I write novels for adults, young adults (My Life as a Bench won the International Rubery Book of the Year), and children. Using my experience as an art student in Nottingham, I wanted to look at the dark side of Sex in the City. The sexual revolution of the 60s gave women freedom, but at what cost? Conviction rates for sexual assault remain depressingly low and our streets remain unsafe for women at night.
Emma O’Donovan is a pretty and popular 18-year-old whose life completely changes after she attends a couple of parties and the following day is found semi-conscious on her doorstep. Unaware of what she has been through the night before, Emma struggles to cope with the public shaming that ensues. This is a brilliant examination of consent, rape culture, and how hard it can be to speak out and seek justice.
'A soul-shattering novel that will leave your emotions raw. This story will haunt me forever. Everyone should read it' Guardian
In a small town where everyone knows everyone, Emma O'Donovan is different. She is the special one - beautiful, popular, powerful. And she works hard to keep it that way.
Until that night . . .
Now, she's an embarrassment. Now, she's just a slut. Now, she is nothing.
And those pictures - those pictures that everyone has seen - mean she can never forget.
For fans of Caitlin Moran, Marian Keyes and Jodi Picoult.
Foreign cultures have always intrigued me. I am a Midwesterner who lived for several years in Latin America, teaching English and later doing field work in anthropology. As a young woman, I lived through a violent coup d’état in Chile, and I drew on that experience when I later wrote about political upheaval in Guatemala. A Ph.D. in anthropology gave me the opportunity to spend time in Guatemala and Mexico, some of it in Mayan towns. My love of historical fiction stems from my desire to enter and understand other worlds, and I am grateful to authors who spin their magic to bring far-off places and times to life.
This is a darkly beautiful novel, set in the period after the American Revolution, a time of great hardship for many Americans. Hannah Trevor has lost her husband and three children, and she cobbles out an independent if marginal life for herself as a midwife in rural Maine. She finds love with a married man, and when he is falsely accused of rape and murder, Hannah sets out to uncover the truth. I was drawn in by Lawrence’s striking prose and by Hannah, who is strong, resourceful, and in many ways, a loner.
Hanna Trevor, a midwife in 1780s Maine, is drawn into the investigation into the rape and murder of a young woman when an honorable man--her former lover and the father of her child, is accused of the crime. Reprint.
My experience is derived from actual experience and my fight to survive. I found it within me to keep my wits about me and think, think, think about my surroundings and my assailant's movements and vulnerabilities. I waited for the one and only moment I would have to escape. Once free, I sought help and I told my story again and again until I found justice.
I ordered the book because the author was described as intelligent, honest, and hopeful. She had to be hopeful; I knew that from experience. She waited 30 years for her story to receive widespread attention. Mine remained archived for 20. For both of us, society had to evolve enough to address the subject in a meaningful way. Like me, she reveals the stigmas and assumptions about the crime and its victims that make recovery such a challenge.
"What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is brilliant, frank, empowering, and urgently necessary. Sohaila Abdulali has created a powerful tool for examining rape culture and language on the individual, societal, and global level that everyone can benefit from reading." ―Jill Soloway
In the tradition of Rebecca Solnit, a beautifully written, deeply intelligent, searingly honest―and ultimately hopeful―examination of sexual assault and the global discourse on rape told through the perspective of a survivor, writer, counselor, and activist
After surviving gang-rape at seventeen in Mumbai, Sohaila Abdulali was indignant about the deafening silence that followed and wrote a fiery…
Women’s rights in the workplace have been my passion for thirty years. As a sociologist who does fieldwork and oral histories, I am interested in understanding work through workers’ perspectives. The most important thing I’ve learned is that employers can be notoriously reluctant to enact change and that the most effective route to workplace justice is through collective action. I keep writing because I want more of us to imagine workplaces that value workers by compensating everyone fairly and giving workers greater control over their office’s rhythm and structure.
Roxane Gay’s memoir writing is brilliant! So is her collection of personal essays written by women who have experienced sexual harassment and rape.
