As an investigative journalist, I’ve spent my career interviewing and trying to understand the worst of humanity: murderers, child molesters and rapists. They are all predators, but rape is personal for me. I was a young journalist starting my career when a serial rapist assaulted my neighbor. He entered many things uninvited—homes, bedrooms, and my mind. For twenty years, I was obsessed—learning everything I could about him and sexual assault. I read these books to understand why the justice system and society sometimes fail survivors. Yet these remarkable survivors still manage to heal their trauma–at least, that’s what I found in each of these books.
I wrote
Don't Say a Thing: A Predator, a Pursuit, and the Women Who Persevered
I devoured this book in one sitting. On her second night away at college, Aspen Matis was sexually assaulted by another student. She dealt with it the only way she knew how—by dropping out of school and hiking the Pacific Crest Trail—2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada.
Most of us would probably not deal with such a trauma this way. I’m right there with her every painful step as she takes us along on that grueling journey—both physical and emotional. What a testament to her incredible strength and the power of healing. Every woman should read this book!
Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis's exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada-a coming-of-age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from speaking of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed. Dealing with a problem that has sadly become all too common on college campuses around the country, she stumbled through her first semester-a challenging time made even harder by the coldness of her college's "conflict mediation" process. Her desperation growing, she…
I don’t know about you, but I’ve often fantasized about revenge. I think anyone who suffers some sort of trauma thinks about righting the wrong. In cases of rape, the punishment often does not fit the crime. And many women never get justice at all—if the rapist is not caught.
But in this book, that’s not the case. It could be argued that justice comes in the form of revenge when three women strike back at their abusers. Elizabeth Flock’s intimate narrative stems from her own experience as a young woman who was drugged and raped while in Europe in her twenties.
This beautifully investigated book forces you to contemplate the true meaning of justice.
'An arresting, deeply reported new book' Washington Post
'This gripping, inflaming book, itself an act of fury, shows how revenge can transmute into politics or be crushed by it' Larissa MacFarquhar
'Flock has a novelist's knack for creating suspense . . . This one will stick with readers' Publishers Weekly
-----------------------------------------------
In this profoundly moving book, Emmy-winning journalist Elizabeth Flock explores the stories of three women living in deeply patriarchal places with destructive cultures of honour, places in which institutions - government, police, courts - failed to protect women from violence, leaving them no option but to stand up and…
For me, this book had it all: a behind-the-scenes look at the incredible investigative journalism by NY Times journalists Jodi Cantor and Meghan Twohey, who exposed Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual assaults.
And the courageous journey of the survivors who chose to tell their stories—which ultimately ignited the #MeToo movement.
*SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CAREY MULLIGAN AND ZOE KAZAN*
'Explosive' Margaret Atwood
'Seismic' Observer
'Brilliant' Nigella Lawson
'Gripping' Jon Ronson
A FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, DAILY TELEGRAPH, METRO AND ELLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
On 5 October 2017, the New York Times published an article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey that helped change the world.
Hollywood was talking as never before. Kantor and Twohey outmanoeuvred Harvey Weinstein, his team of defenders and private investigators, convincing some of the most famous women in the world - and some unknown ones - to go on the record.…
This is a story about a fight for justice—a fight that even Erika Krouse may not have anticipated when she embarked on this five-year journey.
I was captivated by how Krouse walks a delicate tightrope, blending her narrative of her own sexual violence with her crusade for justice for a remarkable young college woman who was attacked at a party by football players and recruits.
Winner of the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open.
Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing.…
I don’t know how Karen Stefano did it...this brave memoir, thirty years in the making, is a perfect case study of PTSD and how trauma from sexual assault can rear its ugly head at any time—even after years in hibernation.
The daily struggle Stefano faced was real. She worked as a criminal defense lawyer fighting for those accused of heinous crimes—some as bad as the ones that were committed against her decades earlier while she was a uniformed patrol officer on a college campus.
I was touched by her honesty, moved by her courage, and blown away by her humanity. Please read this book.
On a summer night in 1984, nineteen-year-old UC Berkeley sophomore Karen Thomas leaves her uniformed patrol job and walks home alone in darkness. At the threshold of her apartment a man assaults her at knife point. After a soul-chilling struggle, she manages to escape.
Though she is left traumatized by her assault and the subsequent trial of her attacker, she herself goes on to become a criminal defense lawyer, defending those accused of crimes as heinous as the one committed against her.
Fast forward to 2014, thirty years after her assault, when her life, once again, appears to be crumbling.…
In a powerful true-crime memoir, an Emmy Award-winning journalist seeks closure in a decades-long series of crimes and freedom from her own personal demons. In April 1999, reporter Tamara Leitner woke to an active crime scene outside her Arizona apartment.
Her neighbor had been sexually assaulted by a man who would later be identified as a serial rapist who escaped justice for decades. New identities. New states. New victims—more than one hundred suspected across the country and thousands more victimized in myriad ways. Tamara’s twenty-year compulsion to follow the investigation began. She needed to question a failed system. She needed to know the women whose lives were irrevocably altered. And she needed to face the root of her obsession with this predator.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
