Rachel Clarke

As a specialist in palliative medicine, Dr Rachel Clarke chooses to inhabit a place many people would find too tragic to contemplate.

Rachel's training was put to the test in 2017 however when her beloved GP father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She learned that nothing - even the best palliative care - can sugar-coat the pain of losing someone you love.

And yet, she argues, in a hospice there is more of what matters in life - more love, more strength, more kindness, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion - than you could ever imagine.

Dear Life is a book about the vital importance of human connection, by the doctor we would all want by our sides at a time of crisis.

The first of our organs to form, the last to die, the heart is both a simple pump and the symbol of all that makes us human: as long as it continues to beat, we hope.

When nine-year-old Keira suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident, her heart continued to beat despite her brain and the rest of her body beginning to shut down. Keira's parents and siblings agreed that she would have wanted to be an organ donor. Meanwhile nine-year-old Max had been hospitalised for nearly a year with a virus that was causing his young heart to fail.

This is the unforgettable story of how one family's grief transformed into a lifesaving gift. With tremendous compassion and clarity, Dr Rachel Clarke relates the urgent journey of Keira's heart and explores the history of the remarkable medical innovations that made it possible.

These are the extraordinary realities of the NHS frontline. From the historic junior doctor strikes to the 'humanitarian crisis' declared by the Red Cross, the overstretched health service is on the precipice. This is a powerful polemic on its systematic degradation, and a letter of optimism to that same health service and those who support it. It captures with tenderness, a new doctor's experiences of an NHS at breaking point.