'When I want to know the real rock-bottom truth about what happens all the time in this doctoring life, what happens to us, and to the folks who bring us their hearts and worries to be heard, that's when I turn, every time, to the novelists, the playwrights, the poets, the essayists, who have given us the sights and sounds, the feel, of all that goes on, minute by minute. What Tolstoy and Chekhov knew, we need to know for ourselves, for our own sakes, as we live out our medical lives.' William Carlos Williams 'The most fundamental of all consulting skills is genuine curiosity about other people, the constant urge to wonder 'Why are they as they are?' We should open our minds to the life of the imagination not just for its entertainment value, but for the mindset of curiosity it engenders in us. Such books as John Salinsky describes in this and his previous volume combine powerful opportunities for our own professional growth with pleasure and recreation too.' Roger Neighbour in his Foreword 'This carefully assembled, wonderfully telling book is a "companion," for sure, a lasting and most helpful one, for the medical travelling that awaits us.' Robert Coles in his Foreword.

Guidelines are powerful instruments of assistance to clinicians capable of extending the clinical roles of nurses and pharmacists. Purchasers and managers perceive them as technological tools guaranteeing treatment quality. Guidelines also offer mechanisms by which doctors and other health care professionals can be made more accountable to their patients. But how can clinicians tell whether a guideline has authority and whether or not it should be followed? Does the law protect doctors who comply with guidelines? Are guideline developers liable for faulty advice? This timely book provides a comprehensive and accessible analysis of the many medical and legal issues arising from the current explosion of clinical guidelines. Featuring clear summaries of relevant UK US and Commonwealth case law it is vital reading for all doctors health care workers managers purchasers patients and lawyers.

I would like to tell you a bit about the sort of bookshop we are. We are fiercely independent and will never be part of any large organization. Our stock is quite small and very carefully chosen. Some might say we are idiosyncratic and even eccentric. To those people I would say: who cares? If you want run of the mill textbooks, carelessly written best sellers and formulaic genre books there are plenty of places to get them. There is only one Green Bookshop. John Salinsky Superbly written, The Green Bookshop is a witty and unconventional collection which includes: The best novels by living writers Books which have something new to say about primary care Books which might help us doctors look after our patients better Almost anything that is really well written Classics, which come up fresh however often you read them Some history, some biography, and some books by Deep Thinkers' Books featuring feisty women. And books about love.

The Bristle Merchants Daughter: about the book John Salinsky wanted to find out more about his mother's life. She was born in 1902, the first child of parents who had emigrated from Eastern Europe in search of a better life and freedom from fear. She tried to become a doctor at a time when women doctors were unusual. She did not succeed, but her three sons all became doctors. She suffered from depression as a young married woman and had psychoanalysis with one of Sigmund Freud's early followers in London. She brought up her family in Leeds and died at the age of 96, having lived through nearly the whole of the twentieth century. Apart from a few unusual features it was 'an ordinary life'. But ones relationship with ones mother is never ordinary. In this biography, John Salinsky begins by using his imagination to picture the life of his young grandparents in Tsarist Russia. He traces his mother's girlhood and her life as a young wife and parent up to the point of his own birth in 1941. From here on he blends imagination with memory and inquiry, trying to make sense of the complex emotions that bind a mother and her son in love and conflict. His description of the closeness they achieved in her final years makes moving reading.

Alvin Green has `accidentally' committed a violent crime and is on the run. The police are after him and so is his victim, bent on revenge. He decides to flee on a train travelling to Scotland. But the 9.35 to from King's Cross to Edinburgh is no ordinary train; as Alvin soon discovers, it is populated by glamorous young women from films by Alfred Hitchcock who want to draw him into their own plots. In case he needs legal advice there is also a barrister in attendance. Can this be a real train? Of course not. Alvin and his train are the creation of aspiring novelist Andrew Brownrigg, who is serving a prison sentence for a similar offence to that of his fictional hero. Fortunately for Andrew, Gainsborough Open Prison is about to start a Creative Writing Class: and he soon becomes tutor Jenny Patterson's favourite student.