What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorA Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home
Steve Pemberton · 264 pages
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
The Privilege of Youth: A Teenager's Story
Dave Pelzer · 240 pages
More than six million readers can attest to the heartbreak and courage of Dave Pelzer’s story of growing up in an abusive home. His inspirational books have helped countless others triumph over hardship and misfortune. Now this former lost boy who defeated insurmountable odds to emerge whole and happy at last takes us on his incredible odyssey toward healing and forgiveness. In The Privilege of
Three Little Words: A Memoir
Ashley Rhodes-Courter · 320 pages
Ashley spent nine years in foster care after being taken away from her mother. She endured many caseworkers, moving from school to school and manipulative, humiliating and abusive treatment from one foster family. See how she survives and eventually thrives against the odds.
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
The Anti-Cool Girl
Rosie Waterland · 304 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.
Crying for Help: The Shocking True Story of a Damaged Girl with a Dark Past
Casey Watson
"Two weeks after saying farewell to her first foster child, Casey is asked to look after Sophia, a troubled 12-year-old with a sad past. Sophia's actions are disturbing and provocative and, before long, Casey and her family find themselves in a dark and dangerous situation, leading Casey to question whether she is really cut out for foster care. Two years ago Sophia's mother fell into a coma. She
Hope's Boy: A Memoir
Andrew Bridge · 313 pages
There's something going on in this Great Land of ours--more and more people are famous for being famous. Now, one of the Avon Trade program's brightest young voices examines what happens to an ordinary young woman who ends up in some pretty wild circumstances.When a Hollywood heartthrob moves in next door, Julie finds herself thrust into the spotlight and becomes a bona fide celebrity for no good
Nobody’s Son: All Alex ever wanted was a family of his own
Cathy Glass · 336 pages
Lost Boy
Brent W. Jeffs, Maia Szalavitz · 256 pages
In the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), girls can become valuable property as plural wives, but boys are expendable, even a liability. In this powerful and heartbreaking account, former FLDS member Brent Jeffs reveals both the terror and the love he experienced growing up on his prophet's compound--and the harsh exile existence that so many boys face on
Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling...
Rosie Perez · 329 pages
The Oscar-nominated actress shares the previously untold story about her disadvantaged childhood and her successes in and out of the Hollywood limelight, tracing her relationship with the schizophrenic mother who relinquished her to a Catholic orphanage, the abuse she suffered in a series of homes and the fierce sense of independence that inspired her career.
Child C: Surviving a Foster Mother's Reign of Terror
Christopher Spry · 313 pages
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
Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island
Regina Calcaterra · 306 pages
Calcaterra and her siblings endured a series of foster homes and intermittent homelessness in the shadow of the Hamptons. She managed to rise above her past while fighting to keep her brother and three sisters together. An unforgettable reminder that, regardless of social status, the American dream is still within reach for those who have the desire and the determination to succeed.
Coreyography
Corey Feldman
"A deeply personal and revealing memoir and Hollywood-survival story by The lost boys and Stand by me star"-- Lovable child star by age ten, international teen idol by fifteen, and to this day a perennial pop-culture staple, Feldman has not only spent the entirety of his life in the spotlight, he's become just as famous for his off-screen exploits as for his roles. But behind the scenes, his life
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
My Story
Marilyn Monroe, Ben Hecht, Joshua Green · 143 pages
Somebody's Daughter
Ashley C. Ford · 264 pages
Turning Stones: My Days and Nights with Children at Risk
Marc Parent · 372 pages
An 8-year old boy holding a knife to his younger brother's throat. Three small children who watch their older sister jump out of a twenty-third story window, following their mother's orders. Two boys whose mother believes they are all victims of a hex laid on them by her ex-husband. An eleven-year-old boy at a fashionable Manhattan address whose mother is so drunk she can't keep her robe closed wh
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
Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke
Patty Duke, Kenneth Turan · 311 pages
They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School
Bev Sellars · 256 pages
Like Native children forced by law to attend schools across Canada and the United States, Sellars and other students of St. Joseph's Mission were allowed home only for two months in the summer and for two weeks at Christmas. The rest of the year they lived, worked, and studied at the school. St. Joseph's mission is the site of the controversial and well-publicized sex-related offences of Bishop Hu