Health & Self

Ponies At the End of the World, Catherine Munro ( paperback August 2023)

£11.99

The Ponies At The Edge Of The World : A story of hope and belonging in Shetland.

A meditation on connection between humans and animals, and the homes we make in wild places. I was completely immersed' Katherine May, bestselling author of Wintering

Catherine Munro transforms her life when she moves to Shetland to study the hardy ponies who call this archipelago home. Over the course of her first year, she is welcomed into the rhythms and routines that characterise life at the edge of the world.

When faced with personal loss, Catherine finds comfort and connection in the shared lives of the people, animals and wild landscapes of Shetland. Ponies at the Edge of the World is a heartfelt love letter to the beauty and resilience of these magical ponies and their native land. This is a stunning book on community, hope and finding home.

The Good Drinker : How I Learned to Love Drinking Less by Adrian Chiles (paperback June 2023)

£10.99

Harpy, Caroline Magennis ( hardback May 2024)

£18.99

Harpy is a tonic; a tongue-in-cheek manual for dealing with Spanish Inquisition-style questioning about saying pass to procreation and building an enriching life beyond the nuclear family' VOGUE'

Harpy made me nod in recognition, and shake my head with sorrow, and then it made me laugh out loud' EMILIE PINE, author of NOTES TO SELF and RUTH & PEN

Each generation has more childfree women than the one before. For many, it is an active decision made for a wide range of reasons. Despite this growing trend, we continue to live in a society where women are often judged for deciding to remain childfree - for not conforming to narrow expectations.

For being a Harpy. In this timely and thoughtful book, Caroline Magennis looks beyond the often-divisive conversation around women who choose to be childfree and offers an alternative message of hope and celebration. With humour and intelligence, she explores why motherhood isn't right for everybody and how any woman - whether a parent or childfree - can live a full life, while also reminding the reader that your freedoms and the right to autonomy should never be taken for granted.

Toes In The Water : Stories of lives changed by wild swimming, Rachel Jones ( paperback )

£14.99

One Day At a Time, Hilary Scott ( paperback April 2022)

£11.99

Hilary Scott is a psychologist and bereavement counsellor. Her book is based on years of personal experience and training, supporting the bereaved through a structure and pace that offers practical and psychological support on a day by day basis. 

A thoughtful gift for anyone going through the different phases of grief, to understand that this range of emotions is normal and part of the healing process. A really practical and comforting guide. 

Notes to Self, by Emilie Pine (pb)

£10.99

The extraordinary #1 bestseller - a word-of-mouth literary phenomenon'

Do not read this book in public: it will make you cry' Anne Enright'

I am afraid of being the disruptive woman. And of not being disruptive enough. I am afraid.But I am doing it anyway. In this dazzling debut, Emilie Pine speaks to the business of living as a woman in the 21st century - its extraordinary pain and its extraordinary joy. Courageous, humane and uncompromising, she writes with radical honesty on birth and death, on the grief of infertility, on caring for her alcoholic father, on taboos around female bodies and female pain, on sexual violence and violence against the self. Devastatingly poignant and profoundly wise - and joyful against the odds - Notes to Self offers a portrait not just of its author but of a whole generation.

Winner of the Bord Gais Non Fiction Irish Book Award in 2018.

Paperback, June 2019 ( pls note picture is of hardback) 

When Things Don’t Go Your Way : Zen Wisdom for Difficult Times by Haemin Sunim

£14.99

What if moments of great difficulty are, in fact, opportunities for growth and self-discovery? What if they can serve as stepping stones to greater things in life?Modern life doesn't always go our way. Loss, rejection, uncertainty and loneliness are unavoidable parts of the human experience -- but there is solace to be found. In When Things Don't Go Your Way, Zen Buddhist teacher Haemin Sunim provides simple but powerful wisdom for navigating life's challenges.

Through his trademark combination of beautiful illustrations, insightful stories, and contemplative aphorisms, Sunim helps us reframe our mindsets and develop emotional agility. Whether you're in the midst of a crisis or simply seeking to improve your mental and emotional wellbeing, When Things Don't Go Your Way is a soothing balm that helps us all find courage and comfort when we need it most. ***'Reading this is like receiving a warm hug' Vex King

How Not to Age : The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older by Michael Greger

£12.99

I have never recommended a book as good as this, ever.' - Chris EvansThe Sunday Times bestseller and as featured on the trending Netflix show You Are What You Eat. Live better for longer with this ultimate guide to longevity from the bestselling author of How Not to Die. We all want to stay healthy as we age but, with so many different claims out there, it can be hard to know the best advice to follow.

