The Atlas of Happiness

When she was suddenly given the opportunity of a new life in rural Jutland, journalist and archetypal Londoner Helen Russell discovered a startling statistic: the happiest place on earth isn't Disneyland but Denmark, a land often thought of by foreigners as consisting entirely of long, dark winters, cured herring, Lego and pastries. What is the secret to their success? Are happy Danes born or made?

Having spent the last few years in Denmark uncovering the secrets of the happiest country in the world, Helen Russell knows it's time to move back to the UK. She thinks. Maybe. Or maybe that's a terrible idea. Like many of us, she suffers from chronic indecision and a fear of change. So she decides to give herself a year for an experiment: to overhaul every area of her life, learn how to embrace change and become a lean, mean decision-making machine.

At 26, apprentice baker Mia West has her entire life planned out: a Craftsman cottage in Seattle, a job baking at the Butter Emporium, and her first love - her boyfriend, Ethan - by her side. But when Ethan declares he “needs some space”, Mia’s carefully planned future crumbles. Feeling adrift, Mia joins her vivacious housemate Rosie on a humanitarian trip around the world funded by a reclusive billionaire.

Every year, we are given a fixed number of days. Some days pass us by without leaving a trace and some days we remember forever. Do you remember your first kiss? Or how the first rays of the spring sun feel? Or how about the best meal you ever had? These memorable experiences are characterised by intensity of perception, depth of feeling or sense of profound significance causing them to stand out in our mind and involve a heightened sense of wonder and awe. 

As revelatory as Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson’s Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, 'old' has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we’ve made old age into a disease. 

From its earliest incarnations 7,000 years ago to the megalopolises of today, the story of the city is the story of civilisation. Although cities have only ever been inhabited by a tiny minority of humanity, the heat they generate has sparked most of our political, social, commercial, scientific and artistic revolutions. It is these world-changing, epoch-defining moments that are the focus of Ben Wilson's book, as he takes us on a thrilling global tour of the key metropolises of history.

Billy Collins’ new collection brings together more than 50 poems and showcases his deft mixing of the playful and the serious that has made him one of our country’s most celebrated and widely known poets. Here are poems that leap with whimsy and imagination, yet stay grounded in the familiar, common things of everyday experience. 

Experience the world of a curious boy, a greedy mole, a wary fox and a wise horse who find themselves together in sometimes difficult terrain, sharing their greatest fears and biggest discoveries about vulnerability, kindness, hope, friendship and love. 

He is a brilliant math professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only 80 minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young housekeeper - with a 10-year-old son-who is hired to care for the professor. And every morning, as the professor and the housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them.

From an award-winning science fiction writer (whose short story ‘The Story of Your Life’ was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated movie Arrival), the long-awaited new collection of stunningly original, humane, and already celebrated short stories.