Gay’s painful introductory piece on learning to understand her own experience of being gang raped at age twelve as “not that bad” illuminates the problem with rape culture. Women learn to blame themselves.
As the essays by other authors make clear, rape culture is bad and women are often denigrated when they speak out, but they must come together to foment change. Whether the essays focus on workplace harassment or date rape, they all hold key lessons for the importance of women’s sexual autonomy at work.
Edited and with an introduction by Roxane Gay, the New York Times bestselling and deeply beloved author of Bad Feminist and Hunger, this anthology of first-person essays tackles rape, assault, and harassment head-on.
Vogue, 10 of the Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2018 Harper's Bazaar, 10 New Books to Add to Your Reading List in 2018 Elle, 21 Books We're Most Excited to Read in 2018 Boston Globe, 25 books we can't wait to read in 2018 Huffington Post, 60 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018 Buzzfeed, 33 Most Exciting New Books of 2018
I’ve been lucky enough to have a happy childhood and enjoy a fulfilling life. Nevertheless, I’ve always been drawn to the darkness… the macabre, the sinister, and the bizarre. My selection of books has, in one way or another, helped to shape me as a writer. I’m constantly fascinated by the process of creating truly disturbed, twisted, or hideous characters. I enjoy the process of working out what makes them tick; shedding my own moral compass and experiencing the world through their eyes… wherever that ends up taking me.
This is the first in Mark Billingham’s excellent series featuring D.I Tom Thorne. He’s a compelling main character and in many ways the archetypal maverick cop who hates authority. What sets this book apart for me is not so much the antagonist, but the author’s treatment of the victim. She has been forcibly placed in a coma-like state, but fully aware of what’s going on around her. The reality of her locked-in syndrome is heartbreaking.
“A British police procedural as good as those produced by crime queens Elizabeth George and Ruth Rendell.” —USA Today
His first three victims ended up dead. His fourth was not so fortunate . . .
Alison Willetts is unlucky to be alive. She has survived a stroke, deliberately induced by a skillful manipulation of pressure points on the head and neck. She can see, hear, and feel and is aware of everything going on around her, but is completely unable to move or communicate. Her condition is called locked-in syndrome. In leaving Alison Willetts alive, the police believe the killer…
God gave me a life-long calling to help anyone affected by sexual violence. Words often fail when I try to describe the pain that results from sexual abuse and what it truly means to me to make a positive difference in the lives of survivors. My heart and soul break for those who are suffering from evil crimes, and yet I continuously see people disclosing, expressing, growing, and healing. From my many years working as a counselor and advocate, I've learned that very often people just need someone to be with them and listen. I'm committed to supporting others in this area for as long as I can be helpful.
Resurrection After Rape: A Guide to Transforming from Victim to Survivor is a therapeutic book with personal stories, artwork, and transformative writing exercises that can be life-changing for rape survivors.
Atkinson is gentle in his approach, and although the readings and exercises may be triggering and at times extremely difficult, they can also provide comfort and clarity throughout the process of engaging with them. I recommend that this book be worked through with a therapist or someone else trained in sexual violence.
Updated 2017 Edition! Expanded with new content! Looking for a book about rape that's not depressing or boring, but doesn't also avoid deeper emotions and questions either? Resurrection After Rape is a deeply-moving, powerful guide for women recovering from rape. What sets this apart from others on this topic is that this one isn't written only by a therapist; it's a collaboration between a therapist, and dozens of survivors who have contributed their insights, journals, and art for you to see. Reading this book is like having your own room full of women who have succeeded in recovery, all of…
I read a lot of literary fiction. At the moment, I’m finishing To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara, which I’ve enjoyed and whose novel, A Little Life,was brilliant. My interest in thriller fiction is sparked by writers who bring their considerable literary talents to their trade. John LeCarré comes to mind. Writers who sacrifice depth of character or concern for place quickly lose my interest. Thankfully, there are many thriller writers who do a superb job of keeping my wandering nature in check. (A quick note: I also write dystopian fiction under my pen name James Jaros.)
