For more than two years, BBC Radio 4's The Archers ran a disturbing storyline centred on Helen Tichener's abuse at the hands of her husband Rob. Not the kind of abuse that leaves a bruise, but the sort of coercive control that breaks your spirit and makes it almost impossible to walk away. As she listened to the unfolding story, Helen Walmsley-Johnson was forced to confront her own agonising past. Helen's first husband controlled her life, from the people she saw to what was in her bank account.

Evan Stark, founder of one of America's first battered women's shelters, shows how "domestic violence" is neither primarily domestic nor necessarily violent, but a pattern of controlling behaviors more akin to terrorism and hostage-taking. Drawing on court records, interviews, and FBI statistics, Stark details coercive strategies that men use to deny women their very personhood, from "beeper games" to food logs to micromanaging dress, speech, sexual activity, and work. 

In this ground-breaking investigation, Laura traces the roots of misogyny across a complex spiders web of groups extending from men's rights activists and pick-up artists to Men Going Their Own Way, trolls and the Incel movement, in the name of which some men have committed terrorist acts. Drawing parallels with other extremist movements around the world, Bates seeks to understand what attracts men to the movement, how it grooms and radicalises boys, how it operates and what can be done to stop it.

Male entitlement takes many forms. To sex, yes, but more insidiously to admiration, bodily autonomy, knowledge, power, even care. In this urgent intervention, philosopher Kate Manne offers a radical new framework for understanding misogyny. In clear-sighted, powerful prose, she ranges widely across the culture - from the Kavanaugh hearings and 'Cat Person' to Harvey Weinstein and Elizabeth Warren - to show how the idea that a privileged man is tacitly deemed to be owed something is a pervasive problem. 

Friday, 12th February, 1993. Two outwardly unremarkable 10-year-old boys began the day by playing truant and ended it running an errand for the local video shop. In between they abducted and killed a two-year-old boy, James Bulger. In search of an explanation, award-winning journalist David James Smith looks behind the misinformation, misunderstanding and sensational reporting to an exact account of the events of that day. A sensitive and definitive account, The Sleep of Reason achieves a unique understanding of the James Bulger case. 

Trauma and Recovery is revered as the seminal text on understanding trauma survivors. By placing individual experience in a broader political frame, Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman argues that psychological trauma is inseparable from its social and political context. Drawing on her own research on incest, as well as a vast literature on combat veterans and victims of political terror, she shows surprising parallels between private horrors like child abuse and public horrors like war.

Rosie Batty knows pain no woman should have to suffer. Her son was killed by his father in a violent incident in February 2014, a horrendous event that shocked not only the nation but the world. Greg Anderson murdered his 11-year-old son, Luke, and was then shot by police at the Tyabb cricket oval. Rosie had suffered years of family violence and had had intervention and custody orders in place in an effort to protect herself and her son. She believes the killing was Greg's final act of control over her.

I watched you move in next door and thought we might be friends. I saw you watching from the window - and knew I’d have to keep you well away from my husband. I started to trust you. Confide in you. I started to mistrust you. Suspect you. I was confused when I blacked out after an evening at your place. Was I really that drunk? I came up with a plan. A plan to make you both pay.

This bundle contains information about some difficult topics that confront us with the harsh realities of our society: sexual and domestic abuse, suicide, and tough relationships.

Nazir Afzal knows a thing or two about justice. As a Chief Prosecutor, it was his job to make sure the most complex, violent and harrowing crimes made it to court and that their perpetrators were convicted. From the Rochdale sex ring to the earliest prosecutions for honour killing and modern slavery, Nazir was at the forefront of the British legal system for decades. But his story begins in Birmingham, in the '60s, as a young boy facing racist violence and the tragic death of a young family member....

When Becky accidently sees her boss with a woman who isn’t his wife, she’s horrified but keeps her counsel - she owes Matthew so much for all he’s done for her career. But when the same woman accuses him of rape and asks for the witness to come forward, Becky doesn’t know what to do. Was what she saw rape? Or is this a young actress looking to get ahead? And can Becky separate her own traumatic past from the present? As Becky attempts to untangle these blurred lines, she must risk everything to find the truth....

On a snowy winter evening in 1982, 21-year-old Mary Brown accepted a ride from a handsome stranger in the resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado. The trip ended with her brutally beaten and raped. Mary survived, but her predator's violence had only just begun. After 10 years in prison, Tom Luther was released a far more vicious criminal. Soon, from the Rockies to West Virginia, like Ted Bundy, Luther enticed a chain of women into his murderous trap.

Under the cover of anonymity, Paul Saunders courageously tells his shockingly true story of how he and his stepsiblings were repeatedly abused by their mother and stepfather. It doesn’t make “easy” listening, but living through it wasn’t fun, either.

What do the attacks in London Bridge, Manchester and Westminster have in common with those at the Charlie Hebdo offices, the Finsbury Park Mosque attack and multiple US shootings? They were all carried out by men with histories of domestic violence. Terrorism begins at home. Terrorism is seen as a special category of crime that has blinded us to the obvious - that it is, almost always, male violence. The extraordinary link between so many tragic recent attacks is that the perpetrators have practised in private before their public outbursts.

A collection of essays from best-selling author and founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, Laura Bates. Laura Bates, pioneering feminist, activist and best-selling author, has given voice to hundreds of thousands of women through her international Everyday Sexism Project. Drawing attention to both hidden and blatant sexist acts and attitudes, Laura has exposed the startling truth behind misogyny in our society: systemic, ingrained and ignored.