Medical Mysteries & Thrilling HistoriesUnpublished

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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Best Books of the Year, Guardian The poignant story of the visionary surgeon who rebuilt the faces of the First World War's injured heroes, and in the process ushered in the modern era of plastic surgery From...

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until...

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For 2,000 years, cadavers-some willingly, some unwittingly-have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space...

"He reached out his hand, and took hold of his wife's head, tried to lift it off, to put it on... His wife looked as if she was used to such things." In his most extraordinary book, Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological...

The critically acclaimed account of Caitlin Doughty's first year working on the funerary frontlines.

The best-selling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns. In 2012, Nobel Prize winning scientist Jennifer Doudna hit upon an invention that will transform the future of the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known...

In her fantastically disgusting international bestseller, Mary Roach dives into the strange wet miracles of science that operate inside us after every meal SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY WINTON PRIZE 2014 'Almost every...

A masterpiece of investigative reporting, And the Band Played On is the definitive history of the spread of AIDS throughout the USA in the 1980's. Randy Shilts was employed by the 'The San Francisco Chronicle' to cover gay issues in 1981, the year AIDS came to international attention, and from...

Bestselling crime writer Val McDermid picks up the scalpel to uncover the secrets of forensic medicine, from the crime scene to the courtroom.

In The Butchering Art, historian Lindsey Fitzharris recreates a critical turning point in the history of medicine, when Joseph Lister transformed surgery from a brutal, harrowing practice to the safe, vaunted profession we know today. Victorian operating theatres were known as...

'If everyone read Edna Bonhomme's incredible, humane, insightful book-and I hope they do-we might stand a chance' Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of An Immense World 'Fascinating and thought-provoking' Jonathan Kennedy, author of Pathogenesis: How Germs Made...

'A SUPERB ACHIEVEMENT' IAN MCEWAN * * * * * What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut through the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you...

The riveting, powerful and profoundly moving story of the AIDS epidemic. Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Winner of The Green Carnation Prize for LGBTQ literature Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT non-fiction ...

In the summer of 1953, maverick neurosurgeon William Beecher Scoville performed a groundbreaking operation on an epileptic patient named Henry Molaison. But it was a catastrophic failure, leaving Henry unable to create long-term memories. Scoville's grandson, Luke Dittrich, takes us on...

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2021'To compare any book to a Sacks is unfair, but this one lives up to it . . . I finished it feeling thrillingly unsettled, and wishing there was more.' James McConnachie, Sunday Times'A study of diseases that we sometimes say are 'all in the...

A devastating memoir of chronic illness, misdiagnosis, addiction and the myth of full recovery - already an online phenomenon in the USA in summer 2018.

The secret history of the body's most fascinating organ: the gut

From the Wellcome Prize-winning author of It's All in Your Head Brainstorm examines the stories of people whose symptoms are so strange even their doctor struggles to know how to solve them. A man who sees cartoon characters running across the room; a teenager who...