Five new books focused on your health and wellness — because we care.

Wellmania: Misadventures in the Search For Wellness, Brigid Delaney, Greystone

After living it up in the States for much of her 30s, the author returns to Australia to get clean, lean and serene. She knows a simple detox won’t do it; a hard reset is necessary. And so she embarks with her readers on a 101-day supervised fast (you’ll be relieved to know she doesn’t make it to the end), then turns her attention to yoga, spirituality and meditation. Delaney is a fine researcher and writer — self-deprecating, with a healthy skepticism — which makes this memoir-cum-guide both informative and even mildly inspiring.

How Not To Be a Doctor and Other Essays, John Launder, Overlook

The author, a British GP, believes that the best doctors are able to draw on their talents, interests and experiences — even if they have nothing to do with the patient before them. Launder, a former English teacher, proves his point. The 50 essays in this collection are thoughtful and illuminating, related to his life as a doctor but also his life as an engaged human being. While he might write about a medical malady (i.e., eczema, which he has) he is more likely to deal with bigger themes, in such essays as “Medicine as Poetry,” “Taking Risks Seriously” and “The Art of Questioning.”

Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain, Abby Norman, Nation

Author Abby Norman uses her experience as a patient to explore medicine’s fraught relationship with women’s health. She suffers from endometriosis, a condition caused by rogue cells from the uterus migrating to places they shouldn’t be. Over the course of a single year, the pain, nausea and fatigue she experienced caused her to lose her place at Smith College, more than 30 pounds and her entire faith in doctors, of whom she saw many. Norman grafts a well-researched social history of women and medicine onto her disturbing memoir.

We Own the Sky, Luke Allnutt, Park Row

Luke Allnutt began this debut novel the day after his 37th birthday. He was in hospital being treated for colon cancer, certain he was going to die, pierced by the belief (and pre-emptive grief) that he wouldn’t live to see his sons grow into men. He decided to write a story that would make them proud, and remember him. We Own the Sky is the harrowing story of Rob and Anna and their little boy, Jack, who turns the family’s world upside down when he is diagnosed with a brain tumour. It is a story of hope and love and resilience — in Allnutt’s words, “what we cling to when we have nothing left.”

My Plastic Brain: One Woman’s Yearlong Journey to Discover If Science Can Improve Her Mind, Caroline Williams, Prometheus

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s capacity to create new neural connections, particularly following a trauma like a stroke. The author, a British science journalist, spent a year studying the research, interviewing scientists and visiting labs to see if she could improve her performance in areas she felt were deficient — improve focus, lower anxiety, enhance creativity, develop an internal GPS and perhaps even adjust her internal clock. The book is often as interesting to read as it must have been to write, and some of what Williams learns can be adapted to our own underperforming lives.