Fifty. And Nobody Warned You: The pilot. For a man turning fifty: what a house and a week of work actually cost in each year he might have arrived, every figure traced to the Office for National Statistics, Nationwide or the Bank of England, and roughly a third of the book he is expected to write in himself.
Fifty. And Nobody Warned You: The same fifty years, read from the other side. Built from the identical fact register as the men's edition and written to a woman rather than about one, with the same last third left deliberately blank.
Sixty. Still Here: Sixty years is long enough that the numbers stop being nostalgia and start being evidence. This one leans hardest on the what-it-cost-then tables, because the gap is widest here.
Forty. The Quiet One: Forty is the milestone people mark by not marking it. This book is shorter on nostalgia and longer on the honest bits, because forty years is not yet long enough for the prices to be funny.
What Estate Agents Actually Mean: The pilot decoder. Estate agent language in two registers: the technical terms that change what you pay, like sold STC, guide price and vacant possession, and the flattering ones that cost you a wasted Saturday, like deceptively spacious. Every entry says what to say back.
The Retirement Survival Guide: The pilot for the survival guides. Retirement is the only major life change people are congratulated for and then left alone with. This one covers the year that starts on the Monday after the last Friday: the month that catches almost everybody out, what to write in the card, and a short serious chapter with real phone numbers in it and no jokes.
The Student Survival Guide: Every guide to first year is written by somebody who came out the other side cheerful and has quietly forgotten the bad fortnight. This one has week six in it, plus the second-year house that gets signed in November after eight weeks of knowing people, and a chapter for the first years nobody writes for: commuters, mature students, student parents and the first in their family to go.
The New Mum Book: The only book in this part of the shop that contains no advice about the baby at all. There are four hundred of those and the reader has been given three. This one is about what happens to the adult: the visitors, four in the afternoon, the invisible list, the fourth month, and going back to work, with every question about the baby pointed at the health visitor where it belongs.