True Childhood

Nancy Pusateri's book is a powerful, raw journey through unimaginable pain and resilience. The book begins by introducing Nancy's roots, tracing her family's migration from Greece to the United States, setting the stage for the story shared ahead in the book. The early years of Nancy's life seemed like a normal childhood until her family shifted to a new house. Then began the series of harrowing experiences, shattering the innocence of her early years. As she shares her story, she reveals the dark undercurrents within her family home: a father who abuses his authority in the cruelest ways ...

How can Danielle understand "normal" if she has never experienced it? She was moved from town to town, kept hidden from society, and always felt like an outsider. Her innocence was brutally taken by someone she least expected. She harbored a dark secret that could devastate her family—a secret she fiercely protected. Would the burden of shame be too much to bear if the truth were revealed? As secrets are uncovered, Danielle plunges into a tumultuous descent with nothing to stop her fall.

When Misty was six years old, her family started to live and dress like the Amish. Misty and her sister were kept as slaves on a mountain ranch where they were subjected to almost complete isolation, sexual abuse, and extreme physical violence. When Misty reached her teens, her parents feared she and her sister would escape and took them to an Amish community where they were adopted and became baptized members. Misty was devastated to once again find herself in a world of fear, animal cruelty, and sexual abuse.

True Story of Childhood Trauma Can I Come HOME Now? Can I Come Home Now? is more than a memoir—it’s a call for compassion, understanding, and dialogue. Whether you’re a survivor, a supporter, or simply someone who appreciates stories of resilience, this book will stay with you long after the final page. Can I Come Home Now? is a moving and deeply personal memoir that brings to light the realities of childhood trauma through the honest and unforgettable journey of its author. This true story offers both heartbreak and hope, showing that even in the darkest moments, the human spirit can...

The man who should have been there to help protect me, love me, and teach me about life did the opposite. I was told to keep quiet and not tell anyone our secret. A secret that filled me with fear and shame. I was sexually abused from ages five to twelve.

America’s Hometown has a dark side. And the truth has been hidden in plain sight. Hannibal, Missouri is known around the world as the boyhood home of Mark Twain—a picturesque river town celebrated for its charm, history, and sense of American innocence. But beneath the postcards, museums, and storybook streets lies a far more unsettling legacy. True Crime in America’s Hometown uncovers the real crimes that shaped Hannibal in silence: brutal murders, unexplained deaths, disappearances that haunted families for generations, and scandals quietly erased from public memory. These are not ...

‘Each time my mother laid a finger on me… it was another step into the jaws of hell. Her abuse, more so than any other, destroyed me. It was the ultimate betrayal.’ Abused from the age of eight by her older brother and then her step-father, Maureen Wood quickly became numb to the constant...

“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 ...

Every great artist started out as a kid. Forget the awards, the sold-out museum exhibitions, and the timeless masterpieces. When the world’s most celebrated artists were growing up, they had regular-kid problems just like you. Jackson Pollock’s family moved constantly - he lived in eight different cities before he was 16 years old. Georgia O’Keeffe lived in the shadow of her “perfect” older brother Francis. And Jean-Michel Basquiat triumphed over poverty to become one of the world’s most influential artists.

Discover an empowering new way of understanding your multifaceted mind—and healing the many parts that make you who you are. Is there just one “you”? We’ve been taught to believe we have a single identity, and to feel fear or shame when we can’t control the inner voices that don’t...

What if the most dangerous part of a serial killer's story happened long before the first victim? Blueprint of a Killer does not sensationalize bloodshed or linger on gore. Instead, it asks the uncomfortable question most true crime books avoid: how did this start? What was happening before the headlines, body counts, and documentaries?

I escaped once. From that house. That street. That place. And my parents. As a teenager - struggling with my sexuality after years of bullying and abuse - I left home and moved to another city, put together a new life and became a different person, while keeping my mental health struggles hidden from everyone. I came out and made friends. I fell in love and was cheated on. But it was life and I was finally getting to live it. Then a violent attack changed everything, so I ran away from it all. I moved abroad on my own. But even on an island in the sun I couldn't escape myself or my past. So...

Based on a remarkable true story. Winter, 1969. Since she was a little girl, Catarina learned not to ask for much. Born to a family of corn farmers in rural south Brazil, she was happiest when she was surrounded by sprawling fields and burly, familial farmhands—until her family was driven out of the land they had worked diligently for years, and Catarina was sent to work for a wealthy family in São Paolo. Only ten years old, Catarina becomes a housemaid—and the lifeline of her family. Far from everyone and everything she’d ever known, she discovers the shocking gap between her life ...

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 ...

Unheard Screams is based on a true story about a girl named Thelma who grew up as a CODA and struggled between two worlds: the hearing and the deaf. Isolated in a farming country outside of town, she lived a life of silence and loss of identity. Thelma was the only one in her biological family that could hear and speak.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell finally tells the story that rivals all of the works that precede it: her own. Patricia Cornwell is best known for her international bestselling thriller series about forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Every story comes from somewhere...

Living in the shadows isn’t the safest place to be… it’s where secrets are buried and predators lurk.. As the youngest child living within a dysfunctional family, I thought that anger, rivalry and hatred were the norm, that every family possessed dirty little secrets they hid from the world… like alcohol and drug addiction, mental and physical abuse, depression, schizophrenia and suicide. Surviving those dirty little secrets while running from the school bully was hard, but it was nothing in comparison to coming up on the radar of the neighbourhood paedophile.

I didn't get the chance to be a child. The day after high school graduation, I became responsible for five younger siblings. Years later, when tragedy tore through my family again, I opened my home to my nephews too. From the outside, I looked strong. Dependable. Faithful. Inside, I was exhausted. Hope in the Darkness: Finding God's Light is the honest story of surviving what I never signed up for —abandonment, loss, burnout, and the quiet grief of growing up too fast. It's about being the "strong one" when no one asks if you're okay. It's about wrestling with God in the dark and choosing...

After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a professor shares the lessons he's learned—about living in the present, building a legacy, and taking full advantage of the time you have—in this life-changing classic. "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy...

Read by the author. Using the written word as her witness statement, Jessica Willis Fisher gives a lacerating portrait of a girl finding her voice after years of being silenced and an unforgettable story of risk and faith. Growing up the eldest daughter in a large, highly controlled...