'Read this book. Then talk to your sons. It is essential reading' Jamie Theakston 'An extraordinary and important book. Read it immediately' Claudia Winkleman 'Superbly written, this deeply moving book underlines how truly precious mother-daughter relationships are, and never more so than in those teenage years' Gloria Hunniford A gripping memoir of two battling narratives and a mother-daughter relationship stretched to its absolute limits. Roxy was 13 years old when she was coerced then blackmailed into sending explicit photos, which were spread around her school. The shame led to self-loathing. The blame led to a psychotic breakdown. Roxy started hearing voices. Then she started seeing things... What happens when your teenager starts to lose it, and then you lose each other? What happens when you can't tell your mother you desperately need help? And how can a family move past a devastating mental health crisis? When You Lose It is a brutally honest true story, written from two perspectives, of consent, coercion and shattering consequences.

The shocking and subversive memoir of a 12-year-NXIVM-member-turned-whistleblower, and her inspiring true story of abuse, escape, and redemption.

"Master, would you brand me? It would be an honor."

Scarred follows actress Sarah Edmondson's account of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult founded by Keith Raniere and the 12 years she spent within the organization, during which she enrolled over 2,000 members. This book also chronicles her breaking point and her harrowing fight to get out, help others, and heal.

Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress and playwright who has starred in the CBS series Salvation and more than 12 films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime.

Complete with personal photographs, this tell-all follows Sarah from the moment she takes her first NXIVM seminar, to the invitation she accepts from her best friend, Lauren Salzman, into DOS a "secret sisterhood" within the cult to her journey toward becoming a key witness in the federal case against its founders.

Readers will learn how cults like NXIVM get started, why people get involved (and stay), and the importance of whistleblowers who bring light to illegal and unethical practices.

Scarred isn't just about NXIVM. It is also a story about abuses of power, the role female friendships play in cults, and how sometimes the search to be "better" can override everything else. In the constant search for self-improvement, how much do you trust the message and messenger?

A thrilling read for fans of true crime and cults, as well as listeners of podcasts like My Favorite Murder and Up and Vanished

Evokes questions about friendship, ethics, good and evil, making it a perfect selection for book clubs.

Great for fans of Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini, Escape by Carolyn Jessop, Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill, and Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

The shocking first-hand account of one man's remarkable fight for freedom; now an award-winning motion picture. 'Why had I not died in my young years - before God had given me children to love and live for? What unhappiness and suffering and sorrow it would have prevented. I sighed for liberty; but the bondsman's chain was round me, and could not be shaken off.' 1841: Solomon Northup is a successful violinist when he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Taken from his family in New York State - with no hope of ever seeing them again - and forced to work on the cotton plantations in the Deep South, he spends the next twelve years in captivity until his eventual escape in 1853. First published in 1853, this extraordinary true story proved to be a powerful voice in the debate over slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War. It is a true-life testament of one man's courage and conviction in the face of unfathomable injustice and brutality: its influence on the course of American history cannot be overstated.

Tilly hates her stepfather, Dave. He abuses her mother, but she refuses to leave him. Frightened for her own safety, Tilly asks to go into foster care and is placed with Cathy. Tilly arrives with a graze on her cheek and Cathy becomes increasingly concerned by Dave's behaviour, especially when she learns he has been showering Tilly with gifts. While she's busy looking after Tilly and trying to keep her safe, Cathy is also worried about her own daughter, Lucy. She has a very difficult decision to make that will affect the rest of her life, and Cathy hopes she makes the right choice.

Carole Mitzman was raised by a vain and snobbish mother and abused at school as a `thieving little Jew girl'. Thrown out of her home at 18 just for going on a date, she was exploited by a succession of men who variously robbed her, two-timed her, abandoned her and tricked her out of her house. Yet Carole found the courage to come through, to explore her Jewish antecedents and to find peace and happiness, first by building a new life in Israel and finally by returning to her English homeland. "I have been a daughter, a mother, a grandmother and now I'm a great-grandmother, but inside I am still that little girl sitting on the bench at Rickmansworth station, searching the trains in vain for the mother who never came".

