We were human toys. Just a piece of meat for someone to play with.'Barbara O'Hare was just 12 when she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital, Aston Hall, in 1971. From a troubled home, she'd hoped she would find sanctuary there. But within hours, Barbara was tied down, drugged with sodium amytal - a truth-telling drug - and then abused by its head physician, Dr Kenneth Milner.The terrifying drug experimentation and relentless abuse that lasted throughout her stay damaged her for life. But somehow, Barbara clung on to her inner strength and eventually found herself leading a campaign to demand answers for potentially hundreds of victims.A shocking account of how vulnerable children were preyed upon by the doctor entrusted with their care, and why it must never happen again.

    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."

    Dr. Manheimer describes the plights of twelve very different patients--from dignitaries at the nearby UN, to supermax prisoners at Riker's Island, to illegal immigrants, and Wall Street tycoons.Manheimer was not only the medical director of the country's oldest public hospital for over 13 years, but he was also a patient. As the book unfolds, the narrator is diagnosed with cancer, and he is forced to wrestle with the end of his own life even as he struggles to save the lives of others.

    It’s a desperate act, a cry for help, but his parent’s reaction – good riddance – speaks volumes. Immediately Casey’s hackles are up for this poor child: it seems he either comes to live with the Watsons, or he’ll be sent to a children’s home.Spencer is the middle child of four siblings. His parents claim all their other kids are ‘normal’ and that Spencer was born ‘vicious and evil’. Casey and her family are disgusted – kids aren’t born evil, they get damaged. Although when vigilante neighbours start to take action and their landlord threatens eviction, Casey is stretched to the limits, trying desperately to hold on to this boy who causes so much pain and destruction.Casey is determined to try and understand what Spencer is going through and help him find the loving home he is so desperately searching for. But it’s only when Spencer’s mother gets in touch with social services for the first time that gradually everything starts to make sense.

    For as long as she could remember, Ashley has put her father on a pedestal. Despite having only vague memories of seeing him face-to-face, she believes he's the only person in the entire world who understands her. She thinks she understands him too. He's sensitive like her, an artist, and maybe even just as afraid of the dark. She's certain that one day they'll be reunited again, and she'll finally feel complete. There are just a few problems: he's in prison, and she doesn't know what he did to end up there.Through poverty, puberty, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley returns to her image of her father for hope and encouragement. She doesn't know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates; when the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley finally finds out why her father is in prison. And that's where the story really begins.Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she provides a poignant coming-of-age recollection that speaks to finding the threads between who you are and what you were born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.

    The story captures the struggles of a family as it was pulled apart by poverty and alcohol, yet bound by witty—and sometimes ribald—humor.The cast of characters reads like fiction, but it is actually truth. There’s the father, the sarcastic, anti-government, alcoholic, and general ne’er-do-well. He moved his family from state to state, only to leave them again for years at a time in search of construction work. He’d return with empty pockets and bizarre interests such as ESP, pyramid power, and telekinesis. The mother, an Irish Catholic, stayed devoted to him.Her lack of education and access to transportation in a small town led to a dependence upon welfare.Two older sisters complete the picture, acting as sources of tension and strength throughout the book. And then there’s the narrator, the youngest—the snoop, the clown, and the observer.In the spirit of memoirs such as Blackbird and Angela’s Ashes, the narrative addresses serious issues while avoiding self-pity. Don’t Spend it All on Candy continuously comes back to the humor that sustained them while celebrating the tenacity that led all three daughters to break the cycle of poverty.

    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...

    Sulfurously funny and intellectually provocative, 7 Tattoos is a journey without maps through the labyrinth of a human soul. There are only a few landmarks as guideposts: the ones carved on the author's own flesh. Each section of this innovative book is the story of one of Peter Trachtenberg's tattoos, as well as a daring, intelligent exploration of the themes that each tattoo evokes: death, sacrilege, primitivism, rebellion, atonement, sadomasochism, and downfall. 7 Tattoos introduces us to a man responding ingeniously and emotionally to the harrowing events of his life: funerary rites in Borneo, heroin addiction on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the deathwatches of both his parents. Though it features deft portraits of famous tattoo artists like Spider Webb, Trachtenberg's book is not about tattoos; rather it is an arsenal of ideas fired off with great emotional power. At once memoir, wild anthropology, and meditation on love, faithlessness, and faith, this stunningly original book redefines what a literary memoir can be.

    In the Dam Square in Amsterdam, long-haired young people wearing vibrant clothes and burning incense could be found meditating, playing music and discussing sexual liberation, the expansion of consciousness and the search for an inner truth. They were a generation refusing to live the robotic and unquestioning life that their parents had known.At this time, Paulo is a young, skinny Brazilian with a goatee and long, flowing hair who wants to become a writer. He sets off on a journey in search of freedom and a deeper meaning for his life: first, with a girlfriend, on the famous “Death Train to Bolivia,” then on to Peru and later hitchhiking through Chile and Argentina.His travels take him further, to the famous square in Amsterdam, where Paulo meets Karla, a Dutch woman also in her 20s. She convinces Paulo to join her on a trip to Nepal, aboard the Magic Bus that travels across Europe and Central Asia to Kathmandu. They embark on a journey in the company of fascinating fellow travelers, each of whom has a story to tell, and each of whom will undergo a transformation, changing their priorities and values, along the way. As they travel together, Paulo and Karla explore their own relationship, an awakening on every level that brings each of them to a choice and a decision that sets the course for their lives thereafter.

