Secrets My Mother Kept


Kath Hardy - 2013
    The two most important people in young Kath's life were her charismatic but manipulative mother Flo and her mother's sister Aunty. But Flo and Aunty were keeping secrets, a tapestry of lies that cast a harrowing shadow over the children's lives.Many years later Kath's mother died and while sorting through Flo's things, Kath discovered a bundle of secret letters that sent her on a journey to finally unravel the truth...Inspirational and moving, this is the story of a women brave enough to confront her past, and strong enough to let love not bitterness define her.

Overlay: A Tale of One Girl's Life in 1970s Las Vegas


Marlayna Glynn - 2012
    This tale describes the turbulent childhood of the author in 1970s Las Vegas.Born into an ongoing cycle of alcoholism and abandonment amidst fallen adults, Marlayna develops a powerful sense of self-preservation in contrast to the quirky people entrusted with her care. Her story explores the personalities of the bizarre characters who populate her life as she moves from home to home, parent to parent, family to family, ultimately becoming homeless at the age of fourteen. Out of the resources of her remarkable childhood emerges an inner strength that will charm and captivate readers and remain in their consciousness long after the last page of her story has been turned.

High Achiever: The Incredible True Story of One Addict's Double Life


Tiffany Jenkins - 2017
    Now, she's clean and sober, a married mother of three. As she found her way in her new life, she started sharing on social media as an outlet for her depression and anxiety. She struck a chord, several of her videos went viral (one with 46million views), and in the past year her following exploded from a few hundred thousand to more than 3 million.The memoir opens in the Florida women's prison where Tiffany was incarcerated for 180 days. The memoir flashes back in time to the events that led to Tiffany's imprisonment (during the time of her active addiction, Tiffany was dating and living with a cop), and moves forward to her eventual sobriety.

Deliver Me from Evil: A Sadistic Foster Mother, a Childhood Torn Apart


Alloma Gilbert - 2008
    The details of her cruelty were so sickening they shocked the country. Alloma Gilbert was one of Spry's young victims, left at her mercy for 11 brutal years. This is her story.

When Rabbit Howls


Truddi Chase - 1987
    What surfaced was terrifying: she was inhabited by 'the Troops'-92 individual personalities. This groundbreaking true story is made all the more extraordinary in that it was written by the Troops themselves. What they reveal is a spellbinding descent into a personal hell-and an ultimate deliverance for the woman they became.

A Poisoned Passion


Diane Fanning - 2009
    But his life back at home, in Texas, would prove a lot more dangerous...In the winter of 2005, Mike's wife, a veterinarian named Wendi Mae Davidson, reported him missing. Wendi told police that Mike had been acting erratically-visiting local clubs, staying out late, sometimes not coming home at all. She filed for divorce the very next day.Eventually Mike's body turned up in a stock pond on a private ranch. Investigators described a corpse that was weighted down with two cinder blocks, a rock, a boat anchor, and other equipment. It had also been stabbed forty-one times with a knife. But an autopsy report told a different story: That the cause of death was exposure to pentobarbital and phenobarbital, drugs commonly used in veterinary medicine. All the evidence pointed to Wendi...and soon she would be found guilty of murder in the first degree. Diane Fanning's A Poisioned Passion is the true, shocking story of a war hero and a marriage that ended in cold-blooded murder.

Invisible Tears: The Abuse, The Rebellion, The Survival, Despite All Odds


Abigail Lawrence - 2010
    Still distraught, Abbie is passed to whoever will have her. Her new step mother subjects her to unimaginable physical, sexual and psychological torture and delivers her to local paedophiles in the entertainment business. During her single minded pursuit of fame Abbie’s step mother stops at nothing, beating and prostituting her own children.Abbie loses control and becomes well known to the local police. Not one person can get through to her because she has no fear, no self respect, no morals or self worth. With nothing to lose, she throws herself into one battle after another, blood and guts brawling between the skin heads and the mods on the streets of London.Her family eventually disowns her realizing they are unable to help. Abbie finds herself in the care of the Court until she is abandoned by children's homes and Social Services too. Alone, penniless and pregnant at the age of 16. Haunted by the secrets of her unspeakable past. Will anyone ever see her invisible tears?

