In the dying months of World War I, Spanish flu suddenly overwhelmed the world, killing between 50 and 100 million people. Nowhere escaped this common enemy: in Britain, 250,000 people died, and in the United States it was 750,000, while European deaths reached over two million. The numbers are staggering. And yet at the time, news of the danger was suppressed for fear of impacting wartime morale. Behind the numbers are human lives, stories of those who suffered and fought it - in the hospitals and laboratories. 

Finlay Donovan, single mum and floundering crime writer, is having a hard time. Her ex-husband went behind her back to fire the nanny, and this morning she sent her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an unfortunate incident with scissors. Making it to lunch with her literary agent is a minor victory but, as she's discussing the plot of her latest crime novel, the conversation is misinterpreted by a woman sitting nearby as that of a hit-woman offering her services to dispose of a 'problem' husband. 

Margot Lee's mother is ignoring her calls. Margot can’t understand why, until she makes a surprise trip home to Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. Determined to discover the truth, Margot unravels her single mother’s past as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother, Mina.

The day of her wedding, 17-year-old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. 

Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life-and-death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids and the hospital parking meter earns more than you. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know - and more than a few things you didn't - about life on and off the hospital ward.

People like Emmy Jackson. They always have. Especially online, where she is Instagram sensation Mamabare, famous for always telling the unvarnished truth about modern parenthood. But Emmy isn’t as honest as she’d like the fans to believe. She may think she has her followers fooled, but someone out there knows the truth and plans to make her pay.

A regular weekday morning veers drastically off-course for a group of strangers whose paths cross in a London café - their lives never to be the same again when an apparently crazed gunman holds them hostage. But there is more to the situation than first meets the eye, and as the captives grapple with their own inner demons, the line between right and wrong starts to blur. Will the secrets they keep stop them from escaping with their lives?

Lysa has been a paramedic for over 20 years, working for the London Ambulance service - the world's biggest and busiest free service - for much of that time. Here, she reveals what it's really like to work in a job that brings paramedic teams face-to-face with death - and destiny - every day.

For 150 years, above the Scottish cliffs, Caldonbrae Hall has sat as a beacon of excellence in the ancestral castle of Lord William Hope. A boarding school for girls, it promises a future where its pupils will emerge 'resilient and ready to serve society'. Rose Christie, a 26-year-old Classics teacher, is the first new hire for the school in more than a decade. At first, Rose feels overwhelmed in the face of this elite establishment, but soon after her arrival she begins to understand that she may have more to fear than her own ineptitude.

Strongest advocate, best friend, expert, cheerleader and chief photographer. Before, during and after labour the role of a midwife is second to none. The Secret Midwife reveals the highs and lows on the frontline of the maternity unit, from the mother that tries to give herself a DIY caesarean to the baby born into witness protection, and from surprise infants that arrive down toilets to ones that turn up in the lift.

Celebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling, titillating and outraging us for much longer than we might realise. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, coffin-sleeping, one-legged French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who launched a violent feud with her former best friend; or Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience.... 

Other people find Majella odd. She keeps herself to herself, she doesn't like gossip and she isn't interested in knowing her neighbours' business. But suddenly everyone in the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up wants to know all about hers. Since her da disappeared during the Troubles, Majella has tried to live a quiet life with her alcoholic mother. 

These are the extraordinary realities of the NHS front line. From the historic junior doctor strikes to the 'humanitarian crisis' declared by the Red Cross, the overstretched health service is on the precipice. This is a powerful polemic on its systematic degradation and a letter of optimism to that same health service and those who support it. It captures with tenderness a new doctor's experiences of an NHS at breaking point.

Walk a day in a Roman's sandals. What was it like to live in one of the ancient world's most powerful and bustling cities - one that was eight times more densely populated than modern-day New York? In this entertaining and enlightening guide, best-selling historian Philip Matyszak introduces us to the people who lived and worked there. In each hour of the day, we meet a new character - from emperor to slave girl, gladiator to astrologer, medicine woman to water-clock maker - and discover the fascinating details of their daily lives.

The Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times, ruling a sixth of the world's surface. How did one family turn a war-ruined principality into the world's greatest empire? And how did they lose it all? This is the intimate story of 20 tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition.