Selected by Heather Goodare:

Jenny Cole's Journeys (with a cancer) (Pawprints, 1995). Definitely not the usual kind of self-help book: subversive, unorthodox (though Jenny undergoes all the rigours of mainstrean breast cancer treatments as well as sampling any number of complementary therapies), and wacky. But it is compelling reading: honest, with an extraordinary black humour that keeps both Jenny and the reader sane through any number of emotional traumas. Her constant companion when all others fail is Waffles, her cat. I do hope she survives - she deserves to. A thoroughly good read.