Can You Keep a Secret?


Katie Collins - 2012
    Katie’s sexual odyssey began before she was even sixteen. She started out stripping on webcam for an audience of strangers and soon she was meeting and having increasingly adventurous sex with numerous men each week, determined to expand her sexual horizons and explore her submissive nature. When Katie discovered the secretive swingers’ scene, her behaviour escalated as she found the perfect outlet for her voracious sexual appetite. After her first nervous encounters with experienced swingers, she threw herself into the anything-goes lifestyle and became the most popular girl on the scene, proudly taking centre stage at fifty-strong sex parties. Katie’s uncontrollable sexual urge eventually led her to experiment with women, explore S&M fetishes and have sex with up to ten men in one night. Katie sought out ever more extreme sexual experiences and she eventually began to wonder if her behaviour was really an expression of her sexual freedom, or if it had grown out of something darker.Can You Keep a Secret? is the brutally honest and sometimes unsettling account of a young girl’s journey into the sexual underworld.Available via Amazon.com and iBooks.

Did You Hear Me Crying? (The Heartbreaking True Story of a Child Abused) - Child Abuse True Stories


Cassie Moore - 2012
    Yet the World Health Organisation estimates that up to 40 million children are abused every year and according to Women's Aid, 1 in 3 women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime.In this shocking memoir, Cassie Moore gives a very open and honest description of how she suffered and survived a lifetime of abuse. She describes:- The sexual, physical and emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of her Stepfather and Mother, who then sold her into marriage at the age of 16 - The heartbreak she suffered when she naively left her 22 month old baby behind when she fled to London with the man she fell in love with, only to be abused by him for a further 23 years- The self-loathing, depression and despair she felt during those lonely years - The enormous sacrifices she had to make to save herself and start a new life

Shannon: Betrayed from Birth


Rose Martin - 2009
    The 999 call made by her mother, Karen, alerted the police to the nine-year-old's disappearance and sparked a massive search across the north of England. The story dominated newspaper headlines and television news for the weeks that followed and there was even an offer of a GBP 50,000 reward for the person who found Shannon. Twenty-four days later, Shannon was found, concealed in the base of a divan bed in a flat about a mile away from her home in West Yorkshire. The truth that unfolded over the subsequent weeks horrified the public, who had sympathized with the seemingly stricken mother and even helped in the search for Shannon. It transpired that the abduction of the innocent girl had been a wicked plan dreamed up by her own mother in league with an accomplice, her stepfather's uncle, Michael Donovan. Donovan lured Shannon into his car with the promise of a trip to the fair. For almost three weeks, she was kept hidden in his home and given temazepam and travel sickness tablets to subdue her. While Shannon suffered, her captors came up with a plan to release her in Dewsbury Market, and for Donovan to find her and claim the reward money. Shannon was finally discovered when neighbors told police that they had heard a child's footsteps coming from Donovan's flat.

Redefining Normal


Justin Black - 2020
    Together, they are building forever. Alexis Black persevered through her mother’s death and her father’s imprisonment. And after escaping a long and abusive relationship, the college junior promised her foster parents not to date for at least a year. But when she meets an incoming freshman on the first day of their scholarship program, she feels the world melt away, as though it were only the two of them in the room. Justin Black lived in abandoned houses before going through the child welfare system. But when he grabs the chance for better opportunities by pursuing higher education, he can’t help but be drawn to a beautiful third-year student. Recognizing a fellow survivor, he cherishes the ease of their deep conversations and her wonderful moments of raw vulnerability that makes him fall hard. In a stark and wholehearted true story that shares how two individuals on separate paths found each other, Alexis and Justin merge their course into one full of hope and purpose. And hand-in-hand, they learn to communicate effectively and avoid patterns of trauma to intentionally break the cycle of unhealthy behaviors. Written in an engaging novelistic style, the authors put forward a thoughtful exchange of ideas and personal experiences illustrating how anybody, no matter their backgrounds, can have a life of self-empowerment and joy. Broken down into four sections that cover crucial topics such as “Worthiness” and “Mental Health,” this compelling narrative will help any who are learning to love themselves and want to end the line of toxic relationships. Redefining Normal: How Two Foster Kids Beat The Odds and Discovering Healing, Happiness, and Love is a page-turning memoir that will open your eyes to possibilities and dreams. If you like honest tales of triumph, refreshing transparency, and resilient faith in God, then you’ll adore Justin Black and Alexis Black’s inspirational autobiography. This story contains mentions of domestic violence, trauma, sexual assault, and other difficult issues faced on the road to healing.

