Reasons to Stay Alive

The world is messing with our minds. Rates of stress and anxiety are rising. A fast, nervous planet is creating fast and nervous lives. We are more connected yet feel more alone. And we are encouraged to worry about everything from world politics to our body mass index. How can we stay sane on a planet that makes us mad? How do we stay human in a technological world? How do we feel happy when we are encouraged to be anxious?

One wet Friday evening, Professor Andrew Martin of Cambridge University solves the world's greatest mathematical riddle. Then he disappears. When he is found walking naked along the motorway, Professor Martin seems different. Besides the lack of clothes, he now finds normal life pointless. His loving wife and teenage son seem repulsive to him. In fact, he hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton. And he's a dog.

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to jazz age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen a lot and now craves an ordinary life. Always changing his identity to stay alive, Tom has the perfect cover - working as a history teacher at a London comprehensive. Here he can teach the kids about wars and witch hunts as if he'd never witnessed them firsthand.

Barney Willow thinks life couldn't get any worse. He's weedy and has sticky-out ears. Horrible Gavin Needle loves tormenting him. And worst of all, his Dad has been missing for almost a year, and there's no sign of him ever coming home. Barney just wants to escape, and find another life. Being a cat, for example. A quiet, lazy cat. Things would be so much easier - right?

Bryony Gordon has OCD. It's the snake in her brain that has told her ever since she was a teenager that her world is about to come crashing down: that her family might die if she doesn't repeat a phrase five times, or that she might have murdered someone and forgotten about it. It's caused alopecia, bulimia, and drug dependency. And Bryony is sick of it. Keeping silent about her illness has given it a cachet it simply does not deserve, so here she shares her story with trademark wit and dazzling honesty.

From number one best-selling author Matt Haig comes a hilarious and heartwarming story. Wherever she is, whatever the day, she has only one kind of thing to say. Just as cats go miaow and cows go moo, The Truth Pixie can say only things that are true.

Meet the Hunter family: Adam, Kate, and their children, Hal and Charlotte. And Prince, their black Labrador. Prince is an earnest young dog, striving hard to live up to the tenets of the Labrador Pact (Remain Loyal to Your Human Masters, Serve and Protect Your Family at Any Cost). Other dogs, led by the Springer Spaniels, have revolted. As things in the Hunter family begin to go badly awry - marital breakdown, rowdy teenage parties, attempted suicide - Prince's responsibilities threaten to overwhelm him and he is forced to break the Labrador Pact.

So, this is me. Lily Allen. I am a woman. I am a mother. I was a wife. I drink. I have taken drugs. I have loved and been let down. I am a success and a failure. I am a songwriter. I am a singer. I am all these things and more. When women share their stories, loudly and clearly and honestly, things begin to change - for the better. This is my story.

Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave good-bye to your friends and relationships.... Welcome to the life of a junior doctor. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former junior doctor Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line.

In February 2014, Reni Eddo-Lodge posted an impassioned argument on her blog about her deep-seated frustration with the way discussions of race and racism in Britain were constantly being shut down by those who weren't affected by it. She gave the post the title 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race'. Her sharp, fiercely intelligent words hit a nerve, and the post went viral, spawning a huge number of comments from people desperate to speak up about their own similar experiences.

Everything you need to know about self-care: what it is, why it's important and why it's such a struggle and how to integrate it into day-to-day life. There's a damaging misconception in society that putting ourselves first is an act of selfishness. But self-care is not just a millennial buzzword. Without the restorative power of self-care, how will we ever escape the vicious circle where we're sick and fed up of feeling sick and fed up?

From the New York Times best-selling author of Chasing the Scream, a radically new way of thinking about depression and anxiety. What really causes depression and anxiety - and how can we really solve them?

In this captivating fusion of science and personal memoir, writer David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind. David has suffered from OCD for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is his honest attempt to understand the condition. At what point does a harmless idea become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts? Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this is an audiobook that will challenge the way you think.

The world has reached unprecedented levels of wealth, but while we have succeeded in getting richer, we have failed in getting happier. While many people live lives of quiet desperation, a few people find themselves at the very top of the scale when it comes to happiness. Their behaviour is different. Their outlook is different. Their priorities are different. What can we learn from the world's happiest people?

Finance is shrouded in mystery for outsiders, while many insiders are uneasy with the disrepute of their profession. How can finance become more accessible and also recover its nobility? Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai takes up the cause of restoring humanity to finance. With deft wit, he draws upon a rich knowledge of literature, film, history, and philosophy to explain finance's inner workings.