Compared to previous generations, we have unprecedented access to information, increased personal freedom, more material comforts, more possessions and longer life expectancy. Yet, a significant number of people are dissatisfied. Levels of anxiety, stress and depression are rising at an alarming rate. For more than 100 years, psychotherapists have been developing and refining models of the human mind. In this compelling and important book, the principle contributions of the outstanding figures associated with the practice of psychotherapy are explained.

Natasha Trethewey was born in Mississippi in the '60s to a Black mother and a White father. When she was six, Natasha’s parents divorced and she and her mother moved to Atlanta. There, her mother met the man who would become her second husband and Natasha’s stepfather. While she was still a child, Natasha decided that she would not tell her mother about what her stepfather did when she was not there: the quiet bullying and control, the games of cat and mouse. Her mother kept her own secrets, secrets that grew harder to hide as Natasha came of age.   

Many of the activities we take for granted are in fact contrary to a healthy lifestyle. In this groundbreaking audiobook, long-held beliefs are exploded by new science: drinking eight glasses a day is too much, breakfast isn't the most important meal of the day, smartphones are not making us all depressed. Bringing to bear the latest research in psychology, nutrition, biology and physics, Dr Stuart Farrimond unearths the facts behind the fads and provides take-away advice on every area of our lives.

Ageing - not cancer, not heart disease - is the world’s leading cause of death and suffering. We accept as inevitable that as we get older our bodies and minds begin to deteriorate, and we are increasingly likely to be struck by dementia or disease. Ageing is so deeply ingrained in human experience that we never think to ask: is it necessary? 

From Pickwick to Scrooge, Copperfield to Twist, how did Dickens find the perfect names for his characters? What was Dickens' favourite way of killing his characters? When is a Dickens character most likely to see a ghost? Why is Dickens’ trickery only fully realised when his novels are read aloud? In 13 entertaining and wonderfully insightful essays, John Mullan explores the literary machinations of Dickens’ eccentric genius, from his delight in clichés to his rendering of smells and his outrageous use of coincidences. 

Born Archibald Leach in 1904, he came to America as a teenaged acrobat to find fame and fortune, but he was always haunted by his past. His father was a feckless alcoholic, and his mother was committed to an asylum when Archie was 11 years old. He believed her to be dead until he was informed she was alive when he was 31 years old. Because of this experience Grant would have difficulty forming close attachments throughout his life. He married five times and had numerous affairs.

The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a jobbing critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein signs away his inheritance to teach schoolchildren in a provincial Austrian village, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and aligns his fortunes with the phenomenological school of Edmund Husserl. Ernst Cassirer sketches a new schema of human culture at the back of a cramped Berlin tram. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama, which will unfold over the next decade.

It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds. It spans the millennia and the continents - from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes you to unimagined places: to a Jewish kingdom in the mountains of southern Arabia; a Syrian synagogue glowing with radiant wall paintings; the palm groves of the Jewish dead in the Roman catacombs.

This collection brings together Finkelstein’s greatest writings from The Times, ranging from the personal - with his articles on growing up Jewish in Hendon Central and on the deaths of both of his parents - to the political, with columns on how to predict elections, the way political science showed us Ed Miliband was on his way to defeat and why the base rate of coups meant Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t be ousted before an election. 

From the outside, the men of today should be happy. They have it comparatively easy. They still get paid more for doing the same jobs. They are still 40 per cent more likely than women to be promoted to management roles. At home, men do washing up and petrol, wine and bins. Women still do everything else. But below the surface, there is a different story unfolding. Men in the UK are three times more likely to take their own life than women. Men aged 45-49 have the highest rate of suicide, nearly four times that of women the same age.

One winter's afternoon on Hampstead Heath in 1980, Elise Morceau meets Constance Holden and quickly falls under her spell. Connie is bold and alluring, a successful writer whose novel is being turned into a major Hollywood film. Elise follows Connie to LA, a city of strange dreams and swimming pools and late-night gatherings of glamorous people. But whilst Connie thrives on the heat and electricity of this new world where everyone is reaching for the stars and no one is telling the truth, Elise finds herself floundering. 

If you suffer from depression you are far from alone. Depression is very common, affecting over 300 million people around the world. Written by Professor Paul Gilbert, internationally recognised for his work on depression, this highly acclaimed self-help book has been of benefit to thousands of people including sufferers, their friends and families and those working in the medical profession.   

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, 35th president. In chronicling Kennedy's extraordinary life and times, with authority and novelistic sensibility, putting the listener in every room where it happened, this landmark work offers the clearest portrait we have of a remarkable figure who still inspires individuals around the world.

The complete collection of acclaimed BBC Radio dramas based on John le Carré's best-selling novels, starring Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, thrilling spy novels.

Living Better is Alastair Campbell's honest, moving and life-affirming account of his lifelong struggle with depression. It is an autobiographical, psychological and psychiatric study, which explores his own childhood, family and other relationships and examines the impact of his professional and political life on himself and those around him. But it also lays bare his relentless quest to understand depression not just through his own life but through different treatments.