Family Survival Stories True

After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now. For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined.

Although this story begins in the darkest of places, Auschwitz, it manifests into a beautiful and romantic story of love that spans six decades. A sixteen year old Hungarian boy notices a beautiful sixteen year old Polish girl across a crowded room. Their eyes meet, an instant attraction forms, and eventually they fall madly in love. However, there is a problem; they are both prisoners in Auschwitz. This is the story of Peter Florea, a young Jewish boy who makes a terrible mistake when in 1943 he volunteers to be sent from Hungary to a ‘work camp,’ but arrives to find he is actually in ...

“They’re gone,” I hear someone say. “Your mother, they all left. Did you know?” The door opens without resistance. They didn’t even bother to lock; they never did. Doors are never locked here, not in this apartment nor any other. Who would steal anything here? There is nothing to take. Born in a rural desert town to a family of Persian immigrants, Miriam was twelve years old the first time she had three meals in one day. The tenth daughter of twelve siblings, she was raised so far away from anyone who might care that there was no one around to see her endure the debilitating ...

Some people fight addiction. Others are forced to live inside someone else’s. Daniel never expected his life to turn into a daily battle against drugs, chaos, and the constant fear of losing the people he loved most. When he married Melissa, he believed he had found the partner he would build a family with. Instead, he found himself pulled into a world he had never been part of before—a world of pill dealers, overdoses, hospital visits, police reports, and the devastating reality of addiction. But the real fight began when children entered the picture. As Melissa’s addiction spiraled ...

First Prize Winner in Published NonFiction, WriterCon 2025. Finalist, 2025 Self-Publishing Review Book Awards The author graduates from an elite university and enters the submarine service in the mid-1980s when rhetoric between the US and USSR threatens to turn the Cold War hot. He encounters an unforgiving world where submarines hunt each other unseen and unheralded in the ocean depths and in which minor mistakes can result in catastrophe. On four classified missions to the Mediterranean Sea, the North Atlantic, the Barents Sea, and the North Pole, he gradually and painfully learns the ...

Mary Adeline Walker is no heroine of legend—just the daughter of a hardworking Florida cattleman. Yet as she comes of age on the raw frontier, amid swamps, storms, and looming conflict, she must summon uncommon courage. In the unforgiving wilderness of Middle Florida, every choice she makes will shape not only her family’s survival, but the legacy they leave behind. South Carolina, 1827. Mary Walker is scared. Happy living in the middle of a big extended family, the sharp-eared seven-year-old can’t understand why her father and uncles are discussing moving to the dangerous Florida ...

It started with a secret. One Elle never saw coming. Her husband, a brilliant Stanford executive, a doting father, best friend, was addicted to meth. Until Meth Do Us Part is the true story of what came after the truth cracked everything open, a family navigating more than ten rehab stays, repeated relapses, financial freefall, and the quiet devastation addiction brings into a home. This isn’t a story of rock bottom under a bridge. It’s about rock bottom showing up in a house with kids, routines, and a white picket fence. Told through raw memories, real messages, and the unfiltered ...

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 ...

Goodbye Poland is a gripping true story of survival, sacrifice, and the quiet strength of a boy forced into manhood by war. Seventeen-year-old Stefan Maczka was born into a proud legacy—his father, a Polish cavalry officer, helped stop the Russian advance into Europe during the 1920 ‘Miracle of the Vistula.’ That victory secured Poland’s independence and earned the Maczkas a plot of land on the new frontier. But Stalin never forgot the humiliation. In 1939, he got his revenge. Overnight, the Soviets rounded up the same families who had once defied them—ripping them from their ...

A heart-wrenching Holocaust survival novel — the WWII family saga of a Jewish child hidden during the Holocaust, the righteous among the nations who risked everything to save her, and the fragile hope of redemption after unspeakable loss. To save their daughter, they handed her over to strangers. Now he wants her back — but her heart has found a new home. Warsaw, 1942. With deportations looming and time running out, Aaron and Raizel make an impossible decision: to entrust their seven-year-old daughter, Machale, to a Catholic family. It is a desperate act of love — and perhaps her only...

