Tess was just eleven years old when her mother sold her to a rich elderly man. Grace ran a brothel in Croydon and she plunged her young daughter into a terrifying world of sex and depravity. Grace was absolutely ruthless in her pursuit of money and had a toxic mix of low cunning and high ambition. Dangerous criminals visited the brothel every day, and Tess was exposed to things no little girl should see. A timid child who longed for her mother's love, she grew up in a world of unimaginable horrors with no one to turn to. Her mother ensured that Tess followed her footsteps and began selling herself. She later opened a brothel too, but became known for looking after her girls and running it as cleanly and as fairly as she could. Along the way she encountered some fascinating characters, including Christine Keeler, the Kray twins and Myra Hindley, as well as numerous well-known actors and politicians. Amazingly, after such a horrendous start in life, Tess has left prostitution and completely turned her life around. HOW COULD YOU DO IT, MUM? offers readers a heart-wrenching and shocking insight into a criminal underworld and is a compelling account of one woman's recovery from the ultimate betrayal.

    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?

    A world where murder, torture and fights to the death are the norm. Where the guards turn a blind eye to the lethal weapons prisoners carry . . . and use almost daily.Hell's Prisoner is the powerful story of one man's battle to survive in some of the world's cruellest and most inhumane prisons. Christopher Parnell, wrongly accused of drug trafficking, found himself catapulted into the maelstrom of madness and degradation that exists within Indonesian jails. Surrounded by murderers and sadistic violent criminals, he soon learned that life can be as cheap as a bowl of rice or a cigarette.During his imprisonment, Parnell was subjected to unthinkable sessions of torture, both physical and psychological. Left to starve and fight every day for his survival, he was forced to eat everything from cockroaches to human flesh.This is an incredible tale of fatalism and bureaucracy, of corruption and the horrors of prison, but most of all it is a no-holds-barred account of what the human spirit can endure.

    Then social services placed her in a residential unit known to be 'a target for prostitution', and suddenly Zoe's life was worse than it had ever been before.Abused and ostracized by her mother, humiliated by her father’s sexual innuendos, physically assaulted and bullied by her eldest brother, even as a young child Zoe thought she deserved the desperately unhappy life she was living.‘I’ve sharpened a knife for you,’ her mother told her the first time she noticed angry red wounds on her daughter’s arms. And when Zoe didn’t kill herself, her mother gave her whisky, which she drank in the hope that it would dull the miserable, aching loneliness of her life.One day at school Zoe showed her teacher the livid bruises that were the result of her mother’s latest physical assault and within days she was taken into care.Zoe had been at Denver House for just three weeks when an older girl asked if she’d like to go to a party, then took her to a house where there were just three men. Zoe was a virgin until that night, when two of the men raped her. Having returned to the residential unit in the early hours of the morning, when she told a member of staff what had happened to her, her social worker made a joke about it, then took her to get the morning-after pill.For Zoe, the indifference of the staff at the residential unit seemed like further confirmation of what her mother had always told her – she was worthless. Before long, she realised that the only way to survive in the unit was to go to the ‘parties’ the older girls were paid to take her to, drink the drinks, smoke the cannabis and try to blank out what was done to her when she was abused, controlled and trafficked around the country.No action was taken by the unit's staff or social workers when Zoe asked for their help, and without anyone to support or protect her, the horrific abuse continued for the next few years, even after she left the unit. But in her heart Zoe was always a fighter. This is the harrowing, yet uplifting story, of how she finally broke free of the abuse and neglect that destroyed her childhood and obtained justice for her years of suffering.

    Vanessa was nearly destroyed until she discovered a secret that ultimately saved her life.From the age of 3, Vanessa lived in daily terror of her mother's unpredictable rage. If she was 'naughty', her mother would lash out at her – with beatings, torture, starvation and making Vanessa sleep in their garden's pigsty, tied up like an animal. Her mother said her punishments were God's revenge on her for being the devil's child. Her father lived in denial of her suffering.When she was 6 years old, Vanessa's grandfather began to sexually abuse her – to her despair, aided and abetted by both her mother and grandmother. At eight years old, she then discovered that the 'mother' who hated her so much had adopted her as a baby and would never love her as her own.At the most horrific times of Vanessa's abuse, she nearly lost all hope that she would escape her prison, until mysterious things started to happen to her that allowed her to fight back.This is the story of how Vanessa survived a childhood that nearly destroyed her and how her secret led her out of the horrors of her past.Vanessa Steel was born and brought up on the outskirts of Birmingham in the 1950s. She survived her childhood ordeals and developed a psychic gift (as a young child she foresaw the assassination of Kennedy in 1963 oblivious to who he was), and started working professionally as a medium. She is now one of the most sought after psychic mediums in Britain with a long list of private clients including many celebrities, both in the UK and abroad.

