Daddy's Little Secret: Pregnant at 14 and There's Only One Man Who Can Be the Father

The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison · 181 pages

Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes. In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running away. If only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her. When someone finally did, it was her fath

Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

Flora Rheta Schreiber · 460 pages

This is the amazing story of a woman who lived with 16 different personalities. Here is the unbelievable yet true story of Sybil Dorsett, a survivor of terrible childhood abuse who as an adult was a victim of sudden and mysterious blackouts. What happened during those blackouts has made Sybil's experience one of the most famous psychological cases in the world.

The Liars' Club

Mary Karr · 320 pages

The Texas refinery town of Leechfield, perched on the swampy rim of the Gulf, is famous for mosquitoes and the manufacture of Agent Orange - a place where the only bookstores are religious ones and the restaurants serve only fried food. A handful of the Leechfield oil workers gather regularly at the American Legion Bar to drink salted beer and spin long, improbable tales. They're the Liars' Club.

Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

Sue William Silverman · 280 pages

From age four to eighteen Sue William Silverman was sexually abused with numbing regularity by her father, a high-ranking government official and successful banker. Rendered in often graphic detail, her story annihilates our complacency about who among us could commit such evil - and who could stop it, for this is also a story of complicity, of the blaming silence with which Silverman's mother met

Running with Scissors

Augusten Burroughs · 320 pages

"Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard

The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls · 296 pages

A story about the early life of Jeannette Walls. The memoir is an exposing work about her early life and growing up on the run and often homeless. It presents a different perspective of life from all over the United States and the struggle a girl had to find normalcy as she grew into an adult.

Helpless: The True Story of a Neglected Girl Betrayed and Exploited by the Neighbour She Trusted

Marianne Marsh

When Daddy Comes Home

Toni Maguire · 352 pages

Mummy Knew

Lisa James · 311 pages

Four-year-old Lisa's world turned upside down when her step-father moved in. Most of the time he was just violent but then he started making her do things to him she knew were wrong. Soon he was visiting her at night. Lisa begged her mother for help but she just shrugged, telling Lisa he would have his way. It was the greatest betrayal of all.At first Lisa's step-father would just make her stroke

Push

Sapphire · 176 pages

Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible: invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem's casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and highly radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as

Broken

Shy Keenan · 305 pages

Shy Keenan co-founded Phoenix Survivors to campaign for justice for victims of sexual abuse and to rescue children at risk. As a child, she was beaten by her mother and raped by her stepfather and his associates. This is her memoir.

Such a Pretty Girl

Laura Wiess · 224 pages

Haunted by flashbacks, fifteen-year-old Meredith learns that three years in prison has not changed the abusive father who molested her.

A Stolen Life

Jaycee Dugard · 273 pages

In the summer of 1991 I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother who loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen. For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible

Tiger, Tiger

Margaux Fragoso · 322 pages

Fragoso's gut-wrenching memoir of sexual abuse--unflinchingly yet exquisitely rendered as she experienced them. One summer day, Margaux Fragoso meets Peter Curran at the neighborhood swimming pool, and they begin to play. She is seven; he is fifty-one. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child's paradise. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed

I Never Gave My Consent: A Schoolgirl's Life Inside the Telford Sex Ring

Holly Archer

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

Elissa Wall, Lisa Pulitzer · 438 pages

In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths

Bastard Out of Carolina

Dorothy Allison · 309 pages

Bone, an illegitimate child in a family of social outcasts, sees her mother's happiness with her new husband and will not tell when the stepfather begins abusing her in the 1950s.

Identical

Ellen Hopkins · 624 pages

Do twins begin in the womb? Or in a better place? Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family—on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that's where their differences begin. For Kaeleigh, she's the misplaced focus of Daddy's love, intended for a

Losing Hope

Colleen Hoover · 380 pages

"In Hopeless, Sky left no secret unearthed, no feeling unshared and no memory forgotten, but Holder's past remains a mystery. He is haunted by the little girl he let walk away from him and he has spent his entire life searching for her. He had hoped that he would finally gain closure and be able to rid himself of his guilt the moment they were reconnected. But he could not have anticipated that th

A Thousand Acres

Jane Smiley · 377 pages

This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare’s *King Lear* centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written, *A Thousand Acres* takes on t

Please, Daddy, No

Stuart Howarth · 288 pages

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou · 281 pages

She was born Marguerite, but her brother Bailey nicknamed her Maya ("mine"). As little children they were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Their early world revolved around this remarkable woman and the Store she ran for the black community. White people were more than strangers - they were from another planet. And yet, even unseen they ruled. The Store was a microcosm

Redemption: A Story of Sisterhood, Survival, and Finding Freedom Behind Bars

Stacey Lannert · 318 pages

As her parent's marriage crumbles, Stacey finds comfort in her loving father, Tom. Until, at age eight, Tom initiates Stacey to a game they must keep between themselves. For the next ten years, Stacey's life is ripped apart by physical and sexual abuse. Feeling hopeless, she takes matters into her own hands by ending the life of her abuser. Redemption takes a dark, disturbing look into a life dest

Silent No More: Victim 1's Fight for Justice Against Jerry Sandusky

Aaron Fisher, Michael Gillum, Dawn Daniels · 221 pages

A victim of Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse, Aaron Fisher first spoke up against Sandusky at age 14, weathering ostracism, harassment, fear, frustration, and guilt through the years it took to finally bring the coach to justice.