Book picks similar to
Cabbagehead: How Could I Have Married a Serial Rapist? by Helen LaRoe
family-dysfunction
memoir
true-crime
It Happened to Audrey: A Terrifying Journey From Loving Mom to Accused Baby Killer
Jill Wellington - 2012
An infant died in her care at the same time the unknown science of Shaken Baby Syndrome hit the media. Swept up in a media frenzy, Edmunds was accused of killing the child through SBS. She was stripped from her children and husband and sent to prison where she would fight for freedom 13 years before she was finally exonerated after updated science showed her innocence. Audrey was and is an all-American mother from the Heartland who shares her story of hope and redemption in the face of unrelenting odds. Built as the ideal reader's club book, It Happened to Audrey includes questions that challenge all readers to think of the possibilities in today's ever-changing world. Edmunds is ultimately released from prison in the middle of a blizzard and reunited with her now grown children.
Flight Attendant Memoir
Margo Anderson - 2016
Flight Attendant Memoir is an intriguing, inside view of the not-so-friendly skies seen through the eyes of former flight attendant, Margo Anderson; if you are a frequent flier or plan to fly in the near future, fasten your seat belts for a turbulent read!
Blood & Marriage: Chris Watts: With these hands
Kathleen McKenna Hewtson - 2021
Nightmare in the Sun - Their Dream of Buying a Home in Spain Ended in their Brutal Murder
Danny Collins - 2007
Within a week of their arrival, the couple had vanished. Welsh detectives, alerted by large sums of cash withdrawn from the couple's UK bank accounts, launched their own missing persons inquiry. Daughter Nicola Welch, frantic with worry but with no idea of what really happened, made an appeal on 'Crimewatch' for her parents to get in touch. Six months after the couple's disappearance, following emailed ransom demands from a mysterious figure codenamed Phoenix, Spainish police recovered the bodies of the couple from under the cellar floor of a villa in Alcoy, 40 kilometres inland.. The full horrifying story was pieced toegther in a painstaking investigation. The O'Malleys had been tricked into viewing a property, held captive for five days and forced to hand over the money they'd saved for their deposit. When they were no longer of use, they were callously disposed of in the cellar of the very house they'd hoped would be their dream home. In April 2006, two men from Venezuela were found guilty by a Spanish court of kidnap, robbery, torture and murder. Jorge Real Sierra was jailed for 62 years and Jose Antonio Velazquez Gonzales for 54 years.Investigative journalist Danny Collins helped North Wales officers track down the killers in a tense search that saw his life threatened and took him into the rough and tumble of a Benidorm underworld never seen by tourists. This story is a cautionary tale for all who seek an escape to the Mediterranean sun.
The Truth Is Out There: Madeleine
Peter Scharrenberg - 2017
In fact they said that he was gone for 30 minutes. Nobody knows what he did during that crucial period. Except for an Irish family, who believe they saw him downtown carrying a little blond girl. Read all about this and about the statements of the tapas-9, the forensic results, the lies, the strange behaviour of the parents, the Madeleine fund, the false timeline and the Portugese and British police investigation. Read also about a frustrated catholic priest, a retired businessman, a dishonest key witness, an impossible burglary and the mysterious pool picture. Make up your own mind about what happened to Madeleine on that dramatic evening in May 2007.
Cold Fury: The Cannock Chase Murders
David J. Cooper - 2020
Why would a man, married to an attractive young woman, want to sexually assault and murder innocent little girls?In the late 1960s, Cannock Chase in Staffordshire became the centre of the biggest murder hunt in Britain.The bodies of five year old Diane Tift, six year old Margaret Reynolds, and seven year old Christine Darby were found dumped there.The killer thought he was cleverer than the police and slipped through the net four times.He would have continued with the killings but he made a big mistake.Find out what happened and how the police eventually caught up with him.
