Charmaine Richardson's highly personal and revealing account describes how she was abused as a child within her comfortable, middle-class London home. It describes the `time bomb' for her and her family, something that led to depression, counselling and a chance meeting with sex-offender expert Ray Wyre, who she married in 1999. A large part of the book is given over to her life with Ray, his work at the Gracewell clinic and an analysis of his book, The Murder of Childhood (2nd Edn., Waterside Press, 2018) and the failure of politicians to heed his warnings about how we need to understand and deal with perpetrators. The book also contains the author's own views on bringing-up children to feel safe, comfortable and resistant to the devious ways in which paedophiles operate, including by the language we use with `little people'. Shows how the author was left to unpick the chaos of Wyre's personal life, his debts incurred in pursuit of his mission, gambling and the free-spending lifestyle that stood at odds with and was an escape from his intense professional commitment.

The Sunday Times bestseller Over her ten years of documentary film making, Stacey Dooley has covered a wide variety of topics, from sex trafficking in Cambodia to Yazidi women fighting back in Syria. At the heart of all her reporting are incredible women in extraordinary situations: sex workers in Russia, victims of domestic violence in Honduras, and many more. On the Frontline with the Women who Fight Back, draws on Stacey's encounters with the brave, wonderful women she has met over her career to explore the issues of gender equality, domestic violence, sexual identity and, at its centre, womanhood in the world today.

Oil is one of the world's most important commodities, but few people know how its extraction affects the residents of petroleum-producing regions. In the 1960s, the Texaco corporation discovered crude in the territory of Ecuador's indigenous Cofan nation. Within a decade, Ecuador had become a member of OPEC, and the Cofan watched as their forests fell, their rivers ran black, and their bodies succumbed to new illnesses. In 1993, they became plaintiffs in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit that aims to compensate them for the losses they have suffered. Yet even in the midst of a tragic toxic disaster, the Cofan have refused to be destroyed. While seeking reparations for oil's assault on their lives, they remain committed to the survival of their language, culture, and rainforest homeland. Life in Oil presents the compelling, nuanced story of how the Cofan manage to endure at the center of Ecuadorian petroleum extraction. Michael L. Cepek has lived and worked with Cofan people for more than twenty years. In this highly accessible book, he goes well beyond popular and academic accounts of their suffering to share the largely unknown stories that Cofan people themselves create-the ones they tell in their own language, in their own communities, and to one another and the few outsiders they know and trust. Their words reveal that life in oil is a form of slow, confusing violence for some of the earth's most marginalized, yet resilient, inhabitants.

THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: Narrative that is direct, candid, unpretentious. A member of a highly privileged caste in Soviet society... reduced to a 'mozho' girl mixing with foreigners, with instructions to report on them... the real story is in the simple, graphic and almost entirely persuasive account of her observations - some amusing and others horribly or pitifully gruesome. In the unforgiving WWII climate of 1940, 21-year old Nora is faced with a perilous ultimatum: Enlist with Stalin's secret police as a honey trap, or face the death of her family. Despairingly she agrees. Nora finds herself struggling to seduce her target, John Murray, a British Embassy cypher in Moscow. As two disparate lives intertwine, their desperate escape leads the couple through frozen Arctic wastelands, clutching forged papers and hopes not just for survival but for a future together.

Tom Batiuk spent several years as a middle school art teacher before creating the comic strip Funky Winkerbean in 1972. Originally a ""gag-a-day"" comic strip that portrayed life in high school, Funky has evolved into a mature series of real-life stories examining such social issues as teen dating abuse, teen pregnancy, teen suicide, violence in schools, the war in the Middle East, alcoholism, divorce, and cancer. In 1999, Lisa Moore, one of Funky's friends and a main character, discovered she had breast cancer. Batiuk, unsure about dealing with such a serious subject on the funny pages, decided to go ahead with the story line. He approached the topic with the idea that mixing humor with serious and real themes heightens the reader's interest. Lisa and husband Les faced the same physical, psychological, and social issues as anyone else dealing with the disease. After a mastectomy and chemotherapy, Lisa was cancer free. She finished her law degree, opened a practice, and had a baby daughter, Summer. Then, in the spring of 2006, the cancer returned and metastasized. ""Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe"" is a collection of both the 1999 comic strips on Lisa's initial battle with cancer and the current series examining her struggle with the disease and its outcome. Additionally, it contains resource material on breast cancer, including early detection, information sources, support systems, and health care.