In How Not to Age, Dr Michael Greger digs into the top peer-reviewed anti-ageing research to deliver a complete and optimal guide with simple steps to extend your lifespan and slow the adverse effects of ageing. Inspired by the dietary and lifestyle patterns of the world’s centenarians and residents of ‘blue zone’ regions where people live the longest, Dr Greger presents easy, evidence-based ways to preserve the body functions that keep us feeling youthful, both physically and mentally. Can an apple a day really keep the doctor away? What’s better for your longevity, jogging for four hours or eating two handfuls of nuts twice a week?Brimming with expertise, How Not to Age lays out practical strategies for living your longest, healthiest life – and for enjoying every moment of it.

How Not to Age : The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older by Michael Greger

£12.99

The Sunday Times bestseller and as featured on the trending Netflix show You Are What You Eat. Live better for longer with this ultimate guide to longevity from the bestselling author of How Not to Die. We all want to stay healthy as we age but, with so many different claims out there, it can be hard to know the best advice to follow.

In How Not to Age, Dr Michael Greger digs into the top peer-reviewed anti-ageing research to deliver a complete and optimal guide with simple steps to extend your lifespan and slow the adverse effects of ageing. Inspired by the dietary and lifestyle patterns of the world’s centenarians and residents of ‘blue zone’ regions where people live the longest, Dr Greger presents easy, evidence-based ways to preserve the body functions that keep us feeling youthful, both physically and mentally. Can an apple a day really keep the doctor away? What’s better for your longevity, jogging for four hours or eating two handfuls of nuts twice a week?Brimming with expertise, How Not to Age lays out practical strategies for living your longest, healthiest life – and for enjoying every moment of it.

The Book of Nordic Self Care ( Nov 24, hardback)

£14.99

The Book of Nordic Self-Care : Find Peace and Balance Through Seasonal Rituals, Connecting with Nature, Mindfulness Practices, and More

by Elisabeth Carlsson (Author)

The Nordic countries are renowned for being among the happiest in the world, and in this beautifully illustrated guide, Elisabeth Carlsson shares the keys to their lifestyle to help you improve your health and wellbeing. In the first chapter, learn about the benefits of wellness practices such as saunas and find skincare rituals that you can try at home.

Next, take inspiration from Nordic foods by focusing on simple flavours, seasonal produce and preparing your meals as an act of self-care. There's also a chapter on immersing yourself in nature through cold-water therapy and wild swimming. Embracing and adapting to the seasons is one way that the Nordics cope with the dark winters, and you'll find methods to help you tune in to your environment through seasonal celebrations.

From small self-care rituals to ways to shift your mindset, this guide includes plenty of inspiration from the Nordic countries to help you simplify and savour your everyday life.

Stitches: A handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair, Anne Lamott ( paperback)

£9.99

A wise and compassionate exploration of how we ‘stitch by stitch ‘ put our lives back in order after loss or personal chaos. From the best selling American novelist and nonfiction writer.

What do we do when life lurches out of balance? How can we reconnect to one another and to what's sustaining, when evil and catastrophe seem inescapable?These questions lie at the heart of Stitches, Anne Lamott's follow-up to her New York Times-bestselling work, Help, Thanks, Wow. In this book, she explores how we find meaning and peace in these loud and frantic times; where we start again after personal and public devastation; how we recapture wholeness after loss; and how we locate our true identities in this frazzled age. We begin, Lamott says, by collecting the ripped sheets of our emotional and spiritual fabric and sewing them back together - one stitch at a time.

It's in these stitches that the quilt of life begins, and embedded in them are strength, warmth, humour and humanity.

The Joy of Wintering : How to Rest, Reconnect and Rejuvenate with Creativity and Conscious Living by Erin Niimi Longhurst

£12.99

How to rest, reconnect and rejuvenate through practical lessons, creativity and conscious living. The Joy of Wintering celebrates the ways in which the joys of spring are made possible at any stage of life by periods of rest and recuperation. Through practical tips and lessons from cultures with a strong wintering tradition, learn why rest should be celebrated not stigmatised, and how to live more consciously and compassionately.

So many of us have experienced periods of burnout, influenced by a range of factors. This book is a rallying cry to make space for times of feast and fallow to improve productivity, make space for creativity and finding your presence in moments of clarity. It is for those who want to unlock their potential and adjust to our new normal, largely inspired by the conversations forced upon us by the pandemic.

Drawing upon different cultures with a strong tradition of rest and recuperation, this book will be full of practical activities, inspirational quotes and aims to provide a space for readers to embrace stillness. The chapters cover: what we see, what to listen out for, what to touch, what to taste, what to breathe; including craft activities, recipes, meditations, and much more.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith ( paperback May 2024)

£10.99

In her long-awaited debut memoir, award-winning poet Maggie Smith explores in lyrical vignettes the end of her marriage and the beginning of a surprising new life. It is a story about a mother's fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman's love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility.

Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.

