New non-fiction for August

In the household of Sarah Moss's childhood she learnt that the female body and mind were battlegrounds. 1970s austerity and second-wave feminism came together: she must keep herself slim but never be vain, she must be intelligent but never angry, she must be able to cook and sew and make do and mend, but know those skills were frivolous. Clever girls should be ambitious but women must restrain themselves. Women had to stay small. Years later, her self-control had become dangerous, and Sarah found herself in A&E. The return of her teenage anorexia had become a medical emergency, forcing her to reckon with all that she had denied her hard-working body and furiously turning mind. 'My Good Bright Wolf' navigates contested memories of girlhood, the chorus of relentless and controlling voices that dogged Sarah's every thought, and the writing and books in which she could run free.

Queen Elizabeth II was the most famous person on Earth and first appeared on the cover of Time magazine at the age of three. Nowadays, only those over the age of 100 would have any chance of recalling a time when she was not a fixture of British identity. Her countenance has been reproduced - in photographs, on stamps, on the notes and coins of 30 different currencies. Until now the curious tactic employed by her biographers has been to ignore what is interesting and to concentrate on what is not. Craig Brown overturns this formula, bringing his kaleidoscopic approach to one of the most guarded women who ever lived, examining The Queen in her time through a succession of interlocking prisms, with hilarious wit and sharp social commentary.

The reed goes on, the reed comes off. The reed rots and returns to the earth. The houses we work on outlast us. The thatch we use has never stood still. 'On The Roof' is a thatcher's tale - a journey of discovery, and a reflection on what it means for a person or a building to belong in a place. It tells Tom Allan's story, leaving an office job in the city to find fulfilment among the Devon roofs, as well as the stories of six other people who share his trade.

Oxford professor Kathy Willis has spent her career researching fossilised plants and plant matter - but when she stumbled across a study that showed that patients recovering from surgery improved faster just by being able to see trees from their hospital bed, it radically changed the way she viewed the natural world. Professor Willis has since embarked on a process of discovery to find the research that has shown, time and time again, that there is a causal link between plants in our lives, both indoors and outside, and better physical and mental health. Focusing on how we interact with nature through the senses of sight, smell, hearing and touch, 'Good Nature' explains how we can organise our homes, our time outdoors and the world around us to reap the health benefits of nature that science is only now just discovering.

Craving a warm cookie, straight from the oven, but don't want to buy lots of expensive ingredients or make an enormous quantity to last for weeks? Then this is the recipe book for you! Edd's tasty cookies are simple to make, with straightforward instructions and mouth-watering flavours. Only ever making a maximum of 6 biscuits, these are the perfect little treat. From Lemon Custard Creams to Sticky Toffee Cookies, Red Velvet Sandwiches and Mint Thins there is a perfect cookie for every moment, to be made just for you. The first ever winner of The Great British Bake Off, Edd is known for his reliable recipes and expert baking know-how, so even a beginner baker is guaranteed to find joy in these 70 sumptuous recipes. Whether chewy or gooey, chocolatey or crunchy, a small batch of cookies makes everything better!

The 'Good Chaps' theory holds that those who rise to power in the UK can be trusted to follow the rules and do the right thing. They're good chaps, after all. Yet Britain appears to have been taken over by bad chaps, and politics is awash with financial scandals, donors who have practically bought shares in political parties, and a shameless contempt for the rules. Simon Kuper, author of the Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller 'Chums', exposes how corruption took control of public life, and asks: how can we get politicians to behave like good chaps again?

George Pointon asks his class a lot of questions. What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you reckon your parents do while you're at school? Can you put that down, please? JJ, the stapler - can you put it down? He's also got a few for himself: what is he doing here? Who was he kidding, thinking he could teach? But the course of true professional fulfilment never did run smooth, and there's no backing out now. In this book, George takes us along on his first year inside the messy, magical world of primary school teaching.

What can we do in the face of things we cannot control? Through her experience in the field of psychotherapy, Anna Mathur dives into topics that many are afraid to face. This book will encourage readers to not spend as much time and emotional energy into the harsh truths of life, such as not everyone is going to like you, bad things will happen, you will die, and you are going to fail.

By the time we reach fifty, over half of women have been through at least five big life challenges: divorce, bereavement, redundancy, coping with tricky teenagers, or elderly parents falling ill and dying. Often, these challenges hit us all at once in a midlife collision, leaving us spluttering and stranded. Women have never had a guide for how to pick ourselves up and carry on; no map for what our lives could look like from here on. In 'Much More to Come', pioneering journalist and founder of Noon.org.uk Eleanor Mills provides that map. Drawing on inspirational stories of how women have survived and thrived; how they moved through and beyond adversity and into an exciting new chapter, it demonstrates how midlife is not a crisis but a chrysalis.