A spellbinding story of family, love, and betrayal set during the Salem witch trials as a mother is condemned by the truth—and her daughter is saved by a lie. Salem, 1752. Sarah Carrier Chapman, weak with infirmity, writes a letter to her granddaughter that reveals the secret she has closely...

In 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester, and their five children pulled up stakes in the lower 48 and headed north to Alaska to follow a pioneer dream of claiming land under the Homestead Act. The only land available lay north of Fairbanks near the Arctic Circle where grizzlies outnumbered humans 20 to one. In addition to fierce winters and predatory animals, the Alaskan frontier drew the more unsavory elements of society's fringes. From the beginning, the Cobbs found themselves pitted in a life or death feud with unscrupulous neighbors who would rob from new settlers.

Fifteen-year-old Yitzhak, E-Jo, escapes from his hometown ghetto during WWII, taking several children and teens under his wing in the forests of eastern Poland. He leads the group and helps them survive over a period of three years. While hiding out in the forests, they live like rabbits on the run, gather food and hunt to survive. This book tells a story of bravery under constant threat of death, of a teenaged boy who loved life and other people, and how they all survive inhumane conditions. Where No Roads Lead is the story of a difficult period during which its characters undergo ...

They took her freedom. They took her innocence. They took her child. But they couldn't take her spirit. Bridie Rodgers was just two years old when she was arrested for begging on the streets of Dublin. She was to spend the next thirty years of her life locked away in different institutions. The orphanage came first. But at sixteen, she was raped, fell pregnant, and was sent to a home for unmarried mothers. Even then, when she should have been shattered by what life had thrown at her, she found happiness in her perfect son. But Bridie's child was taken away from her. She was sent to one of ...

The heartbreaking, iconic true story of an abandoned little boy’s horrific journey through the American foster care system. On a misty evening in Brooklyn, Jennings Michael Burch’s mother, too sick to care for him, left her eight-year-old son at an orphanage with the words, “I’ll be...

A candid, compulsively readable memoir from New York Times bestselling author Isabel Gillies, Happens Every Day chronicles the sudden collapse of a marriage after an affair—and one woman’s journey through heartbreak, motherhood, marital betrayal, and starting over after divorce. Isabel...

Editorial Review DEVIL IN THE HOUSE is a chilling, methodical descent into one family’s fight to survive a home that refuses to release them, delivering sustained tension through realism rather than spectacle. Ted Lazaris builds dread with disciplined escalation and emotional restraint, creating a haunting narrative that feels disturbingly possible from the first disturbance to the final, unforgettable realization. Fans of stories in the tradition of The Conjuring will find this a gripping, atmospheric entry in the Documented Terror series that lingers long after the last page. DEVIL IN ...

This is an intimate, true story of the lives of a family after the mother is told "you have four months to live". The story is a raw and personal account that follows this family and their journey following a diagnosis of stage 4 cancer. It details their lives before and during cancer, revealing all of the highs and lows. Nothing is left out. This is one of the greatest hardships anyone could face. The book covers treatments, exploring options, caregiver hardships, kids' emotions, traveling for options, and home remedies for recovering between cycles. If you are looking for a read that will...

After years of physical and mental abuse, Jade thought her kindly foster mother would be the answer to her prayers. She was wrong … this is her staggering true story. ‘This must be what prison is like,’ I thought as another hour crawled by. In fact, prison would be better … at least you...

This true story will take you on a journey through the life of a child that suffers from horrible physical and mental abuse. You will truly be shocked, saddened, and emotional, yet amazed and excited, as you find yourself rooting for Wayne, for his courage and the extraordinary power of the human spirit. How to suffer and survive the most deplorable degradation, pain and abandonment. This story will show you family dynamics in a secretive, isolated setting of horror and hopelessness, and how this young boy learned to survive and found a safe place for refuge. He will go on to face the world...