"A startling debut... This book will make you want to hold everyone you love close, reminding you that life may be fleeting but the people in it never are." PICKED FOR ESQUIRE MAGAZINE'S BEST BOOKS OF 2022 Best Books of 2022 - Picked by Readers - FINANCIAL TIMES When Freddy was 21 years old, his dad, a larger-than-life, successful TV producer, was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive type of brain cancer. In vivid snapshots, Freddy recalls the ups and downs of an impossible time - from the entertaining antics of a wine-gum tossing competition in a hospital ward, to the comi-tragedy of trying to decipher his father's muddled riddles as his speech disintegrates, to painful moments of regret and self-loathing as he squanders precious time. Don't Put Yourself on Toast is a bittersweet coming-of-age memoir which shows how the power of humour and laughter can provide, even in our darkest moments, sustenance, comfort and hope.

‘A most magnificent, beautifully written memoir’ - Nina Stibbe

'Deft, witty and profound . . . had me turning the pages all night' - Jessie Burton

Jean Hannah Edelstein was looking for love on OKCupid the night she lost her father. She had recently moved back to America to be closer to her parents, leaving behind the good friends, bad dates and questionable career moves that defined her twenties. But six weeks after she arrived in New York, her father died of cancer – and six months after that she learnt she had inherited the gene that determined his fate.

Heartbreaking, hopeful and disarmingly funny, This Really Isn’t About You is a book about finding your way in life, even when life has other plans.

In 'Goodbye, Friend', Reverend Gary Kowalski takes readers on a journey of healing, offering warmth, guidance, and sound advice on how to deal effectively with death of your animal companion's life.

Author's New York Times essay, 'Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me' (http://nyti.ms/2k87bUM) was chosen by the newspaper as one of their top 20 articles of 2016, and was read by millions

"Gripping and true in all ways. This fine, affecting memoir will stay with me for a very long time."-Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion "In this vividly written memoir novelist O'Hara shares a painful but ultimately beautiful account of her daughter Caitlin's life with cystic fibrosis. . . . Her compelling story will resonate with anyone seeking a light in the darkest depths of grief."-Library Journal In the vein of The Year of Magical Thinking and Beautiful Boy, an emotionally raw and inspiring memoir that illuminates a mother's grief over the loss of her adult child and considers the hope of soulful connections that transcend the boundary of life and death. When their only child was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) at the age of two, Maryanne O'Hara and her husband were told that Caitlin could live a long life or be dead in a matter of months. Thirty-one years later, Caitlin lost her battle with this devastating disease following an excruciating two-year wait on the transplant list and a last-minute race to locate a pair of healthy lungs. The sudden spiral of events left Maryanne in an existential crisis, searching to find an answer to the eternal question: Why we are here? During her final years, Caitlin had become a source of wisdom and comfort for her mother-the partner with whom she shared a deep spiritual quest to understand what it meant to have a soul. After Caitlin's passing, Maryanne began to notice signs-poignant, persistent synchronicities that seemed to lean toward proof of Caitlin's enduring presence. Weaving together a series of interconnected meditations with illuminating glimpses of life rendered via text messages, e-mails, and journal entries, Little Matches is a profound reflection on life and death, motherhood, the pain of chronic uncertainty, and finding inspiration in the unexpected sparks that light our way through the darkness.

"A bold attempt to portray the greyness of growing up without roots or identity, cast adrift in an uncomprehending and uncertain world." Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement. March, 1945. The ravaged face of London will soon be painted with victory, but for Sylvie, the private battle for peace is just beginning. When one of her twins is stillborn, she is faced with a consuming grief for the child she never had a chance to hold. A Small Dark Quiet follows a mother as she struggles to find the courage to rebuild her life and care for an orphan whom she and her husband, Gerald, adopt two years later. Born in a concentration camp, the orphan's early years appear punctuated with frail speculations, opening up a haunting space that draws Sylvie to bring him into parallel with the child she lost. When she gives the orphan the stillborn child's name, this unwittingly entangles him in a grief he will never be able to console. His own name has been erased, his origins blurred. Arthur's preverbal trauma begins to merge with the loss he carries for Sylvie, released in nightmares and fragments of emerging memories to make his life that of a boy he never knew. He learns all about 'that other little Arthur', yearning both to become him and to free himself from his ghost. He can neither fit the shape of the life that has been lost nor grow into the one his adopted father has carved out for him. As the novel unfolds over the next twenty years, Arthur becomes curious about his Jewish heritage, but fears what this might entail - drawn towards it, it seems he might find a sense of communion and acceptance, but the chorus of persecutory voices he has internalised becomes too overwhelming to bear. He is threatened as a child with being sent back where he belongs but no one can tell him where this is. He wanders as an adult looking for purpose but is unable to find his place. Feeling an imposter both at home and in the city, Arthur's yearning for that sense of belonging echoes in our own time. Meeting Lydia seems to offer Arthur the opportunity to recast himself, yet all too soon he is trapped in a repetition of what he was trying to escape. A past he can neither recall nor forget lives on within him even as he strives to forge a life for himself. Survival, though, insists Arthur keeps searching and as he opens himself to the world around him, there are flashes of just how resilient the human heart can be. Through Sylvie's unprocessed grief and Arthur's acute sense of displacement, A Small Dark Quiet explores how the compulsion to fill the empty space death leaves behind ultimately makes the devastating void more acute. Yet however frail, the instinct for empathy and hope persists in this powerful story of loss, migration and the search for belonging.

'Illuminating and consoling' JULIA SAMUEL, author of GRIEF WORKS Though approximately one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage, it remains a rarely talked about, under-researched, and largely misunderstood area of women's health. This profoundly necessary book - the first comprehensive portrait of the psychological, emotional, medical, and cultural aspects of miscarriage - aims to help break that silence. In this groundbreaking book, psychotherapist Julia Bueno draws on historical and psychological research alongside her personal story and those of people she's helped. Straightforward and supportive, she shines a light on the different ways that miscarriages can happen and how we might allow for our grief, offer comfort and break the silence. ***Winner of the British Medical Association Popular Medicine Book Award*** 'It's the sort of book that women have long been searching for, and it feels like real progress. I'm so thankful she wrote it' MEAGHAN O'CONNELL, author of And Now We Have Everything 'Profound insight, rare courage' ZOE WILLIAMS 'Opening the door to more candid conversations' OBSERVER 'Intuitive and compassionate' SATHNAM SANGHERA ***Runner-Up - The British Psychological Society Book Award 2021***

As his mother was dying, Philip Kennicott began to listen to the music of Bach obsessively. It was the only music that didn't seem trivial or irrelevant, and it enabled him to both experience her death and remove himself from it. For him, Bach's music held the elements of both joy and despair, life and its inevitable end. He spent the next five years trying to learn one of the composer's greatest keyboard masterpieces, the Goldberg Variations. In Counterpoint, he recounts his efforts to rise to the challenge and to fight through his grief by coming to terms with his memories of a difficult, complicated childhood. He describes the joys of mastering some of the piano pieces, the frustrations that plague his understanding of others, the technical challenges they pose, and the surpassing beauty of the melodies, harmonies and counterpoint that distinguish them. While exploring Bach's compositions he sketches a cultural history of playing the piano in the twentieth century. And he raises two questions that become increasingly interrelated, not unlike a contrapuntal passage in one of the variations itself: What does it mean to know a piece of music? What does it mean to know another human being?