Unravelled: The inspirational true story of a journey out of darkness


Vikie shanks - 2014
    For it's the day that Paul, my late husband and father to my seven children, decided he'd had enough of the life he had created for us all, and took himself off to the woods on the edge of our property, and fatally slashed his neck and arms." When Vikie Shanks met Paul, he seemed to be everything a girl could ever want. Handsome, attentive, caring and musically gifted, he felt like the antidote to all the bad things that had happened in her life. Vikie had had a deeply unhappy childhood, and it had scarred her. Sexually abused by her eldest brother and dominated by a violent father, her childhood ended with the death of her mother when she was just sixteen. Unravelled is the story of Vikie's life with Paul. Of the years in which his behaviour and mental state became ever more erratic. Of his casual cruelty, his spying, his inexplicable and sudden rages. Of his growing obsession with having more and more children, and of naming them according to a precise set of rules. How, over a period of years, he all but gutted their family home, tearing down most of the internal walls and removing almost everything but basic furniture, while simultaneously creating a secret home for himself, made out of plywood, in what used to be a shed. Of his secret diaries - the tens of thousands of entries he made, documenting every minute of every day. After his death, it would be these writings that would provide such compelling evidence of what further tragedy might have happened had he not made the decision that he did that fateful morning. Because whatever was wrong with him was like a ticking bomb that even Vikie hadn't properly heard; it seemed he'd spent time planning to kill the whole family.

Daddy Knows Best: A Raw, Uncut True Story


Matt Gable - 2011
    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.

El Infierno: Drugs, Gangs, Riots and Murder: My time inside Ecuador’s toughest prisons


Pieter Tritton - 2017
    I hurled myself through the doorway and into the room. I didn’t look back.”Caught in an Ecuador hotel room with 8kg of cocaine, Pieter Tritton was no mule or dupe. He had planned and organised everything. The consequence: a 12-year sentence inside one of the world’s deadliest prison systems, where gun fights, executions and riots are a part of everyday life. As a Brit banged up abroad, Pieter had to learn how to survive – and fast – because one wrong move would mean death.This is the insider account of what it’s like to live in a place worse than hell and come out a changed man on the other side.

Momma, Don't Hit Me!: A True Story of Child Abuse (Shannon's NH Diaries Book 1)


Shannon Bowen - 2012
    Three-year-old Kevin was the victim, betrayed by the parents who should have protected him.This isn't a nice story. It's not a novel. It's raw and told in actual diary entries. Day by day and month by month, the author describes what she heard, what she saw, and how she tried to get help for little Kevin. This is a true story of child abuse, and it describes real events in the state of New Hampshire during 2011 and 2012. It's a harsh plea for child abuse awareness.

Don't Look At Me In That Tone Of Voice!: Memories of a Confused Sixties Childhood


Alex Cotton - 2014
    She spends her days stuck between a mother with permanent PMS and a desire to create a spectacle wherever she goes and a father determined to blend into the background and avoid being noticed at all costs. When you add to the mix strange childhood friends, sadistic teachers, haircuts from hell and events that had to be lived to be believed and it makes for some amusing reading. If you remember sitting in tin baths in front of the fire, outside toilets in freezing backyards and doing PE in your knickers then this book might bring back a few memories and make you smile. "Our first term at Junior School saw the whole class caught up in a sex scandal. Not that any of us realised it, we were all still as clueless as each other." "We were very excited to be at the City Hall, as for the first time we wouldn't be dancing in our underwear." "Me and Johnny went everywhere together, we were like Forest Gump and Jenny, only with Yorkshire accents" A must read for everyone that ever had to grow up wearing their mother's dubious knitting and enduring humiliating visits from the nit nurse! Volume One : Volume 2 Dont Tell My Mum! available for download now.

The Names of My Mothers


Dianne Sanders Riordan - 2013
    In 1942 Elizabeth Bynam Sanders was a young woman who left home under false pretenses and travelled to Our Lady of Victory, a home for unwed mothers in upstate New York. Shortly after surrendering her daughter for adoption, she returned to her life in Johnston County, North Carolina. She never married and never had another child of her own. This powerful and moving memoir speaks of the profound need for connection. It is a story about identity, the hunger we feel for a sense of belonging and the ineffable significance of blood.

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.

Dance for your Daddy: The True Story of a Brutal East End Childhood


Katherine Shellduck - 2005
    I had been looking for sweets. I put my hand in the bag and felt a sticky liquid on my fingers, then I looked at it. A red smear. Then I looked in the bag: bloody knives and clothes. It didn't feel good. What did it mean? I don't know. There are no answers; I daren't ask the questions'Growing up in poverty in London's East End, Kathy was eight years old when her father forced her mother into prostitution. When their mother fled, leaving Kathy and her sisters behind, the girls stuck fiercely together while being passed from children's homes to boarding schools. Then, on a rare trip home, Kathy looked out the window to see a man firing four shots into a Rolls-Royce. It took several seconds for her to realise the victim was her mother's lover, and the gunman was her father.Kathy began her haunting memoir when, as an adult, she travelled back to London, to find out who her gangster father really was. A compelling memoir of an extraordinary childhood, Dance for your Daddy is a true story of the effects on one family of poverty and affluence, violence and love.

