More than one woman's search for her biological parents, Found is a story of loss, adjustment, and survival. Lauck's investigation into her own troubled past leads her to research that shows the profound trauma undergone by infants when they're separated from their birth mothers—a finding that provides a framework for her writing as well as her life.Though Lauck's story is centered around her search for her birth mother, it's also about her quest to overcome her displacement, her desire to please and fit in, and her lack of a sense of self—all issues she attributes to having been adopted, and also to having lost her adoptive parents at the early age of nine. Throughout her thirties and early forties, she tries to overcome her struggles by becoming a mother and by pursuing a spiritual path she hopes will lead to wholeness, but she discovers that the elusive peace she has been seeking can only come through investigating—and coming to terms with—her past.

    Indignant at the silence on the issue in India, she wrote an article for an Indian women’s magazine questioning how we perceive rape and rape victims. Thirty years later her story went viral in the wake of the 2012 fatal gang rape in Delhi and the global outcry that followed. In 2013, Abdulali published an op-ed in the New York Times called “After Being Raped, I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t” that was widely circulated. Now, as the #metoo and #timesup movements blow open the topic of sexual assault and rape, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is a brilliant and entirely original contribution to our understanding.Drawing on her own experience, her research, her work with hundreds of survivors as the head of a rape crisis center in Boston, and three decades of grappling with the issue as a feminist intellectual and writer, Abdulali examines the contemporary discourse about rape and rape culture, questioning our assumptions and asking how we want to raise the next generation. She interviews survivors whose moving personal stories of hard-won strength, humor, and wisdom collectively tell the larger story of how societies may begin to heal.Abdulali also explores what we don’t say. Is rape always a life-defining event? Does rape always symbolize something? Is rape worse than death? Is rape related to desire? Who gets raped? Is rape inevitable? Is one rape worse than another? How does one recover a sense of safety and joy? How do we raise sons? Is a world without rape possible? Both deeply personal and meticulously researched, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is a rallying cry and required reading for us all.

    It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's paradise? Well, almost ... In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books (both lost classics and new discoveries), introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.

    In this book Sally describes a shocking story of a mother's neglect and a father's betrayal.

    Sophie was routinely neglected and harmed, starved and left to fend for herself. Social workers were often involved but, despite numerous visits and extensive reports, nothing was ever done.When Sophie was six, her life took another horrible turn: her adored grandfather began to sexually abuse her.Please Will Someone Help Me? is Sophie Young's heartbreaking story about a young girl at the mercy of the adult world. With full access to her social work files, she shows how those who are meant to help children can be blind to the reality of their lives; but how, ultimately, love conquers all.Sophie Young was the eldest of three, born into a dysfunctional family that she fought for years to escape. Now forty years old, she lives in England with her husband and children, and works as a volunteer for a national children's charity.

    But how else do you cope when your mentally ill mother has killed your little brother and sister by scalding them with boiling water?This is a harrowing true story of how one little girl endured the most tragic of childhoods. But it's also the ultimate tale of forgiveness.Follow Nikkia on her heartbreaking journey, as she attempts to find answers and rekindle a relationship with her mother behind the gates of a secure psychiatric hospital.Deeply moving, Mummy is a Killer proves that love really is the strongest emotion of all.

    This is a book for anyone who has ever failed. Which means it’s a book for everyone. If I have learned one thing from this shockingly beautiful venture called life, it is this: failure has taught me lessons I would never otherwise have understood. I have evolved more as a result of things going wrong than when everything seemed to be going right. Out of crisis has come clarity, and sometimes even catharsis.Part memoir, part manifesto, and including chapters on dating, work, sport, babies, families, anger and friendship, it is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. It's a book about learning from our mistakes and about not being afraid. Uplifting, inspiring and rich in stories from Elizabeth’s own life, How to Fail reveals that failure is not what defines us; rather it is how we respond to it that shapes us as individuals. Because learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. And everyone needs a bit of that.

    I suddenly feel very differently about my forthcoming operation.”In July 2012, aged thirty, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery—a process she chronicled with unflinching honesty in a serialised national newspaper column. Trans tells of her life to the present moment: a story of growing up, of defining yourself, and of the rapidly changing world of gender politics.Fresh from university, eager to escape a dead-end job, she launches a career as a writer in a publishing culture dominated by London cliques and still figuring out the impact of the Internet. She navigates the treacherous waters of a world where, even in the liberal and feminist media, transgender identities go unacknowledged, misunderstood or worse. Yet through art, film, music, politics and football, Jacques starts to become the person she had only imagined, and begins the process of transition. Interweaving the personal with the political, her memoir is a powerful exploration of debates that comprise trans politics, issues which promise to redefine our understanding of what it means to be alive.Revealing, honest, humorous, and self-deprecating, Trans includes an epilogue with Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?, in which Jacques and Heti discuss the cruxes of writing and identity.From the Hardcover edition.

