Why do some men despise women so much that they will do anything to undermine them, destroy their confidence and show them how useless they think they are? As Olive goes through life struggling to lead a harmonious life with her husband James, she is thwarted at every turn. Looking back, she remembers that James is not the only man she has fallen foul of. There was Fred, an old flame who tried to take control of her life after she took pity on him, and John, who ridiculed her over her driving and tried to humiliate her at social gatherings. All these me n have in common a desire to dominate and belittle women, particularly those close to them, those they need. This story deals with aspects of misogyny and its effect on women.

Born a humble village boy in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, Sher Khan had the curiosity, the intelligence and the determination to succeed in a career in medicine, becoming a senior registrar in a UK hospital. Sensitive, wide-ranging and often very funny, Sher’s story portrays the life of a wise and kind man – a village boy who became a world traveller, an expert in nuclear medicine and a philanthropist who has done his best to overcome the inequity and suffering he sees around him. Dismayed at the dishonesty, favouritism and profiteering that have pervaded Pakistan since independence, he talks freely of the power struggles and posturing which have riddled his homeland’s affairs over the past half century. A colourful description of a vanished world and of the new world that is replacing it.

On September 18 2012, PC Nicola Hughes and her colleague PC Fiona Bone were shot dead by a psychopathic criminal called Dale Cregan who had lured the young officers to his doorstep by making a false 999 call. The crime shocked the whole of Britain. While Cregan serves life sentences for the murders with a recommendation that he should never be freed, Nicola’s father Bryn, a former prison officer, constantly relives his memories of the day he lost his daughter. To try to deal with his grief and to create a force for good from an act of evil, he has set up a charity in her name which has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to help young people who have lost someone close through crime. The police and the people of Britain have united to help him. Now Bryn has told Nicola’s story, from the joy of her birth through to the terrible circumstances of her death at the age of just 23, as well as the challenging aftermath.

Richard Youens’ decision to give up an interesting job in the wine trade to work in insurance might have seemed a recipe for a safe but boring career. It proved otherwise. Life for Youens had never been dull, but it suddenly became a lot more colourful when he joined a firm which specialised in film insurance. His work took him around the world, from Switzerland to Singapore, involved him in multi-million-dollar claims and bringing him into contact with an array of Hollywood stars, including Sophia Loren, David Niven, Peter O’Toole, Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen and Richard Harris, as well as directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Coppola and Stanley Donen. It’s Always Friday is a light-hearted account of his adventures before, during and after his career in film insurance.