In this shocking, timely, and inspirational memoir, Elissa Wall details her life growing up in the polygamous Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints religious sect, being forced into an unwanted marriage at the age of 14, and her courage to testify against FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.--From publisher description.

"At thirteen years old, Stephen Mills is chosen for special attention by the director of his Jewish summer camp, a charismatic social worker. Stephen, whose father had died when he was four, places his trust in this authority figure, who then grooms and molests him for two years. The boy tells no one, but the aftershocks rip through his life: self-loathing, drugs, petty crime, and horrific nightmares, all made worse by the discovery that his abuser...

"In the summer of 1994, when Molly Brodak was thirteen years old, her father robbed eleven banks, until the police finally caught up with him while he was sitting at a bar drinking beer, a bag of stolen money plainly visible in the backseat of his parked car. Dubbed the "Mario Brothers Bandit" by the FBI, he served seven years in prison and was released, only to rob another bank several years later and end up back behind bars. In her powerful, provocative...

"Few people are aware that in the aftermath of German and Soviet invasions and division of Poland, more than 1.5 million people were deported from their homes in Eastern Poland to remote parts of Russia. Half of them died in labor camps and prisons or simply vanished, some were drafted into the Russian army, and a small number returned to Poland after the war. Those who made it out of Russia alive were lucky--and nine-year-old Krystyna Mihulka was...

In the fall of 1929, when Laura Cummings mother was three years old, she was kidnapped from a beach on the Lincolnshire coast of England. There were no screams when she was taken, suggesting the culprit was someone familiar to her, and when she turned up again in a nearby village several days later, she was found in perfect health and happiness. No one was ever accused of a crime. The incident quickly faded from her memory, and her parents never discussed...

"A stunning firsthand account of the creation of a modern cult under conman Larry Ray and the horrifying costs paid by his young victims: his daughter's college roommates. In September 2010, at the beginning of the academic year at Sarah Lawrence College, a sophomore named Talia Ray asked her roommates if her father could stay with them for a while. No one objected. Her father, Larry Ray, was just released from prison, having spent three years behind...

Losing Aaron is the story of the life and death of Aaron Hughes told by his mother, Ingrid Blaufarb Hughes. It describes the devastation of his mind by schizophrenia and the ways that his illness reverberated through the family altering everyone's life. In his teens Aaron was sensible, poised, and brilliantly able in his schoolwork and projects and a generous support to friends and family. Excerpts from his high school journals and medical records...

"From the Ashes is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Metis-Cree man who refused to give up. Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers, cut off from all they had known. Eventually the children landed in the home of their paternal grandparents, but their tough-love attitudes meant conflicts became commonplace. And the...

"It was Devin Galaudet's job to take the ashes and pour them into the waters of Cadiz, Spain after his father's death. Carrying them across Spain by car, train, and backpack, this was their swan song, their "buddy picture" come to life. Half a mile from the Mediterranean, though, Devin lost his father's ashes. Standing in the middle of a windy cobblestone street in Old Town Cadiz, he wondered what the hell just happened--not just in that moment, but...