The Sex Lives of English Women review – turkish delight fantasies and great ‘organisms’

Being ravished on Question Time, enjoying bondage in the pub, a nun who wants a threesome … Wendy Jones has given women the space to talk, but could have done much more

Book reviews roundup: The Essex Serpent; The Muse; The Middlepause: On Turning 50

What the critics thought of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry, The Muse by Jessie Burton and The Middlepause: On Turning 50 by Marina Benjamin

Tristimania by Jay Griffiths; Mad Girl by Bryony Gordon – review

Two depression memoirs aimed at different readerships both offer optimism and enlightenment

The Middlepause by Marina Benjamin and In My Own Times by Jane Miller – review

What does it mean to be middle-aged? Is 50 over the hill? An honest facing up to loss and sadness is an important theme in these valuable studies

Lean in 15: The Shape Plan by Joe Wicks – digested read

The fitness guru’s 15-minute healthy eating recipe plan is trimmed to shape in less than 800 words

Shooting Up: A History of Drugs in Warfare by Lukasz Kamienski review – what turns soldiers into monsters?

Drunk Romans and drugged Americans: the chemical arsenal used to dull the horror of war

A Walk in the Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution by Travis Elborough – review

There’s plenty to look at in this enjoyable stroll through the history of our public parks, despite a few omissions

Gut by Giulia Endere review – a celebration of our most under-rated organ

An amusing and delightfully frank primer on our intestines crammed with amazing biological facts and anecdotes from the scatological limits of research

The Voices Within by Charles Fernyhough review – why do we talk to ourselves?

We experience some kind of inner speech for at least a quarter of our waking lives. This helps some, while others set out to reduce the chatter. And how does it relate to God?

Expecting by Chitra Ramaswamy review – the strangeness of the pregnant body

This beautifully rendered account by a gay woman updates the standard narrative of pregnancy and lifts it to another sphere, full of poetic language and references from Voltaire to Almodóvar