    He was a seemingly respectable businessman from Canada, so attentive and caring it was easy to ignore the warning signs - until he started, step by step, to take over her life. Six months after they first met Al Amin's web of lies started to unravel and Alison became aware that he had a sinister dark side. When she tried to end the relationship, the unthinkable happened and she found herself the victim of an escalating campaign of terror. Even when Al Amin was found with knives and guns, the police had no powers to detain him. Nobody could have imagined the events that were to follow, as Alison was left fearing for her life. It would take all her strength to survive. Brave and gripping, Stalked tells of one young woman's fight against the man who terrorized her, and her determination to defeat the fear and live a normal life.

    The job: to delve into the psyche of convicted men and women to try to understand what lies behind their often brutal actions. Follow in the footsteps of Kerry Daynes, one of the most sought-after forensic psychologists in the business and consultant on major police investigations. Kerry's job has taken her to the cells of maximum-security prisons, police interview rooms, the wards of secure hospitals and the witness box of the court room. Her work has helped solve a cold case, convict the guilty and prevent a vicious attack. Spending every moment of your life staring into the darker side of life comes with a price. Kerry's frank memoir gives an unforgettable insight into the personal and professional dangers in store for a female psychologist working with some of the most disturbing men and women.

    If you passed me in the street, you wouldn’t notice either. You might see the small scar on my neck that was inflicted by a knife being pressed to my throat. You might notice a lump on my left wrist where the bones didn’t heal properly after it was fractured. You might notice small scars on my arms where I was used as a live ashtray. But you won’t see the scars that are deep inside me – the ones which take a lifetime to heal. They’re ingrained in me, trapped under the surface like fish under a frozen lake, waiting for the moment when the surface cracks and they can come to life again. These mental scars are the demons that haunted me when I was at my lowest point. They came out to torment me, rearing their ugly head in the darkness. Then they would retreat again for a time, making me think I’d got over what happened to me, only to show up when I least expected it. But with every year that passed, I learnt how to handle the demons more. Every sick and twisted thing that happened in my childhood has made me into the woman I am today. I’m a survivor. My name is Sarah and this is my story…

    Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital—or ice pick—lobotomy.Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together. But even as he began to live the “normal” life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question: Why?“October 8, 1960. I gather that Mrs. Dully is perpetually talking, admonishing, correcting, and getting worked up into a spasm, whereas her husband is impatient, explosive, rather brutal, won’t let the boy speak for himself, and calls him numbskull, dimwit, and other uncomplimentary names.”There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor’s attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn’t intervened on his son’s behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers. “December 3, 1960. Mr. and Mrs. Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on. I suggested [they] not tell Howard anything about it.”Through his research, Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman’s sons about his father’s controversial life’s work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor’s files are stored, he finally came face to face with the truth.Revealing what happened to a child no one—not his father, not the medical community, not the state—was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man. Without reticence, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.

    Powered by Amy’s charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book full of words to live by.

    No one in this radical splinter sect of the Mormon Church was more powerful or terrifying than its leader Warren Jeffs—Rachel’s father.Living outside mainstream Mormonism and federal law, Jeffs arranged marriages between under-age girls and middle-aged and elderly members of his congregation. In 2006, he gained international notoriety when the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted List. Though he is serving a life sentence for child sexual assault, Jeffs’ iron grip on the church remains firm, and his edicts to his followers increasingly restrictive and bizarre.In Breaking Free, Rachel blows the lid off this taciturn community made famous by John Krakauer’s bestselling Under the Banner of Heaven to offer a harrowing look at her life with Warren Jeffs, and the years of physical and emotional abuse she suffered. Sexually assaulted, compelled into an arranged polygamous marriage, locked away in "houses of hiding" as punishment for perceived transgressions, and physically separated from her children, Rachel, Jeffs’ first plural daughter by his second of more than fifty wives, eventually found the courage to leave the church in 2015. But Breaking Free is not only her story—Rachel’s experiences illuminate those of her family and the countless others who remain trapped in the strange world she left behind.A shocking and mesmerizing memoir of faith, abuse, courage, and freedom, Breaking Free is an expose of religious extremism and a beacon of hope for anyone trying to overcome personal obstacles.

    When, aged 13, his father brought a charge against him in order to remove him from the family home, John found himself in Juvenile Court – from here he was sent to the notorious St. Vincent’s school, run by a group of Catholic Irish Brothers.Beatings and abuse were a part of daily life – both from John’s fellow pupils, but also from the brothers, all of which was overseen by the sadistic headmaster, Brother De Montfort. Tormented physically and sexually by one boy in particular, and by the Brothers in general, John quickly learnt to survive but at the cost of the loss of his childhood.Please don’t make me go, tells in heart-rending detail the day-to-day lives of John and the other boys – the beatings, the weapons fashioned from toilet chains and stones, the loneliness – but we also see the development of John’s love of reading, his growing friendship with Father Delaney and his best friend, Bernard, and his unstinting love for his mother whom he feared was suffering at the hands of his violent father.A painfully, brutally honest account, Please don’t make me go is also an example of the resilience of the human spirit as it documents how John learnt to survive and come through his ordeal.