Tears of the Silenced


Misty Griffin - 2014
    Misty and her sister were kept as slaves on a mountain ranch and subjected to almost complete isolation, sexual abuse, and extreme physical violence. Their step-father kept a loaded rifle by the door to make sure the young girls were too terrified to try to escape. No rescue would ever come since the few people who knew they existed did not care.When Misty reached her teens, her parents feared she and her sister would escape and took them to an Amish community. Devastated to again find herself in a world of fear, cruelty, and abuse, Misty was sexually assaulted by the bishop. As Misty recalls, "Amish sexual abusers are only shunned by the church for six weeks, a punishment that never seems to work... I knew I had to get help, and one freezing morning in early March, I made a dash for a tiny police station in rural Minnesota. After reporting the bishop, I left the Amish and found myself plummeted into a strange modern world with only a second-grade education and no ID or social security card."

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs


Elissa Wall - 2008
    At once shocking, heartbreaking, and inspiring, Wall’s story of subjugation and survival exposes the darkness at the root of this rebel offshoot of the Mormon faith.

Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea


Tami Oldham Ashcraft - 1998
    Life is perfect; you're young and in love. Then picture everything going horribly wrong. You inadvertently sail into a hurricane, you're injured, and you wake up to find that your loved one is gone. Your boat's motor is shot and your masts have disappeared. Utterly alone, you're weeks from dry land.Red Sky in Mourning is the story of Tami Oldham Ashcraft's 41-day journey to safety, which she survived through fortitude and sheer strength of character. Interspersed with flashbacks to her romance with her doomed fiance Richard, this survival story offers an inspiring reminder that even in our darkest moments we are never truly alone.

Out of the Silence: After the Crash


Eduardo Strauch Urioste - 2012
    It was a harrowing test of endurance on a snowbound cordillera that ended in a miraculous rescue. Now comes the unflinching and emotional true story by one of the men who found his way home.Four decades after the tragedy, a climber discovered survivor Eduardo Strauch’s wallet near the memorialized crash site and returned it to him. It was a gesture that compelled Strauch to finally “break the silence of the mountains.”In this revelatory and rewarding memoir, Strauch withholds nothing as he reveals the truth behind the life-changing events that challenged him physically and tested him spiritually, but would never destroy him. In revisiting the horror story we thought we knew, Strauch shares the lessons gleaned from far outside the realm of rational learning: how surviving on the mountain, in the face of its fierce, unforgiving power and desolate beauty, forever altered his perception of love, friendship, death, fear, loss, and hope.

Just a Boy: The True Story of a Stolen Childhood


Richard McCann - 2004
    It was 3am and their mother hadn't come home yet. Next morning, the police arrived to take the children away. Their mother had become the first victim of a serial killer soon to become known as the 'Yorkshire Ripper'. Passed from one violent home to another, the children were forgotten by all except the press. As the salacious headlines multiplied, Richard and his sisters were never able to recover from their mother's murder. Whilst Richard tried to handle the terror of his violent upbringing, his sister struggled to deal with memories of sexual abuse. Without love or support they spiralled away from help or happiness. Then one day Richard McCann, having reached suicidal rock bottom, decided no one was going to rescue their lives but him. It was the beginning of an inspirational transformation. Now he is able to tell the story of how the forgotten children of violence suffer, and how they can heal. A heartbreaking, uplifting story of survival and hope.

If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood


Gregg Olsen - 2019
    Until now.For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

A Mother's Trial


Nancy Wright - 1984
    Reprint.

Unloved: The True Story of a Stolen Childhood


Peter Roche - 2007
    Finding it was like discovering that I really did exist after all . It was as if someone was saying ‘No, it wasn’t all in your imagination, that childhood really did happen, and it happened to you.’ Brought up in South London by violent and abusive parents, the Roche children knew only cruelty, neglect, starvation and squalor. As one of ten and regularly beaten, Peter searched dustbins for food and slept rough when he couldn't face going home. It was survival at all costs, every child for itself. Expelled from school at the age of 14, Peter’s life of petty crime landed him in borstal – and exposed him to yet more sickening abuse.Then, years later, a chance meeting with a social worker led to his discovery of a photograph - a portrait, taken by Lord Snowdon, of a toddler dressed in rags. It was an image that had shocked the world. The boy in the picture was Peter. Unloved is a harrowing account of a shattered childhood, told by a man who has finally found the courage to speak out. This is his story.