True Girl

A father kills his three young children and his wife and impersonates a disgraced journalist. Oregon's most famous murderer explains how her jail breaks show she's ready for parole.

By the age of 13, vulnerable Sheffield teenager Samantha Owens had fallen through the cracks in the care system. Bounced around numerous foster carers after her home life became too chaotic, Samantha thought she had found a friend in the streetwise Amanda Spencer. The older girl bought her clothes, styled her hair and found her places to stay. Samantha's welfare was the last thing on Spencer's mind, however, as in reality she was grooming the young girl for exploitation of the worst possible kind.

With thousands of men off fighting in the Civil War, the government hired women and girls - some as young as 10 - to make millions of rounds of ammunition. Poor immigrant girls and widows paid the price for carelessness at three major arsenals. Many of these workers were killed, blown up and burned beyond recognition.

In the Civil War, the government hired women and girls - some as young as nine - to make millions of rounds of ammunition. They worked 72-hour weeks with little training. Poor immigrant girls and widows paid the price for carelessness at three major arsenals. Many of these workers were killed, blown up, and burned beyond recognition. Gunpowder Girls is a story of child labor and immigrant hopes and the cruel, endless demands of an all-consuming war. A Junior Library Guild selection.

What can drive a young and seemingly innocent child to kill? Murder is horrible enough when perpetrated by adults, and yet the concept takes on a whole new level of chilling morbidity when a murderer is revealed to be a young boy or girl. Is it the result of severe trauma manifesting itself in the most macabre of ways? Is it the progeny of some severe mental disorder? Or were they influenced by the actions of the people they grew up with? Most of the time, the answers to such a question are simple but no less horrific.

In her midfifties, Dr. Stacey Kerr was diagnosed with osteoporosis and told to play it safe. Instead, she bought her first Harley. Over the next fourteen years, Stacey and her two best friends decided to give the finger to aging gracefully, ultimately embarking on seven epic motorcycle tours throughout the western United States filled with drama, introspection, and pure joy. Using her motorcycle adventures to guide her memories, Stacey travels the twisting road of her own past, in which the only constant is defying expectations.

The picture didn't fit. On the surface, Alyssa Bustamante was a pretty 15-year-old girl who excelled in school. Behind closed doors, however, Alyssa was a deeply disturbed teenager with fantasies about killing someone. Her social media pages and diaries all painted the portrait of someone with an insatiable to desire to inflict pain onto the world. Her murderous impulses increasing by the day, Alyssa dug two graves in the woods outside her home and waited...waited for the perfect victim.

Some scary stories are more than just tall tales. This spine-tingling collection of TRUE terrors and haunting legends is perfect for Halloween—and thrills and chills all year long. This book is not for the faint of heart…but for those brave enough, a bone-chilling, globe-trotting adventure...

Cassandra Petit-Charles is not your average preacher’s kid. She carries a gun and takes on Boston’s underbelly. She is an “extraction specialist” and her job is relocating kids who have gotten entangled in street life. Helping at-risk youth feels like penance for Cassie’s wild younger years and she’s at peace with living for each new day’s adventure, even if her family think she’s stuck in the past and afraid of the future. Then, the past returns.

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 people and was alone and scared most of the time. That was until, aged just 11, an older married man called Tom befriended her. She loved having someone who would talk to her, listen to her - a protector. But when he moved away a few months later, she was easy prey.

A girl uses her wits to survive a maniacal killer who wipes out her family. A woman is condemned for the "final betrayal of motherhood" for killing her children. A grieving mother becomes convinced that the man convicted of murdering her beautiful teenage daughter is innocent.

Prayer is something that we hear Christians talking about all the time - but when it comes to actually talking to God, we often don't know what to say. Written specifically for teen girls, the prayers in this audiobook are the prayers of our hearts. You can pray them or use them for inspiration for prayers of your own. You can pray about anything and everything - God is always listening. The prayers we cover include: Depression, purity, acceptance, peer pressure, and more.

Susan Tate Ankeny was sorting through the belongings of her late father - a World War II bombardier who had bailed from a burning B-17 over Nazi-occupied France in 1944 - when she found two boxes. One contained her dad's Air Force uniform, and the other an unfinished memoir, stacks of envelopes, black-and-white photographs, mission reports, dog tags, and the fake identity cards he used in his escape. Ankeny spent more than a decade from that moment tracking down letter writers, their loved ones, and anyone who had played a role in her father's story.

Like the script of a riveting Hollywood Western and nearly forgotten for over 130 years, the Meeks Family Murders of 1894 is one of the most heartbreaking true stories in the history of America. After the horror, a courageous little girl came back from the grave to tell on the awful fiends who had committed the murders. This is the most complete account yet written about the tragedy, which happened near Browning, Missouri in the heartland of America.

When 16-year-old Jessica Wragg applied for a job at her local farm shop in Derbyshire, England, she never expected to land a position behind the butchery counter. Wragg was younger than many of her colleagues by decades, and she was one of the few women on staff, struggling to earn her keep among colleagues who were reluctant to share the tricks of their trade with a novice. Breaking down carcasses by day, and studying animal anatomy by night, Wragg was soon hooked and determined to establish herself in an industry that is steeped in tradition, and often resistant to change.

When her parents’ devastating divorce uprooted her life, Haylee Graham plunged into a downward spiral. Heartbroken and afraid, the young girl turned to her beloved horse, Cartier, as a lifeline. The only place she felt safe was hiding with him in his stall; the only time she felt like herself was when the two jumped fences together. So when a corrupt lawyer threatened to seize ownership of Cartier and sell him to a slaughterhouse to repay their debts, Haylee knew she would do anything to save him. Her mom said, "Take the horse and run!"—and she did.

When Tai Choi leaves her home in the Zhejiang province of China, she believes she’ll be visiting her grandmother. But in truth, despite her mother’s opposition, her father has sold her to pay his gambling debts. Alone and afraid, Tai Choi is put on a ship headed for San Francisco, known among the Chinese as Gold Mountain. When she arrives, she is forced to go by the new name listed on her paper documents: Tien Fu Wu. Her new life as a servant at a gambling den is hard. And if she is to survive, Tien Fu must persevere, and learn who to trust.

Just three weeks after my 21st birthday, on the evening of October 4, 1994, I was abducted from the streets of my hometown in Southern Russia while on my way home. They drugged me and drove to another country, where they held me captive in a tiny room at first, and then under a house in a pit. A few weeks after my kidnapping, a brutal civil war broke out. Through eight horrifying months of captivity, witnessing atrocities, surviving bombings and sexual violence, I fought desperately to stay alive, stay sane, and not to lose the one thing that kept me going: my hope.

On a winter morning in 1990, Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota picked up the Bismarck Tribune. On the front page, a small girl gazed into the distance, shedding a tear. The headline: Foster home children beaten - and nobody's helping. Dorgan, who had been working with American Indian tribes to secure resources, was distressed. He flew to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to meet with five-year-old Tamara and her grandfather. They became friends. Then she disappeared. And he would search for her for decades until they finally found each other again.

At least that’s what twelve-year-old Eliana has grown up hearing. Imagine her surprise when one morning in the forest she finds herself eye-to-eye with a young dragon. When she learns the dragon’s father has been missing since the last full moon, she vows to help.