The Rape of the Rose is an unforgettable novel that details the horrors of the Industrial Revolution in nineteenth-century Britain. Hughes, also a poet of note, portrays the enslavement of children in those “dark Satanic mills” with disturbing precision, offering his youngest characters shreds of dignity, which life has deprived them of so roundly. He also shows men and women maimed and worked to death by owners intent on extracting every last ounce of their labor. A major figure in the novel is a father who flees a mill and joins the Luddite Revolution. I read this book thirty-five years ago and remember it vividly. It presents the underbelly of the Industrial Revolution—and the ample reasons for the rebellions it triggered.
Set in 1812, this novel concerns Mor Greave, a self-educated man, who is caught up in an English revolution in the North. He is hunted by the authorities and becomes drawn into a underworld of duplicity, passion and sexual licence he never imagined.
I’ve always liked narrative history and how we can take research and turn it into a story. More importantly, I love books that can recover the histories of marginalized people—people who don’t make it into the history textbooks. Historical true crime gives me access to realities we don’t often see. Court transcripts, detective reports, news accounts, and oral histories all combine to illuminate a world beyond the famous and known. I’m drawn to those books (and book projects) that ask the question: what can we know about the past if we look at it through the lens of a crime? Whose realities do we witness through such a lens?
Sweet drew me in from the start with this story of 17-year-old seamstress Lahan Sawyer who was raped in late 18th century New York. The book not only tells us the story of this crime and Sawyer’s courage to press charges but also opens a window into life in that era, from class dynamics to legal proceedings around claims of rape, to the political dynamics of New York in those years after the Revolution.
But what I really love about this book is its narrative force. Sweet renders the world of a New York recovering from war as he speculates and contextualizing Swayer’s life within the broader city, which she had little power to control.
On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel - the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape.
Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah's and her assailant's lives. The trial exposed a predatory sexual underworld, sparked riots in the streets, and ignited a vigorous debate about class privilege and sexual double standards.…
This is a novel of violence and misogyny, but it is also strangely uplifting and inspirational.
A group of women brought up in a cult discover a horrifying secret about the men in their lives that leaves them with two choices: go or stay. Their dilemma is complicated by their extreme isolation; none of them can read or write and they speak a language distinct to their religious sect. It is told from the POV of a recently returned outcast whose presence is a mystery until the last page.
Now a major motion picture from writer/director Sarah Polley, starring Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand.
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
“This amazing, sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of The Handmaid's Tale.” -Margaret Atwood, on Twitter
"Scorching . . . a wry, freewheeling novel of ideas that touches on the nature of evil, questions of free will, collective responsibility, cultural determinism, and, above all, forgiveness." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For…
I’m a veteran journalist and a long-time lover of mysteries and crime fiction. My new novel, The End of The Road ties together my experience over many years covering true crime and my love of the Classics—my college major—and in particular Homer’s Odyssey. In later years, reading Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, in which she recasts the return of Odysseus from the Trojan War as the story of his long-suffering wife Penelope, inspired me to tell my own tale of an arduous journey from Penelope’s perspective. Being a crime reporter and mystery aficionado helped me spin Penny’s story from a procedural and plotting standpoint; reading Homer helped me explore the literary side of her adventure.
Dionne’s book drew me in immediately with its provocative opening lines: “If I told you my mother’s name, you’d recognize it right away. My mother was famous, though she never wanted to be. Hers wasn’t the kind of fame anyone would wish for.”
Dionne divides the subsequent story between past and present, beginning with protagonist Helena’s hunt for her father after he escapes from prison, knowing he'll come for her. To track him, Helena uses the backwoods skills her father taught her as she grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness.
Through flashbacks, we learn the bizarre details of Helena’s upbringing as the child of a woman her father abducted as a teenager and held captive for years. Totally gripping.
You'd recognise my mother's name if I told it to you. You'd wonder, briefly, where is she now? And didn't she have a daughter while she was missing?
And whatever happened to the little girl?
Helena's home is like anyone else's. With a husband and two daughters, and a job she enjoys. But no one knows the truth about her childhood.
Born into captivity and brought up in an isolated cabin until she was 12, Helena was raised to be a killer by the man who kept her captive - her own father.…