Powerful and inspiring, I Own You is the shocking story of how one woman overcame her harrowing past to find happiness on her own terms. To the outside world, Dawn McConnell was a successful businesswoman. No one knew that every waking minute of her day was controlled by her husband Stuart. She had been subjected to years of coercion - belittled, threatened and hit. He told her that she belonged to him, that he would do horrific things to her if she left. Dawn met Stuart when she was fourteen. She had already been abused by her older brother as a child and was all too easily groomed by this local businessman who seemed to love her. Pregnant at sixteen, rejected by her parents, she ended up marrying him. And then it started, the long campaign to break her. She was forced to work all hours for Stuart, making money for him to spend. Then one day Dawn found the strength to fight back - against the brother who abused her, and the husband who made her life hell. To have her freedom and get revenge on Stuart she would risk losing everything . . .

The Girl Who Just Wanted To Be Loved is a heart wrenching true story from foster mum and Sunday Times bestseller Angela Hart. Eight-year-old Keeley looks like the sweetest little girl you could wish to meet, but demons from the past make her behaviour far from angelic. She takes foster carer Angela on a rocky and very demanding emotional ride as she fights daily battles against her deep-rooted psychological problems. Can the love and specialist care Angela and husband Jonathan provide help Keeley triumph against the odds? This is a true story that shares the tale of one of the many children Angela has fostered over the years. Angela's stories show the difference that quiet care, a watchful eye and sympathetic ear can make to children who have had more difficult upbringings than most.

'Powerful and sometimes shocking...' Sunday Times In this powerful book, Dr Shirin Ebadi, Iranian human rights lawyer and activist, tells of her fight for reform inside Iran, and the devastating backlash she faced after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Having fought tirelessly for democracy, equality before the law and freedom of speech, Ebadi became a global voice of inspiration. Yet, inside her own country, her life has been plagued by surveillance, intimidation and violence. Until We Are Free tells shocking stories of how the Iranian authorities eventually forced her into exile. Her sister and daughter were detained, her husband was enmeshed in an espionage plot with another woman, her Nobel medal was stolen from her safety deposit box, and her offices in Tehran were ransacked. An illuminating depiction of life in Iran today as well as the account of Ebadi's personal struggle to uphold her work and keep her family together, Until We Are Free is ultimately a work of hope and perseverance under circumstances of exceptional difficulty.

In 1735 a team of French scientists set out on a daring expedition into the South American wilderness to resolve one of the great scientific challenges of the time: the precise size and shape of the Earth. Scaling the Andes and journeying along the Amazon, the mapmakers faced all manner of danger, while madness, disease and violent death each took their toll. However one, Jean Godin, fell in love with a local girl called Isabel Grameson. When the time came for the expedition to return to France, Godin travelled ahead to ensure the way was safe for his new family. But on reaching French Guiana, disaster struck: Spain and Portugal closed their borders and he was stranded, unable to return to Isabel. What followed lies at the core of this extraordinary tale - a heartbreaking 20-year separation that ended when Isabel, believing she might never see her husband again, decided to make her own way across the continent: a journey that began in hope but became hell on earth... Drawing on his own experience retracing Isabel's epic trek as well as contemporary records, Robert Whitaker recounts a captivating true story of love and survival set against the backdrop of what many still regard as 'the greatest expedition the world has ever known'.

Henry Friedman was robbed of his adolescence by the monstrous evil that annihilated millions of European Jews and changed forever the lives of those who survived. When the Nazis overran their home town near the Polish-Ukrainian border, the Friedman family was saved by Ukrainian Christians who had worked at their farm. Henry, his mother, his younger brother, and a young schoolteacher-who had been hired by his father when Jews were forbidden to attend school-were hidden in a loft over the animal stalls at a neighbor's farm; his father hid in another hayloft half a mile away. When the family was liberated by the Russians after eighteen months in hiding, Henry, at age fifteen, was emaciated and too weak to walk. The Friedmans eventually made their way to a displaced persons camp in Austria where Henry learned quickly to wheel and deal, seducing women of various ages and nationalities and mastering the intricacies of dealing in the black market. In I'm No Hero, he confronts with unblinking honesty the pain, the shame, and the bizarre comedy of his passage to adulthood. The family came to Seattle in 1949, where Henry Friedman has made his home ever since. In 1988 he returned with his wife to Brody and Suchowola, where he succeeded in finding Julia Symchuk, who, as a young girl, had warned his father that the Gestapo was looking for him, and whose family had hidden the Friedmans in their loft. The following year he was able to bring Julia to Seattle for a triumphal visit, where she was honored in many ways, although, as Friedman writes, "in her own country she had never been honored with anything except hard work." Like many other survivors, Henry Friedman has found it difficult to confront his past. Like others, too, he has felt the obligation to bear witness. Now retired, he devotes much of his time to telling his story, which he believes is a message of hope, to thousands of schoolchildren throughout the Pacific Northwest. He has received national recognition for his role in establishing the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and as a founder of the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center.

