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…

    She was wrong. Her relative came too. And, as her parents had to work nights, Jayne's abuser became her 'carer'.Raped repeatedly by him, beaten, abused and battered, Jayne's life was a living hell.One thing kept Jayne sane: the love and care of her older brother, Stuart. But he had demons of his own, and Jayne watched in helpless despair as the boy who had always protected her turned into an adult consumed by rage. Out of control and on the edge, Stuart went on to commit one of the most terrible crimes of recent years....DESTROYED is the heart-stopping tale of an innocence destroyed and a family torn apart - told by a woman who has finally managed to confront her harrowing past.

    Hours later she found herself in a dark cellar, wrapped in a blanket. When she emerged eight years later, her childhood had gone. In "3,096 Days" Natascha tells her incredible story for the first time: her difficult childhood, what exactly happened on the day of her abduction, her imprisonment in a five-square-metre dungeon, and the mental and physical abuse she suffered from her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil. "3,096 Days" is ultimately a story about the triumph of the human spirit. It describes how, in a situation of almost unbearable hopelessness, she slowly learned how to manipulate her captor. And how, against inconceivable odds, she managed to escape unbroken.

    From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery.

    Just feeling the warmth of a newborn head in your hands, that new life, there’s honestly nothing like it… I’ve since brought more than 2,200 babies into the world, and I still tingle with excitement every time.It’s the summer of 1967and St Mary’s Maternity Hospital in Manchester is a place from a bygone age. It is filled with starched white hats and full skirts, steaming laundries and milk kitchens, strict curfews and bellowed commands. It is a time of homebirths, swaddling and dangerous anaesthetics. It was this world that Linda Fairley entered as a trainee midwife aged just 19 years old.From the moment Linda delivered her first baby – racing across rain-splattered Manchester street on her trusty moped in the dead of night – Linda knew she’d found her vocation. ‘The midwife’s here!’ they always exclaimed, joined in their joyful chorus by relieved husbands, mothers, grandmothers and whoever else had found themselves in close proximity to a woman about to give birth.Under the strict supervision of community midwife Mrs Tattershall, Linda’s gruellingly long days were spent on overcrowded wards pinning Terry nappies, making up bottles and sterilizing bedpans – and above all helping women in need. Her life was a succession of emergencies, successes and tragedies: a never-ending chain of actions which made all the difference between life and death.There was Mrs Petty who gave birth in heartbreaking poverty; Mrs Drew who confided to Linda that the triplets she was carrying were not in fact her husband’s; and Murial Turner, whose dangerously premature baby boy survived – against all the odds. Forty years later Linda’s passion for midwifery burns as bright as ever as she is now celebrated as one of Britain’s longest-serving midwives, still holding the lives of mothers and children in her own two hands.Rich in period detail and told with a good dose of Manchester humour, The Midwife’s Here! is the extraordinary, heartwarming tale of a truly inspiring woman.

    Intrigued and frustrated with a stalled music career, Thibodeau gradually became a follower and moved to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He remained there until April 19, 1993, when the compound was stormed and burnt to the ground after a 51-day standoff.In this book, Thibodeau explores why so many people came to believe that Koresh was divinely inspired. We meet the men, women, and children of Mt. Carmel. We get inside the day-to-day life of the community. Thibodeau is brutally honest about himself, Koresh, and the other members, and the result is a revelatory look at life inside a cult.But Waco is just as brutally honest when it comes to dissecting the actions of the United States government. Thibodeau marshals an array of evidence, some of it never previously revealed, and proves conclusively that it was our own government that caused the Waco tragedy, including the fires. The result is a memoir that reads like a thriller, with each page taking us closer to the eventual inferno.

    Still distraught, Abbie is passed to whoever will have her. Her new step mother subjects her to unimaginable physical, sexual and psychological torture and delivers her to local paedophiles in the entertainment business. During her single minded pursuit of fame Abbie’s step mother stops at nothing, beating and prostituting her own children.Abbie loses control and becomes well known to the local police. Not one person can get through to her because she has no fear, no self respect, no morals or self worth. With nothing to lose, she throws herself into one battle after another, blood and guts brawling between the skin heads and the mods on the streets of London.Her family eventually disowns her realizing they are unable to help. Abbie finds herself in the care of the Court until she is abandoned by children's homes and Social Services too. Alone, penniless and pregnant at the age of 16. Haunted by the secrets of her unspeakable past. Will anyone ever see her invisible tears?

    "I began life, it would seem, as some kind of Grimm's fairy tale creature, large and oafish, undesirable, grossly imperfect. Neatly penned in my baby book were the words, 'Debbie was a fat, unattractive baby.' Fat and ugly aside, my life was fairly normal for a couple of years. It would be a while before the abuse began. Before the smoking and pills, the rage and rebellion, the alcoholism and cancer, the broken marriages. In those first uncomplicated years I could have set out on any of a dozen different paths toward an orderly life . . . it was not to be. . . . But this is not a story of defeat."This is a book about surviving. It's about hope. It's about how each of us-ordinary, imperfect, damaged-can dream and heal. This book weaves the humorous, often outrageous, always courageous tapestry of Debrah Constance's life. Voted Woman of the Year by the State of California Legislature for founding A Place Called Home, (APCH) an organization providing services to at-risk inner-city kids in South Los Angeles, she proves that anyone can rise above life's obstacles and make a better life for themselves-and others.