A moving true story of love on the front lines. It was July 1944 when Madge stepped onto a troopship that was to carry her thousands of miles away from home. Only twenty years old and not long qualified as a nurse, she had signed up to serve in the Burma Campaign. She would be based on the Indian border, near the frontline where a fierce battle was raging between Allied forces and the Japanese. As Madge arrived in Chittagong, she wondered how she would adapt to the ever present danger of invasion and to life in a military hospital. She spent long, exhausting hours nursing the badly-injured young soldiers in her care, but found strength in her friendship with the other nurses. And then, one day, she met Captain Basil Lambert . . . Could their fragile, new found romance survive the terrifying final months of war? Heart-warming and poignant, Some Sunny Day by Madge Lambert is a story of courage, sacrifice and the power of true love.

National Book Award winner Neal Shusterman presents a graphic novel exploring the Holocaust through surreal visions and a textured canvas of heroism and hope. Courage to Dream plunges readers into the darkest time of human history - the Holocaust. This graphic novel explores one of the greatest atrocities in modern memory, delving into the core of what it means to face the extinction of everything and everyone you hold dear. This gripping, multifaceted tapestry is woven from Jewish folklore and cultural history Five interlocking narratives explore one common story - the tradition of resistance and uplift Internationally renowned author Neal Shusterman and illustrator Andres Vera Martinez have created a masterwork that encourages the compassionate, bold reaching for a dream

Two women. Two cultures. And a friendship that freed them both. 'We don't choose where we're born. Geography ends up being everything.' Shaimaa Khalil and Shelley Davidow met twenty years ago in the Middle East when Shaimaa was Shelley's student at the University of Qatar. Strangers in a strange land where the silencing and oppression of women is deeply entrenched, they immediately formed a deep and abiding bond. Shelley saw Shaimaa as her 'Rosetta Stone', helping her decode a culture and world so foreign it appeared to be from another planet. Shaimaa saw Shelley and her apartment as her 'Tardis', a space where she could glimpse a world she dreamed of inhabiting. Born a decade apart on opposite ends of the African continent - Shaimaa, an Arab Muslim from Egypt and Shelley an Ashkenazi Jew from South Africa - tell the story of a friendship that has defied historical, geographic and temporal boundaries, mapping the vast emotional and geographic territories they have travelled as women pushing against patriarchal confines over the past two decades. In an exchange of words and memories, Shaimaa and Shelley recall what shaped them, what broke them, and how they made themselves whole again through their interwoven stories.

From the age of 14, Caitlin was completely controlled, repeatedly raped, provided with alcohol, given drugs, sold and passed on to new gangs over and over again. The majority of her abusers were Pakistani men, who were blatant in their attacks upon her, often collecting her from school or home, to be taken to flats they owned, family homes, or hotels booked for the day, to be horrifically and systematically abused. At a time when the abuse ring realities of young white women in Rotherham and other major English cities are coming to light, Caitlin's story will appal readers - not just because of the degree of horrific attacks which were perpetrated upon her, but also because of the ways in which the authorities refused to act. Caitlin speaks openly about what she has suffered, and also shows just how unwilling many people are to face up to what is happening in our midst, for fear of being called racist. By bravely speaking out, she will, hopefully prove just how deep these problems are and just how the abusers get away with it in plain sight of the authorities.

'A book grows rather like a snow crystal. One doesn't write it from start to finish but, in greater or less degree, all at the same time ... that is why my book is not in chronological order; for everything is of the present, held in the moment when thought captures it.' Kurt Diemberger's Summits and Secrets is a mountaineering autobiography like no other. Writing anecdotally, Diemberger provides an abstract look into his life and climbing career that is both fascinating and awe-inspiring to navigate. Known for surviving the 1986 K2 disaster - an account described in harrowing detail in his award-winning book The Endless Knot - Diemberger provides a captivating insight into his earlier climbs in Summits and Secrets. From climbing his first peak in the Tyrol mountains of Austria, to the epoch-making first ascent of Broad Peak with Hermann Buhl in 1957, and then summiting Dhaulagiri in 1960, where he became one of only two people to have made first ascents of two mountains over 8,000 metres, Diemberger recounts his experiences with wit, honesty and an infectious enthusiasm: 'Every climber knows the thrill ... the unique inexplicable tension, which the regular shapes of the mountain world awake in him: huge pyramids, enormous rectangular slabs, piled-up triangles of rock, white circles, immense squares - the thrill of simplicity of shape and outline and the excitement of mastering them, to an unbelievable extent, by his own efforts, his own power ... ' Summits and Secrets is a must-read for those wanting an insight into the life and achievements of one of the toughest high-altitude climbers the world has ever known.

