This true story begins on a sunny July morning in 2003, just outside of Flint Michigan, when an eighty year old grandmother has mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth. Days later the charred remains of her car were identified, after being completely destroyed by an intentional fire; but she was nowhere to be found. We had to find her. She was my mom...

    They did not talk about their mom's extended absences or why their dad put Scotch tape on the backdoor frame. To cover up the chaos, they kept their clothes neat and got good grades. But when they were teenagers, an arson fire destroyed their home and killed their parents. Rumors were thick that summer that smart, angry, fourteen-year-old Lisa set the blaze. Then, adult powers they did not understand squelched the investigation. As teenagers accustomed to keeping silent, they packed up and moved on.Forty years later, Leigh, the oldest, decided it was time to find out who killed their parents. She obtained copies of the police and fire investigations and began unwrapping the past. This memoir is the story of that investigation as Leigh tried to piece together the truth, but found more lies instead. With the help of her sisters, Leigh was able to reconstruct much of what happened to them in the beach towns around Atlantic City in the early 1970s. After the fire, one sister turned to heroin and another to alcohol; Leigh became Miss Atlantic City. Then, one by one, they each moved to California and shut the door on their past, even though they privately wondered whether one of them killed Frank and Nancy Overton. It's funny. They never wondered whether one of their parents was trying to kill them.

    He has cult status and commands a respect that few, even in the violent world he moves in, can equal. To him, violence is simply an accepted part of his profession. He doesn't exaggerate it, he can't excuse it and he refuses to apologize for it. His name may mean nothing to you—he's no actor, no showman, no wannabe celebrity. He does, however, live by a merciless code, and though he may not have cloven hooves and a tail, if he goes after someone, all hell comes with him.

    Huffman knows what it means to fight. He learned long before he entered the ring, when daily survival was a fierce battle.Booker T: From Prison to Promise details Huffman’s struggles from his youngest years. Losing his father at only ten months and his mother at only thirteen years old, Booker was forced along with his seven siblings to navigate life alone. Wrestling with hunger, poverty, and criminal influences, he struggled to survive in urban Houston and soon spiraled out of control, gravitating toward gang life and ultimately landing in prison.Finally confronting himself while incarcerated, Booker made a promise to rise above crime and hopelessness to accomplish greater things and become an agent of change in his community. From anonymity to stardom, from rags to riches, Booker T takes us on his journey From Prison to Promise . . . Now can you dig that, SUCKA?

    Sixteen year old Tina S. leaves behind her dysfunctional family to join her new friend, April, a wild and charismatic teenage runaway, living in the station's deepest tunnels amidst the homeless and drug addicted. Soon she's caught up in in a romantic relationship with April and finds herself following in her footsteps: bingeing on crack cocaine, stealing, rolling drunks, and panhandling to support their habits and to survive on the New York City streets. In her own words Tina describes her harrowing descent into crack addiction, being raped in the tunnels, several arrests and jail terms served with hardened criminals on Rikers Island, and her devastation over April's sudden, brutal death. Finally faced with the reality that she might not make it through one more day, Tina takes her first tentative steps towards a normal life.With the help of a homeless advocate and his wife, a gay uncle dying of AIDS, and Jamie Pastor Bolnick, the writer who was to become her coauthor on this book, Tina turns her life around and begins the long struggle back to the world of the living.

    It includes tales of living through a lifetime of dysfunction, violence and terror at the hands of both her father and other nefarious individuals who would seek to perpetuate the cycle. More importantly though, it is also a story of how they did not succeed in this hateful quest, as Jvonne struggled on and through to the other side to embrace love, laughter and the pursuit of personal happiness. Part of this amazing transformation even led to her adoption of a biracial infant, an event that served both as a healing elixir to her soul and a grandiose “!#%& you” to all the ugliness that hate brings.

    On the run, he was pursued by bikers and a neo-Nazi gang blood-thirsty for revenge, while a homicide detective launched a nationwide manhunt.As the mist from his smoking gun fades, readers are left with an unexpected portrait of a stoic philosopher with a wealth of charm, a glorious turn of phrase and a fanatical devotion to his daughter.

    In desperation, he agreed to smuggle cocaine out of Venezuela. Almost inevitably, he and his girlfriend, Sam, were caught.The price they paid was a ten-year sentence in the hell of the overcrowded Venezuelan prison system, notorious for official corruption and abuse, and rife with weapons and gangs. At one point, Frank was held in the remote El Dorado prison, better known for being the one-time home of Henri Charrière, or Papillon. He witnessed countless murders as gang leaders fought for power, and he had to become as ruthless as his fellow inmates in order to survive. In an attempt to dull the reality of the horrendous conditions, he succumbed to drugs.After enduring years of systematic beatings by the guards and attempts on his life by inmates, Frank suffered more than one breakdown. He lost over four stone and was riddled with disease, but somehow he found the strength within himself to survive and was eventually released in 2004 after serving over seven years of his sentence. During the long walk back from hell, Frank decided to tell his story.

