Showing titles in Dysfunctional Families

A homeless foster kid finds redemption in Iraq.

‘The best kind of book: the one you didn’t know you were craving until it appeared . . . self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it’ JIA TOLENTINO ‘A very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories with such...

Picking up where Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth leaves off, Kristin Masterwood and her boyfriend up the ante—by going into her attic to re-enact scenes described in Christopher Dollanganger’s journal. Jealousy, tragedy, survival, and revenge—the discovery of Christopher’s...

The true story of a wife and mother's descent into alcohol addiction. A harrowing and sometimes heartbreaking chronicle of habitual blackouts and unremembered nights, and her triumphant emergence into the light of recovery.

Wouldn't it be empowering to say goodbye to harmful relationships and reclaim your peace? Many people feel consumed by toxic relationships, battling overwhelming emotions and seeking tools to overcome pain and negativity. Millions experience low self-esteem and emotional turmoil due to toxic connections. However, there is a way out. This book is not your average guide. It offers you a lifeline—a clear pathway toward reclaiming your life, repelling toxicity, and building nourishing relationships.

Imagine a life where the critical voice in your head grows quiet, replaced by compassion and trust. Where joy, creativity, and peace return—the parts of you that felt alive before life’s hurts dimmed your light. This audiobook offers a compassionate, practical roadmap to heal your inner child, release the weight of your past, and step into a future where you feel grounded, worthy, and truly alive.

'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...

If you are a survivor of family trauma, "home" was never a sanctuary. It was a place of pain, instability, and fear. You may have longed for a home filled with love, nurturing, connection, belonging, and safety―but instead were met with dysfunction and emotional harm. When a home is toxic, it...

Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) is a 12 Step organization that helps people deal with trauma, neglect, abandonment and abuse experienced in childhood that still affects as adults. This book is an official conference approved book of the fellowship of ACA. These daily readings, one for each day of the year, offer shared experiences from actual ACA members about the subject for the day that also include a passage from the Adult Children of Alcoholics / Dysfunctional Families Big Red Book. The pages are cited and the readings can be used as part of a daily meditation exercise.

When your parents are pathologically self-centered, manipulative, or emotionally abusive, the pain they cause is deep and often difficult to put into words. You may experience anxiety, depression, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), low self-esteem, addiction, or other mental health conditions as an adult. But it was not your fault, and there are tools you can use to heal the trauma caused by your childhood.

The moving true story of a little girl with Asperger syndrome, controlled and abused by the one person she called her friend. Taylor had always struggled to make friends – she felt ‘different’. Taylor never knew her father and her mother wasn’t around much. She just didn’t understand...

'Fierce. Game-changing. Urgently necessary. Brilliant, brilliant and did I say brilliant?' EMMA THOMPSON 'Pacy, vivid, compelling and very, VERY funny ... it will help so many' MARIAN KEYES 'A fucking classic. Required reading for all women and men and I believe it's going to be the book of...

When a parent singles out a child for special privileges and attention, that child is often unaware that the relationship is unhealthy - even incestuous. As adults, these children struggle to feel validated, because while they have not been directly abused, they feel a sense of violation and crossed boundaries - usually done in the name of 'love' and 'caring'. The parent's love feels more confining than freeing, more demanding than giving, more intrusive than nurturing. Yet these children suffer from what psychologist Kenneth Adams calls The Silent Seduction.

Having a narcissistic parent can create long lasting effects on our self-esteem, confidence and subsequent relationships. Raised By Narcissists will teach you to acknowledge and begin to heal from the difficult experience of narcissistic parental abuse, reclaim your experience and move on to build a better future.

In this groundbreaking guide, the prominent therapist Dr. Robin Stern shows how the Gaslight Effect works, how you can decide which relationships can be saved and which you have to walk away from—and how to gasproof your life so you'll avoid gaslighting relationship. Your husband crosses the...

Frances Reilly and her sisters were abandoned by their mother outside Nazareth House Convent - a Belfast orphanage run by nuns. Little did they know the unimaginable cruelty they'd endure within its walls. Frances suffered horrifically at the hands of the Sisters: brutally beaten, worked like a slave, abused and molested, the convent regime stripped her of everything - education, innocence and childhood. But the hope of rescue or escape never left her. Years later, Frances would face her demons in court, bringing to account those who so viciously stole her youth. 

Barbara was 12 when she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital Aston Hall in 1971. From a troubled home, she'd hoped she would find sanctuary there. But during her stay, Barbara was systematically drugged and abused by its head physician, Dr Kenneth Milner. Somehow, eventually, she started to campaign for answers. This is a shocking account of how vulnerable children were preyed upon by the doctor entrusted with their care.

'They made me do it, it wasn't my fault!' When three brothers come to live with Maggie, she knows that it's going to be challenging. They are all already struggling with rejection after their dad abandoned them, their mum having died several years before. While four-year-old Billy is a delight...

*Longlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction* 'Not simply a memoir. It is an indictment of failure at the highest levels of police, press and politics' Tom Watson 'Intensely personal ... turning fear into bravery and pain into power' Cosmopolitan 'A powerful memoir ... the astonishing...

A moving, compelling memoir about growing up and escaping the tragic legacy of mental illness, suicide, addiction, and depression in one of America's most famous families: the Hemingways.