'A vastly entertaining tale, bursting with astonishing stories and extraordinary characters ... A fascinating read' Sunday Telegraph 'Brilliant ... An amazing story, one I hadn't heard too much about' Dan Snow IT IS THE DEPTHS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. The Germans like to boast that there is 'no escape' from the infamous fortress that is Colditz. The elite British officers imprisoned there are determined to prove the Nazis wrong and get back into the war. As the war heats up and the stakes are raised, the Gestapo plant a double-agent inside the prison in a bid to uncover the secrets of the British prisoners. Captain Julius Green of the Army Dental Corps and Sergeant John 'Busty' Brown must risk their lives in a bid to save the lives of hundreds of Allied servicemen and protect the secrets of MI9. Drawn from unseen records, The Traitor of Colditz brings to light an extraordinary, never-before-told story from the Second World War, an epic tale of how MI9 took on the Nazis and exposed the traitors in their midst.

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.

Jean Borthwick and her brother should have enjoyed a happy childhood, growing up in a village in rural post-war Scotland. Their father was a brilliant and talented schoolteacher who was invariably charming to all who knew him, but at home, behind closed doors, he turned into a tyrannical monster. He would beat both his children mercilessly with a slipper or a belt for the smallest offence, from talking after lights out to looking at him in a funny way. Somehow both Jean and her brother survived their years of terror and torture to become happy and successful adults, but the shadow of those years will never go away. This is Jean's moving account of a childhood haunted by fear.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A MAIL ON SUNDAY, THE TIMES, ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN, THE SPECTATOR, TIME, DAILY EXPRESS AND DAILY MIRROR BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Thrilling' Daily Mail 'Gripping' Guardian 'Heartwrenching' Yuval Noah Harari 'Magnificent' Philip Pullman 'Excellent' Sunday Times 'Inspiring' Daily Mail 'An immediate classic' Antony Beevor 'Awe inspiring' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Shattering' Simon Schama 'Utterly compelling' Philippe Sands 'A must-read' Emily Maitlis 'Indispensable' Howard Jacobson Anne Frank. Primo Levi. Oskar Schindler . . . Rudolf Vrba. In April 1944 nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became the first Jews ever to break out of Auschwitz. Under electrified fences and past armed watchtowers, evading thousands of SS men and slavering dogs, they trekked across marshlands, mountains and rivers to freedom. Vrba's mission: to reveal to the world the truth of the Holocaust. In the death factory of Auschwitz, Vrba had become an eyewitness to almost every chilling stage of the Nazis' process of industrialised murder. The more he saw, the more determined he became to warn the Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. A brilliant student of science and mathematics, he committed each detail to memory, risking everything to collect the first data of the Final Solution. After his escape, that information would form a priceless thirty-two-page report that would reach Roosevelt, Churchill and the pope and eventually save over 200,000 lives. But the escape from Auschwitz was not his last. After the war, he kept running - from his past, from his home country, from his adopted country, even from his own name. Few knew of the truly extraordinary deed he had done. Now, at last, Rudolf Vrba's heroism can be known - and he can take his place alongside those whose stories define history's darkest chapter.

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War - organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place - 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces. How these three men came together - along with the partisans - to plan and execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest Escape, written by Ralph Churches' son Neil, takes us from Ralph and Les's capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the escapees on a nail-biting 160-mile journey across the Alps, pursued by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.