    Jesse walked out of prison a free man and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Never, that is, until 1949 when he came out of hiding after almost 60 years to claim his inheritance. In the course of proving his identity to a court Jesse told some amazing stories of his time when he was an outlaw but his biggest revelation of all was that his good friend Billy the Kid was still alive. Jesse led a young lawyer to an old man named not William H. Bonney but William H. Roberts who after some consideration finally agreed to come forward and reveal himself as Billy the Kid only if he would help him obtain a pardon from the Governor before his death so he could die a free man. You see, Billy the Kid was still wanted for murder and was condemned to hang. To come forward and reveal himself was to risk being arrested and put to death. This was a risk that William H. Roberts was willing to take. He sat down with the young lawyer and told his story. That story is the one true autobiography of Billy the Kid and told only one time, to one man. This is his story.

    Using vignettes and illustrations from family, education, religion, the military, and politics, Black presents a determined and unyielding faith in his Creator. His confidence in God's control of his life led not only to amazing achievement but also to abiding peace when things didn't work out as planned. From the Hood to the Hill describes the obstacles and unlikely paths that led Barry Black to become: a two-star Navy admiral; the only African-American to ever serve as U.S. Navy Chief of Chaplains; and the first person of color in the nation's history to serve as Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. Inside each chapter, he offers the lessons he has learned.

     “Crime Squad takes readers on an unforgettable ride as Mike, an innocent lad from the Yorkshire Dales, learns to grow up fast and stay alive on the mean streets of London.” Weebly “A great read… gave a great feel of policing in the 80's and 90's in London, particularly with the change in drug culture and guns.” Netgalley “Well-written and informative, giving an insight into the workings of the police force in London in 1980s. Recommended.” Wendy Rhodes - Reviewer “A rollercoaster read of life on the front line.” Sir Hugh Orde OBE QPM “An accurate and fascinating picture of police work at the sharp end.” Detective Superintendent John Jones (rtd) “Gripping from first to last.” Andy Trotter OBE QPM London 1988: PC Mike Pannett, fresh out of training school, had suspected life in the Metropolitan Police was going to be a bit different from rural North Yorkshire, but the 23-year-old had no idea by just how much. Sent south of the river to Battersea, then top of London’s crime league tables, Mike was thrown straight into the deep end – during his first drugs raid he ended up staring down the wrong end of a double-barrelled shotgun. Mike’s arrival in London coincided with the explosion in crack cocaine use. In the early 1990s, Yardies – criminal gangs from Jamaica and the USA - flooded into the capital, starting in Battersea, where they brought all manner of guns with them, along with a live-fast die-young attitude. Rivals were ruthlessly eliminated and whole neighbourhoods fell under the control of drug gangs. Mike and his police colleagues fought back with extraordinary valour and inventiveness and with the support of the local community they started to turn the tide – but then came the unthinkable crime: the murder in 1993 of PC Patrick Dunne, one of Mike’s colleagues, by Gary Nelson, aka ‘Tyson’, a criminal the national press described as ‘the most dangerous man ever to walk to the streets of Britain.’ Mike was drawn into the long and exceptionally dangerous hunt for Nelson that would go on to cost the life of another police officer. Crime Squad takes readers on an unforgettable ride as Mike, an innocent lad from the Yorkshire Dales, learns to grow up fast and stay alive on the mean streets of London.

    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.

    This is the story of Grace's journey from the snow-capped peaks of Banff, Canada, down the spine of the Rocky Mountains, and finally into the forbidding desert of New Mexico. Grace battled many difficulties, including an infection that put her two days behind the nearest competitor, Multiple Sclerosis, the elements, demons from her past, as well as a secret that even she didn't know. Ride with Grace and laugh at her hilarious interactions with the oddballs she encountered along the way. Divide By One is an adventure story with heart and humor that shows how indomitable will and perseverance can change the way we see our limitations and our world.

    And yet, when she finally does have something like that life, as a wife and mother in 1980s London, she is the one blaring music from her room, necking vodka and valium and making an almighty mess of her home and family.Cleaning other people’s houses, eventually, is the only option left. At 50 years old, post rehab, living alone in a Hackney bedsit, Michele finds herself finishing her working life as she had begun, “in a dumb job that you do when you can’t really do anything else...”This is a remarkable, powerful, and often unbearably funny memoir in which cleaning and getting clean intertwine as a strange and magical form of redemption. Michele Kirsch is a Nora Ephron for the modern age.

    Anyone who has followed Mary's career in film and as the popular in-your-face TV and stage character Effie, may be shocked to learn of the trials she was going through at the time. But they won't be surprised by the love she gives out to all, and receives in return, from family and friends.By giving us an intimate view of her experiences—including meeting George, the love of her life, and their journey to parenthood—we also see the universal truth that in life there's loss and, amongst the pain and tragedy of that, there is the power of hope and humour. Mary's story of the deaths of her father, her grandmother and her daughter Stevie is at times heartbreaking but, ultimately, All I Know is an enriching and uplifting celebration of life.