Abuse & Self Defense Books

The Gift of Fear

Gavin De Becker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 305 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Each hour, 75 women are raped in the United States, and every few seconds, a woman is beaten. Each day, 400 Americans suffer shooting injuries, and another 1,100 face criminals armed with guns. Author Gavin de Becker says victims of violent behavior usually feel a sense of fear before any threat or violence takes place. They may distrust the fear, or it may impel them to some action that saves their lives. A leading expert on predicting violent behavior, de Becker believes we can all learn to recognize these signals of the "universal code of violence," and use them as tools to help us survive. The book teaches how to identify the warning signals of a potential attacker and recommends strategies for dealing with the problem before it becomes life threatening. The case studies are gripping and suspenseful, and include tactics for dealing with similar situations.

People don't just "snap" and become violent, says de Becker, whose clients include federal government agencies, celebrities, police departments, and shelters for battered women. "There is a process as observable, and often as predictable, as water coming to a boil." Learning to predict violence is the cornerstone to preventing it. De Becker is a master of the psychology of violence, and his advice may save your life. --Joan Price

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

Lundy Bancroft

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 192 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Hmmm I Did'nt Know That Was Abuse.... 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Hello. I really like the straight forward approach Lundy uses in the book. I had no idea so many behaviors were abusive..until now. The book puts things into perspective. He covers a lot and many circomstanses were not for me, but over all the book was very informative and supportive for the woman who is in an abusive relationship and doesn't know it and for the ones who know and just need to see it in print. The book offers clear boundaries and clear ways in which to handle each situation and the serious reasons why action needs to take place in most abusive situations. Overall very informative, supportive and clear.

Editorial Review:

"He doesn't mean to hurt me-he just loses control."
"He can be sweet and gentle."
"He's scared me a few times, but he never hurts the children-he's a great father."
"He's had a really hard life..."

Women in abusive relationships tell themselves these things every day. Now they can see inside the minds of angry and controlling men-and change their own lives. In this groundbreaking book, a counselor shows how to improve, survive, or leave an abusive relationship, with:

€ The early warning signs
€ Nine abusive personality types
€ How to tell if an abuser can change, is changing, or ever will
€ The role of drugs and alcohol
€ What can be fixed, and what can't
€ How to leave a relationship safely

The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Eleanor Payson

Amazon Price: $14.95 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Julian Day Publications Amazon Marketplace: 8 new & used starting at $14.95

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Relationships -> Interpersonal Relations

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 74 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Every day headlines are filled with examples of narcissistic individuals in positions of power who are nothing more than impostors plundering and wrecking havoc on the lives of others. From the corporate moguls of Enron and WorldCom to the clergy leaders of the Catholic Church, we daily encounter narcissists and the self-serving systems that enable them. Helping people reclaim their lives from this sinister exploitative force is the mission behind Payson's book, The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family. Using simple metaphors from the American classic, The Wizard of Oz, Payson illustrates how Dorothy's journey captures all the seductive illusions and challenges that occur when we encounter the narcissist. Empowering the reader with the ABCs of unhealthy narcissism and the unique problems that occur when a person becomes involved with the narcissist, Payson gives step-by-step practical tools to identify, protect, and heal from these destructive relationships. Largely un-addressed in the psychology and self-help literature, this ground breaking book offers hope and help to those who have been drawn into these devastating relationships. She includes illuminating case studies that identify the problems that occur in the different types of relationships, from co-workers, to friends, to parents, to lovers. Readers employing these insights and skills will find new abilities to identify and protect against the narcissist's manipulations and take back control of their lives.

The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize it and How to Respond

Patricia Evans

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Adams Media Amazon Marketplace: 168 new & used starting at $1.87

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 228 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Extremely helpful book 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

When I was considering buying this book, I read the reviewer who said she read it on a Monday and filed for divorce on Friday. I thought WOW, that's a pretty powerful book! It took me a little longer to leave - 4 months. If you even think you are in an abusive relationship, I cannot recommend this book enough. Verbal abuse might not even involve yelling or name calling - it can be very, very subtle. The main thing is to look at how you feel in the relationship - not at what your partner is telling you you should feel. A marriage isn't a prison sentence. This book was right on target in describing all of the different types of verbal abuse and how the partner of a verbal abuser feels. It also had some great suggestions for how to move forward.