This is the true story of an unusual hero. Tall, dark and handsome and often surrounded by an admiring crowd, this is no film star but an eight-year old bay gelding from the Mounted Branch of the Metropolitan Police. Horses such as Merlin go through a challenging training process to prepare them for life in the force. There are three stages of training; red, amber and green. Reports from his early training show that Merlin was sometimes naughty and spirited - but once his training was complete he was disciplined enough to maintain order at some of the toughest and most high-profile events in London. This book looks at Merlin's daily life and duties and his fascinating partnership with his mounted constable, Karen Howell. When Karen first met Merlin during his training it was love at first sight and over the years she has developed an intriguing bond with this brave, eccentric and deeply individual character.

This timeless classic is an exciting true story of survival against all odds. 'There was a sudden sickening sense of disaster. I felt a great lurch and heel, and a thunder of sound filled my ears. I was conscious, in a terrified moment, of being driven into the front and side of my bunk with tremendous force. At the same time there was a tearing cracking sound, as if Tzu Hang was being ripped apart, and water burst solidly, raging into the cabin. There was darkness, black boards, and I fought wildly to get out, thinking Tzu Hang had already gone. Then suddenly I was standing again, waist deep in water, and floorboards and cushions, mattresses and books were sloshing in wild confusion round me.' Miles Smeeton and his wife Beryl sailed their 46-ft Bermuda ketch, Tzu Hang, in the wild seas of Cape Horn, following the tracks of the old sailing clippers through the world's most notorious waters. This is an exciting true story of survival against all odds, but it is also a thoughtful book which provides hard-learned lessons for other intrepid sailors. As Nevil Shute writes in his foreword: 'It has been left to Miles Smeeton to tell us in clear and simple language just where the limits of safety lie.'

The Butterfly's Cage, is the heart wrenching, inspiring true story of a young Pakistani woman's flight to freedom. Suffering familial abuse, tyranny and disownment as a result of refusing to submit to the abuse received by not one but two violent husbands, Shahnaz* opens the doors to a hidden world, illustrating how cultural values can allow human rights violations to prosper and the cost of reputation is integrity, respect and love. Born into a wealthy family with homes in both Britain and Pakistan, she was forced to give up school at the age of 12 in order to care for her younger brothers. There followed two arranged marriages, to a violent, drug addicted, petty criminal and then to a vicious, controlling sadist. Her family ignored her pleas to escape her marital hell, instead casting her as the wicked, immoral daughter whose selfish desires threatened to damage the family's reputation. After years of abuse and intimidation in both England and Pakistan, Shahnaz fled the family homes to try to start a new life in London with her young daughter only to be lured back to Pakistan under false pretences. Stripped of her possessions and kept under house arrest, Shahnaz was in constant fear of her life for a further 18 months, enduring brutal beatings and diabolical threats to her life. Through her intelligence, courage and unwavering fortitude alone, Shahnaz overcame adversity, won her freedom, her family's acceptance and now lives in England with her daughter and third husband, embarking on a career in social care. Six years on, wishing to reveal the pain and suffering that can be caused by misguided cultural attitudes and social values, Shahnaz has written her story. *Shahnaz is not her real name - she does not want herself or her family to be identified

On January 19, 2000, a fire raged through Seton Hall University's freshman dormitory, killing three students and injuring 58 others. Among the victims were Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos, roommates from poor neighbourhoods who made their families proud by getting into college. They managed to escape, but both were burned terribly. AFTER THE FIRE is the story of these young men and their courageous fight to recover from the worst damage the burn unit at Saint Barnabas hospital had ever seen. It is the story of the extraordinary doctors and nurses who work with the burned. It is the story of mothers and fathers, of faith and family and the invisible ties that bind us to each other. It is the story of the search for the arsonists--and the elaborate cover-up that nearly obscured the truth. And it is the story of the women who came to love these men, who knew that real beauty is a thing not seen in mirrors.

