New non-fiction for May

In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work drew her into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens. Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton's 'Paradise Lost' to John Clare's enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. But the story of the garden doesn't always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It's also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. This is a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of gardens: not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discover, bee-loud and pollen-laden.

A woman with bipolar flies from America in a wedding dress to marry Harry Styles. A lorry driver with schizophrenia believes he's got a cure for coronavirus. A depressed psychiatrist hides his profession from his GP due to stigma. Most of the characters in this book are his patients. Some of them are his family. One of them is him. Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine's most mysterious and controversial speciality. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people's messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures?

Rockfield Studios is a place of legend, the recording location of some of the most famous rock albums of all time. With her mother installed as the resident Cordon Bleu chef, Tiffany Murray grew up around rock stars including Black Sabbath, Queen, Motorhead, Rush, David Bowie, and The Damned. 'My Family and Other Rock Stars' reveals how these music legends lived day-to-day: whether it was David Bowie refusing a salmon buffet, or Freddie Mercury's touching love for a Great Dane. For Tiffany, they were the background to a whirlwind childhood of freedom, adventure and continuous change. The one constant throughout is the extraordinary relationship between Tiffany and her mother, as they build an unconventional family around them in the most unlikely of locations.

Beginning at a love hotel by Japan's Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, 'Question 7' is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows. By way of H.G. Wells and Rebecca West's affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die. At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, place and memory is about how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.

When Josh set out to break the world record and run 76 marathons around the UK's 76 cities in 76 days he knew it would be a test of determination and resilience, but he hadn't realised that his past struggles would provide the real strength he needed to cross the finish line. Having suffered with depression and come close to suicide in the past, Josh ran to raise money for the Samaritans and as he ran through the wind and rain, sometimes with crowds of supporters, sometimes alone, he often drew upon the memories of his darkest days to spur him on, knowing that there were happier times ahead. This is a collection of the 76 powerful lessons that fuelled Josh to reach the finish line - and will inspire you to reach yours, whatever that might look like.

When we think of nutrition and eating well, so many of us jump to the words 'diet', 'unenjoyable', and 'sacrifice'. Sometimes we see healthy eating as something we should do, rather than something we want to do. This is the book to help you kickstart healthy eating as an enjoyable lifelong habit rather than a fad for a week. A perfect collection of over 80 vibrant, tasty and easy recipes all steeped in nutritional science, 'So Good' explains the principles of healthy eating in a fun and relatable way. Food should be a celebration, a memory, a moment. It's not about counting calories; it's about making every meal count. Let every meal you make nourish your body and bring you joy with every bite.

In February 1942 RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly-identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. The brilliant scientist Dr RV Jones proposed an assault to capture key components. The nearest accessible enemy set stood upon a steep cliff at Bruneval in Normandy. Winston Churchill enthused, as did Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations. A company of the newly-formed Airborne Forces was committed to the operation, which took place on the night of 27/28 February. Amid heavy snow 120 men landed, some of whom were misdropped almost two miles from their objective. They nonetheless launched the assault, dismantled the German radar, and after three nail-biting hours in France and a fierce battle with Wehrmacht defenders, escaped in the nick of time by landing-craft across stormy seas to Portsmouth.

Did you know that up to 90% of women experience menstrual abnormalities or pelvic problems in their lifetime? Yet these issues are overwhelmingly misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or dismissed. Conditions such as PCOS, endometriosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts, PMDD, or pelvic floor dysfunction, don't receive the stream of funding for research and new treatments that other conditions do, despite affecting up to half the population. 'It's Not Hysteria' shares critical knowledge that anyone impacted by these conditions desperately needs. Covering everything from the anatomy and reproductive health basics you wish you learned at school, to issues such as abnormal periods, PCOS, endometriosis, and fibroids, to more complex aspects of gynaecologic care like fertility, sexual health, and hysterectomies.