    Ten years older, he promised to take care of her. Sammy thought she was in love, but in reality she was being groomed by a ringleader of Britain's most notorious child sex ring.Just A Child tells the heartbreaking story of how a young girl from Rotherham was abused by her drug-dealing 'boyfriend', eventually giving birth to his baby, right under the nose of the very authorities who were meant to protect her. When reality dawned and Sammy realised she was one of countless vulnerable child victims - many of whom were trafficked around the north of England - she took it upon herself to blow the whistle and save others from a similar fate.Thanks to Sammy's bravery, the gang was fully exposed, as well as the authorities that did little to help her. Her shocking account of how these events came to pass will enrage and sadden but, above all, it will offer hope and show why this must never happen again.

    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.

    On the very day Richard Millhous Nixon became the 37th President, Ivan was born into a dysfunctional family. From a mentally challenged mother to an incapable father and a fragile brother, Ivan was faced with challenges no child is ready for. And yet despite all the anger and frustration that came with them, he somehow managed to persevere, to become more what society deemed him to be: an executive. This creative uncensored biography recounts in vivid detail the anger and depression of growing up in poverty, the gripping homicidal effects of drugs, racism, police brutality and a broken government system. Ivan’s voice is expressed through a masterful use of syntax that reveals a soul that, while battered, is far from broken. His tale maintains steadfast a hope for a better future that would give Richard Nixon himself reason to pause. From Illinois to Indiana comes a story over forty-years that highlights the indomitable power of a determined soul. Relive some of the most unimaginable situations, leading up to a meeting with a certain angel that will change his life for the better. Find out how a word as simple as “FAVOR” can make all the difference in the world. This unrestricted story will leave you never looking at your own “Dirty Laundry” the same.

    The shocking true story of a marriage that spiraled into the most forbidden acts a man and woman could commit, and of a husband who began a campaign of intimidation against his wife that ended in murder.

    Beaten and tortured by a violent alcoholic father in 70s' poverty-stricken Dundee, Charlie's early life was one of poverty and misery, but at least he had his best friend Bonnie a German shepherd puppy to turn to. Charlie lives with Jock, his violent, disturbed, alcoholic father in a Dundee tenement. Money is scarce, and Jock's love of vodka means that Charlie bears the brunt of his abuse. Often too bruised to go to school, Charlie lives in constant fear of Jock's next outburst. Subjected to hours of physical and mental torture, Charlie can only think of killing his dad. The only thing Charlie can rely on is Bonnie, a German Shepherd puppy, brought home to keep Charlie company while Jock goes out on his drinking sessions. But even Bonnie doesn't escape Jock's brutality.Please Don’t Hurt Me, Dad is an evocative portrait of seventies and eighties working-class Dundee, where everyone is on the dole, alcoholism is rife and most people have illegal jobs on the side.Somehow Charlie escaped from the everyday struggle for survival. Bonnie wasn't so lucky. Charlie's way out came in the form of a beautiful young woman who became the love of his life and his saviour.

    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 rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbour had triggered their removal - the Irish authorities ruling that her mother must have been negligent. They were only allowed a strictly supervised visit once a year, until they were permitted to leave the harsh and cruel regime of the institution at the age of sixteen. But Kate survived her traumatic childhood and escaped her past by leaving for England and then Australia when the British government offered a scheme to encourage settlement there. Fleeing her past again, Kate worked as a governess in Paris and then returned to England where she trained as a beautician at Elizabeth Arden. She married and had a son.A turning point in Kate's life came when she applied to become a magistrate and realised that she had to confront her hidden personal history and make it public. This is her inspiring story.

    Laura Fahrenthold knew that to cope with her painful loss, she needed to do it on her own terms. So she bought an RV, took her kids and their dog, and drove across the United States and Canada in search of healing and understanding. A career in journalism fills The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles with insight and wit as Laura shares her adventures and misadventures, her deeply-layered love story, and her hilarious slice of life dispatches during her 30,152-mile road trip.

    . . difficult to piece together. It was too extreme, too violent for me to understand."Living in a state of shock and self-loathing, it took her years of struggle to confront the buried memories of that first attack and begin to undo the damage it wrought, as men continued to take advantage of her fragility in the worst possible way. Yet, after growing up with a burden no teenager should ever have to shoulder, she found the heart to carry out the best revenge plan of all: leading a fulfilling and happy life. But the road to piecing her life back together was long and painful. For Madeleine, forgiveness was the key. True forgiveness takes genuine effort. It takes a real desire to understand those who have done us so much harm. It is the ultimate act of courage. In Unbroken, Madeleine tells her deeply moving and empowering story, as she discovers that life is about how a person chooses to recover from adversity.

    What happened during those blackouts has made Sybil's experience one of the most famous psychological cases in the world.