Showing titles in Dysfunctional Families

When foster carer, Cathy Glass, is asked to foster Darcy-May, a two-day old baby, she is very concerned. The baby is coming to her straight from hospital and will have no contact with her teenage mother, Haylea. Even more worrying, she will be brought to Cathy with a police escort as it’s...

PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT THEIR FATHERS. TOO STRICT. TOO INSRUSIVE. TOO MUCH. MINE? HE KILLED PEOPLE. The untold story behind the hit true crime podcast The Clearing, this unforgettable memoir traces one daughter’s moving quest to understand her larger-than-life childhood as she searches for the...

After years of suffering multiple forms of abuse, a vulnerable young girl flees her home only to land straight into the arms of her biological father - a sexual predator. My Daddy the Pedophile tells the harrowing true story of a teenage girl’s affair with her manipulative sociopathic father. After a terrible dark secret comes to light, the real story unfolds and her courageous journey of healing begins.

Narcissistic abuse creates a tidal wave of confusion, hypervigilance, and overthinking. You have trouble thinking clearly, remembering things, or taking in new information. And because these changes are happening to you, you begin to wonder: What's wrong with me? Why can't I make this relationship work? Am I fundamentally broken? And that's exactly how narcissistic abuse works—it happens so subtly that you believe the insecurities you're experiencing are "you" instead of "what's happening" to you. This audiobook covers unique information related to narcissistic abuse.

Gaslighting. What it is, how you can spot it - and how you can break free. He's the charmer - the witty, confident but overly controlling date. She's the woman on your team who always manages to take credit for your good work. He's the neighbour who swears you've been putting your rubbish into his bins or the politician who can never admit to a mistake. Gaslighters are master controllers and manipulators, often challenging your very sense of reality.

A highly illuminating examination of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and its insidiously traumatic impact on family members and partners. Packed with insight, compassion, and practical strategies for recovery, this is a must-read for survivors and clinicians alike. Narcissistic...

Sister Fidelma follows a trail that is as suspenseful as it is tortuous in the riveting third novel in Peter Tremayne's unputdownable series. In the mid-7th Century AD, the Venerable Dacán, a much respected and beloved scholar of the Celtic Church, has been found murdered while on a visit to a...

‘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...

"I was one of 28 children born to my dad and his three wives. Indoctrinated to believe that the outside world was evil, and that I resided among the righteous, I was destined to marry a man chosen for me by the Prophet. I would then live in harmony with my sister-wives, bear many children, and obey and serve my future husband in this life and throughout eternity. But my innocence didn't last long." Flora goes on from there to tell the dramatic true story of how she ultimately escaped and has been rescuing women and children from the FLDS.

For more than two years, BBC Radio 4's The Archers ran a disturbing storyline centred on Helen Tichener's abuse at the hands of her husband Rob. Not the kind of abuse that leaves a bruise, but the sort of coercive control that breaks your spirit and makes it almost impossible to walk away. As she listened to the unfolding story, Helen Walmsley-Johnson was forced to confront her own agonising past. Helen's first husband controlled her life, from the people she saw to what was in her bank account.

Jackson is aggressive, confrontational and often volatile. His mother, Kayla, is crippled with grief after tragically losing her husband and eldest son. Struggling to cope, she puts Jackson into foster care. Cathy, his carer, encourages Jackson to talk about what has happened to his family, but...

Confusing. Crazy making. Draining. Does this describe your relationship? Do you wonder if they will ever change? Do you want to know why they lie so much...even when the truth would work better? Have you wondered why they never seem to change - no matter how much you are willing to do for them, or how much love, understanding, rehab, religion, therapy, second (or 22nd) chances you’ve given them? If so, you are not alone and this book is a great place to start.

Evie and Elliot are scrawny, filthy and scared when they turn up on foster carer Maggie Hartley's doorstep. Aged just two and three years old, this brother and sister have hardly set foot outside their own home. They have been prisoners, locked in a world of abuse, violence and neglect. Maggie soon realises that Evie and Elliot are lacking the basic life skills we all take for granted, and the outside world terrifies them. Gradually unlocking the truth of their heartbreaking upbringing, Maggie tells their shocking true story.

This program is read by the author. Who Could Ever Love You is an intimate, heartbreaking memoir of a father, a mother, and a family’s exile. Mary L. Trump grew up in a family divided by its patriarch’s relentless drive for money and power. The daughter of Freddy Trump, the highly...

When Sandra Leigh was seven years old, she fell into the role of protector of her mother and three younger siblings. One winter night, she ushered her mother out of the house during one of her father’s tirades, and then snuck her back into the dark home through a window. Sandra was used to events like these; what she wasn’t used to were the mountains and nature surrounding her new home in West Virginia.

Abby's Story is the second book in the Thrown Away Children series by author and foster mum Louise Allen. She doesn't want this baby. She can't look after this baby. She will never be able to love this baby. Little Abby's life begins badly, then just gets worse. Now foster mum Louise and her family must help her deal with the truth of her past to give her the chance of a future.

Fourteen-year-old Shazia has been taken into care after a conversation at school leads her teacher to suspect that the teenager's family are planning to send her to Pakistan for an arranged marriage. To her family's fury, Shazia is sent to live with foster carer Maggie Hartley whilst social services investigate. But with Shazia denying everything and social services unable to find any evidence to support the teacher's fears, Shazia is allowed to return home.

June Briand shot four bullets into her husband's head and was sentenced to 15 years to life. This is the shocking, true story of survival - and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded, and dominated her so relentlessly she refused to believe he was dead even after she killed him.

Why do some people manipulate, exploit, and harm with chilling consistency—while others, even when raised in the same environment, do not? Cruelty by Nature dismantles the comforting myths that abuse is merely the product of trauma, bad parenting, or social wounds. Instead, it draws from neuroscience, genetics, and clinical psychology to reveal a sharper truth: personality pathology is rooted in stable biological systems that bias individuals toward exploitation.

You don’t stay in a toxic relationship with a narcissist because you’re weak. You stay because you’re confused. If you’re married to a narcissistic woman who drains your confidence, rewrites reality, punishes you emotionally, and still somehow makes you feel like the problem, this book was written for you. From the outside, your marriage may look normal. Even successful. Behind closed doors, you’re walking on eggshells, second-guessing yourself, and slowly losing who you are. And the most painful part? You can’t fully explain why.