" This is quite a remarkable, angry but refreshing and powerful book to empower and console - highly recommended" - Linda 

The Teenage Guide to Digital Wellbeing, Tanya Goodin ( paperback May 2024)

£12.99

A useful guide to digital wellbeing and living your best life – offline and on! Digital wellbeing is all about finding the balance between the digital world and the real world – and making sure we use smartphones and other digital devices in a healthy way, while living fulfilling lives beyond the screen. This guide helps tweens and teens do exactly that, inspiring them to set their devices aside (sometimes anyway!) and start living in the here and now. Written by digital wellbeing expert Tanya Goodin, it’s packed with positive prompts, thought-provoking science, and hands-on activities to encourage healthy habits around screen use – including nostalgic crafts, retro tech scavenger hunts, and phone-free nature excursions, plus practical tips on how to deal with digital challenges like comparison culture, cyberbullying, trolling, and much more.

This book is not about teenagers giving up their devices forever; it’s about being more mindful of how they use them, so they can live their best lives – on and off the screen. Teenagers will discover how to: Develop healthy habits, identify priorities, and set achievable goalsKnow their own screen limits and deal with digital distractionsStay safe and savvy on the internetFocus on the positive and productive uses of smartphones (no more doom-scrolling!)Combat comparison culture on social media and quieten their inner criticsNurture friendships and family relationships offline and onBuild resilience and self-confidence to live healthily and happily with their digital devices.

Slow Seasons : A Creative Guide to Reconnecting with Nature the Celtic Way by Rosie Steer

£16.99

The Flow : Rivers, Water and Wildness - by Amy-Jane Beer (Author)

£10.99

WINNER OF THE 2023 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING

A visit to the rapid where she lost a cherished friend unexpectedly reignites Amy-Jane Beer's love of rivers setting her on a journey of natural, cultural and emotional discovery. On New Year's Day 2012, Amy-Jane Beer's beloved friend Kate set out with a group of others to kayak the River Rawthey in Cumbria.

Kate never came home, and her death left her devoted family and friends bereft and unmoored. Returning to visit the Rawthey years later, Amy realises how much she misses the connection to the natural world she always felt when on or close to rivers, and so begins a new phase of exploration. The Flow is a book about water, and, like water, it meanders, cascades and percolates through many lives, landscapes and stories.

From West Country torrents to Levels and Fens, rocky Welsh canyons, the salmon highways of Scotland and the chalk rivers of the Yorkshire Wolds, Amy-Jane follows springs, streams and rivers to explore tributary themes of wildness and wonder, loss and healing, mythology and history, cyclicity and transformation.

The Art of Living, Thich Nhat Hanh ( paperback)

£13.99

Nobel Peace Prize nominee, internationally renowned Zen master and bestselling author Thich Nhat Hanh shares his mindful techniques in mastering the art of living. 'Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout...a scholar of immense intellectual capacity' -- Martin Luther King

Master the art of living from one of the world's most revered spiritual leaders. Thich Nhat Hanh, the world's most renowned Zen master, turns his mindful attention to the most important subject of all - the art of living.

The bestselling author of The Miracle of Mindfulness presents, for the first time, seven transformative meditations that open up new perspectives on our lives, our relationships and our interconnectedness with the world around us. He reveals an art of living in mindfulness that helps us answer life's deepest questions, experience the happiness and freedom we desire and face ageing and dying with curiosity and joy instead of fear. Stimulating and inspiring, this book teaches us the importance of looking inside ourselves and developing compassion, before we can turn to our relationships at home and in the wider world.

Full of remarkable stories from Thich Nhat Hanh's own experiences and mindful practices for engaging with life, this will be a book that will help us generate happiness, understanding and love so we can live deeply in each moment of our life, right where we are.

The Joy of Wild Swimming ( Lonely Planet) Sept 2023

£19.99

India Knight’s Beauty Edit (hardback Nov 23)

£20.00

'India Knight is a LEGEND in the beauty industry. I am OBSESSED with her column because you can trust her to get it right every single time!' Charlotte Tilbury

With beauty, as with so much else, knowledge is power. Here's all of mine. Why has my favourite eyeliner stopped looking flattering? What can I do about the skin on my neck?Am I too old for contour? What is contour? Every week, tens of thousands of women turn to India Knight's beauty column in the Sunday Times Style Magazine, to be directed to beauty products that really work by someone they can trust - and who understands how much this stuff matters. It matters because looking, and therefore feeling, like yourself at every stage of life is fundamental. In this brilliant, essential, reassuring book, India has distilled her beauty wisdom into practical advice for every part of the face and beyond: from tips for thinning lips and thinning hair, to the best skincare for older faces, to the make-up products that really make a difference, to demystifying the scientific jargon beloved by the beauty industry.

