Got 150 hours? Great audiobooks to listen to on lockdown
From Ian McKellen reading Homer to Bill Bryson on the body, these audiobooks can expand your horizons, even when you can’t go out
This Too Shall Pass by Julia Samuel review – how to cope with change
In a sequel to Grief Works, the therapist guides us through major life changes in work, love, identity and health
Sitopia by Carolyn Steel review – a utopian vision that begins with food
We are out of step with our planet, so how should we live? Cheap food is an oxymoron and anarchism’s time may have come, argues this wide-ranging, stimulating book
Donald West obituary
Writer of a book on homosexuality that helped change the climate of opinion at a time when sex between men was illegal
Fever dreams: did author Dean Koontz really predict coronavirus?
From ‘Wuhan-400’, the deadly virus invented by Dean Koontz in 1981, to the plague unleashed in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, novelists have long been fascinated by pandemics
The Crying Book by Heather Christle review – why do we weep?
A personal examination of tears – what causes them, why we cry – which takes in biological science, relationship break-up, poetry and Donald Trump
Dear Life by Rachel Clarke review – a doctor on grief, love and the NHS
A medic’s heartbreaking personal account of the loss of her father, and of witnessing the courage of the critically ill
Picture books on prescription
A scheme for GPs to recommend books for mental health and wellbeing is extending its reach to younger readers. Which are the best titles for anxiety, grief or online pressures?
Beyond borders: the best books about pandemics
As the coronavirus has spread to four continents, Laura Spnney chooses scientific studies, memoirs and novels about Aids, TB, polio and Spanish flu
Dr Rachel Clarke: ‘Wrinkles, middle age, grey hairs… these are reasons to celebrate’
The palliative care doctor on her moving new memoir, Boris Johnson’s broken promises, and why the way we treat dying people should be the number one metric of a civilised society