiva (the industry-leader in this emerging field) that builds EI into our technology and develops systems that understand humans the way we understand one another. This is the fascinating story of her mission to humanise technology and what she learns about humanity along the way.

Girl Decoded

My Quest to Make Technology Emotionally Intelligent – and Change the Way We Interact Forever

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