A neurologist explores the very real world of psychosomatic illness.Pauline first became ill when she was fifteen. What seemed to be a urinary infection became joint pain, then life-threatening appendicitis. After a routine operation Pauline lost all the strength in her legs. Shortly afterwards, convulsions started. But Pauline’s tests are normal: her symptoms seem to have no physical cause whatsoever.This may be an extreme case, but Pauline is not alone. A...

From a neurologist and the award-winning author of The Sleeping Beauties, a meticulous and compassionate exploration of how our culture of medical diagnosis can harm, rather than help, patients.We live in an age of diagnosis. Conditions like ADHD and autism are on the rapid rise, while new categories like long Covid are being created. Medical terms are increasingly used to describe ordinary human experiences, and the advance of sophisticated genetic sequen...

'I loved it. She is in my view the best science writer around - a true descendant of Oliver Sacks' Sathnam Sanghera, author of The Boy with the TopknotThe brain is the most complex structure in the universe.In Brainstorm the Wellcome Prize-winning author of It’s All in Your Head uncovers the most eye-opening symptoms medicine has to offer.‘Powerfully life-affirming... Brainstorm is...

In Sweden, hundreds of refugee children fall into a state that resembles sleep for months or years at a time. In Le Roy, a town in upstate New York, teenage girls develop involuntary twitches and seizures that spread like a contagion. In the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, employees experience headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises during the night. These are only a few of the many suspected culture-bound psychosomatic syndromes—specific sets of symptoms that exist in a particular cu...

A neurologist explores the very real world of psychosomatic illness.Pauline first became ill when she was fifteen. What seemed to be a urinary infection became joint pain, then life-threatening appendicitis. After a routine operation Pauline lost all the strength in her legs. Shortly afterwards, convulsions started. But Pauline’s tests are normal: her symptoms seem to have no physical cause whatsoever.This may be an extreme case, but Pauline is not alone. A...

From a neurologist and the award-winning author of The Sleeping Beauties, a meticulous and compassionate exploration of how our culture of medical diagnosis can harm, rather than help, patients.We live in an age of diagnosis. Conditions like ADHD and autism are on the rapid rise, while new categories like long Covid are being created. Medical terms are increasingly used to describe ordinary human experiences, and the advance of sophisticated genetic sequen...

In Sweden, hundreds of refugee children fall into a state that resembles sleep for months or years at a time. In Le Roy, a town in upstate New York, teenage girls develop involuntary twitches and seizures that spread like a contagion. In the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, employees experience headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises during the night. These are only a few of the many suspected culture-bound psychosomatic syndromes—specific sets of symptoms that exist in a particular cu...

A leading neurologist recounts some of her most astonishing, challenging cases, which demonstrate how crucial the study of epilepsy has been to our understanding of the brain.Brainstorm follows the stories of people whose medical diagnoses are so strange even their doctor struggles to know how to solve them. A man who sees cartoon characters running across the room; a girl whose world suddenly seems completely distorted, as though she were Alice in Wonderl...

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • The inspiration for the riveting new drama NOCTURNE, soon to be an Apple Original series on Apple TV. • This installment in the Killer Instinct Series tells the chilling story of a manipulative serial killer and the two brilliant police agents who must beat him at his own game, Detectives Joona Linna and Saga Bauer.“With its tight, staccato chapters and cast of dangerous wraiths lurking everywhere, The Sandman is a non...

**The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers • A New York Times “Readers’ Choice: Best Books of the 21st Century” PickFrom the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Table for Two, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel**In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to ...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLDThis inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question, What makes a life worth living?**“Unmissable . . . Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option.”—Janet Maslin, The New York TimesONE...

NOW AN APPLE TV+ SERIESA Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction * Winner of the British Book Awards Fiction Book of the Year and overall Book of the Year *A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of The Year * Waterstones Book of the Year * Costa Book Award Finalist“A novel of almost insolent ambition—lush and fantastical, a wild Eden behind a garden gate...it’s part ghost story and part natural history lesson, part romance and...