MUSTREADS Out now in paperback

NOTES FROM THE VELVET UNDERGROUND by Howard Sounes

(Black Swan £9.99) ‘NO ONE,’ remarked one of Lou Reed’s colleagues, ‘could accuse Lou of being a nice guy.’ Howard Sounes’s biography of Reed suggests this is a heroic understatement.

The co-founder of the Velvet Underground, who worked (and fell out) with Andy Warhol and David Bowie, was born Lewis Alan Reed in New York in 1942.

He was a troubled boy who suffered a breakdown as a student and was treated with ECT, something for which he later bitterly blamed his parents.

At university, he began writing songs while experimenting with the drugs that remained inseparably linked to his creativity.

Sounes chronicles Reed’s turbulent, and often brutal, relationships with men and women, his late, happy marriage to avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson, and the wayward talent that produced such classics as Walk On The Wild Side.

MARTIN LUTHER by Peter Stanford

(Hodder £10.99) MANY of us, asked what we know about Martin Luther, might mutter about the Diet of Worms and nailing a thesis to a church door, before falling silent.

October 31 marks the 500th anniversary of the day on which Luther is said to have attached a copy of his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg, an act that precipitated religious and political turbulence across Europe and provoked a schism that still divides Christianity.

Peter Stanford’s timely biography gives a vivid portrait of a deeply flawed man, prone to spiritual selflaceration, whose kindly mentor, exhausted by his lengthy confessions, once gently suggested that next time, he should admit to something worth confessing — adultery, say.

Luther was, Stanford concludes: ‘A man for his own age, but also for every age since.’

IN THE BONESETTER’S WAITING ROOM by Aarathi Prasad

(Profile £8.99) AARATHI PRASAD is a biologist whose first book, Like A Virgin, explored technologies that could change the future of reproduction.

Her new offering is a fascinating investigation into healthcare in India, where scientific innovation exists alongside such traditional remedies as swallowing live fish to cure asthma.

Indian healthcare is a multi-disciplinary affair, with seven recognised categories, including Ayurveda and homeopathy, but while India’s billionaires and growing middle-class can afford world-class care, the vast majority of its population lack even basic help.

With vivid anecdotes of the aesthetic procedures favoured by Bollywood stars, this is a revealing study of Indian medicine, ancient and modern.