Dysfunctional Childhood

This is my inspirational true story of childhood sexual abuse that I endured. The abuse was a secret, even to me, due to the fact that all the painful images were locked up in my subconscious for close to 37 years.

Were you abused as a child? Gary was. He was born in a small town in rural South Carolina to alcoholic parents who abused and neglected him. For the first twenty years of his life, he was trapped in a world of anxiety, fear, and self-loathing. Tormented daily at home and bullied at school, he was the ideal candidate to pass along the same abuse to his children. . . or worse. Instead of perpetuating the sadistic behavior, he decided it was enough. It would stop here, with him. Gary’s story, heartbreaking and gut-wrenching though it may be, is, above all, uplifting and inspiring. Overcoming...

THE GIRL THAT NO ONE CLAIMED is the true story of a child everyone saw but no one truly protected. As a little girl, Lena learned early how to disappear in plain sight. Behind the closed doors of a small-town home, she faced the kind of fear most people only see on the news—violence, manipulation, and adults who cared more about protecting themselves than protecting her. When she finally spoke up, the system that promised safety gave her something else instead: disbelief, blame, and a courtroom that broke her all over again. This memoir follows her life before and after the day the state ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER In a coming-of-age memoir that’s “equal parts hysterical and moving” (Marie Claire), the co-creator of Hulu’s brilliant Pen15 grapples with the reappearance of her estranged father—and whether it’s possible to reconnect before it’s too late. “Anna Konkle...

You spent years wondering what was wrong with you. You spent years wondering what was wrong with you. You walked on eggshells. You learned to read the emotional weather in the room before you even spoke. You made yourself smaller, quieter, easier — because keeping the peace felt like your responsibility. When something went wrong, you assumed it must somehow be your fault. And even after you grew up, something from that environment followed you. The second-guessing The overthinking The strange feeling that love is something you have to earn by being careful enough, good enough, or useful ...

9-year-old Nichole and her parents are evicted from their home because both of her parents are addicted to heroin. With nowhere left to turn, they are now homeless. In order to survive they must dig through dumpsters, beg, and steal. While living on the streets, Nichole struggles to understand why people treat them differently.

"It’s a dark story that forced me to think more expansively about what constitutes a cult." —The New York Times' Ernesto Londoño "Although this is Mestyanek Young’s first time narrating, listeners will appreciate hearing this deeply personal story told by the author herself. Share with...

For fans of Jeannette Walls, Jodi Picoult, and Alice Sebold, a heartening memoir about a girl who survives abuse and molestation to become a powerful advocate against gun violence in America. The inspiring memoir of a woman who overcomes the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of her early life to blossom into a gun violence prevention activist.

The unforgettable story of a young woman's odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes on her journey to redemption. Astrid is the only child of a single mother, Ingrid, a brilliant, obsessed poet who wields her luminous beauty to intimidate and manipulate men. Astrid worships her...

Author Talia Kendrix awakens an array of emotions with The House on Fairview, stirring up a hunger for our most basic need… the need to survive. We are immediately swept into young Talia’s life as she gives us the riveting details from her point of view, beginning with her parents’ divorce and progressing through a series of horrific events that are relatable and all too common. Used and abused in every way, Talia repeatedly gets knocked down by the harsh realities of life as she learns what it means to fight for hers. She grows up confused and rebellious, desperately yearning to be ...

“Wickedly funny and always movingly illuminating, thanks to kick-ass storytelling and a poet's ear.” –Oprah.com The New York Times bestselling, hilarious tale of Mary Karr’s hardscrabble Texas childhood that Oprah.com calls the best memoir of a generation. The Liars’ Club took the...

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but...

What if you’re the lucky one? At sixty-five years old, William Aperance was proud of the life he’d built: a comfortable home in upstate New York, a successful career managing country clubs, and, most importantly, a happy family. Despite growing up in poverty and neglect, with a sense that he never quite belonged, William and his wife, Kim, had created a loving home for their three children. But with retirement on the horizon, one Christmas gift challenged everything. The results from the DNA kit under the tree rocked the foundations of his identity, and everything he thought he knew ...

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist for the Man Booker Prize A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century The New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club introduces a middle-class American family that is ordinary in every way but one in this award-winning novel...

Did you grow up feeling unseen, unheard, or unimportant in your own home? Maybe your parents were emotionally distant, overly critical, or made you feel like your needs were a burden. Perhaps you learned early on to hide your feelings, take on adult responsibilities as a child, or strive for perfection just to feel loved and accepted. These experiences don’t stay in the past—they often follow us into adulthood, shaping how we see ourselves and relate to others. But here’s the good news: your past doesn’t have to define your future. In I Didn’t Choose to Be Born, certified early ...

Welcome to the hilarious, strange, elegiac, outrageous world of David Sedaris! In Naked, Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview-a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable. A...

“Toxic Family Survival Guide” is for anyone who wants to give themselves a fighting chance at happiness and peace in their life, no matter what their early years subjected them to.

In a small North Carolina mountain town, three fifth graders from fractured families are thrown together for a class project. Marcus, a shy piano prodigy struggling under the weight of his mother’s expectations and his father’s musical legacy, finds an unlikely ally in Shell, the resilient daughter of a drug-addicted mother who is just beginning a shaky road to recovery. Alongside them is Squeeze, the sheriff’s neglected son whose bullying hides a desperate need for attention. But when Shell’s mother returns from rehab with a youth pastor who seems to promise stability, the fragile ...

In an all too familiar scenario, played out in millions of homes every day, children who grow up in addictive families abide by certain rules: don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. The rigid survival roles and youthful coping behaviors they take on, such as the responsible child, the adjuster, the placater, and the acting-out child can eventually contribute to problems of depression, loneliness, and addiction in adulthood. 

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon, Jeannette Walls’s gripping novel "transports us with her powerful storytelling...contemplates the extraordinary bravery needed to confront real-life demons in a world where the hardest thing to do may be to...