Our Secret Son is book 2 of the War Riders MC trilogy. Book 3, Our Secret Child, is available everywhere now! SHE KEPT OUR DAUGHTER HIDDEN FROM ME. TIME TO PAY THE PRICE. I did the right thing once. Never again. No one takes what's mine. Not even the mother of my child. I saved Kayla from that hellhole. Took in her, kept her safe, made her mine. I put my neck on the line for that girl. And what do I get in return? Lies. Deceit. Betrayal. I was good to her then, but no longer. She owes me everything. And I'm coming to take it.
My beautiful boy...Created in love? born into hatred.There were so many terrifying stories about the Jews. People called them useless vermin, filthy, dangerous. Before I met Abram, I was afraid of them too. But I am about to tell you a very different story - a forbidden story.My love for Abram defied all reason...as well as German law.Tonight our son giggles with excitement as he blows out the candles on his birthday cake. But our safety is nothing but an illusion. As his candles burn out, a window shatters outside. The room shudders as the synagogue down the street is engulfed in flames.Kristallnacht has begun.When my hidden paradise crumbles like a stack of cards, I must do everything in my power to protect that which is most precious to me. My son's secret must remain hidden.Before we lose everything.
I know that two men are coming up the mountain, at this moment, including the boy from far away. I wonder what my grandson's face will look like.This is a boy in the skin of a man.I know the boy is innocent, that it's his family soul which is guilty. An old woman sits waiting in a village that clings to a Turkish mountainside, where the women weave rugs, make tea and keep blood secrets that span generations. Berna can see what others cannot, so her secrets are deeper and darker than most. It is time for her to tell her story, even though the man for whom her words are meant won't hear them. It is time for the truth to be told. Nearly a hundred years before, her father James had come to the village on the back of a donkey, gravely ill, rescued from the abandoned trenches of Gallipoli by a Turkish boy whose life he had earlier spared. James made his life there, never returning to Australia and never realising that his own father was indeed the near-mythical bushranger that the gossips had hinted at when he'd been a boy growing up in Beechworth. Now, as Berna waits, a young man from Melbourne approaches to visit his parents' village, against the vehement opposition of his cursed, tight-lipped grandfather. What is the astonishing story behind the dark deeds that connect the two men, unknown to each other and living almost a century apart? The Secret Son is a remarkable debut, a dazzlingly original, audacious and exhilarating novel. At once joyous and haunting, it is a moving meditation on love, honour and belonging, as well as a story about the strength of women and what it means to be a good man.
“In this profound memoir, Mary Carter Bishop takes an openhearted and unflinching look at a family history that is equal parts love story and requiem for a brother she barely knew. Bishop turns her formidable investigative journalism skills inward to unearth long-simmering class and culture divides in bucolic rural Virginia."--Beth Macy From a prizewinning journalist, Mary Carter Bishop, a moving and beautifully rendered memoir about the half-brother she didn’t know existed that hauntingly explores family, class, secrets, and fate. Applying for a passport as an adult, Mary Carter Bishop made a shocking discovery. She had a secret half-brother. Her mother, a farm manager’s wife on a country estate, told Mary Carter the abandoned boy was a youthful "mistake" from an encounter with a married man. There’d been a home for unwed mothers; foster parents; an orphanage. Nine years later, Mary Carter tracked Ronnie down at the barbershop where he worked, and found a near-broken man—someone kind, and happy to meet her, but someone also deeply and irreversibly damaged by a life of neglect and abuse at the hands of an uncaring system. He was also disfigured because of a rare medical condition that would eventually kill him, three years after their reunion. During that window, Mary Carter grew close to Ronnie, and as she learned more about him she became consumed by his story. How had Ronnie’s life gone so wrong when hers had gone so well? How could she reconcile the doting, generous mother she knew with a woman who could not bring herself to acknowledge her own son? Digging deep into her family’s lives for understanding, Mary Carter unfolds a sweeping story of religious intolerance, poverty, fear, ambition, class, and social expectations. Don’t You Ever is a modern Dickensian tale about a child seemingly cursed from birth; a woman shattered by guilt; a husband plagued by self-doubt; a prodigal daughter whose innocence was cruelly snatched away—all living in genteel central Virginia, a world defined by extremes of rural poverty and fabulous wealth. A riveting memoir about a family haunted by a shameful secret, Don’t You Ever is a powerful story of a woman’s search for her long-hidden sibling, and the factors that profoundly impact our individual destinies.
