Domestic Partner Violence

Everyone has the right to choose, but no one gets to choose the consequences. Sometimes we are unfairly forced to live with the consequences of another person’s actions when facing abuse and domestic violence. Further complications come when the abuser is someone we love. Fortunately, hope and choices are always present for those who look for them.

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.

Praed's first book, Multiple Sclerosis Q & A: Reassuring Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, was a best seller on Amazon. My Freedom from Abuse, her third book, was developed to help women prepare an escape plan that will allow them to successfully escape their abusers and to give abused women the tools to help them recover.

In Shattered to Shining, nine women and one male domestic violence survivor describe how they were shattered, as their home became a place where physical and sexual violence, emotional and psychological control dominated their lives. Through persistence and courage, they have risen above their situation and come out the other side shining with positivity, strength, commitment, and empathy for others.

In June 2005, Kristin Mitchell was killed by her ex-boyfriend 20 days after her college graduation. Kristin’s family was faced with a decision: Concentrate on healing themselves - or take their experience and help others who might face a similar situation. When Dating Hurts is the detailed account of what the Mitchell family learned the hard way, beginning with a call from detectives.

In this brave and beautiful memoir, written with the raw honesty and devastating openness of The Glass Castle and The Liar’s Club, a woman chronicles how her marriage devolved from a love story into a shocking tale of abuse—examining the tenderness and violence entwined in the relationship...

A searing portrait of a mother’s body—a resurrection and reclamation of pleasure after abuse, a study of intergenerational trauma, and a love letter to the bodies of women: as alive and unbound as the teeming Mississippi wilds that bear witness Four months postpartum with her second child...

Renesia Martin seemed to have it all together. She was thriving in her corporate career, and she was married to an outgoing and handsome man, in a beautiful home in an upper-class neighborhood. Yet, behind closed doors she was living in the cycle of abuse. Don't Hit My Mama is a memoir where Renesia recounts what she saw, heard and felt as a child witness of domestic violence, and how it impacted her early development and later in life as an adult. In addition, she openly shares the process she went through to bring restoration and healing to herself and her family.