What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorChildhood Interrupted
Kathleen O'Malley · 250 pages
In 1950, Kathleen O'Malley and her two sisters were legally abducted from their mother and placed in an industrial school ran by the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns. The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbour had triggered their removal - the Irish authorities ruling that her mother must have been negligent. They were only allowed a strictly supervised visit once a year, until they were per
A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home
Steve Pemberton · 264 pages
Street Kid
Judy Westwater, Wanda Carter · 320 pages
After a childhood lived in terror, in 1994, Judy was presented with an Unsung Heroes Award for her charity work with street children in South Africa. Her moving story came to light after Judy was interviewed by John Peel on BBC's "Home Truths". This title offers the story of her early years, a story of a child who refused to give up.
Stitches
David Small · 336 pages
Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award and finalist for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards: the prize-winning children's author depicts a childhood from hell in this searing yet redemptive graphic memoir. One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched toget
The Lost Boy
Dave Pelzer · 272 pages
Imagine a young boy who has never had a home. His only possessions are the old torn clothes he carries in a paper bag. His only world is isolation and fear. Although this young boy has been rescued from his alcoholic mother, the real hurt is just beginning-he has no place to call *home*. This is the first paragraph on the back of the book. While I feel it sums up the book pretty well, I think some
A Piece of Cake
Cupcake Brown · 480 pages
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The heart-wrenching, uplifting tale about a woman named Cupcake “[Cupcake] Brown’s confessional . . . memoir is one you can’t easily put down. Her life is nothing short of a miracle.”—Chicago Sun-Times There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-dea
Amelia's Story: A Childhood Lost
D.G. Torrens · 386 pages
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 Kid : A True Story
Kevin Lewis · 256 pages
Kevin Lewis grew up on a council estate in South London. Beaten and starved by his parents, ignored by the social services and bullied at school, he was offered a chance to escape this nightmare world and was put into care. Despite his best efforts to make things work out, his life spiralled out of control. At the age of 17 he became caught up in the criminal underworld of London, where he was kno
Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt · 384 pages
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish im
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.
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.
The Light In The Window
June Goulding · 224 pages
In Ireland, 1951, the young June Goulding took up a position as a midwife in a home for unmarried mothers run by the Sacred Heart nuns. What she witnessed there was to haunt her for the next fifty years. It was a place where women were denied any contact with the outside world; denied basic medical treatment and abused for their 'sins'; where, after the birth, they were forced into hard labour in
Dorie, the girl nobody loved
Doris Van Stone
"Someone has said that when you have nothing left but God, you realized that God is enough. God had stood beside me when no one else wanted me. He was not going to abandon me now. God would have to heal the emotional pain that throbbed through my body." As a child, Dorie was rejected by her mother, sent to live in an orphanage where she was regularly beaten by the orphanage director, was beaten ti
Girl Unbroken: A Sister's Harrowing Story of Survival from The Streets of Long Island to the Farms of Idaho
Regina Calcaterra, Rosie Maloney · 488 pages
"They were five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who left them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all they had each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives 'like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path'. But when Regina discloses the t
Helpless: The True Story of a Neglected Girl Betrayed and Exploited by the Neighbour She Trusted
Marianne Marsh
Child C: Surviving a Foster Mother's Reign of Terror
Christopher Spry · 313 pages
Behind Closed Doors: A True Story of Abuse, Neglect and Survival Against the Odds
Jenny Tomlin · 264 pages
Playground: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion
Jennifer Saginor · 282 pages
You are six years old. Every day after school your father takes you to a sprawling castle filled with exotic animals, bowls of candy, and half-naked women catering to your every need.You have your own room. You have new friends. You have an uncle Hef who's always there for you.Welcome to the world of Playground, the true story of a young girl who grew up inside the Playboy Mansion. By the time she
Damaged
Cathy Glass · 339 pages
'I'm not bad, am I, Cathy?' I held her closer to me. 'No sweet, of course you're not bad. What was happening to you was bad. It was never your fault. You mustn't think that.' Eight-year old Jodie's behavior is so challenging and disturbing that she has already been through five foster carers in four months. But it is Jodie who is the real victim. Only Cathy has th
Runaway Girl: Escaping Life on the Streets, One Helping Hand at a Time
Carissa Phelps, Larkin Warren · 315 pages
In this book is a story of triumph and a fierce determination to give back. The author was a runner. By twelve, she had run away from home, dropped out of school, and fled blindly into the arms of a brutal pimp, who made her walk the hard streets of central California. But even when she escaped him, she could not outrun the crushing inner pain of abuse, neglect, and abandonment. With little to hop
Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave
Shyima Hall · 240 pages
This biography traces the life of Shyima Hall, a domestic slave smuggled from Egypt to Orange County by the family her parents sold her to at age eight. The coauthor is Lisa Wysocky. The author, Shyima Hall was eight when her parents sold her into slavery. In Egypt's capitol city of Cairo, she lived with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten,
Against All Odds:
Paul Connolly · 283 pages