`It is often from our setbacks, even our weaknesses, that we derive some of our greatest blessings.' That Untravelled World is the autobiography of one of the greatest adventurers of the twentieth century. Eric Shipton was a pioneering explorer, journeying to places that did not feature on maps and to unexplored mountains, such as the High Dauphine. Shipton describes early childhood days filled with adventures; his first encounter with the high mountains on a visit to the Pyrenees, and the onset of his climbing career inspired by travels in Norway with a friend. He reminisces on first meeting infamous explorer H.W. `Bill' Tilman, and their first expedition together to Mount Kenya. Tilman and Shipton were later to become one of the most famous climbing partnerships of all time. Filled with anecdotes from different periods of his life, Shipton takes us on his journey from Kilimanjaro and Mount Stanley alongside Tilman, his discovery of the route to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, summiting Mount Kamet with mountaineering icon Frank Smythe, and multiple expeditions to Everest. First published in 1969, That Untravelled World is the story of an adventurer who, inspired by Edward Whymper, travelled to feral landscapes across the globe, and has in turn inspired generations of climbers and mountaineers.

In 2004 Carol Young set herself a challenge - walking in stages from Land's End to John O'Groats, on her own. For someone who had only once travelled away from home alone, it was quite a challenge, particularly as it meant leaving her husband and children for weeks at a time. The journey tested Carol's physical and mental strength, determination and her integrity, to say nothing of her understanding of maps, walking gear and survival skills. The experience proved rewarding and life changing. In over 1200 miles of plodding the lanes and tracks of the UK she met many fascinating people, whose kindness and generosity helped to make the task enjoyable. There were glimpses of rare wildlife, breathtaking scenery and several ordeals at the hands of wind, weather and water. In Search of Me is Carol's heart warming story, illustrated by many evocative photographs of her experience.

A Humans of New York Instagram sensation! This is the inspiring, dramatic and heart-warming true story of family, justice and how we all deserve a second chance. The young Walter Miller was a product of his time. Growing up Black in the Jim Crow American South, he was in trouble with the police before his fourteenth birthday. And, like so many young Black men, once he'd landed in the criminal justice system it was hard to find a way out. Soon enough, he was facing a thirty-year prison sentence. But Walter was smarter than his jailers. He escaped prison and fled to New York with a hundred dollars in his pocket. He changed his name to Bobby Love, and began again - living a crime-free life for nearly forty years, with a steady job, a loving wife, a church-going family. And a big secret. Until the FBI came knocking one cold winter morning, and it all came crashing down. The Redemption of Bobby Love is an incredible true story that illuminates some of the enduring themes of being Black in America. Fuelled by the drama of a jailbreak and the suspense of a man on the run, at its heart is a remarkable tale about breaking free from society's prejudices and making the most of a precious second chance. A compelling story for underdogs everywhere, it's proof that transformation is possible and redemption is real.

In the course of the Second World War, more than a quarter of a million European and American soldiers were taken prisoner by the Japanese in Malaysia, the Dutch East Indies and the Pacific. They went on to suffer years of deprivation and brutality, most of them failing to survive at all. Harold Atcherley was fortunate enough to be one of the survivors. Throughout his time as a prisoner, from the fall of Singapore on 15th February 1942 until 14th September 1945, he kept a diary, which he was able to bring home with him. This book is based on that diary, along with other diaries and official documents. The original diary can now be viewed at The Imperial War Museum, London. He was fortunate enough to count among his friends and comrades the celebrated artist Ronald Searle, whose drawings have been used to illustrate his text; they give a far better impression of what life was like for a POW of the Japanese than mere words can, though neither words nor pictures could ever convey the appalling stench of disease and death on such a massive scale.

Three thousand feet above the Zambian bush, the DHC2 Beaver had only ten minutes' fuel remaining. Night was drawing in; ground features were indiscernible. I could not raise anyone on the radio. Would this be the end? John Flexman knew he wanted to be a pilot from the moment he saw an RAF flypast as a boy of eight. At sixteen he joined the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy, getting his 'wings' in 1961 at the age of 18. From there on he never looked back. His flying career took him around the world, from the Far East to Africa and back again. John came within seconds of disaster on several occasions and often encountered tragedy, losing several friends and colleagues in flying accidents. During his years in Africa he flew the dictator Idi Amin several times, while on the ground he was able to witness the barbaric results of Amin's regime. He went on to fly an assortment of prominent businessmen, politicians and pop stars, from Norman Tebbitt and Rupert Murdoch to Phil Collins and Paul McCartney. John finally retired at 60, having narrowly survived a 42-year career spanning 17,800 flying hours. Aviation at the Edge is his story.