I Am Jessica: A Surivor's Powerful Story of Healing and Hope
Jamie Collins - 2019
As a child, I was known as "Jessica Pelley." When I was nine, I went to a sleepover at a friend's house for the weekend. While I was away, my entire family was murdered. I would spend the next 30 years fighting, crawling, and clawing my way through the darkness. This wasn't just a national news headline, a cold case, or a true crime show. It was my family. And my life. I was the broken little girl left behind to tell this story. I am now "Jessi," in the pages of this unapologetic memoir, set free. *** JESSI - APRIL 29, 2016 April 29, 1989. A date I cannot forget. Numbers forever seared deep into my soul. It was 27 years ago, today. Jesus. Get a grip, Jessi. They’re just numbers. They don’t mean anything. You’re giving them power over you, again. That’s what I tell myself. But the numbers—those damn numbers—they haunt me. They always will. I cannot escape them. Not now. Not ever. For most people, dates are just numbers on a calendar. No big deal. Random markers of time affixed to the top left corner of small, white squares on a page to depict days filled with choices, chances, and opportunities. At least that’s what they are for the normal people. But I’m no longer one of them. For me, they serve as numeric reminders of the girl I used to be. A tragedy that would irrevocably and mercilessly alter the life of a little girl wearing dark blue jeans, canvas lace-up sneakers, and a white tee shirt, accessorized by prominent coke bottle glasses, her hair hanging in a messy bob. Her life would be forever dismantled. Gone. The moment they told me the words. The ones that I will never forget. At that moment, my life froze and shattered into pieces, splintering like bits of broken glass, dropping down onto the ground around me, like the remnants of a cracked windshield, falling fast before the spinning mind and broken heart of a wide-eyed little girl. Life, as I knew it, was over in that moment. What happened on April 29, 1989, has scarred me forever. A day that started out normally, before it became ensnared in marred memories, tucked between folds of tragedy and darkness. The lingering memories cut straight to the core of the hollow girl left behind. The darkness delivers itself to me, every year, on schedule. Steadily. Greedily. On the 29th day of April. Relentless. Haunting. It taunts the pieces of me that remain. Every single year. I try to lift myself out of the darkness. I tell myself the numbers shouldn’t matter. Not after 27 years have passed. Jessi, It’s just another day. You can do anything you want with it. Don’t slip into the darkness. But not even the voice in my head believes those lies I tell myself. Year after year, my happiness recoils, my thoughts run to a dark place filled with foggy memories and a void that swallows me whole. The door of despair opens and I’m trapped: alone, numb to the bone, emotionally deplete, void of all reality, space, and time. I hate the helplessness as I slip further into that dark place. A place that, long ago, was filled with light. A place where three little girls would sing happy songs, pick flowers, hold hands while skipping through tall blades of grass, and sit down at the dining room table, where they would bow their heads to pray before plates filled with food, in a home filled with laughter. Then it hits me—the life-defining, self-inflicted images of horror—of their final moments—dragging me deep into the darkness.
Happy Land - A Lover's Revenge: The nightclub fire that shocked a nation
OJ Modjeska - 2020
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.
Family Secrets: The scandalous history of an extraordinary family
Derek Malcolm - 2017
The secret, though, that surrounded my parents’ unhappy life together, was divulged to me by accident . . .’ Hidden under some papers in his father’s bureau, the sixteen-year-old Derek Malcolm finds a book by the famous criminologist Edgar Lustgarten called The Judges and the Damned. Browsing through the Contents pages Derek reads, ‘Mr Justice McCardie tries Lieutenant Malcolm – page 33.’ But there is no page 33. The whole chapter has been ripped out of the book. Slowly but surely, the shocking truth emerges: that Derek’s father, shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted at a famous trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was unique in British legal history as the first case of a crime passionel, where a guilty man is set free, on the grounds of self-defence. Husband and wife lived together unhappily ever after, raising Derek in their wake. Then, in a dramatic twist, following his father’s death, Derek receives an open postcard from his Aunt Phyllis, informing him that his real father is the Italian Ambassador to London . . . By turns laconic and affectionate, Derek Malcolm has written a richly evocative memoir of a family sinking into hopeless disrepair. Derek Malcolm was chief film critic of the Guardian for thirty years and still writes for the paper. Educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, he became first a steeplechase rider and then an actor after leaving university. He worked as a journalist in the sixties, first in Cheltenham and then with the Guardian where he was a features sub-editor and writer, racing correspondent and finally film critic. He directed the London Film Festival for a spell in the 80s and is now President of both the International Film Critics Association and the British Federation of Film Societies. He lives with his wife Sarah Gristwood in London and Kent and has published two books – one on Robert Mitchum and another on his favourite 100 films. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and a veteran of film festival juries all over the world.
The Last Real Gangster: The Final Truth About the Krays and the Underworld We Lived In
Freddie Foreman - 2015
THEY HAD GOOD REASON TO BE RESPECTFUL OF FREDDIE AND THEY BUILT THEIR EMPIRE UPON MANY OF THE LESSONS HE TAUGHT THEM.' - TOM HARDYFor over fifty years, Freddie Foreman's name has commanded respect, and occasionally fear, from those who work to uphold the law - and those who operate just outside of it. With almost all of his compatriots - like the notorious Kray twins - now gone, Freddie is truly The Last Real Gangster.A true entrepreneur and businessman, Freddie was one of the great personalities of the criminal underworld. A man of principle, protective of his family and unfailingly loyal to his friends, Freddie was someone who could be relied upon with complete confidence in all circumstances.Together with co-authors Frank and Noelle Kurylo - who have themselves been intimately involved in the underworld for a number of decades - as well as dozens of previously unpublished photographs, The Last Real Gangster contains the musings and reminiscences of someone who truly was there and really did see it all.Including a detailed look at the life of the Kray twins, alongside dozens of other recognisable 'Faces', this book is the no-holds-barred story of Freddie's life and the exciting and glamorous world in which they lived.