Editorial Review:

Are you now, or have you ever been, in relationships with family, friends, or mates who have been verbally abusive? Is your happiness with someone you love continually threatened by interactions that continually undermine your self-esteem? Do you feel trapped in a relationship that keeps decaying in a downward spiral of overt or passive-aggressive abuse?

If so, this book could be your life raft, either carrying you toward repair of the existing relationship or the effects of past relationships or offering liberation from your current confusion. Its practical approach can help clear your head and possibly change your life. The only criticism that I and other readers have is that the author assumes verbal abuse is almost always directed by males toward females, which, in my experience and that of others I know, is not necessarily the case. Highly Recommended.

The Darkest Night: Two Sisters, a Brutal Murder, and the Loss of Innocence in a Small Town

Ron Franscell

Amazon Price: $6.99 List Price: $6.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: St. Martin's True Crime Amazon Marketplace: 44 new & used starting at $3.21

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Fall- The darkest night 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

THE FALL by Ron Franscell. (A MUST HAVE)

A roller coaster ride from heck!! Keeps you on the edge of your seat from the time you open the cover. Very well written and a book you can't put down. Get ready to pull an all nighter. I shall not ruin it by giving details but I will say throw away your 3 D glasses and latest graphics card for this book will take you away to the place it happened, you will feel as if you are living it. Based on a true story, this book will open your mind and slap you in the face. Beyond brilliant. The Author does something very unique in this story. He watched the story unfold right in front of him. He chooses not to judge or really give a complete opinion. He allows the reader to be Judge and Jury. You can tell it deeply effected him but he presents itFall: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small TownFall: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town in a way that he leaves out his own emotion so that it can be replaced by yours.
To this day I can not obtain a copy of Mein Kampf that the author does not have to give you his own opinion of how awful. We know how it ends, we the people do not need other people making our conclusions. I'd like to think we know the difference between right and w

Editorial Review:

Casper, Wyoming:1973. Eleven-year-old Amy Burridge rides with her eighteen-year-old sister, Becky, to the grocery store. When they finish their shopping, Becky’s car gets a flat tire. Two men politely offer them a ride home. But they were anything but Good Samaritans. The girls would suffer unspeakable crimes at the hands of these men before being thrown from a bridge into the North Platte River. One miraculously survived. The other did not.



Years later, author and journalist Ron Franscell—who lived in Casper at the time of the crime, and was a friend to Amy and Becky—can’t forget Wyoming’s most shocking story of abduction, rape, and murder. Neither could Becky, the surviving sister. The two men who violated her and Amy were sentenced to life in prison, but the demons of her past kept haunting Becky…until she met her fate years later at the same bridge where she’d lost her sister.

The Courage to Heal 4e: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse 20th Anniversary Edition

Ellen Bass, Laura Davis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 130 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Come to terms with your past while moving powerfully into the future

The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and a map of the healing journey to every woman who was sexually abused as a child—and to those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible.

Weaving together personal experience with professional knowledge, the authors provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, and support throughout the healing process. Readers will feel recognized and encouraged by hundreds of moving first-person stories drawn from interviews and the authors' extensive work with survivors, both nationally and internationally.

This completely revised and updated 20th anniversary edition continues to provide the compassionate wisdom the book has been famous for, as well as many new features:

• Contemporary research on trauma and the brain
• An overview of powerful new healing tools such as imagery, meditation, and body-centered practices
• Additional stories that reflect an even greater diversity of survivor experiences
• The reassuring accounts of survivors who have been healing for more than twenty years
• The most comprehensive, up-to-date resource guide in the field
• Insights from the authors' decades of experience

Cherished by survivors, and recommended by therapists and institutions everywhere, The Courage to Heal has often been called the bible of healing from child sexual abuse. This new edition will continue to serve as the healing beacon it has always been.

