A haunting memoir of one woman's survival of childhood abuse and neglect. After All… is an inspiring story of how faith and a grandmother's unconditional love gave young Maria the strength to survive a loveless home and, incredibly, showed her the path to forgiveness. The memoir traces her journey from poverty in rural Portugal to a full and happy life in Canada. 

Charisse always felt like she was born into the wrong family and at 14 finds out that she has a different father than her four sisters. 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?

As a little girl, Sam had no idea that her life was different than anyone else's. Her days consisted of playing in a nearby pond, banished to the forest until supper by her mother. Thankfully, she wasn't alone out in the woods...her brother, Charlie, was always there to guide and protect her from anything that may bring harm—however, who was going to protect her from him?  

Raised in a primitive one-room farmhouse with no indoor plumbing, the fourth of five children, Catherine Marenghi begins her life in poverty and isolation. She leaves home at the age of 17. A decade later, she is a successful journalist with the means to buy her family their first decent house. But the past will not be put to rest so easily. Catherine unravels a web of long-buried family secrets, and a terrible betrayal that robbed her family of the home that was rightfully theirs. And she finally uncovers the story her parents never shared: the gladiolus farm that was once their dream.

I was born and broken in Birkenhead, abused from infancy by a network of every kind of pervert from ‘thinks it’s love’ to ‘show it hurts’. I was unwanted, beaten, sold, swapped, photographed, filmed, left for dead, corrupted, blamed, betrayed, ignored and orphaned. But I was also born with a fire inside me. I call it my Phoenix Fire. I am no victim—that word only describes what happened to me. Nor am I a survivor because that implies I am over it. I am a Phoenix—a work in progress. This is my story....

They are five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who leaves them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all, they have each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives "like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path". But when Regina emancipates herself as a minor and escapes, her siblings are separated.

My name is Hazel Lamb…Lindsey, but my momma called me Fireball. I am 84 years old. I only got one year of schooling, but I am self-taught. I worked hard all my life. 

Rainey Paxton was born addicted to heroin. In the fragile first hours of Rainey’s life, hospital doctors and nurses fight to keep her alive. Several months later, she is released into her parents' custody, where she is forced to live on neglect and tainted breast milk. Constrained in her home infested with drug addicts and drifters, Rainey’s drug-addicted parents leave little hope for her protection. While Rainey is still an infant, her aunt Sophie visits her and finds the baby dirty and hungry. A bond forms between the two until tragedy strikes.

In 1911 two British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, read a brochure about a revolutionary fasting treatment that promised a lifetime of good health. The sanatorium in the village of Olalla, west of Seattle, was surrounded by a beautiful forest, sparkling waters and fresh air. The sisters agreed it sounded perfect and exactly the restorative holiday they needed. But within a month of arriving, under the supervision of Doctor Linda Burfield Hazzard, Claire and Dora began to realise the frightening truth – they were not patients but prisoners at the isolated sanitorium.

Ashley Collins, a 16-year-old girl, has severe behavior issues. She regularly fights with her parents, Logan and Jane. When the fights become personal and physical, Logan and Jane decide to take matters into their own hands. They chain their daughter in the basement and abuse her in an attempt to rescue her from her bad behavior...while delving into their own deviance and depravity.

With poignant prose and a deeply authentic personal story, this harrowing account exposes the stark and painful realities of childhood abuse, painting a heart-breaking picture of the lasting pain and fear that it inflicts on its victims. Spanning 30 years, in this coming-of-age memoir, author Christina Vitagliano recounts in vivid detail the frightening nights spent when her father loomed in the doorway of her bedroom, along with the psychological toll that the relentless familial abuse took on her psyche.

From the age of four, Eve wandered through a maze of injustice, exploitation, and unthinkable parental betrayal. After escaping home at the age of 15, it disheartened Eve to find that her childhood was only the beginning of a road fraught with violent relationships. Come along on her journey of perseverance through intense psychotherapy as she learns it is possible to not only survive the aftereffects of deep childhood trauma, but also break the generational cycle for her own family.

Surviving My Mother is the harrowing, candid, beautiful story of a woman’s quest to survive, a mother’s quest to heal, and a daughter’s quest to forgive. Debbie Matzkin shares the life-saving lessons she learned, how she was able to find happiness in even the darkest of depths, and how she ultimately reclaimed her future.

Abused from the age of eight by her older brother and then her step-father, Maureen Wood quickly became numb to the constant suffering. But Maureen’s world crumbled when her own mother started to abuse her too. A Family Secret is the harrowing true story of how one little girl survived sickening abuse by the people who should have loved her most and how an innocent baby finally saved her.

Richard Trenton Chase started life without a hitch. Popular and well-liked, his future looked bright as the Cali sun...but those around knew nothing of the dark truths that he fostered. His parents’ marriage was rapidly falling apart, and soon he began to suffer from strange health problems. Rapidly declining, he decided there was only one solution….