Books Weekend Balancing crime, spirituality and mental healthAnxiety, depression and child sexual abuse, along with a regular dose of crime thrillers, are what AZINS has for its readers this weekend. Take a look.

1. Book: The Paying Guests; Author: Sarah Waters; Publisher: Hachette; Pages: 566; Price: Rs. 599

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work are demanding change. And in a genteel house in the south of the city, its inhabitants still recovering from the devastating losses of the First World War, life is about to be transformed.

Widowed Mrs. Wray and her daughter, Frances - an unmarried woman with an interesting past, now on her way to becoming a spinster - find themselves obliged to take in lodgers.

The arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a young couple of the "clerk class", brings with it gramophone music, colour and fun.

Open doors offer Frances glimpses of the newcomers' habits, and the staircase and landing have never seemed to her so busy.

As she and Lilian are drawn into an unexpected friendship, loyalties begin to shift. Secrets are confessed, dangerous desires admitted; the most ordinary of lives, it seems, can explode into passion and drama.

A love story, this is also a crime story.

2. Book: The Final Report; Author: Monabi Mitra; Publisher: Penguin; Pages: 246; Price: Rs. 199

When a young girl falls to her death from the Mission Row Police Housing Complex, home to DSP Bikram Chatterjee, the Crime Branch goes into a tizzy.

Who is she? Is it murder or suicide? And, most importantly, how did she manage to climb up to the roof without being noticed?

As DSP Chatterjee grapples with death in his own backyard, elsewhere in the city two young criminals explore a new modus operandi, while there is a sudden spurt in wildlife poaching and the theft of antiques. The deeper he investigates, the more questions he is confronted with. Are all these crimes connected?

3. Book: Emotional Traumas: How to Help or Seek Help; Author: Dinesh Kumar; Publisher: Leadstart; Pages: 192; Price: Rs. 249

There is pitifully little awareness about mental health issues in our country. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), depression, and not diabetes or hypertension, will soon be the biggest killer of the modern world. The general perception is that people are either mentally healthy or nutcases requiring psychiatric intervention. The truth is that many mental health issues are transient. They fall into the category of mental "sprains" and not "fractures".

They can be healed with the help of a trained counsellor.

This book deals with subjects such as anxiety, depression, marriage, suicide, child sexual abuse, adolescence and stress.

4. Book: "Stress to Serenity; Author: Amar Chandel; Publisher: Konark; Pages: 208; Price: Rs. 295

Stress is the scourge of the 21st country. Almost everyone has it. Victims blame the busy, competitive, cut-throat lifestyle for it, but the blame actually lies somewhere else. The fact of the matter is that only about 20 percent of it is caused by external factors. The other 80 percent is the result of how we react to people, places or situations. The key to moving from stress to serenity is observing and modifying one's own thinking process and responses. Aided with beautiful illustrations, handy exercises, examples and case studies, the book shows you how.