Book picks similar to
The Boy from Nowhere by Rosie Goodwin


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Deadly Dose: The Untold Story of a Homicide Investigator's Crusade for Truth and Justice


Amanda Lamb - 2008
    For four months, arsenic consumed the body of promising young pediatric AIDS researcher Eric Miller. No one thought that his wife could be capable of such a horrible crime—except for veteran homicide investigator Chris Morgan, a man who would spend the next four years in his pursuit of justice.

Our Little Secret


Duncan Fairhurst - 2007
    Raised in a household where secrets and sick rituals were part of daily life, Duncan was manipulated, bullied and raped from the age of four for over a decade. This is his story. Desperate to escape his father's tyranny, he tried to kill himself with an overdose. After a six-year battle with drink and drugs, which saw him living in squalor and arrested for possessing drugs, Duncan finally began to turn his life around. Courageously, he took his father to court where justice was finally done. Now happily married and with his father paying the price for his abuse, this is a devastating but compelling account of a boy who triumphed over evil.

Did You Hear Me Crying? (The Heartbreaking True Story of a Child Abused) - Child Abuse True Stories


Cassie Moore - 2012
    Yet the World Health Organisation estimates that up to 40 million children are abused every year and according to Women's Aid, 1 in 3 women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime.In this shocking memoir, Cassie Moore gives a very open and honest description of how she suffered and survived a lifetime of abuse. She describes:- The sexual, physical and emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of her Stepfather and Mother, who then sold her into marriage at the age of 16 - The heartbreak she suffered when she naively left her 22 month old baby behind when she fled to London with the man she fell in love with, only to be abused by him for a further 23 years- The self-loathing, depression and despair she felt during those lonely years - The enormous sacrifices she had to make to save herself and start a new life

The Third Gift: My Dance with the Devil (and Her Mother)


J.D. McCabe - 2020
    

No More Silence


David Whelan - 2010
    No-one knew the London businessman was born into a world beyond poverty, the son of a rapist father and disturbed mother. Abandoned as a baby, he spent most of his childhood in care and suffered appalling sexual abuse. But no-one knew. But a call from the abuser's wife, 30 years on, proved he was living in a house of cards.The youngest of five children, David was the son of a drunkard rapist father and a mentally unhinged mother. His father was jailed and his mother deserted the family, leaving five urchins to battle to survive in an inner city Glaswegian slum. Rescued, but separated, David grows up with vague memories of Ma, but no memory of his siblings.For the next years of his young life David was shipped from pillar to post, until the authorities decided the best place for him and his youngest sister was Quarriers Children's village, where he was delivered into the hands of a paedophile.Helpless, powerless and alone, it was beaten into David that no-one cared for him and no-one loved him.Finally David escapes and goes on to build a life of success, determined to bury his secret and never tell anyone what happened to him. Then he receives a phone call from his abuser's wife, and all that he has built comes tumbling down. She asks David to be a character witness on behalf of the man who stole his childhood. Instead David chooses to tell the truth, turning the tide for detectives involved in a massive investigation and changing his own life forever. This is his remarkable story.

Broken: A traumatised girl. Her troubled brother. Their shocking secret.


Rosie Lewis - 2017
    Rosie remembers that when asked what he enjoyed most about the course, Archie said: ‘the biscuits’.Social workers are concerned that Archie and Bobbi have been neglected. As Rosie gets to know the children, she begins to suspect that something far more disturbing lies in their past.Archie, jovial and polite, bats away Rosie’s attempts to talk to him about anything serious with witty one-liners and sophisticated distractions. Bobbi reacts violently, lashing out and throwing herself around. Rosie has never seen a child as young a Bobbi behaving so viciously, but it is Archie she is most concerned about as the weeks go by.After a worrying incident at school, Archie tearfully discloses the truth – a shocking secret that has left him and his sister traumatised. Horrified at what she learns, Rosie is determined to help the young siblings find a forever-home that will provide them with the love and care they deserve.

Eating the Elephant


Alice Wells - 2016
    In reality, her story offers the reader a rarely told perspective – a mother’s account of the impact of a husband’s devastating addiction to internet child pornography and how this dark world reached right into the heart of her own home.But Alice’s story is about so much more than the impact of sexual abuse. This is not a depressing book. This a fascinating and insightful journey.As a doctor, as well as a wife and a mother, Alice eloquently and intelligently tackles her own complex feelings of bereavement – mourning a man she loved and set up a life with, while slowly having to reconcile herself to the unfolding knowledge of his hidden life as a paedophile. At the centre of Alice’s story lies the wise question that helped her through it all: How do you eat an elephant? How do you face and break down the unthinkable, the insurmountable.And so piece by piece she explores the emotions, the practicalities, the accusations from other parents, the guilt, misplaced feelings of responsibility and the difficulty of finding anyone else who might begin to understand the unspeakably taboo world she now inhabits.Yet through all of this shines her deep love for her children, her optimism, her belief in recovery and her focus on a bright future for them as a family and as healthy, happy, balanced individuals.Despite the rise of extreme internet pornography in this internet-centric, international society and the resulting abuse of children, few are brave enough to talk about the fallout. Alice discovered there is little in place to help the young victims and the adults caring for them to adequately deal with it. But by speaking about these issues – by shining a light into dark places, maybe things can change…