Family Secrets: The scandalous history of an extraordinary family


Derek Malcolm - 2017
    The secret, though, that surrounded my parents’ unhappy life together, was divulged to me by accident . . .’ Hidden under some papers in his father’s bureau, the sixteen-year-old Derek Malcolm finds a book by the famous criminologist Edgar Lustgarten called The Judges and the Damned. Browsing through the Contents pages Derek reads, ‘Mr Justice McCardie tries Lieutenant Malcolm – page 33.’ But there is no page 33. The whole chapter has been ripped out of the book. Slowly but surely, the shocking truth emerges: that Derek’s father, shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted at a famous trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was unique in British legal history as the first case of a crime passionel, where a guilty man is set free, on the grounds of self-defence. Husband and wife lived together unhappily ever after, raising Derek in their wake. Then, in a dramatic twist, following his father’s death, Derek receives an open postcard from his Aunt Phyllis, informing him that his real father is the Italian Ambassador to London . . . By turns laconic and affectionate, Derek Malcolm has written a richly evocative memoir of a family sinking into hopeless disrepair. Derek Malcolm was chief film critic of the Guardian for thirty years and still writes for the paper. Educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, he became first a steeplechase rider and then an actor after leaving university. He worked as a journalist in the sixties, first in Cheltenham and then with the Guardian where he was a features sub-editor and writer, racing correspondent and finally film critic. He directed the London Film Festival for a spell in the 80s and is now President of both the International Film Critics Association and the British Federation of Film Societies. He lives with his wife Sarah Gristwood in London and Kent and has published two books – one on Robert Mitchum and another on his favourite 100 films. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and a veteran of film festival juries all over the world.

The Murder of Rachel: A Stranger Murdered My Daughter When She Was 21. This is the Whole Story


Wanda Moran - 2007
    On the morning of New Year's Day 2003, Rachel Moran left her family’s home for a quick stop at her apartment and feed her new kittens. After not hearing from Rachel for some time, a search for her began. It was two weeks before her belongings were fished out of a nearby drain and another two weeks before her body was discovered. At some stage during that twenty minute walk, she had been abducted near her apartment and raped and murdered. This heartbreaking account details the family grief and mourning, the extensive search for the killer, and the trail that followed.

Can't Anyone Help Me?


Toni Maguire - 2011
    Can't Anyone Help Me? is the shocking true story by Toni Maguire.Jackie was an unwanted child. So unwanted that her mother regularly left Jackie at her uncle's house. Which was when the nightmare started. For when his wife went out, her uncle's friends came round. He had a Special Room. In it Jackie was tied up and molested, beaten, burnt by cigarettes and urinated on. Sometimes other children were brought along. Jackie got to know the Special Room intimately.Jackie could never bring herself to tell her mother. She ended up in a home for disturbed children. She ran away, and a life of homelessness, drugs, prostitution and psychiatric wards followed. Eventually, Jackie sought help. But could she turn her life around? Would her evil uncle and his Special Room haunt her forever?Can't Anyone Help Me? by Toni Maguire is the inspirational story of struggle and survival against all odds as one young woman attempts to put her torturous past behind her and make a future for herself.Toni Maguire is the author of four bestselling books: Don't Tell Mummy, When Daddy Comes Home, Nobody Came and Helpless.

I Never Gave My Consent: A Schoolgirl's Life Inside the Telford Sex Ring


Holly Archer - 2016
    Seven men, all from the town’s Pakistani heritage community, were jailed for selling vulnerable young girls for sex. The convictions made national news, but for one girl the chilling headlines were all too real.      Holly Archer was just fourteen when her life changed forever after becoming embroiled in a frightening web of exploitation and abuse. Enduring countless violent rapes and death threats, she was forced to sleep with several men a night. As her abusers’ grip tightened, she fell into despair, twice becoming pregnant. Hours after her last GCSE exam, she took an overdose in a desperate attempt to end the nightmare that had become her life.      Her escape eventually came when, old enough to leave home, she fled to Birmingham. She moved house every six months, fearing her abusers would hunt her down. She eventually found the strength to return to Telford shortly after giving birth to a daughter, around the same time the police launched an investigation into the exploitation of young girls in the town. She underwent hours of rigorous police interviews but in the end decided she could not face her abusers in court.      Nonetheless, seven men were convicted of sex offences and jailed as a result of the investigation. Holly slowly began to pick up the pieces of her life and was given a job with a rape prevention charity. Having survived her ordeal, she now tells her full, shocking story for the first time.

Wrong Family: For Every Secret, There Is A Family


Charisse Dahlke Peeler - 2018
    In order to break the dysfunctional cycle, Charisse needs to overcome the chaos caused by generations of family secrets, extreme poverty, fanatical religion and sexual abuse all of which leaves her ill equipped to make her own adult decisions. Can she overcome a legacy of lies?

Mother from Hell: Two Brothers, a Sadistic Mother, a Childhood Destroyed


Ken Doyle - 2009
    Offaly.Though the home was dysfunctional and all the children suffered at the hands of their parents, Kenneth and Patrick were singled out for horrific abuse at the hands of their mother.Starved, beaten and sent out to steal, their story is a catalogue of abuse. It also implicates the authorities, who had pages upon pages of reports on their situation, and yet never stepped in.

More Than Just Coincidence


Julie Wassmer - 2010
    Little did Julie know how momentous this meeting was set to be. Twenty years earlier, when Julie was just 16, she had become pregnant. Worried how her parents would react, Julie had kept her pregnancy a secret right up until the day she gave birth. Ten days later, she'd been forced to make the hardest decision of her life: to give her baby up for adoption. As the years passed, Julie often wondered what had happened to her daughter. Now, through the most extra-ordinary of coincidences, Julie was about to find out. A temporary secretary called Sara had just started working in the agents' office. Sara had recently discovered that she had been adopted, and had just got hold of her birth certificate. According to the certificate, her mother's name was Julie Wassmer.