    Aged seven, she has a paranoid schizophrenic for a mother and her father is a distant memory. So when Tina gets a new step-dad, who lavishes sweets and cuddles upon her, she feels wanted for the first time ever.Sadly, her new daddy isn't all that he seems. He begins to sexually abuse Tina, using chilling threats to scare her into silence.Tina is so terrified, she even gives birth to four of her step-father's children without breathing a word. Her world becomes so warped the cruelty she endures seems normal. Until eventually, the tragic death of one of her innocent children makes her see otherwise...This is the inspiring true story of how a frightened little girl grew into a fighter and finally found the strength to escape the man who stole her childhood.

    Her job is to stand in court representing the mad and the bad, the vulnerable, the heartbroken and the hopeful. She must become their voice: weave their story around the black and white of the law and tell it to the courtroom. These stories may not make headlines but they will change the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary ways. They are stories which, but for a twist of luck, might have been yours.To work at the Bar is to enter a world shrouded by strange clothing, archaic rituals and inaccessible language. So how does it feel to be an instrument of such an unknowable system? And what does it mean to be at its mercy? Our legal system promises us justice, impartiality and fair judgement. Does it, or can it, deliver this?With remarkable candour, Sarah describes eleven cases which reveal what goes on in our criminal and family courts. She examines how she feels as she defends the person standing in the dock. She tells compelling stories - of domestic fall out, everyday burglary, sexual indiscretion, and children caught up in the law – that are sometimes shocking and often heart-stopping. She shows us how our attitudes and actions can shape not only the outcome of a case, but the legal system itself.

    out-of-town hit man who spends the night after a local contract is completed. 2. A juvenile sentenced to serve any period longer than nine months in a state-managed facility.This is the story of four young boys. Four lifelong friends.Intelligent, fun-loving, wise beyond their years, they are inseparable. Their potential is unlimited, but they are content to live within the closed world of New York City's Hell's Kitchen. And to play as many pranks as they can on the denizens of the street. They never get caught. And they know they never will. Until one disastrous summer afternoon.On that day, what begins as a harmless scheme goes horribly wrong. And the four find themselves facing a year's imprisonment in the Wilkinson Home for Boys. The oldest of them is fifteen, the youngest twelve. What happens to them over the course of that year -- brutal beatings, unimaginable humiliation -- will change their lives forever. Years later, one becomes a lawyer. One a reporter. And two have grown up to be murderers, professional hit men. For all of them, the pain and fear of Wilkinson still rages within. Only one thing can erase it. Revenge. To exact it, they will twist the legal system. Commandeer the courtroom for their agenda. Use the wiles they observed on the streets, the violence they learned at Wilkinson. If they get caught this time, they only have one thing left to lose: their lives.SLEEPERS is the extraordinary true story of four men who take the law into their own hands. It is a searing portrait of a system gone awry and of the people -- some innocent, some not so innocent -- who must suffer the consequences. At the heart of SLEEPERS is a sensational murder trial that ultimately gives devastating, yet exhilarating, proof of street justice and truly defines the meaning of loyalty and love between friends. Told with great humor and compassion, even at its most harrowing, SLEEPERS is an unforgettable reading experience.

    . . . I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for ten years.”   A horrifying story rapidly unfolded. Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver, had separately lured Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight to his home, where he kept them chained. In the decade that followed, the three were raped, psychologically abused, and threatened with death. Berry had a daughter—Jocelyn—by their captor.   Drawing upon their recollections and the diary kept by Amanda Berry, Berry and Gina DeJesus describe a tale of unimaginable torment, and Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan interweave the events within Castro’s house with original reporting on efforts to find the missing girls. The full story behind the headlines—including details never previously released on Castro’s life and motivations—Hope is a harrowing yet inspiring chronicle of two women whose courage, ingenuity, and resourcefulness ultimately delivered them back to their lives and families.

    He was also a member of a sadistic paedophile ring. He would keep Paul locked up and naked in a tiny cupboard under the stairs of their home before sexually abusing him. This cycle of abuse continued for several years and also affected his brother. The cupboard became a horrific prison where fear and terror filled his every moment.The Cupboard Under the Stairs is a story of abuse at the mercy of adults whom Paul should have been able to trust. There followed a life almost destroyed by their actions. It is the harrowing story of one man’s fight for justice and an end to the horrific memories that still haunt him daily.

    Or a prediction comes true and I couldn't do anything to stop it, so it seems like a kind of useless magic."

    But between the ages of eight and thirteen Julia's father sexually abused her. While Julia's mother's obsessive domestic tendencies occupied her elsewhere, Julia's father concentrated his attentions on his daughter. When, eventually, Julia twice found the courage to reveal what was happening to her, her mother encouraged her to retract her allegations. Years later, after Julia had married and had two daughters, her father confessed - and Julia was able to record their conversation and press charges. Her father is currently serving eight years in prison. Julia no longer has a relationship with her mother and brother, but she has successfully rebuilt a new life for herself. This the dramatic story of how, by confronting her painful past, Julia has begun to build herself a successful future.