An evocative pictorial tribute to the historic houses of worship of North America’s Christian faith communities, from the early colonial days through the turn of the twentieth century, The Old Church Book includes simple meetinghouses of the Quakers, spired New England village churches and ornate expressions of the Spanish Colonial style. This colorful pageant showcases the expressive photography of Charles J. Ziga.

Weaving together natural history and investigative reporting with mythological and cultural material, On Rare Birds tells the compelling stories of ten rare or extinct bird species – from the tragic demise of the once-abundant Passenger Pigeon to the shooting death of the last Carolina Parakeet in the wild, and from the startling natural defences of the wilful Nightjar to the diverse cultural significance of the Kingfisher. Some stories bear sad witness to precious species we have lost, but they are all fascinating and often heartwarming or humorous depictions of the unique lives and loves of birds. On Rare Birds is a visually stunning volume illustrated by author Anita Albus’s own superb artwork and by images ranging over five centuries. It will delight anyone who loves birds, laments the depletion of their populations by human hands, and cares about the survival of those species that still stand a chance. With knowledge, devotion, and a true artist’s eye, Albus explains in graceful, precise prose why the decline of these bird species is a great loss both to the natural world and, unavoidably, to culture. With each species lost, a world is lost to human understanding-to our arts, our mythology, and our environment.

Divine comedy…a joyous celebration of human imperfection – Louise Welsh. Maria’s job is to support Blue Group, an unruly crew of service users. But she might just have bitten off more than she can chew when she suggests they put on a large-scale community show. The venue for the show is to be Ray’s workshop, a deconsecrated church where she’s constantly distracted by local oddballs and Dezzie, her handsome colleague. Maria soon faces moral dilemmas that would curl a bishop’s hair. If she does ‘the right thing’ she’ll wreck careers and break hearts – but what’s ‘the right thing’ anyway? Who decides who’s allowed to love who? And can Ray even be trusted?

Bohemian Paris in the 1880s. Exotic, strange and exciting – especially to young English sculptress Jessie Lipscomb, who joins her friend Camille to become a protégée of the great Auguste Rodin. Jessie and Camille enjoy a passionate friendship and explore the demi-monde of the vibrant city, meeting artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and the boldly unconventional Rosa Bonheur. But when Rodin and Camille embark on a scandalous affair, Jessie is cast as their unwilling go-between and their friendship unravels. Years later she tracks her down to an insane asylum where Camille tells her an explosive secret – can their friendship survive the betrayal?

Adverse reactions to medical drugs cause thousands of deaths in the UK every year. Statins, aspirin and other drugs are taken en masse, whether they help or harm. Our one-size-fits-all approach to medicine is primitive. Who we are – our age, gender, size, ethnic group, environmental conditions, our very individuality – matters to our health. Shouldn’t our medicine be tailored to our differences?

With an introduction from the eminent British scientist Professor Joyce Tait CBE, director of the Institute for Innovation Generation in the Life Sciences, this book explores these groundbreaking advances and the coming sea change in how we detect and treat disease. It also discusses the other issues we will face: Who will have access to the highly sensitive data? Who will fund research when mass prescription drugs are finished? This important new book will help us wake up to taking charge of our health in a completely new era.

Pioneer Women provides a rare look at frontier life through the eyes of the women who settled the West. Their hopes, fears and courage in the face of adversity are revealed in excerpts from journals, letters and oral histories. Illustrated with a collection of seldom-seen photographs, Pioneer Women reveals the faces as well as the voices of the frontier’s women. Historians Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith have co-authored numerous books and articles on women in the American West.

See University of Oklahoma Press.

Safety campaigns touch a nerve in all of us. Over the years, these posters, slogans and TV adverts have imprinted themselves on our collective memory, evoking nostalgia for childhood and a bygone Britain. In 2011, RoSPA made a wonderful discovery: a superb ‘missing’ archive of historical safety posters dating from the 1930s to 1970s.

Clever, beautifully designed, often amusing, always packing a punch – these posters not only showcase the talented designers of the time, but also reflect the momentous changes that swept 20th-century Britain, revealing our social and industrial history from a unique new angle.

This book is a celebration of forty years of Scotland’s national ballet company, with stunning photographs and a lively appreciation and commentary by Mary Brennan, Scotland’s foremost dance critic.

“Strong feeling, uncompromising frankness” – Marina Warner. On wishing night, a seal slips from her watery domain and assumes human form on a Scottish island, but being human proves to be stranger and more complex than she’d imagined. This is an edgy modern retelling of the classic selkie tale, originally published in The Four Marys, a quartet of contemporary novellas drawing on Celtic history and folklore.

The study of dreams has enriched our understanding of the unconscious mind and how it communicates with its conscious counterpart. This illuminating book by Clare Gibson, best-selling author of The Ulti-mate Birthday Book, draws on many authoritative sources to provide an invaluable aid to understanding, and learning from, your dreams. Its fifty chapters are packed with an array of the objects, characters and emotions that populate the dream world, each of which carries a symbolic message that will help you to untangle your past, present and future. As Montaigne observed, “Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them” – this book will teach you that art.