Evil in Disguise


M.A. Comley - 2014
    Caught in an abusive marriage, Jenny Slater desperately hopes there is more to life than the lies she tells to hide the bruises. Her three children have no idea their father is a monster, and Jenny struggles with the decision to tell them of her torment, which she can no longer bear alone. Jenny’s pen pal in the States is the only person aware of the truth. When Helen pleads with her to visit, Jenny is undecided about leaving England when her family is at odds. However, when a letter from a mysterious source arrives, seeking Jenny’s help, she flies to the States. Her attempts to save another trapped soul only entangle her in another manipulative relationship.

Forever Torn


Jason Greenfield - 2013
    Forever Torn is the true and amazing story of two brothers and three generations of one family - a family torn apart by deaths, poverty, deceit and a promise made by a small boy to his Grandfather over 80 years ago.It is the story of one man who refused to acknowledge his past and his brother who remained bound to protect the secret, despite his own pain.If you have enjoyed fictional epics such as Blood Brothers and Kane and Abel, you will love Forever Torn, which unlike the aforementioned is based on a true and tragic story.

I Am Redeemed: Learning to Live in Grace


Mike Weaver - 2019
    . . . His children. Loved. Set free. Redeemed.I Am Redeemed is an open book of Mike Weaver's life, bringing into the light everything from his battle with self-hatred to the near death of his brother and bandmate, who ultimately had both feet amputated to save his life. Mike shares the lessons learned in the loss of his father and dealing with the spirit of suicide within his band, Big Daddy Weave.At the lowest of lows, with Mike feeling rejected and alone, God broke through to speak truth and life into him. Thankful for God's plan and timing and methods, he is especially grateful for the new identity Jesus had paid for on the cross. In spite of his faults and failures, Mike learned that only God can take the stuff you hate about yourself and use it to reach people.Through the million-selling song "Redeemed" and now the powerful story behind it, as well as inspiration from Scripture, you will be encouraged to embrace God's redeeming grace so you, too, have the opportunity to be beautiful offerings to the Lord.

The Secrets They Kept: The True Story of a Mercy Killing that Shocked a Town and Shamed a Family


Suzanne Handler - 2012
    If you are experiencing this issue, please visit the author's website to view and download a high-resolution PDF file of all the documents and images found in the book. We apologize for any inconvenience and we thank you for your patience. ***Every family has its secrets. In 1937, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, an anguished father made the momentous decision to end his mentally ill daughter’s life rather than commit her to an insane asylum. After signing a joint murder-suicide pact to die together, the father first killed the girl and then attempted to take his own life. Forever known as Cheyenne’s “mercy slayer,” the man survived to face the consequences of his unimaginable crime. Yet the question remains: What power on earth would compel a father to murder his own child? Now, after more than seven decades of silence, events surrounding this long-ago tragedy are at last being told. Author Suzanne Handler shares with readers the secrets of her family’s dark past. You will be moved by this extraordinary story of murder, mental illness, and the impact of secrets on families.

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.

Banquet of Consequences: A Juror's Plight: The Carnation Murders Trial of Michele Anderson


Paul Sanders - 2017
     Unbeknownst to them, their daughter was armed with a loaded 9 mm pistol and McEnroe was carrying a .357 Magnum. Both parents were callously shot dead by the pair and their bodies hidden from view. Two and a half hours later, Michele’s brother Scott, his wife Erica and their two children, Olivia (5) and Nathan (3), arrived at the house. Within the hour, they too had been pitilessly slain, in an act of violence that was breath-taking in its scope and cruelty. With his highly-anticipated third book, Paul Sanders takes the reader inside every day of the trial of Michele Anderson with his customary attention to detail, from December 2015 until March 2016. And in a unique digression from his other works, Sanders includes something he has never done before. An interview with one of the killers, Joseph McEnroe, at Walla Walla Penitentiary. Banquet of Consequences is the first of two books on what came to be known as the Carnation murders. Were the killings a premeditated act, or had the defendants acted in self defense? And what of the deaths of Olivia and Nathan? Who shot them and why? It would not be an easy task for a jury to decide. Look for Book Two: The Carnation Murders, “Beyond The Pale: Rogue Juror – The Joseph McEnroe Death Penalty Trial.” Available Christmas Eve, 2017. Reader reviews for Paul Sanders: “Move over Ann Rule and Shanna Hogan and make way for America’s newest crime writer!” “Paul Sanders is now among my favorite authors. Both of his books had me right there!” “The reader is taken into a world few of us who have ever received a jury summons will ever experience.”

I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry...


Susie Kelly - 2013
    From profound lows to sublime highs, the one constant is her pony, Cinderella. You may shed a tear at her losses, and you will almost certainly be shocked and appalled by what she does for the love of Cinderella. If you have enjoyed reading of Susie's life and travels in France, then this book will give you a moving insight into her earlier life, and allow you to judge her actions for yourself.