Lucky: A Memoir

Alice Sebold

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 257 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Enormously visceral, emotionally gripping, and imbued with the belief that justice is possible even after the most horrific of crimes, Alice Sebold's compelling memoir of her rape at the age of eighteen is a story that takes hold of you and won't let go.Sebold fulfills a promise that she made to herself in the very tunnel where she was raped: someday she would write a book about her experience. With Lucky she delivers on that promise with mordant wit and an eye for life's absurdities, as she describes what she was like both as a young girl before the rape and how that rape changed but did not sink the woman she later became.It is Alice's indomitable spirit that we come to know in these pages. The same young woman who sets her sights on becoming an Ethel Merman-style diva one day (despite her braces, bad complexion, and extra weight) encounters what is still thought of today as the crime from which no woman can ever really recover. In an account that is at once heartrending and hilarious, we see Alice's spirit prevail as she struggles to have a normal college experience in the aftermath of this harrowing, life-changing event.No less gripping is the almost unbelievable role that coincidence plays in the unfolding of Sebold's narrative. Her case, placed in the inactive file, is miraculously opened again six months later when she sees her rapist on the street. This begins the long road to what dominates these pages: the struggle for triumph and understanding -- in the courtroom and outside in the world.Lucky is, quite simply, a real-life thriller. In its literary style and narrative tension we never lose sight of why this life story is worth reading. At the end we are left standing in the wake of devastating violence, and, like the writer, we have come to know what it means to survive.

The Courage to Heal Workbook: A Guide for Women and Men Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Laura Davis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A workbook for a journey 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This workbook is paperback and has lots of room for notes and comments. Well construsted and felxable for use as a workbook. For any survivor this is a very needful journey. This book and its author has gathered the tools that many have but don't know how to use and helps us understand what to do and how to do it. I have greatly benefitted from this. It is a book well recieved by my therapist. For all survivors and their partners and families this is a book that gives hope, understanding and reassurance. Well worth it.

Editorial Review:

In this groundbreaking companion to The Courage to Heal, Laura Davis offers an inspiring, in-depth workbook that speaks to all women and men healing from the effects of child sexual abuse. The combination of checklists, writing and art Projects, open-ended questions and activities expertly guides the survivor through the healing process.

• Survival Skills -- Teaches survivors to create a safe, supportive environment, ask for help, deal with crisis periods, and choose therapy.
• Aspects Of Healing -- Focuses on the healing process: gaining a capacity for hope, breaking silence, letting go of shame, turning anger into action, planning a confrontation, preparing for family contact, and affirming personal progress.
• Guidelines For Healing Sexually -- Redefines the concept of "safe sex" and establishes healthy ground rules for sexual contact.

Evil Beside Her: The True Story of a Texas Woman's Marriage to a Dangerous Psychopath

Kathryn Casey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great True Crime 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book was well written and almost all the words were spelled correctly (a problem in some true crime books). The story was scary and the author made it believable. It wasn't a rehash of newpaper articles on the crime (also another problem with true crime books, in my opinion). Very good read.

Editorial Review:

Sleeping with a monster

At first, Linda Bergstrom's marriage to her husband James was idyllic. They were young and in love; he was about to enter the Navy and she was eager to start a family. But it wasn't long before the dream exploded. James became abusive and violent, prone to sudden bursts of anger, long silences, and unexplained disappearances. But Linda vowed to hold on, despite the pain and fear . . . and her disturbing suspicions about her husband's secret life.

Then, not long after their move to Houston, Texas, she made a terrifying discovery: James's hidden cache containing duct tape, a ski mask, and handcuffs. No longer could Linda Bergstrom deny the hideous truth.

The man she lived with, the man she married for love, was a dangerous psychopath. And there was no escape and nowhere to run. Because no one—not her friends, the Navy, or the police—would believe her.

Pure Murder (Pinnacle True Crime)

Corey Mitchell

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Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Two Innocent Teens

The crime was unspeakable. On a summer night in Houston, two bright, beautiful, success-bound teenage girls crossed paths with a group of young men fueled with alcohol and rage. Four days later, when searchers finally found Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena, their bodies were unrecognizable...

An Orgy Of Violence

At first, the teenage boys grabbed Elizabeth, while Jennifer escaped. But Elizabeth's desperate cries brought Jennifer back to help her best friend. Both girls were subjected to sexual assaults of every conceivable kind...and long, painful, drawn-out deaths...

No Mercy

For days afterward, the killers bragged openly about their crime. By the time prosecutors got the case, convictions for double murder looked like a "slam dunk." But the families of the victims were in for a horrible surprise. In this terrifying case, justice would be a torturous journey...

Includes 16 Pages Of Shocking Photos