As the Smoke Clears: The inspirational true story of surviving Greece’s deadly wildfires, overcoming devastating loss, and discovering a path to renewal
Zoe Holohan - 2021
Afraid to Tell
Heidi Harding - 2017
After years of fear and isolation, Heidi knew she had to go to the police. For a long time, Chloe resented Heidi for forcing her to disclose what had happened when she wasn’t ready, while their brother, Tom, couldn’t understand how he had so misjudged his father, and at first he didn’t believe their tale. The truth threatened to destroy them all. This is the very honest story of three siblings, and how a man they trusted threatened to tear their family apart.
Incest, Murder and a Miracle: The True Story Behind the Cheryl Pierson Murder-for-Hire Headlines
Cheryl Cuccio - 2016
What really happened to Cheryl and Rob before, during and after Cheryl Pierson, a sixteen-year-old sexually, physically and mentally abused teen, hired a classmate to kill her father for $1,000 in 1986?The case was in the national media for many years. In 1988 a New York Times reporter wrote A Deadly Silence, a successful true crime book about this case using an investigative journalism style. It also became a TV movie. As a traumatized sixteen year old, Cheryl only gave one short interview 30 years ago, so much of what was reported in the media, book and movie was fabrication and speculation. Some accounts implied she lied about the abuse, others that she did it for her father’s insurance, but Cheryl remained silent for years—too young and destroyed to fight back against the speculation and frequent falsehoods or to discuss the true dark nature of the nightmare she lived every day of her young life. After her release from jail, she and her high school boyfriend, Rob Cuccio were married, they had two daughters and led as normal a life as possible. Most friends and neighbors had no idea of her past.Throughout her life, Cheryl has suffered from PTSD and other symptoms as a result of her father’s abuse and his subsequent murder, but the story doesn’t end there. People often wonder what happened next, or where are they now, because this case continues to hold a fascination. Two episodes are scheduled on Discovery ID channel in early 2017.This is not fiction and is not sugar-coated. It is the story of their life to the present, and everything is backed by documentation. Cheryl hopes through finally telling the truth about what drove her to murder in her own words, it will help other abuse victims and encourage them to speak out.On Cheryl’s forty-third birthday, May 14, 2012, after months of misdiagnosed chest pain and other symptoms, Rob Cuccio, her husband of 25 years, suffered a fatal heart attack. Doctors pronounced him dead after thirty minutes, but he’d saved Cheryl’s life for so many years, even when she wanted to commit suicide, that now she knew in her heart she couldn’t live without him. She had to do everything possible to save him. Over the years through Rob’s love, understanding and support she had come a long way from the abused teenage victim. She refused to accept that he was dead, because something inside told her he was clinging to a remnant of life.She begged doctors to keep trying and wouldn’t give up. The doctor finally said, “We’ll try for ten minutes more, but after that you have to let him go.” Then she prayed to everyone she could think of, even to the father she paid to have killed.With only two minutes of the ten left, forty-three minutes after his heart ceased to beat and supply oxygen to his brain, there was a faint pulse and Rob came back to life. It was called a miracle. The doctors never had a case where the patient was dead for so long and did not sustain massive brain damage. Everything Cheryl endured during her life had given her the strength to demand they keep trying to save her husband.Cheryl and Rob brought a malpractice suit against the cardiologist who had treated Rob for chest pain and other classic symptoms. Over at least a six month period, instead of diagnosing that Rob’s arteries were blocked and his heart was dying, the doctor never ordered tests like an angiogram, and instead told him repeatedly nothing was wrong—it was only anxiety. The malpractice case was proven, but a travesty of justice occurred in an astounding jury verdict—the doctor won the case. Some of the doctor’s testimony is included in the book.***In writing their dramatic book, they want to illustrate that damaged lives can be rebuilt. The book has a photo and media reprint section.
Can You Keep a Secret?
Katie Collins - 2012
Katie’s sexual odyssey began before she was even sixteen. She started out stripping on webcam for an audience of strangers and soon she was meeting and having increasingly adventurous sex with numerous men each week, determined to expand her sexual horizons and explore her submissive nature. When Katie discovered the secretive swingers’ scene, her behaviour escalated as she found the perfect outlet for her voracious sexual appetite. After her first nervous encounters with experienced swingers, she threw herself into the anything-goes lifestyle and became the most popular girl on the scene, proudly taking centre stage at fifty-strong sex parties. Katie’s uncontrollable sexual urge eventually led her to experiment with women, explore S&M fetishes and have sex with up to ten men in one night. Katie sought out ever more extreme sexual experiences and she eventually began to wonder if her behaviour was really an expression of her sexual freedom, or if it had grown out of something darker.Can You Keep a Secret? is the brutally honest and sometimes unsettling account of a young girl’s journey into the sexual underworld.Available via Amazon.com and iBooks.