Showing titles in Dysfunctional Families

‘I’m going to love my baby and give her lots of attention,’ Jade said. ‘I’ll show my mum she’s wrong.’ Jade, 17, is pregnant, homeless and alone when she’s brought to live with Cathy. Jade is desperate to keep her baby, but little more than a child herself, she struggles with the...

In this important sequel to Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, author Lindsay Gibson offers powerful tools to help you step back and protect yourself at the first sign of an emotional takeover, make sure your emotions and needs are respected, and break free from the coercive control of emotionally immature parents.

Based on the public television series of the same name, Bradshaw On: The Family is John Bradshaw's seminal work on the dynamics of families that has sold more than a million copies since its original publication in 1988. Here, you will discover the cause of emotionally impaired families. You will learn how unhealthy rules of behavior are passed down from parents to children, and the destructive effect this process has on our society.

A light in the darkness for severely troubled children, former special education teacher Torey Hayden faced three of her most extraordinary challenges after she left the classroom. Nine-year-old Cassandra, kidnapped by her father and found starving, dirty, and picking through garbage cans - a child prone to long silences and erratic, violent behavior, whose hard-won recollections of the nightmare she endured could not be fully trusted.

'I’ve never read a book like it. It’s as if they tore their own hearts out and asked the other to hold it for them while they wrote.' Phoebe Waller-Bridge ‘Alcohol flows across families like water over a landscape. Sometimes it moves in torrents, sometimes in floods, sometimes in...

‘Smart and wickedly funny, it had me cackling into my eggnog!’ IAN MOORE ‘My favourite Christmas book of the year!’ GILL SIMS 🔪🎄🔪🎄🔪🎄🔪🎄🔪🎄🔪🎄🔪🎄🔪🎄🔪 Anna’s taking the family away for a quiet Christmas in this hilarious, standalone murder...

A true-crime story that sounds like a thriller, Sleeping with a Psychopath is a blow-by-blow account of the power of manipulation and a testament to the human will to survive. 

Hundreds of thousands of fans flock to the PTWM blog and Facebook page purely because Rachaele is genuine and incredibly honest and has created a supportive online community where parents (and non-parents) can go for respite. Her message is clear: not everyone is a perfect mum with a nice house, a steady marriage and 2.5 children. We lead messy, complicated lives. For Rachaele, blogging is about shining a light on very real ups and downs (from having fun with your beautiful kids and watching them grow to meltdowns, domestic violence, bullying and more). 

Bekhal Mahmod was one of six siblings from a Sunni Muslim family in Iraqi Kurdistan who sought a new life as asylum seekers and arrived in London in 1998. When Bekhal's father tried to force her into an arranged marriage at 15, she ran away. This caused her father to ‘lose respect’ within the Kurdish community and Bekhal became the target of an honour killing and her younger sisters Banaz and Payzee were quickly married off to restore the family's reputation. When Banaz left her husband, Mahmod decided this 'shame' to the family meant Banaz must die. Within weeks, she had vanished.

In her trademark gentle, supportive and reassuring style, best-selling author Sarah Ockwell-Smith shows that while we all lose it at times, everyone can become a calmer parent. Based on her many years' experience working with parents, Sarah provides research, advice and practical exercises that will set you on the path to calmer parenting that will benefit both you and your child.

Cult victims and those who have experienced abusive relationships often suffer from fear, confusion, low self-esteem, and post-traumatic stress. Take Back Your Life explains the seductive draw that leads people into such situations, provides insightful information for assessing what happened, and hands-on tools for getting back on track.

A devastating story of coercive control and domestic homicide. Why would an 'ordinary' father murder his family? On 19 July 2016, Claire and Charlotte Hart were murdered in broad daylight, by the family's father, using a sawed-off shotgun. He then committed suicide. Luke and Ryan Hart, the two surviving sons, open up about their experiences growing up and the circumstances surrounding the murders. They hope to highlight the patterns of behaviour in coercive control and its deadly consequences, improving public awareness and leading to informed discussion on domestic abuse. 

'Required reading' CATHY NEWMAN 'Inspiring and uplifting' VICTORIA DERBYSHIRE 'A rallying cry and a beacon of hope' LUCIA OSBORNE-CROWLEY If you and your family needed help, could you trust the law to be on your side? Barrister Charlotte Proudman has seen countless women let down by the very...

The next book in Louise Allen's Thrown Away Children series.

Following the tremendous success of Pulitzer Prize nominee A Child Called "It", this book continues the extraordinary tale of author Dave Pelzer's childhood. On the verge of adolescence, Dave is rescued from his terrifyingly abusive, alcoholic mother and made a permanent ward of the court. Then the real journey begins. He is moved from one foster home to another, searching for identity and family.

When you said, “I do”, you entered marriage with high hopes, dreaming it would be supremely happy. You never intended for it to be miserable. Millions of couples are struggling in desperate marriages. But the story doesn’t have to end there. Dr. Gary Chapman writes, “I believe that in every troubled marriage, one or both partners can take positive steps that have the potential for changing the emotional climate in their marriage.”

Unlike people with carefree previous lives, I packed away my past. There are some memories labelled 'Look at', and others 'Leave well alone'... Emily Smith was held in a prison of fear for ten years. When she was four, her father left and a new man was brought into her life. He loved her, he...

Left as a newborn in a box outside Stoke City Football ground, her grandparents took her into their home. But instead of finding a sanctuary, Nicky was subjected to horrific sexual abuse throughout her childhood. In 1951, when Nicky was six years old, her glamorous-looking estranged mother arrived on the doorstep to 'rescue' her. But Nicky's hopes of a safe and loving family were very soon smashed, and her world became darker still. 

A pioneering physician reveals how childhood stress leads to lifelong health problems and what we can do to break the cycle. When a young boy walked into Dr Nadine Burke Harris's clinic he looked healthy for a preschooler. But he was seven, and hadn't grown a centimetre since a traumatic event...

The year was 1975, and at age sixteen, young Keri was desperate to strike out on her own. However, as listeners of the first three volumes of this series will know, her childhood was hardly the loving, supportive, preparatory period it should have been.