Thereafter, he was his worst enemy. A tough-as-nails father who firmly enforces his old-fashioned ways, a mother who has little or no say, and a son with a penchant for getting into misadventures. The boy tries to convince his parents that something is wrong with him, and he is really physically ill. He suffers three years of humiliation, agony, and punishment from the school and his father. The school principal, gave him swats, detention and isolation, where he spent all day locked up in an empty storage room. His emotionally unstable father spanked him ferociously. The boy was also whipped shirtless with his shorts on leaving him with welts all over his body from head to toe. He suffered other cruel punishments as well. The school and his parents misjudge him almost costing him his life. The parents get a divorce. The mother and brothers moved back to Wisconsin from Texas. They found themselves in an all-black housing project, being the only whites there for almost four years. He grows up quick and learns that life isn't as simple as black and white. When he turns 18, he decides to move back to Texas to seek vengeance from his father in a small country town with his father and his new mother. He hasn't seen or talked to his father in almost four years. Things fall apart fast. The young man and his younger brother end up out on the streets being homeless for two months and encounters unpredictable adventures. A raw, uncut true story.

    This is the first time that I have told the whole story of the abuse I suffered at the hands of my alcoholic step father.

    The clock finally displayed the numbers that she’d been anticipating. Tossing the covers back from the bed, Bella rose. Reaching into her nightstand, she grabbed the tightly sealed envelope and shut the drawer back. Grabbing the baby monitor, Bella made her way to the bathroom –her favorite place. Closing the door behind her, Bella locked it and slid down to the floor. Laying on the plush rug that she’d had RahMeek to have special ordered, she relaxed. Tearing the envelope open, Bella began to read the words that her husband had written. The very first paragraph warmed her beating heart. Dear Bella, I just wanted to start by saying that I love you, Bells. You’ve changed a nigga. It’s not everyday that I meet a woman as super as yourself. When I think of you, peace overcomes me. You’re everything that I could’ve dreamt of in a wife. I can honestly say that you’ve changed me, baby. Each day I thank God that he created you, love. Cause without my sunshine, there would be no Reign. That was mad corny, huh? Let me get off of this mushy tip and get to the real. Come ride with a nigga…

    Because I would never, ever know peace again.' Charlene Downes was 14 when she went missing in Blackpool's seedy underbelly. Once a happy-go-lucky schoolgirl, she had become a truant - hanging out with the wrong crowd by the takeaway shops and pier. But Charlene's mum, Karen, always knew her typical teenage daughter would come home.Until one day she didn't.Karen has been searching for 15 years, campaigning for the truth of what happened to her daughter. To this day, Karen and her family have no body, no convictions and no answers. Arrests were made and a murder trial took place, but no one has ever been brought to justice.On the 15th anniversary of Charlene's disappearance, Karen shares this heartbreaking account of every parent's worst nightmare.

    This is the first in a series of true stories about a young helicopter pilot’s tour of duty in Vietnam.

    

    

    Hidden in the villages and towns of England reside eccentric characters of all types: sex-starved housewives, retired comedians, foul-mouthed parrots, monosyllabic children, troublesome students, even a wife-swapper or two!Twenty two hilarious stories from the world of home delivery taken from Lee's popular The Deliveryman Diaries Blog.

    Her twin brother. The secrets and lies that would tear them apart.There is a special bond that twins share, an ethereal connection that can't be put into words.Margaret Harrod shared that unique bond with her twin brother, Michael.As children they were inseparable, and at age 22, together, they gave their lives to the Catholic Church. Margaret became a nun and Michael a Salesian priest - it was the proudest day of their deeply religious parents' lives. Margaret cherishes those carefree childhood memories because the brother she adored is now in jail. Father Michael Aulsebrook pleaded guilty to multiple charges of molesting children, some as young as seven. And the unlikely whistle-blower was his courageous twin sister.It cost Margaret everything, but she couldn't stay silent any longer about the damage her brother was wreaking in his community. Margaret knows of that damage firsthand, having had that trust betrayed herself.Blood on the Rosary is a heartfelt, brave and inspiring memoir that tells Margaret Harrod's story - how she sacrificed everything she held dear in the pursuit of the truth and how she bravely fought her church and her community to bring paedophile priests, including her beloved brother, to justice.

    

    

    All of the laughs, the scraps, the yarns and the characters: they all left a mark on me. And I wouldn’t change any of it."Bob Murphy has never been a typical footballer.Music buff, Age columnist and Winnebago driver, he is as comfortable in a Fitzroy café or the front bar of a grungy pub as he is in the locker room.In this unique memoir, Murphy takes the reader inside his seventeen-year career, including his three years as captain of the Western Bulldogs, exploring the people, places and events that shaped him. From playing backyard cricket in 1980s Warragul to Community Cup with Paul Kelly in the 2000s, and from the joy of marrying his high school crush to the agony of a season-ending ACL rupture: the man described as the spirit of the Bulldogs has soul, and it’s made of leather.How did the country kid with a gypsy’s heart become an All-Australian captain? What’s it like to have your club reach the AFL Grand Final for the first time in sixty-two years, and have to cheer from the sidelines? How does it feel to realise you can no longer do the things that made you great?The great Australian football bard Martin Flanagan has long insisted Bob Murphy has a book in him like no footballer has written. Leather Soul proves him right.

    

    But instead of being a marriage made in heaven, it was the beginning of a hellish existence of spiralling abuse that ended six years later when she escaped with her two young children. Except it wasn’t the end at all because Dr Wynter remarried – and this woman and her child weren’t able to escape, and Helen wasn’t able to help.In this brave memoir, Helen Cummings relates an idyllic childhood growing up in 1960s Australia and looks back on a marriage that nearly killed her and her children. Nowadays Helen is ‘the mother of a famous daughter and the daughter of a famous mother’, but she also had to come to terms with being the former wife of a murderer, and who was powerless to help his victims.

    In many ways, his rise, fall, and rise again is an iconic story: a young American politician of vaunting ambition, aiming for nothing less than the presidency. Building on his father's political success, a first run for governor in 2002 led to a stinging defeat, and a painful, public divorce from Kerry Kennedy, scion of another political dynasty, Cuomo had to come back from seeming political death and reinvent himself. He did so, brilliantly, by becoming New York's attorney general, and compiling a record that focused on public corruption. In winning the governorship in 2010, he promised to clean up America's most corrupt legislature. He is blunt and combative, the antithesis of the glad-handing, blow-dried senator or governor who tries to please one and all. He's also proven he can make his legislature work, alternately charming and arm-twisting his colleagues with a talent for political strategy reminiscent of President Lyndon Johnson. Political pundits tend to agree that for Cuomo, a run for the White House is not a question of whether, but when.