Never Call Me Mummy Again


Peter Kilby - 2013
    In rural Gloucestershire in the early 1940s, Peter's family lived in poverty. It wasn't long before his father introduced a new woman into their lives, his mistress Flossie. On meeting her, Peter made a mistake; he called her 'Mummy'. Dragged outside, trampled on and shouted at, Peter never made that mistake again. Thus began a childhood of terrible abuse from which Peter tried time and again to run away. The arrival of a new sister, who was treated like a princess, only served to intensify the harm directed towards Peter. After running away one time too many, Flossie pulled Peter into the bedroom that he shared with his brothers and sister and committed an act of unforgivable evil. It didn't end there though - the catalogue of cruelties continued until, finally, Peter was able to escape for good.In this, his heart-breaking yet profoundly moving and ultimately uplifting memoir, Peter recounts a childhood like no other and a stepmother from hell.

The Girl in the Dark


Angela Hart - 2019
    After she’s picked up by the police, and with nowhere else to go, she is locked in a secure unit with young offenders. Social Services beg specialist foster carer Angela to take her in, but can she keep the testing 12-year-old safe? And will Angela ever learn what, or who, drove Melissa to run and hide, sometimes in the dead of night? The Girl in the Dark is the sixth book from well-loved foster carer Angela Hart. A true story that shares the tale of one of the many children she has fostered over the years. Angela's stories show the difference that quiet care, a watchful eye, and sympathetic ear can make to those children whose upbringing has been less fortunate than others.

The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside Story


Ann Rule - 1980
    With a slow chill that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one of the most prolific serial killers in America. He would confess to killing at least thirty-six young women from coast to coast, and was eventually executed for three of those cases. Drawing from their correspondence that endured until shortly before Bundy's death, and striking a seamless balance between her deeply personal perspective and her role as a crime reporter on the hunt for a savage serial killer -- the brilliant and charismatic Bundy, the man she thought she knew -- Rule changed the course of true-crime literature with this unforgettable chronicle.

No One Wants You: A True Story of a Child Forced into Prostitution


Celine Roberts - 2006
    Illegitimate and unwanted, Celine was forced by her foster mother into prostitution. Her bones were broken, her nose was crushed and she ate candle wax to stay alive.Celine was finally rescued and sent to an industrial school, where she picked up the pieces of her shattered life. She also began the search for her parents. But what she found gave her battered survival instincts the hardest knock of all...

Dirty Old Man (A True Story)


Moll French - 2013
    I knew one called Bernie.He groomed me and led me away from home." It's been all over the news lately. Teenagers running away from home. Groomed and snatched from the nest by predators, before they get chance to spread their wings.Regardless of culture or social class, it's happening everywhere; online, in schools, clubs and societies.It happened to me, Moll.This is my true story, a harrowing account of my stolen youth, and my journey to take it back. A story of the ones who overlooked my situation, and a story dedicated to those who made a difference to my life.I lived in that squalid mobile home for two and a half years with my abuser. I even married him because I felt I had no way out. From the mind games of my father, to the open arms of Bernie, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.I was helpless for a short time, but never hopeless.

Prey: My Fight to Survive the Halifax Grooming Gang


Cassie Pike - 2019
    She fell through the net of the care system and reached out for friendship, only to be consumed by an escalating spiral of abuse. This harrowing and truly shocking story captures in vivid detail how gangs of men were able to ply a child with drink and drugs, then rape her and pass her around their associates with no one seemingly able to step in and prevent it. Cassie was lost in a world of appalling degradation for years before a local policeman and caring social worker became instrumental in helping her to escape and rebuild her life. In 2016, the largest case of child sexual exploitation ever brought to trial at that time in the UK resulted in the conviction of 17 men. Since Cassie's abusers were jailed, child safeguarding policies have improved so that vulnerable children like Cassie should never again fall through the net and become prey.

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple


Jeff Guinn - 2017
    His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.

The Last Days of John Lennon


James Patterson - 2020
    “We were the best bloody band there was,” he says. “There was nobody to touch us.” Nobody except the original nowhere man, Mark David Chapman. Chapman once worshipped his idols from afar—but now harbors grudges against those, like Lennon, whom he feels betrayed him. He’s convinced Lennon has misled fans with his message of hope and peace. And Chapman’s not staying away any longer.  By the summer of 1980, Lennon is recording new music for the first time in years, energized and ready for it to be “(Just Like) Starting Over.” He can’t wait to show the world what he will do.  Neither can Chapman, who quits his security job and boards a flight to New York, a handgun and bullets stowed in his luggage.  The greatest true-crime story in music history, as only James Patterson can tell it. Enriched by exclusive interviews with Lennon’s friends and associates, including Paul McCartney, The Last Days of John Lennon is the thrilling true story of two men who changed history: One whose indelible songs enliven our world to this day—and the other who ended the beautiful music with five pulls of a trigger.