Lust, incest, greed, envy, pride, gluttony, murder. 'I haven't been much drawn to erotica or political allegory, but Chen Xiwo changed that.' - The Spectator. Chen Xiwo sued the Chinese authorities for banning this book, his terrifying exploration of the dark side of the human psyche. Seven novellas traverse a terrain of sexual and political deviance. In 'I Love My Mum', a disabled man who shares a bed with his mother becomes a murder suspect. In 'Kidney Tonic', a resident of an exclusive gated community indulges in voyeuristic fantasies about the sex lives of his neighbours. In 'Going to Heaven', the son of a village undertaker tries to convince his friend to enter a suicide pact. The author once worked as a 'mamasan' in a Tokyo brothel and is 'one of China's most outspoken voices on freedom of expression for writers.' A superb English translation, the text is designed to shock as we are taken into a dark world. 202pp, paperback.

Stories of human cruelty and compassion, Dr Gwen Adshead has spent 30 years providing therapy inside secure hospitals in prisons. Whatever her patient's crime - serial homicide, stalking or arson - she helps them to better know their minds by enabling them to articulate their life experience. Case by case she takes us into the treatment room and sheds new light on the unpredictable nature of the therapeutic process as doctor and patient try to find words for the unspeakable. This book has now become a Sunday Times Bestseller with the sub-title 'Encounters In Forensic Psychiatry', and it is a myth-buster of a book 'crammed with compelling, constructive, candid and compassionate insights into the criminal mind.' - Val McDermid. From one of the most distinguished and brilliant minds in psychiatry, you will keep reading not out of morbid or macabre fascination of these stories of extreme cruelty, but to understand the darker side of what it means to be human. It is a captivating journey through the corridors of Broadmoor Hospital and beyond, into the prison system, the community and the consultation room and Adshead's voice is constant and reassuring. Large softback, 355pp.

Sub-titled 'How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do To Stop It', the book asks, are our brains wired to hate? Does online hate incite violence on the streets? With hate crimes at an all-time high, what can we do to help turn the tide? Drawing on 20 years of research as well as his own experience as a hate crime victim, world-renowned criminologist Matthew Williams uncovers the answers to these pressing questions of our age. Exploring evolution and biology as well as social media and global events such as financial meltdowns, worldwide pandemics and even sporting tournaments, he exposes the conditions for hateful behaviour. His journey sees him talking to perpetrators and victims, delving into the murky recesses of the Internet, and having his brain scanned by neuroscientists to reveal the science behind hate. Professor Williams' expert analysis has been fundamental to several high-profile crime TV documentaries on the rise of hate crime and speech and his ability to translate highly complex science into meaningful and accessible journalism to a mass audience is impressive. Traversing the globe and reaching back through time from our tribal ancestors in prehistory to Artificial Intelligence in the 21st century, the book is a surprising examination of the elusive 'tipping point' between prejudice and hate. 429pp in very large softback with diagrams and colour photos.

The award winning documentary maker Jon Ronson is fascinated by madness, extraordinary behaviour and the human mind. He has spent his life investigating crazy events, following fascinating people and unearthing unusual stories. He is after all the author of the famous 'The Men Who Stare at Goats.' Collected here from various sources including the Guardian and GQ America are the best of his adventures. Jon meets the man preparing to welcome the aliens to Earth, the woman trying to build a fully conscious robotic replica of the love of her life, and the Deal or No Deal contestants with a fool proof system to beat the Banker. Jon realises that it's possible for our madness to be a force for good when he meets America's real-life superheroes, or a force for evil when he meets the Reverend 'Death' George Exoo who has dubiously assisted in more than 100 mercy killings. He goes to a UFO convention in the Nevada Desert with Robbie Williams, asks Insane Clown Posse (who are possibly America's nastiest rappers) whether it's true they have actually been evangelical Christians all along, and rummages through the extensive archives of Stanley Kubrick. Frequently hilarious, sometimes disturbing, always entertaining, these compelling encounters with people on the edge of madness will have you wondering just what humans are capable of. 448pp, paperback.

Sub-titled 'Sex, Hysteria and the Riddle of Mental Illness', the book asks where should neurology and psychiatry converge to explore not just the brain, but the nature of the human psyche? In 1882, Jean-Martin Charcot was the premier physician in Paris where many of his patients had neurosyphilis - the advanced form of syphilis which was causing an overflow of patients in Europe's asylums. A sexually transmitted disease, it was known as the 'great imitator' since its symptoms resembled those of almost any biological disease or mental illness. Charcot brought mesmerism or hypnotism into his clinic in favour of the far sexier and theatrical treatment of female 'hysterics'. The disease of mad poets, musicians and artists swept through the highest and lowest rungs of European society like a plague, demonstrated in an outbreak of bizarre behaviours resembling epilepsy, but with no identifiable source in the body and it strained the diagnostic skills of the great neurologists. Today we know that syphilitic madness was a destructive disease of the brain, but what is the difference between the brain and the mind? What does it mean to have an illness that affects one and not the other? Is madness physical or intangible? The book asks the deepest questions about the very nature of who we are. A rollicking ride, patient by patient, through the two conditions of neurosyphilis and hysteria. 242pp, paperback.

