A gripping, humbling account... This is a story of great courage, love, and extraordinary selflessness but most of all it is a celebration of the existence of a bright, lively, brave little boy

An uplifting tribute to a remarkable child

Ollie is not a bleak book. There are episodes of exuberant joy... More compelling than a climbing narrative

The Blissful Baby Expert is a fantastic guide for new mums, especially in those early weeks when everything is a bit chaotic. As a first-time mum, the schedule suggestions and chapters on feeding and sleeping were essential reading. Lisa's knowledge and understanding of what matters to a new parent really shines through.

One of the few contemporary British writers comfortable on a world stage

A writer whose anger and confusion in the face of the world transform into poetic flights of fancy . . . which always feel marvellously right

It is, at heart, Bridget Jones with an iPhone.

Hilarious.

If you could have just one food book this year, make it How To Eat

A gloriously sensual wander through the possibilities of food. The recipes read more like seduction than instruction

My book of the decade... I love this book: its prose, its intelligence and, above all, its workable, soul-warming recipes

The most valuable culinary guide published this decade

A chatty, sometimes cheeky celebration of home–cooked meals

[Nigella] brings you into her life and tells you how she thinks about food, how meals come together in her head...and how she cooks for family and friends... A breakthrough...with hundreds of appealing and accessible recipes

Nigella Lawson serves up irony and sensuality with her comforting recipes...the Queen of Come–On Cooking

Nigella Lawson is, whisks down, Britain's funniest and sexiest food writer, a raconteur who is delicious whether detailing every step on the way towards a heavenly roast chicken and root vegetable couscous or explaining why 'cooking is not just about joining the dots'

A big book in every sense of the word: passionate, informative, detailed, bossy and admirably practical.

This book, with its evocative writing style and empowering approach (it's all about experimentation, and broadening skills and knowledge) was the one that most inspired my cooking when it was first published back in 1998. The joy is, it's now available in hardback, which will please the legions of cooks who, like me, have a falling-apart paperback copy on their shelf

A masterclass in food writing – one glance shows how good she really is

A brilliant book… If you haven’t discovered Nigella’s very first cookbook yet, there is something missing from your bookshelf. I’m so evangelical about this book that if I find any of my friends don’t own it, I generally buy them a copy at the next available opportunity.

It’s the first cookbook I ever properly read, and I loved it on three levels: for the quality of the writing, for the way it encourages you not to follow a recipe slavishly but to be bold, experiment and explore variations as you cook – and for the way Nigella captures the magic that happens when people sit down and eat together

I’m inspired by Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat… It’s about a lifestyle and an attitude

This is a book I constantly return to, as reference in the kitchen or just to read for the sheer pleasure of Nigella’s writing. There are so many people telling us how to eat these days that this book, ironically, feels like a non-dictatorial return to common sense

Far from the Tree is a landmark, revolutionary book… Andrew Solomon plumbs his topic thoroughly, humanely, and in a compulsively readable style that makes the book as entertaining as it is illuminating.

One of the most extraordinary books I have read in recent times – brave, compassionate and astonishingly humane. Solomon approaches one of the oldest questions – how much are we defined by nature versus nurture? – and crafts from it a gripping narrative. Through his stories, told with such masterful delicacy and lucidity, we learn how different we all are, and how achingly similar. I could not put this book down.

A passionate and affecting work that will shake up your preconceptions and leave you in a better place. It’s a book everyone should read… there’s no one who wouldn’t be a more imaginative and understanding parent – or human being – for having done so… breathtaking reading.

Andrew Solomon reminds us that nothing is more powerful in a child’s development than the love of a parent. This remarkable new book introduces us to mothers and fathers – many in circumstances the rest of us can hardly imagine – who are making their children feel special, no matter what challenges come their way.

"Parenting," writes Andrew Solomon in Far from the Tree, "is no sport for perfectionists." It's an irony of the book, 10 years in the making and his first since The Noonday Demon, that by militating against perfectionism, he only leaves the reader in greater awe of the art of the achievable. The book starts out as a study of parents raising "difficult" children, and ends up as an affirmation of what it is to be human.

The first thing you should know about Andrew Solomon’s new book, Far From the Tree, is that it’s a monumental work. This is a masterpiece of non-fiction, the culmination of a decade’s worth of research and writing, and it should be required reading for psychologists, teachers, and above all, parents. Far From the Tree is a stunning work of scholarship and compassion.

Knotty, gargantuan and lionhearted… Mr. Solomon’s first chapter, entitled 'Son', is as masterly a piece of writing as I’ve come across all year. It combines his own story with a taut and elegant précis of this book’s arguments. It is required reading.

Far-reaching, original, fascinating - Andrew Solomon's investigation of many of the most intense challenges that parenthood can bring challenges us all to reexamine how we understand human difference. Perhaps the greatest gift of this monumental book, full of facts and full of feelings, is that it constantly makes one think, and think again.

An informative and moving book that raises profound issues regarding the nature of love, the value of human life and the future of humanity.

Solomon is a storyteller of great intimacy and ease… [He] creates something of enduring warmth and beauty: a quilt, a choir.

Andrew Solomon provides us with an unrivalled educational experience about identity groups in our society, an experience that is filled with insight, empathy and intelligence. Reading Far from the Tree is a mind-opening experience.

Solomon is in many ways the perfect writer for the subject – nuanced, thorough, humane, and a gifted stylist.

Far From the Tree is a book of extraordinary ambition… From a writer known primarily as a historian of sadness, this sweeping tribute to the joys of parental love can be startling and ecstatic.

A ground-breaking book

Brought to life by its intimate domestic voices, many of them people who ended up falling in love with children they never knew they wanted

A life-changing book

Nobody could read this extraordinary, moving book and not feel enlightened, but above all enlarged, by it.

I'd suggest this be made compulsory reading for an couple considering having a baby... This is a remarkable work: moving but never bathetic, challenging in parts but always worth the effort. I'd call it extraordinary - if only Solomon would let me.

A book brimming with poignancy

A fascinating examination of the accommodation of difference

You don't so much read Far from the Tree as cohabit with it; its stories take up residence in your head and heart, messily unpack themselves and refuse to leave

A generous, humane and — in complex and unexpected ways — compassionate book about what it means to be a parent

The book is about people and their experiences and it is rich with their strategies, smiles and sadnesses

Solomon writes movingly of the resources of support and empathy that he found among communities of the deaf, dwarfs, transgender children and people with Down’s syndrome

A catalogue of astonishing tenacity and unexpected joy that inevitably expands both our sympathies and sense of wonder at the immense variety of human experiences

This is a remarkable work: moving but never bathetic, challenging in parts, but always worth the effort

Nobody could read this extraordinary, moving book and not feel enlightened, but above all enlarged by it

Far From the Tree is the most important book I’ve ever read. It is a masterpiece of research; giving an impressive insight into human relationships and our tolerance of those who are different. If everyone read this book the world would be a better place

A monumental and generous-hearted book, balanced between the universal and the particular, and gorgeously observed

Solomon’s compassionate study of these dozen loves that are, and are not, like each other, illuminates not so much the heroism of difficult kinds of love as the adaptability of every kind

A triumphant celebration of the power of parental love

Forces] the reader to meditate on a number of wrenching, often heart-breaking aspects of existence. And to mediate as well on questions of stigma and prejudice, callousness and cruelty, the widespread and extraordinary intolerance of human diversity, and the horrors that those attitudes and behaviours heap on the heads of those whose lives are already extraordinarily difficult, and on the head of those who love and care for them