Adopting his late girlfriend’s son turns one man’s life upside down in this domestic thriller by the author of The Neighbors. When Josh’s longtime partner, Grace, dies in a tragic accident, he is left with a mess of grief—and full custody of her seven-year-old son, Logan. While not his biological father, Josh has been a dad to Logan in every way that counts, and with Grace gone, Logan needs him more than ever. Wanting to do right by Logan, Josh begins the process of becoming his legal guardian—something that seems suddenly urgent, though Grace always brushed it off as an unnecessary formality. But now, as Josh struggles to find the paperwork associated with Logan’s birth, he begins to wonder whether there were more troubling reasons for Grace’s reluctance to make their family official. As he digs deeper into the past of the woman he loved, Josh soon finds that there are many dark secrets to uncover, and that the truth about where Logan came from is much more sinister than he could have imagined . . . Tightly paced and brimming with tension, Her Secret Son is a heartbreakingly honest portrait of a family on the edge of disaster and a father desperate to hold on to the boy who changed his life. Praise for Her Secret Son “An engrossing mix of suspense, grief, and family drama . . . a powerful tale.” —Kimberly Belle, author of The Marriage Lie “Emotionally tense and brimming with secrets, McKinnon showcases love in all its purity and peril.” —Mindy Mejia, author of Leave No Trace “If readers are expecting this to be just another domestic suspense tale, then they’re in for a wonderful surprise. . . . Her Secret Son will shock, flabbergast, and hook readers into reading frantically way past their planned stopping point.” —Fresh Fiction
A brilliant and provocative exploration of the interconnection of private life and the large-scale horrors of war and devastation. A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and a winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award, Susan Griffin’s A Chorus of Stones is an extraordinary reevaluation of history that explores the links between individual lives and catastrophic, world-altering violence. One of the most acclaimed and poetic voices of contemporary American feminism, Griffin delves into the perspective of those whose personal relationships and family histories were profoundly influenced by war and its often secret mechanisms: the bomb-maker and the bombing victim, the soldier and the pacifist, the grand architects who were shaped by personal experience and in turn reshaped the world. Declaring that “each solitary story belongs to a larger story”—and beginning with the brutal and heartbreaking circumstances of her own childhood—Griffin examines how the subtle dynamics of parenthood, childhood, and marriage interweave with the monumental violence of global conflict. She proffers a bold and powerful new understanding of the psychology of war through illuminating glimpses into the personal lives of Ernest Hemingway, Mahatma Gandhi, Heinrich Himmler, British officer Sir Hugh Trenchard, and other historic figures—as well as the munitions workers at Oak Ridge, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, and other humbler yet indispensible witnesses to history.
This book is composed of revelations from the life of a world famous storyteller including extensive travel and projects spanning thirty years. It helps readers understand the power of storytelling as a profound and unique art form combining modern solo theatre, spoken literature, spirituality, and direct oral tradition akin to ancient ritual. The book is shaped with stories and poems and a remarkable fairytale that weaves in and out of a life of experiences: rescuing ex-child soldiers from a devastating war; working with epic singers, Native American storytellers and Tibetan meditation masters; designing a playground; telling tales to Roma mothers and children; and saving a zoo in Northern Romania. This is a unique combination of personal story, myth, memoir, and fairytales that will interest anyone involved in storytelling as performance; those using narrative in healing, business, or education; peacemakers and humanitarians; writers; anyone seeking a deeper spiritual practice; and those hoping to understand the psychology of personal memoir, myth and symbol, the importance of anthropology in our cultural life, and how communities are affected by the stories we tell.
'If you look at the murders - I wanted it and Hazel facilitated it. So we were both waltzing in time.' - Colin Howell at the trial of Hazel Stewart May 1991. The location - a quiet picturesque seaside town. The scene - two bodies in a car filled with carbon monoxide. Police officer Trevor Buchanan and nurse Lesley Howell have apparently taken their own lives, unable to lives with the pain of their spouses' affair with each other. The adulterous pair - Sunday school teacher Hazel Buchanan and dentist Colin Howell - had met in the local Baptist Church. Following the apparent double-suicide, they continue their affair secretly before both later remarrying. A series of disasters in Howell's life - the death of his eldest son, massive losses in an investment scam, and the revelation that he has been sexually assaulting sedated female patients - lead to him declaring that he is a fraud and a godless man. He tells the elders of his church that he and Hazel Stewart conspired together to murder their spouses nearly two decades earlier. What follows the dramatic confession are two of the most sensational murder trials ever seen in the United Kingdom, Howell's conviction for murder in December 2010 and Stewart's in March 2011, despite her protestations of innocence. 'If I was controlling in one area, Hazel was controlling in another area. It was a dance between control and manipulation.' - Colin Howell at the trial of Hazel Stewart In Let This Be Our Secretdistinguished journalist Deric Henderson has produced the definitive account of one of the most extraordinary murder cases to hit these islands for decades.