    Reprinted here for the first time is Franzen's controversial l996 investigation of the fate of the American novel in what became known as "the Harper's essay," as well as his award-winning narrative of his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, and a rueful account of his brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author.

     So, what did Sadie Valentine do next? After an emotional voyage through the minefield of anxiety and depression, Sadie decides to use her experience with mental health to help others. Becoming a counsellor for the support group that once helped her takes Sadie’s life in a completely new direction and she soon finds herself absorbed in her new role. Knowing that she’s aiding other sufferers through their darkest days gives her the ultimate job satisfaction, but when a mysterious and troubled man attends Anxiety Anonymous, Sadie wonders if she is out of her depth. Dealing with Aidan Wilder proves trickier than Sadie expected and it’s not long before those closest to her start to express their concerns. What led a dishevelled Aidan to the support group? As Sadie delves further into his life, her own demons make themselves known. Will unearthing Aidan’s story cause Sadie to fall back into the dark world she fought so hard to escape? Join Sadie as she guides other sufferers back to mental wellness and battles her own torment along the way… PRAISE FOR ANXIETY GIRL A fantastic insight into the fear, dread and debilitating illness that is anxiety and depression. Brilliantly written and very well observed. An eye-opening, thoroughly enjoyable and very relatable read. I honestly couldn't put this book down! Entertaining, sometimes desperately sad, very often uplifting and hugely life-affirming. Another magnificent achievement for Lacey's remarkable pen. I'll never forget it.

    This is my story of how a paedophile entered my life, home and family when I was six years old.I highlight how he attempted to break my mind, soul and spirit for his total control over me, and how I fought for my sanity, survival and freedom against his evil and constant onslaught of abuse.I was Marie; now I'm Jes.“Even when I die, I'll come back to haunt you.”It's time for Jes to bury Marie's ghosts forever.Six-year-old Marie finds her world has changed and become one of confusion, deceit and abuse.No longer called by her birth name, she is unaffectionately referred to as Scrag - a shortened version of Scraggy-knickered-nut-rag.Her will to survive manifests quite bizarre tactics, as she deviates off course into a childhood of insanity, paranoia, glue-sniffing, self-harming and messages from David Bowie ringing through her ears.Her mind contrives strategies to cope with the continued onslaught that it seems destined to endure.Adulthood is her escape route if she can survive the wait, but can demons be truly locked away in the past forever?This is the story of one child's mind at the mercy of a real life monster.

    When she was 11 years old, her parents both had their identities stolen. Their credit ratings were ruined, and they were constantly fighting over money. This was before the age of the Internet, when identity theft became more commonplace, so authorities and banks were clueless and reluctant to help Axton's parents.Axton's family changed all of their personal information and moved to different addresses, but the identity thief followed them wherever they went. Convinced that the thief had to be someone they knew, Axton and her parents completely cut off the outside world, isolating themselves from friends and family. Axton learned not to let anyone into the house without explicit permission, and once went as far as chasing a plumber off their property with a knife.As a result, Axton spent her formative years crippled by anxiety, quarantined behind the closed curtains in her childhood home. She began starving herself at a young age in an effort to blend in--her appearance could be nothing short of perfect or she would be scolded by her mother, who had become paranoid and consumed by how others perceived the family.Years later, her parents' marriage still shaken from the theft, Axton discovered that she, too, had fallen prey to the identity thief, but by the time she realized, she was already thousands of dollars in debt and her credit was ruined.

    She has written some of the most admired books of the past few decades, including her internationally bestselling first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents that is now often required reading in contemporary fiction. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a memoir about a life's work to find happiness. It's a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in an north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the Universe as Cosmic Dustbin. It is the story of how a painful past that Jeanette thought she'd written over and repainted rose to haunt her, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother.

    ‘Sully’ Sullenberger—the pilot who miraculously landed a crippled US Airways Flight 1549 in New York’s Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 passengers and crew.On January 15, 2009, the world witnessed a remarkable emergency landing when Captain "Sully" Sullenberger skillfully glided US Airways Flight 1549 onto the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 passengers and crew. His cool actions not only averted tragedy but made him a hero and an inspiration worldwide. His story is now a major motion picture from director / producer Clint Eastwood and stars Tom Hanks, Laura Linney and Aaron Eckhart.Sully's story is one of dedication, hope, and preparedness, revealing the important lessons he learned through his life, in his military service, and in his work as an airline pilot. It reminds us all that, even in these days of conflict, tragedy and uncertainty, there are values still worth fighting for—that life's challenges can be met if we're ready for them.