Prescribed reading: medicine in literature

Chris Power: A new book prize turns a welcome spotlight on a rich and varied tradition of writing about health and medicine

Welcome to the bright new world of positive living

At one time, 'self-help' books were considered a little odd. Now they have moved into the mainstream and the new 'science of happiness' has become a cultural orthodoxy. Carole Cadwalladr asks if this vogue for positive psychology really helping anyone?

Retro guide books show modern women the lost wisdom of being a lady

Being cheap doesn't mean being unladylike, according to a new market in nostalgic self-help manuals

Pamela Stephenson writes ‘epic’ sex book

Pamela Stephenson, pyschologist and wife of Billy Connolly, has written what her publishers call the 'most comprehensive book on sex - ever'

Home truths

Writer Sathnam Sanghera tells Mary O'Hara why mental illness should not be a closed book

‘Yum yum! Delicious babies!’

Recent years have spawned mummylit, dadlit and a brood of online offspring. Two new anthologies bring together earlier examples of parentlit in poetry and prose. Jenny Turner on why a sprinkling of 'not-niceness' is essential in books about bringing up children

Chastened by Hephzibah Anderson

Immodesty Blaize on why seduction is more valuable than sex

France’s ‘cookery bible’ gets English edition

Je Sais Cuisiner, which has sold more than 6m copies in France, has been translated into English for the first time

Health in mind

Review: Doctoring the Mind by Richard BentallDaniel Freeman finds a challenge to psychiatric orthodoxy leavened by a touching humility

Carlos Castilla del Pino

Obituary: Spanish psychiatrist influenced by the horrors of the civil war

See a psychiatrist? Are you mad?

Review: Doctoring the Mind by Richard BentallSalley Vickers applauds a brave work that argues that mind-altering drugs do more harm than good to the mentally ill