If you would rather not use 35 products on your face every morning or watch how-to videos on TikTok, or if you have ever looked in the mirror and found yourself thinking 'Who is that?', then India Knight's Beauty Edit is the book you've been waiting for. It is a glorious and indispensable celebration of how to be old(er) with minimum fuss and a generous helping of grace, confidence and style. 

The Electricity of Every Living Thing, Katherine May ( paperback 2019)

£9.99

A Woman's Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home

 Perfect for fans of The Salt Path and The Outrun, this book is a life-affirming exploration of wild landscapes, what it means to be different and, above all, how we can all learn to make peace within our own unquiet minds. 'A windswept tale, beautifully told' Raynor Winn - The Salt Path 'A manifesto for the value of difficult people. I loved it' Amy Liptrot - The OutrunIn August 2015, Katherine May set out to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path.

She wanted to understand why she had stopped coping with everyday life; why motherhood had been so overwhelming and isolating, and why the world felt full of inundation and expectations she can't meet. Setting her feet down on the rugged and difficult path by the sea, the answer begins to unfold. It's a chance encounter with a voice on the radio that sparks a realisation that she has Asperger's Syndrome.

The Electricity of Every Living Thing tells the story of the year in which Katherine comes to terms with her diagnosis. It leads to a re-evaluation of her life so far - a kinder one, which finally allows her to be different rather than simply awkward, arrogant or unfeeling. The physical and psychological journeys become inextricably entwined, and as Katherine finds her way across the untameable coast, she also finds the way to herself.

A Fortunate Woman : A Country Doctor's Story, Polly Morland

£9.99

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize ( Best British Non Fiction) 

If you want to read a book that moves you both at the level of sentence and the quality of language and with the emotional depth of its subject matter, then A Fortunate Woman is definitely the book you should be reading' - Samanth Subramanian, Baillie Gifford judge.

When Polly Morland is clearing out her mother's house she finds a book that will lead her to a remarkable figure living on her own doorstep: the country doctor who works in the same remote, wooded valley she has lived in for many years. This doctor is a rarity in contemporary medicine - she knows her patients inside out, and their stories are deeply entwined with her own. In A Fortunate Woman, with its beautiful photographs by Richard Baker, Polly Morland has written a profoundly moving love letter to a landscape, a community and, above all, to what it means to be a good doctor.

'Morland writes about nature and the changing landscape with such lyrical precision that her prose sometimes seems close to poetry' - Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times'

The Korean Book of Happiness, Barbara J Zitwer ( hardback March 2023)

£14.99

The Korean Book of Happiness : Joy, resilience and the art of giving.

Life Is Hard : How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way, Kieran Setiya (Paperback, 2023)

£10.99

Winter Swimming : The Nordic Way Towards a Healthier and Happier Life, by Susanna Soberg (Hardback Sept 2022)

£25.00

Jellyfish Age Backwards, Nicklaus Brendborg ( paperback Feb 2023)

£10.99

Jellyfish Age Backwards : Nature's Secrets to Longevity

"In a field characterised by overclaiming and wishful thinking, it is judicious, sensible and refreshingly clear. And fascinating." Sunday TimesA deep-dive into the astonishing nature and true science of longevity Molecular Biologist Nicklas Brendborg takes us on a journey from the farthest reaches of the globe to the most cutting-edge research to explore everything the natural world and science have to offer on the mystery of aging. From the centuries-old Greenland shark and backwards-aging jellyfish to the man who fasted for a year and the woman who successfully edited her own DNA, this book follows the thread of every experiment, story, and myth in the search for immortality.

With mind-bending discoveries and physiological gifts that feel closer to magic than reality, Jellyfish Age Backwards will reshape everything you thought you knew about aging - and offer nature's secrets to unlocking your own longevity.

No Cure For Being Human, Kate Bowler ( paperback October 2022)

£10.99

The bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I've Loved) asks, how do you move forward with a life you didn't choose?

Hailed by Glennon Doyle as 'the Christian Joan Didion', Kate Bowler used to accept the modern idea that life is an endless horizon of possibilities, a series of choices which if made correctly, would lead us to a place just out of our reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner.

A promotion on the horizon. But then at thirty-five she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, and now she has to ask one of the most fundamental questions of all: How do we create meaning in our lives when the life we hoped for is put on hold indefinitely?In No Cure for Being Human, Kate searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of our modern 'best life now' advice industry, which offers us exhausting positivity, trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn and out-perform our humanness. With dry wit and unflinching honesty she grapples with her cancer diagnosis, her ambition and her faith and searches for some kind of peace with her limitations in a culture that says that anything is possible.

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate's irreverent, hard-won observations in No Cure For Being Human chart a bold path towards learning new ways to live.

Age Proof : The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life The No 1 International Bestseller

£10.99