Twenty-five years in the ER could become a résumé for despair, but for best-selling author Dr. Robert D. Lesslie, it's a foundation for inspiring stories of everyday angels - friends, nurses, doctors, patients, and even strangers who offer love, help, and support in the midst of trouble. The ER is a difficult and challenging place to be. Yet the same pressures and stresses that make this place so challenging also provide an opportunity to experience some of life's greatest wonders and mysteries.

Most of us have done our time in the retail trenches, but service stations are undoubtedly the frontline, as Melburnian David Goodwin found out when he started working the weekend graveyard shift at his local servo. From his very first night shift, David absorbed a consistent level of mind-bending lunacy, encountering everything from giant shoplifting bees and balaclava-clad goons hurling cordial-filled water bombs from the sunroof of their BMW, to anarcho-goths high on MDMA releasing large rats into the store from their matching Harry Potter backpacks.

A man who has injured himself trying out his girlfriend's waxing treatment. The inimitable curiosity of a boy whose cactus has left his hand in a mess. More Googled self-diagnoses than one can count. These are the cases that Rudd faces daily. As hilarious as they are poignant, the memoirs showcase some of the most baffling as well as heartbreaking stories that any doctor and their patients have had to experience. 

Having worked in the emergency services for more than 15 years, Dan Farnworth has seen it all. There was the time he was called to take away a dead body - only for the 'corpse' to jolt back into life and demand to know what he was doing in her house. Earlier in his career, he unwittingly disturbed a crime scene as he shared the sad news of the victim's death with her son. 

As a young girl growing up in a strict ultra-Orthodox family, Dassi's life was preordained - marry young, live a devout life and raise children within the Adass community's religious rules. This righteous path would keep her safe from the immodest, secular world just a few blocks away in suburban Melbourne. But the Adass community was not safe for Dassi. She was fifteen when her revered school principal, Malka Leifer, started to single her out. Dassi's cloistered and harsh upbringing meant she didn't have the words for what was happening to her, but she knew it was very, very wrong.

Every weekend, in Holland’s most popular newspaper, de Volkskrant, renowned science-journalist Ellen de Visser asks a different medical professional to tell her about ‘that one patient’; the patient who changed everything for them. Every day, in every country, thousands of patients share their stories with their doctors: stories they may never have told anyone else; stories that are heartbreaking, sometimes funny and - just occasionally - unforgettable. 

Join Colin Black on his journey from accidental medical student to HSE and NHS trainee and, finally, consultant paediatric anaesthetist at the largest children’s hospital in Ireland, where any given day could end in laughter or tears—and that’s just the staff. Razor-sharp and forthright, Gas Man is a disarming and frequently hilarious account of life in one of the most fascinating and thrilling professions at medicine’s frontline, where every day is a heady cocktail of severe pressure, poignancy and profound social awkwardness.

Stephanie Green isn't like most other doctors. Nearly every day, she confronts life-and-death situations behind the scenes at Heathrow, where the truth is almost always stranger than fiction. Here, she reveals the exhilarating drama of working in the world's sixth busiest airport and what is required to make life-and-death decisions in the hidden no-man's-land of medicine, geopolitics, terror and tragedy that is The Heathrow Doctor. 

Tim Booth is shocked when his first emergency call-out for someone short of breath turns out to be an adult man with a blocked nose. Far from beginner's luck, this turns out to be an omen for the rest of his paramedic career. Between the obligatory stories of objects lodged in body cavities to grown men who can't look after themselves when their wives are away, Tim finds that the promised life-saving moments are far outweighed by the trivial, frustrating and bizarre ambulance callouts.

Family doctor, Irishman, musician, award-winning author, anarchist and recovering morphine addict, Liam became a columnist for the British Medical Journal in 1994. He went on to write for many major publications, winning a series of prestigious awards; in 2005, he was the first doctor to win Columnist of the Year in the Periodical Publishers Association awards. The book contains a selection of Liam’s best work, from his columns, blogs and short stories.

In his The Dark Side series, Andy Thompson gives us a taste of the dark sense of humor paramedics use as a coping mechanism; here he packs laugh-out-loud moments into every word as he recalls health care professionals' encounters with the weirdest of behavior, hilarious misunderstandings, and cringingly embarrassing episodes.

A Life in Trauma is a frank, remarkable account of a career spent helping others, offering a positive outlook on the potential of Ireland’s healthcare system in the future. Concern. Compassion. Doubt. Despair. Anger. Hope. Imagine juggling these feelings every day in a situation where your work could mean the difference between someone's life or death. 

Emily Craig has been a witness to history, helping to seek justice for thousands of murder victims, both famous and unknown. It’s a personal story that you won’t soon forget. Emily first became intrigued by forensics work when, as a respected medical illustrator, she was called in by the local police to create a model of a murder victim’s face. Her fascination with that case led to a dramatic midlife career change: She would go back to school to become a forensic anthropologist - and one of the most respected and best-known “bone hunters” in the nation.

He's into his second year of medicine, but this time Max is out of the wards and onto the streets, working for the Phoenix Outreach Project. Fuelled by tea and more enthusiasm than experience, he attempts to locate and treat a wide and colourful range of patients that somehow his first year on the wards didn't prepare him for...from Molly the 80-year-old drugs mule and God in a Tesco car park to middle-class mums addicted to appearances and pain killers in equal measure. 

Heartwarming and gloriously eccentric, Dr Tom's stories capture the beauty of the Lowlands, the joys and sorrows of its inhabitants and the richly rewarding experiences of life as a Scottish country doctor.