A third of the population sleep badly but this revolutionary five-week plan means you don't have to be one of them. Using a blend of mindfulness and ACT therapy (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) techniques, Dr Guy shares his plan to cure your sleep problem whether it?s a few restless nights or a lifetime of insomnia. Most people who have trouble sleeping invest a huge amount of time, effort and money into fixing the problem, but Dr Guy has discovered the secret lies not in what you do, but what you learn not to do and that the more frustrated you become only serves to push sleep further away. These pioneering methods have an unprecedented success and we hope you will find your remedy here as some readers have said it is a book which has 'changed my life' and that the book has a useful, kind and gentle approach. The surprise bonus is it endows the user with the power to get over jetlag. The five-week remedy was pioneered at the Sleep School and now by popular demand appears in this reissued paperback. 211pp.

Pursued by a very charming man during her divorce, mother of three Chrissy Handy entered into a three year relationship with a man purporting to be named Alexander de Rothschild. It turned out he was a serial fraudster and she was duped into selling her family home and backing him in a dream to create a new life for themselves in Switzerland with the children. Then after one night when she was persuaded by him to have unprotected sex, she fell pregnant. Giving birth without him there, she endured a series of lies and deceptions with Alexander saying he is called away on business in Geneva. Funding the academic life that she believed he was pursuing and his business interests, she handed over tens of thousands of pounds and eventually sold her house and took on a rented accommodation, seeing him only when it suited him and for short periods of time. With her tiny baby and with three children under eight years old, Chrissy had by the end of three and a half years handed over more than £500,000 to this 'international financier', the seemingly wealthy smooth-talking Alexander Marc D'Ariken de Rothschild-Hatton. And then he vanished, along with her money. After months of detective work she finally tracks him down in the USA, but the reality of his true identity is much darker than she could ever have imagined. He was finally brought to justice on charges of rape and indecent assault with a minor. Chrissy's story is heart-breaking, but she is a survivor and sadly one of many victims of this convicted fraudster. 262pp, paperback.

The communist manifesto of 1848 outlined the beginnings of an idea that was to change world history. Although Marx's "spectre haunting Europe" was a revolutionary spirit which is irresistible because it represents the mobilisation of the workers, the manifesto was an ideological document, not a programme for practical action. Yet the history of Communism is one of repression and brutality. This fascinating global study seeks to balance the two driving forces of theory and practice that made Communism a global phenomenon, and finally examines how the party idea degenerated into a tool for personal despotism in the twentieth century. By 1902, as the movement emerged from the 19th century disturbances such as the Paris Commune, Lenin took the lead in creating a centralised body of disciplined professionals to awaken the slumbering proletariat. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks fought for power, with an important staging point being the 1919 Third Comintern, and on Lenin's death in 1924 the dominant ideology was openly named Leninism as Joseph Stalin was designated the new Secretary of the Russian Communist Party. By 1927 Mao Zedong was calling for a different kind of revolution in China, focusing his Hunan Report on the prospect of a peasant uprising, rather than the top-down elitist revolution of Marx and Lenin. In 1943 Stalin dissolved the Comintern, opening the way for unchallenged brutality, and Mao moved towards the bonfires of the Cultural Revolution. Following Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev led a plot against his henchman Beria and emerged as a leader who ruled by humiliating his colleagues. Finally the glasnost of Gorbachev briefly opened up the party. In spite of the eastern European modifications of the 1970s, and China's attempt at legitimation in the eighties, the idea of an enlightened Communism started to decline in Russia, China, Cuba, north Korea, Vietnam and Laos. 564pp, photos.

'The Psychology of Courage and How to Be Brave', this powerful book explains why good people so often do nothing. Have you ever regretted being silent? Who hasn't? In the face of discrimination, bad behaviour, evil and abuse, why do so many good people fail to act? Pioneering psychologist Catherine Sanderson uses real-life examples, neuroscience and the latest psychological studies to explain why we might be good at recognising bad behaviour, but bad at taking action against it. With practical strategies to transform your thinking, this book shows how we can all learn to speak out, intervene, think outside the group mentality and ultimately become braver, more decisive versions of ourselves. She explains the misperception of stacked odds and personal powerlessness that stops individuals challenging bad behaviour and discrimination on public transport, workplace fraud, sexual harassment, school bullies and more. She uses insights from academia, the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib, and crime scenes of police brutality, and analyses the powerful forces that drive human beings to act against cruelty, injustice and human suffering. With a sweeping breadth of research, Sanderson also gives us hope. 260pp, paperback.

A lovely young Australian couple Cameron and Sam Bloom were holidaying with their three little boys in Thailand when Sam leant against a safety fence, riddled with dry rot. The barrier collapsed beneath her and Sam stood poised on the edge for a seemingly infinite slither of time - 'Leaning back over the void at an impossible angle, her slim arms waving wildly, fingers extended as if to find purchase in the air and take flight. And then she was gone. She didn't scream. I never heard her hit the ground.' With frightful head injuries causing constant migraine, her spine was shattered at T6 and T7 and in Cameron's absence, a callous doctor brusquely told Sam that it was obvious she would never walk again. 'My brave wife was devastated.' In the darkest days of her struggle towards some sort of recovery, the pain and depression was constant. Suddenly a new and unexpected member of the family came into their lives - an injured magpie chick abandoned after she fell from her nest in a car park near Grandma's house. She became their little girl, and known as Penguin Bloom. In many ways the penguin saved them and as the little chick grew into a strong and beautiful bird, Sam found she could talk to her and they became inseparable, one always looking after the other. The three little boys fed and petted her and the bird was free to come and go from the house. The story is told with the photographer-author's own beautiful images about a crazy little bird who helped make the family whole again. The number one international bestseller. B/w photos. Paperback, 272pp.