Broken: A traumatised girl. Her troubled brother. Their shocking secret.


Rosie Lewis - 2017
    Rosie remembers that when asked what he enjoyed most about the course, Archie said: ‘the biscuits’.Social workers are concerned that Archie and Bobbi have been neglected. As Rosie gets to know the children, she begins to suspect that something far more disturbing lies in their past.Archie, jovial and polite, bats away Rosie’s attempts to talk to him about anything serious with witty one-liners and sophisticated distractions. Bobbi reacts violently, lashing out and throwing herself around. Rosie has never seen a child as young a Bobbi behaving so viciously, but it is Archie she is most concerned about as the weeks go by.After a worrying incident at school, Archie tearfully discloses the truth – a shocking secret that has left him and his sister traumatised. Horrified at what she learns, Rosie is determined to help the young siblings find a forever-home that will provide them with the love and care they deserve.

My Firefly


Maggie Kirton - 2011
    Seen from the perspective of the family home, this young girl struggles to stay alive as she is slowly ripped apart emotionally, physically and sexually by her father. You’ll experience an abundance of feelings throughout this book and won’t be able to put it down. My Firefly is a flicker of light in complete darkness, leading to safety. It is cruel and brutish and bloody. But, if you want inspiration, then read My Firefly. It will change your world. . .

Our Little Secret


Duncan Fairhurst - 2007
    Raised in a household where secrets and sick rituals were part of daily life, Duncan was manipulated, bullied and raped from the age of four for over a decade. This is his story. Desperate to escape his father's tyranny, he tried to kill himself with an overdose. After a six-year battle with drink and drugs, which saw him living in squalor and arrested for possessing drugs, Duncan finally began to turn his life around. Courageously, he took his father to court where justice was finally done. Now happily married and with his father paying the price for his abuse, this is a devastating but compelling account of a boy who triumphed over evil.

I Am Jessica: A Surivor's Powerful Story of Healing and Hope


Jamie Collins - 2019
     As a child, I was known as "Jessica Pelley." When I was nine, I went to a sleepover at a friend's house for the weekend. While I was away, my entire family was murdered. I would spend the next 30 years fighting, crawling, and clawing my way through the darkness. This wasn't just a national news headline, a cold case, or a true crime show. It was my family. And my life. I was the broken little girl left behind to tell this story. I am now "Jessi," in the pages of this unapologetic memoir, set free. *** JESSI - APRIL 29, 2016 April 29, 1989. A date I cannot forget. Numbers forever seared deep into my soul. It was 27 years ago, today. Jesus. Get a grip, Jessi. They’re just numbers. They don’t mean anything. You’re giving them power over you, again. That’s what I tell myself. But the numbers—those damn numbers—they haunt me. They always will. I cannot escape them. Not now. Not ever. For most people, dates are just numbers on a calendar. No big deal. Random markers of time affixed to the top left corner of small, white squares on a page to depict days filled with choices, chances, and opportunities. At least that’s what they are for the normal people. But I’m no longer one of them. For me, they serve as numeric reminders of the girl I used to be. A tragedy that would irrevocably and mercilessly alter the life of a little girl wearing dark blue jeans, canvas lace-up sneakers, and a white tee shirt, accessorized by prominent coke bottle glasses, her hair hanging in a messy bob. Her life would be forever dismantled. Gone. The moment they told me the words. The ones that I will never forget. At that moment, my life froze and shattered into pieces, splintering like bits of broken glass, dropping down onto the ground around me, like the remnants of a cracked windshield, falling fast before the spinning mind and broken heart of a wide-eyed little girl. Life, as I knew it, was over in that moment. What happened on April 29, 1989, has scarred me forever. A day that started out normally, before it became ensnared in marred memories, tucked between folds of tragedy and darkness. The lingering memories cut straight to the core of the hollow girl left behind. The darkness delivers itself to me, every year, on schedule. Steadily. Greedily. On the 29th day of April. Relentless. Haunting. It taunts the pieces of me that remain. Every single year. I try to lift myself out of the darkness. I tell myself the numbers shouldn’t matter. Not after 27 years have passed. Jessi, It’s just another day. You can do anything you want with it. Don’t slip into the darkness. But not even the voice in my head believes those lies I tell myself. Year after year, my happiness recoils, my thoughts run to a dark place filled with foggy memories and a void that swallows me whole. The door of despair opens and I’m trapped: alone, numb to the bone, emotionally deplete, void of all reality, space, and time. I hate the helplessness as I slip further into that dark place. A place that, long ago, was filled with light. A place where three little girls would sing happy songs, pick flowers, hold hands while skipping through tall blades of grass, and sit down at the dining room table, where they would bow their heads to pray before plates filled with food, in a home filled with laughter. Then it hits me—the life-defining, self-inflicted images of horror—of their final moments—dragging me deep into the darkness.