Showing results by publisher "HarperCollins Publishers Limited" in Relationships

Bestselling author and foster carer Casey Watson shares the shocking true story of Tyler, an abused eleven-year-old who, after stabbing his step-mother, had nowhere else to go. Knowing a little of Tyler's past - his biological mother, a heroin addict, died of an overdose when he was three - Casey feels bound to do her best for him. It isn't easy; Tyler continuously lashes out, even trying to attack Casey herself.

Born in a prison and removed from his drug-dependent mother, rejection is all that 7-year-old Alex knows. When Cathy is asked to foster little Alex, aged seven, her immediate reaction is: Why can't he stay with his present carers for the last month? He's already had many moves since coming into care as a toddler and he'll only be with her a short while before he goes to live with his permanent adoptive family. But the present carers are expecting a baby and the foster mother isn't coping, so Alex goes to live with Cathy.

It's the night before Christmas when Casey and Mike get the call. A 12-year-old girl, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Her father is on a ventilator, fighting for his life, while her mother is currently on remand in prison. Despite claiming she attacked him in self-defence, she's been charged with his attempted murder. The girl is called Bella, and she's refusing to say anything. The trouble is that she is also the only witness....

In answer to the crisis in girls' mental health, the UK's best-selling parenting author, Steve Biddulph, brings a guide rich in content and interactive elements to help parents be prepared and self-aware in providing for their daughters. In his groundbreaking new book, Steve Biddulph, million-copy best-selling author of Raising Girls, psychologist and parent educator, offers an interactive experience for parents to explore the relationship with their girls from the cradle to the teenager.

Brought to Casey as a short-term emergency placement, 14-year-old Adrianna arrives with nothing but her gratitude. Having turned herself in to a social services office some 100 miles away, she has no possessions, no English and, apparently, no history - not that she's willing to share, anyway. She is a beautiful young Polish girl, with the bearing of a ballerina, but is terrified, malnourished and unwell.

Louisa first met Robert Lockhart when they were both 17. Their stop-start romance lasted decades, in which time he became a celebrated composer and she an acclaimed novelist. Always snapping at their heels was Robert’s alcoholism, a helpless, ferocious dependency that affected his personality before crippling and finally, despite five years of hard-won sobriety, killing him. There are a million love stories and a million stories of addiction. This one is truly transcendent.

It’s a freezing winter’s night in 1954. A baby boy, a few hours old, is left by his mother, wrapped in nothing but two sheets of newspaper and hidden amongst the undergrowth by a canal bank. An hour later, a late-shift postman is walking wearily home when he hears a faint cry. He finds the newspaper parcel and discovers the newborn, white-cold and whimpering, inside. After being rushed to hospital and against all odds, the baby survives. He’s baptised by the hospital chaplain as Richard.

The stunning and heartbreaking story of the young son of Rachel Nickell - who witnessed the brutal attack on his mother and whose childhood was shaped by the media storm that followed. A coming-of-age story that begins with a tragedy but ends in optimism, forgiveness and peace.

From one of America’s greatest and most iconic writers: an honest and courageous portrait of age and motherhood. Several days before Christmas 2003, Joan Didion’s only daughter, Quintana, fell seriously ill. In 2010, Didion marked the sixth anniversary of her daughter’s death. Blue Nights is a shatteringly honest examination of Joan Didion’s life as a mother, a woman and a writer.

In the much-anticipated follow-up to Sunday Times best seller Trapped, foster carer Rosie Lewis tells the heartbreaking true story of Zadie. When the young teenage girl, thrown out of her home by her strict Muslim family, is discovered hiding on the city streets by the police, it is clear that all is not as it should be. Taught to believe that Westerners should not be trusted, when Zadie is initially delivered into the experienced hands of foster carer Rosie, she is understandably suspicious of the family around her.

The true story of two-year-old Anna, abandoned by her natural parents, left alone in a neglected orphanage. Elaine and Ian had travelled halfway round the world to adopt little Anna. She couldn't have been more wanted, loved and cherished. So why was she now in foster care and living with me? It didn't make sense.

In The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy shares stories about her family, her relationships, her career, good - and bad - sex, recounting the experiences that have shaped who she is today: from the riches to rags story of her childhood to her teenage quest for popularity (and boys) to becoming one of the most sought-after comedians on the planet and an outspoken advocate for women's rights.

A new memoir from Sunday Times and New York Times best-selling author Cathy Glass. When Cathy receives a call about a terminally ill widower terrified of leaving his son all alone in the world, she is wracked with sadness and indecision. Can she risk exposing her own young children to a little boy on the brink of bereavement? Eight-year-old Michael is part of a family of two, but with his beloved father given only months to live and his mother having died when he was a toddler, he could soon become an orphan.

The 11th memoir and latest title from the internationally bestselling author and foster carer Cathy Glass. This book tells the true story of Cathy's adopted daughter Lucy. Lucy was born to a single mother who had been abused and neglected for most of her own childhood. Right from the beginning Lucy's mother couldn't cope, but it wasn't until Lucy reached eight years old that she was finally taken into permanent foster care.

From a childhood of gothic proportions in a vicarage on the Welsh borders, through adolescence, leaving herself teetering on the brink of the 1960s, Lorna Sage vividly and wittily brings to life a vanished time and place and illuminates the lives of three generations of women.

In April 2018, seasoned adventurer Ben Fogle and Olympic cycling gold medallist Victoria Pendleton, along with mountaineer Kenton Cool, took on their most exhausting challenge yet – climbing Everest for the British Red Cross to highlight the environmental challenges mountains face. It would be harrowing and exhilarating in equal measure as they walked the fine line between life and death 8,000 metres above sea level.

'I would like to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently....' What does feminism mean today? In this personal, eloquently argued essay - adapted from her much-admired TEDx talk of the same name - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers listeners a unique definition of feminism for the 21st century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness.

Best-selling author and teacher Casey Watson shares the horrifying true story of Kiera Bentley, a 12-year-old girl with a deeply shocking secret she's too young to even understand. When Casey first meets Kiera, a small, slight girl who's just lashed out at a fellow pupil in assembly, she immediately senses something's wrong. Something in Kiera's eyes alerts Casey that this is an "old head on young shoulders", and with Kiera's constant tiredness and self-soothing habit of pulling her hair out, she follows her instinct and takes Kiera under her wing.

It's late on Friday night when Casey's mobile starts to ring. She is expecting it to be her daughter, Riley. But it isn't Riley. It's a woman from the Emergency Duty Team. So begins Casey and Mike's latest fostering challenge - a 15-year-old girl called Keeley who's run away from her long-term foster home 25 miles away.

Steve Biddulph's Raising Boys was a global phenomenon. The first book in a generation to look at boys' specific needs, parents loved its clarity and warm insights into their sons' inner world. But today, things have changed. It's girls that are in trouble. There has been a sudden and universal deterioration in girls' mental health, starting in primary school and devastating the teen years. Steve Biddulph's Raising Girls is both a guidebook and a call to arms for parents.