‘Fierce. Game-changing. Urgently necessary. Brilliant, brilliant and did I say brilliant?’ EMMA THOMPSON

‘Is it worth the hype? Absolutely’ LAURA PULLMAN, STYLE

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Actor, writer and hopeless romantic Rebecca Humphries had often been called crazy by her boyfriend. But when paparazzi caught him kissing his Strictly Come Dancing partner, she realised the only crazy thing was believing she didn’t deserve more.

A flood of support poured in on social media, but amongst the well-wishes was a simple question with an infinitely complex answer: ‘If he was so bad, why did you stay?’

Empowering, unflinching and full of humour, this book takes that question and owns it. Using her relationship history and experiences since the scandal during Strictly, Rebecca explores why good girls are drawn to darkness, whether pop culture glamourises toxicity, when a relationship ‘rough patch’ becomes the start of a destructive cycle, if women are conditioned for co-dependency, and – ultimately – how to reframe disaster into something magical.

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‘Pacy, vivid, compelling and very, VERY funny… it will help so many’ MARIAN KEYES
‘A fucking classic. Required reading for all women and men’ BRYONY GORDON
‘A funny, brave and honest book that will change lives. I have not stopped talking about it’ THE TIMES
‘So funny and heart-breaking. So stunningly written. ‘ SUSAN WOKOMA
‘A magical, magical book’ GLAMOUR
‘So thoughtful and moving and funny and sad and great, I love it so, so much. I resented having to put it down’ DAISY BUCHANAN
‘Her thought-provoking story should be required reading for anyone in a relationship’ DAILY MIRROR
‘This book isn’t an ice-cold revenge opus; it’s a diary of self-discovery, a celebration of friendship, resilience and finding one’s self-worth…is it worth the hype? Absolutely: I had to stop myself from reading it one grateful gulp’ LAURA PULLMAN, STYLE

When Max Dickins decided to propose to his girlfriend, he realised there was no one he could call on to be his best man.

He quickly learned that he wasn’t the only man struggling with friendships. For decades, countless studies from across the world have confirmed that men have fewer close friends than women – and the problem gets worse the older men get. But what goes wrong? And what can men do about it? Dickins is going to find out.

Join Max on his funny and charmingly candid search as he takes a defibrillator to his social life. As he ultimately discovers that if he wants a Best Man, then he needs to be a better man.

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We need to have a conversation about boys. There has never been a more important time to consider how we are raising the men of the future.

This is an invitation for parents of boys, as well as anyone who cares about the young males in their lives. Parents of daughters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, community leaders; this is a discussion that we all need to participate in.

Whether we are expecting a baby boy, parenting young men, or are simply interested in effecting positive change, many of us are asking how we can raise boys who challenge the status quo and are empowered to stand up for what is right. Confronting toxic masculinity and delving into the hot-button issues affecting boys today, from education to sexism, power to consent, Raising Boys Who Do Better looks at bringing up boys in the era of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.

Inside the pages of Raising Boys Who Do Better, you will find:

– Interviews with experts in parenting, gender and psychology.
– Practical and applicable tips, journaling prompts, as well as advice for initiating conversations with boys and young men of every age.

Offering practical tips, journalling prompts and conversation starters, Uju Asika will include interviews with experts, as well as her own anecdotal experiences as a mother and step-mother. Exploring the relationships between parents and their sons, brothers, friendships and the wider community, this book is an absolute must-read for those who want to help nurture the boys in their lives to grow up into compassionate, kind, healthy and successful men.

‘One of the most important non-fiction books of the year’ – Sunday Times

Boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail at all three key school subjects: maths, reading and science

In the US, the wages of most men are lower today than they were in 1979, while women’s wages have risen across the board

In the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 45

Boys are falling behind at school and college because the educational system is structed in ways that put them at a disadvantage. Men are struggling in the labour market because of an economic shift away from traditionally male jobs. And fathers are dislocated because the cultural role of family provider has been hollowed out. The male malaise is not the result of a mass psychological breakdown, but of deep structural challenges.

Structural challenges require structural solutions, and this is what Richard V. Reeves proposes in Of Boys and Men – starting boys at school a year later than girls; getting more men into caring professions; rethinking the role of fatherhood outside of a nuclear family context.

Feminism has done a huge amount of good in the world. We now need its corollary – a positive vision of masculinity that is compatible with gender equality.

In a beautiful blend of prose and lyricism, each essay sees its author tap into their most vulnerable place – engaging honestly in conversations often silently grappled with by Black British men because of socially enforced beliefs around Black masculinity.

The themes in this essay collection range from the importance of male role-models, and the unique relationship between mother and son to the sexual pressure placed on young heterosexual men, while also asking the question: “what does contemporary Black queerness actually look like?”

Edited by award-winning artist Iggy London and featuring essays from Yomi Sode, Jeffrey Boakye, Christian Adofo, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Athian Akec, Dipo Faloyin, Okechukwu Nzelu, Phil Samba, Sope Soetan, and Jordan Stephens, MANDEM is an unmissable, thoughtful anthology of Black male expression.

A highly acclaimed, bestselling work from one of France’s preeminent historians

What does it mean to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good brother, or a good friend?

In this insightful analysis, social historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of the eighteenth century, Jablonka uncovers the origins of our patriarchal societies. He then offers an updated model of masculinity based on a theory of gender justice which aims for a redistribution of gender, just as social justice demands the redistribution of wealth.

Arguing that it is high time for men to be as involved in gender justice as women, Jablonka shows that in order to build a more equal and respectful society, we must gain a deeper understanding of the structure of patriarchy – and reframe the conversation so that men define themselves by the rights of women. Widely acclaimed in France, this is an important work from a major thinker.

As one of our leading campaigners for justice, human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has spent a lifetime getting to know his clients – from detainees in Guantánamo Bay to prisoners facing execution on Death Row – and finding out, in his own words, ‘what makes them tick’.

But for much of his life, closer to home, there was a man whose mind remained off limits: his own father. It was only years after Dick’s death, when Clive inherited more than 3,000 of his letters, that he could finally take a breath and start to piece together the obsessive personality behind them.

In The Far Side of the Moon, Stafford Smith seeks the broad conversation about mental illness that was not accessible in his earlier years, reflecting on his father’s fragmented life together with that of Larry Lonchar, a client who also struggled with severe depression, and whose fate continues to preoccupy him.

Following the critically acclaimed Injustice, this courageous new book is an indictment of the failures in our social and justice systems, a meditation on privilege and its consequences, and an intimate exploration of how the mind’s hinterlands can impact a family and shape a life.

On the surface, men today don’t have much to complain about. At work, they still get paid more than women for doing the same jobs. At home, they still shirk most of the unpaid labour. Putting the bins out does not count.

Beneath the surface, it’s a different story. An alarming number of men end up anxious, exhausted, depressed – and very reluctant to admit they are. Even if they do everything that’s expected of them in work, life and fatherhood, genuine happiness is still elusive. By midlife, their levels of stress are higher and their levels of wellbeing are lower – and work-life balance turns out to be just a cruel illusion.

The evidence is clear and ironic: the system set up by men for men doesn’t work for men either. It is making none of us happy.

In Man Down, Matt Rudd takes the long view on this perplexing paradox. Drawing on stories from his own life, and the varied lives of the other men he has interviewed, he goes back to the beginning to consider what makes the modern man – how the seeds of midlife misery are sown in the school playground and cultivated through adolescence and into adulthood. By turns compassionate and provocative, Man Down asks the important question: is midlife unhappiness inevitable? Spoiler alert: it isn’t.