Congo Dawn Katherine Scholes Viking, $32.99

After is the tender, touching story of the life and death of Nikki Gemmell’s mother Elayne. Struggling with her diminished independence as she aged, Elayne decided “to choose the quality of her death”. Taking her own life was “her last magnificent act of breaking free”. There are immediate concerns: a police investigation, an autopsy, what to tell the children. Gemmell recounts each of these with urgency and raw emotion. There are also deeper issues: could we have done more, listened more, understood her more. All this is entwined in a mesh of old guilts and resentments. Inevitably more of us are now facing the challenge of caring for elderly parents, often as we ourselves are ageing. This intensely personal book demands that we face some very uncomfortable truths.

Verdict: chilling