Texas singer/songwriter Vince Bell's story begins in the 1970s. Following the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Bell and his contemporaries Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, and Lucinda Williams were on the rise. In December of 1982, Bell was on his way home from the studio (where he and hired guns Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson had just recorded three of Bell's songs) when a drunk driver broadsided him at 65 mph. Thrown over 60 feet from his car, Bell suffered multiple lacerations to his liver, embedded glass, broken ribs, a mangled right forearm, and a severe traumatic brain injury. Not only was his debut album waylaid for a dozen years, life as he'd known it would never be the same. In detailing his recovery from the accident and his round-about climb back on stage, Bell shines a light in those dark corners of the music business that, for the lone musician whose success is measured not by the Top 40 but by nightly victories, usually fall outside of the spotlight. Bell's prose is not unlike his lyrics: spare, beautiful, evocative, and often sneak-up-on-you funny. His chronicle of his own life and near death on the road reveals what it means to live for one's art.

On the morning of 7 July 2005, Peter Zimonjic, a Canadian journalist living and working in London, was travelling on an eastbound Circle line train heading towards Edgware Road. Coming in the opposite direction was a train carrying Mohammed Sidique Khan with a bag full of explosives. As the trains passed each other in the tunnel, Sidique Khan detonated his bomb. Peter's train came to a standstill and he managed to smash the window in his carriage and crawl into the carnage where he and several others spent the next hour desperately trying to help the injured and dying. Into the Darkness reconstructs the story of the day at all four bomb sites based on intensive interviews with dozens of survivors. In the form of a dramatic narrative this book documents the bravery, the triumphs, the despairs, and the shortfalls that occurred on a day when the innocence of thousands of ordinary commuters was lost forever.

Our Only Hope is based on correspondence between Eddie Weisz, a German Jew who emigrated to the U.S. in 1938, and his family (father, mother, and brother) who remained behind, first in Berlin and then Prague. Like many German Jewish families, Eddie's parents sent their eldest child to America hoping that he could pave the way for the rest of the family to follow. The story is a deeply personal account of how the Nazi phenomenon affected a single family. It gives voice to victims of the Holocaust, people whose experiences are typically told through the eyes of survivors and perpetrators. Through this narrative, Our Only Hope illuminates an ironic and tragic dualism: the steady deterioration of life's circumstances for the Weisz family that is left behind, countered by the transformation of Eddie Weisz into an independent adult and American citizen.

Considered the Mt. Everest of diving, the Andrea Doria is the ultimate deepwater wreck challenge. Over the years, a small but fanatical group of extreme scuba divers have investigated the Andrea Doria, pushing themselves to the very limits of human endurance to explore her -- and not all have returned. Diver Kevin McMurray takes you inside this elite club with a hard, honest look at those who go deeper, farther, and closer to the edge than others would ever dream.

Deep Descent is the riveting true story of the human spirit overcoming human frailty and of fearsome, mortal risks traded for a hard-core adrenaline rush. Chronicling these adventures in his page-turning narrative and in dozens of dramatic photos, McMurray draws us deeper into the cold heart of the unforgiving sea, giving us a powerful vision of a place to which few will ever have the skills -- or the courage -- to go.

These Are Our Stories is a collection of women's stories, thoughts, and poems about the domestic abuse they have experienced throughout their lives. Transcribed directly from Jan Rosenberg's interviews with eleven women in the Florida panhandle, their histories embody the epidemic of domestic violence in America. The eleven survivors are lower to middle class women of various ethnic orientations, and range in age from their late twenties to mid-sixties. The survivors' stories are clarified with the use of diagrams from The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP), and examined as the women re-build their lives hours and days at a time. These Are Our Stories provides two resource guides following the women's interviews. The first guide is adapted for use in north Florida to assist an abused woman in identifying her situation using these eleven women's stories as a thread. The second resource is a brief bibliography of literature and resources for domestic violence victims that can be used throughout the U.S.

Risen from the Ashes is one man's memoir of hope and survival during the Holocaust. Having cheated death four times through perseverance, hope, faith, and humor, Hans Cohn vividly narrates his experience from the horrors of the past to spiritual renewal.