I’m only doing this to save my marriage

Thanks to a new self-help book, When Good People Have Affairs, we now know that there might be all sorts of reasonable excuses for adultery. Zoe Williams has even come up with a few more of her own ...

Could you make 28 meals from this?

A new book claims it can save you time and money and reduce your eco impact - with its seasonal shopping and cooking plans. Zoe Williams gives it a go

Right all along

On reading Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson's Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), David Newnham warns on the dangers of relying on one's memory

Nasty to be nice

Elizabeth Pisani's The Wisdom of Whores, a critique of the UN's policy on Aids, suggests a pragmatic alternative. By Michael Fitzpatrick

Atrocity exhibition

Two new interrogations of torture, Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure and Philippe Sands' Torture Team, will help justice be done, writes Michael Byers

When the only way was down

Stephanie Merritt's The Devil Within is a memoir of a devastating mental illness, says Anushka Asthana

The need to blow up sheds

The Creative Feminine and Her Discontents, by Juliet Miller, packs a powerful and joyful punch and makes provocative reading, says Michèle Roberts

Here’s looking at you

On reading Raymond Tallis' The Kingdom of Infinite Space, Jane O'Grady is reminded of what a glorious thing it is to be human

Quacks on the rack

Rose Shapiro's Suckers and Trick or Treatment by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst explore the actual worth of alternative medicine and its practitioners, says Olivia Laing

Scrubs up nicely

Lucy Ellmann finds out in Katherine Ashenburg's Clean how we learnt to wash and go

My private hell

She was a young, successful writer with a flourishing career and a new baby. So why did she come within moments of throwing herself from a train? Stephanie Merritt describes the crisis that almost claimed her life

The getting of wisdom

At 35, Lorna Martin had come to a crisis in her life. Turning to therapy for some answers, she recorded her progress in a weekly column that is now being published as a book. But, wonders Zoe Williams, is she really any the wiser?

Second-hand spooks

Do we need another look at Victorian spiritualism, asks Kathryn Hughes, after reading Servants of the Supernatural by Antonio Melechi

Disturbed lives

Salley Vickers applauds an acute and sobering account of the treatment of mentally ill women in Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present by Lisa Appignanesi