Guo Sheng now lives in a New Zealand city, but during China's Cultural Revolution her family were persecuted by the Red Guards and subjected to unspeakable violence. In her story brutal beatings and public humiliations become a daily occurrence. Their property was destroyed and her grandfather shot and killed. Meanwhile Guo herself was in love with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks: he and his family were Red Guard sympathisers. Her family was horrified. A decade later the couple met up ag...
'A thrilling reading experience! One of the greatest adventure stories of our times.' New York Times Book Review In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men set sail for the South Atlantic on board a ship called the Endurance. The object of the expedition was to cross the Antarctic overland. In October 1915, still half a continent away from their intended base, the ship was trapped, then crushed in ice. For five months Shackleton and his men, drifting on ice packs, were castaways on one...
An unhealthy obsession and a dark secret spell trouble for Louise in a disturbing case… A baby is named ‘Marilyn’ after the Hollywood legend, Norma Jean. Marilyn inherits her mother’s fascination for Marilyn Monroe and develops an obsession with her alter-ego. She wears red lipstick and mirrors the curvy, platinum-blonde film star from a very young age. When her family is torn apart by tragedy, she finds herself in the care system. Suddenly placed with Louise, she turns the family’s longed-...
A tie-in to the ITV Savage Planet series, this book is a compelling account of natural phenomena, a book about the effects of nature's extremes, and a fascinating account of real life stories of tragedy and survival in the face of disaster.
Kidnapped and held for ransom for 18 days by Nigerian pirates, Captain Wren Thomas suffered horrors, bringing to life the reality of modern-day pirating. Faith carried him during and after captivity, a beloved PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) service dog named Beaux, eventually saving his life once again. In this first-person survivor account, Captain Thomas brings readers into the ocean, onto his ship as he and his team fight off the pirates, and ultimately within the captivity camp. Devas...
Embracing the Light Within
by Abdule A Lawrence Esquire and Truthbetolld
Karen Grassle, the beloved actress who played Ma on Little House on the Prairie, grew up at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in a family where love was plentiful but alcohol wreaked havoc. In this candid memoir, Grassle reveals her journey to succeed as an actress even as she struggles to overcome depression, combat her own dependence on alcohol, and find true love. With humor and hard-won wisdom, Grassle takes readers on an inspiring journey through the political turmoil on ’60s campuses, on...
For the first time in one volume: the bestsellers GREAT PIONEER WOMEN OF THE OUTBACK and HEROIC AUSTRALIAN WOMEN. Providing inspiration for today's women, in this book of profiles, Susanna de Vries examines what it takes to be a truly heroic Australian. Women of grit and courage, women of integrity, resilience and resourcefulness: the 21 individuals whose stories make up tHE COMPLEtE BOOK OF HEROIC AUStRALIAN WOMEN were a rare breed. they faced different tests - harshness as pioneers in outback...
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 vital her extended family don’t know where she is. Abandoned at birth, Cathy and her family quickly bond with little Darcy-May although they have to accept she will eventually leave them to...
Sara finally found strength to confide in her mother about the terrible things she had been forced to endure. Despite her father being arrested and imprisoned, it would take much more than his punishment for Sara to free herself from the demons that haunted her. Trying to find love and support lacking in her family, Sara sought comfort from strangers and there followed a series of abortive and often abusive relationships. Her determination to be her on person and find independence led her to le...
'So there I was - a twenty-one year old black female university student walking down a suburban street with a gun, no shoes and murder on my mind. I was going to kill the past. I didn't know what else to do with it' Stacey Patton today is a vibrant and impressive young woman with a promising career in journalism. Yet her childhood was a battleground of bullying, abuse and mental torture. Abandoned by her birth mother, Stacey was placed in the New Jersey foster care system and was apparently...
The story of an ordinary thirty-something city girl who became the first British woman to walk to the South Pole. 'We called ourselves Plebs to the Pole. It was the first time travellers with no previous polar experience had the chance to attempt such a journey. Before our expedition, Antarctica had been sacred territory - the preserve of scientists and real explorers. No one had any idea how amateurs would perform in such extreme conditions.' In January 2000 Catharine Hartley, a thirty-four-yea...
Refugee Lives in the Archives (New Directions in Life Narrative)
by Gillian Whitlock
This book introduces the unique archive of letters, textiles, hand-drawn maps, emails and photographs from asylum seekers held indefinitely in offshore detention at Topside Camp, Nauru 2001-5. These artefacts introduce the distinctive and creative forms of resistance produced by asylum seekers in the remote Pacific camps on Nauru and Manus Island, and they expose their experiential histories of radical suffering and trauma. Paying due deference to the creative and aesthetic agency of these vario...
In 1944, German paratrooper Clemens Forell was captured by the Soviets and sentenced to twenty-five years of labor in a Siberian lead mine. In the Gulags, this was virtually a death sentence. Driven to desperation by the brutality of the prison camp, he staged a daring escape. For the next three years, Forell traveled 8,000 miles in barren, frozen wilderness, haunted by blizzards, wolves, criminals, the KGB, and the fear of recapture and retribution. Only a remarkable will to survive, and a bit...
For Felicity, growing up with her unmarried mother and grandparents in a tiny bungalow in Scarborough, life could be frightening and confusing. Why did her beloved granddad just make excuses when her gran subjected her to physical and psychological abuse? Why did her dad, who lived alone nearby, call her by a different name and hide her from his family? What was wrong with her?Sick of it all, Felicity ran away from home aged fifteen and for years she struggled to find her way until she qualif...
A classic memoir retold to reveal a long kept secret. When Ben Duncan chronicled his evolution from a Depression-era orphan in Alabama to an Oxford educated writer and commentator in England in 1962, he was unable to tell his whole story. He revealed much - a harrowing childhood, his tenacity and drive for self-definition and self-creation. But he also hid crucial parts of his life that would remain masked for fifty years. As a gay man living in Great Britain at a time when homosexuality was agg...
Tom Batiuk spent several years as a middle school art teacher before creating the comic strip Funky Winkerbean in 1972. Originally a ""gag-a-day"" comic strip that portrayed life in high school, Funky has evolved into a mature series of real-life stories examining such social issues as teen dating abuse, teen pregnancy, teen suicide, violence in schools, the war in the Middle East, alcoholism, divorce, and cancer. In 1999, Lisa Moore, one of Funky's friends and a main character, discovered she h...