Teen Memoirs

Three harrowing tales of three teenage girls who left behind a trail of murder and mayhem.

In September, 2008, Roanoke, Texas, police discovered a house of horrors: poisoned pudding, a bathtub set up for electrocution, a bloody butcher knife, and a hank of chopped-off hair. The worst was yet to come. Days before, 17-year-old Jennifer Bailey, her 13-year-old brother David, and their friends Paul Henson and Merrilee White had made a gruesome pact: they'd kill their parents, steal their cars and credit cards, and flee to Canada. Paul and Merrilee's parents thwarted their fates, but Jennifer and David's mother Susan Bailey wasn't so lucky.

Told against the backdrop of the American landscape of the late '80s to the mid-'90s, Growing Up Dead is the story of Peter Conners's journey from straight-laced suburban kid to touring Deadhead. Peter discovered the Grateful Dead in 1985, at the age of 15, through friends who exchanged bootleg tapes of live Grateful Dead concerts. A teenager living in the suburbs of Rochester, New York, he became exposed to an entirely new way of life, and friends who were enjoying more freedom and less parental guidance.

Branwyn St. Clair is running from her wicked stepfather when she stows aboard the first ship she comes to. Little does she know, it is the infamous elven pirate ship, the Moonbeam. When cabin boy, Johnny Pate finds her in the hold, they form an uneasy alliance. Life aboard the Moonbeam is not what she expects. The ship soars through the clouds in search of plunder. But the biggest theft of all has already occurred....

This is a summary and analysis, not the original book. For over 40 years, Kermit Gosnell was hiding the fact that he was America's most prolific serial killer. One day a pill mill task force landed on his doorstep and the impending investigation led Philadelphia detectives to the most gruesome house of horrors anyone had ever seen.

In Shame: An Unconventional Memoir, Josh Roggie doesn't just reveal the guilt, disappointment, and embarrassment that has been present in his life - he seeks to overcome it through wit and abundant oversharing. From being born into a puritanical household, to dealing with bullying throughout school and heavy doses of anxiety, he reveals the foundation that would define his longest lasting pains. By including stories on infertility, ever-evolving theology, and even masturbation, he makes it clear that no topic is off-limits.

Maggie has spent basically every summer of her 15-year-old life at the 100-year-old Camp Bellflower for Girls, set deep in the heart of Appalachia. She's from Atlanta, she's never kissed a guy, she's into Backstreet Boys, and her long summer days are full of a pleasant, peaceful nothing - until one confounding moment. A split-second of innocent physical contact pulls Maggie into a gut-twisting love for an older, wiser, and, most surprising of all (at least to Maggie), female counselor named Erin.

This audiobook reveals the main facts about the magical childhood and teenage years of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, the youngest son of a humble farmer, born in a remote Tibetan village, who became the political and spiritual leader of his homeland when he was only a kid. Its surprising content sheds light on the main facts and events that shaped his amazing early life, including: the Tibetan prophecy that announced his reincarnation; the magic lake that described the place where he was born; how the high lamas found him in a small farming village when he was two; and more!

Carl Lavin was a high school senior when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native enlisted when he turned 18, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge. Home Front to Battlefront is the tale of a foot soldier who finds himself thrust into a world where he and his unit grapple with the horrors of combat, the idiocies of bureaucracy, and the oddities of life back home - all in the same day.

Okay, let's get one thing straight. I didn't write this book to de-convert anyone. Honest. So, if you're a devout Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Mormon, Catholic, Scientologist, or whatever, you just keep on doing what you're doing.

Annie takes us to the legendary UFO club in Tottenham Court Road to hear Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix, and other legendary venues such as Les Cousins and Bunjies to hear the best of the British Folk and Blues performers. In the process of exploring the counterculture night life, Annie discovers her voice, and sings in several obscure bands, but she is also on a journey of discovery to find herself in this coming of age story that takes her to Israel and Scotland, and meeting many eccentric and interesting people

On a cool Pensacola night in January 1991, just a few minutes before midnight, three teenagers pulled up to the Trout Auto Parts store. Patrick Bonifay, his body coursing with adrenaline, entered the store clad in a ski mask carrying a loaded gun, intent on carrying out a poorly laid plan. Little did he know that it was his life - as well as the lives of his companions - that was about to be forever changed. Bonifay, Clifford Barth, and Eddie Fordham were hired to kill Daniel Wells by Robin Archer, who blamed Wells for losing his job nine months prior.

Most of us think of bowling as a "sport" in quotation marks, and bowling alleys are places with disco balls, matching shirts, and funny shoes. But in the 1960s, New York City was the center of "action bowling", a form of high-stakes gambling in which bowlers - often teenagers - faced off for thousands of dollars every night. When money like that is changing hands, you can bet the pressure is on (and the balls are rigged), and losses come with dire consequences.

As a teen mom turned doctor, Dr. A certainly had the odds stacked against her. Raised in the crime-ridden streets of Detroit, her family was turned upside down at age 13 when her parents divorced and her mother was shot by a hitman—and survived! Three years after, Dr. A became a teen mom, young and pregnant while still in high school. Despite it all, she went on to earn three degrees and six figures before the age of 30, all while raising her son and working full time! Using secrets that fostered career management for life, she didn’t just beat the odds, she crushed them!

Criminal defense lawyer Lisa Peebles was taken aback by a secretly recorded phone call and police interrogation video that surfaced in a 20-year-old kidnapping case. They held the stench of a cover-up. She recruited an investigative reporter to help unearth the truth and exonerate Gary Thibodeau, the man convicted in the 1994 kidnapping and murder of 18-year-old Heidi Allen.

Investigators and Central Florida residents were horrified when 16-year-old vampire cult leader Rod Ferrell was arrested and charged with bludgeoning a cult member's parents. When they realized the slain couple's 15-year-old daughter was missing, they feared she was a victim, too. Detectives and journalists swarming over three states soon uncovered a web of blood-drinking occult rituals, illicit sex, wildly dysfunctional families, and spiritual warfare.

When it comes to things that grip us with fear, the mind usually looks to the supernatural experiences that know no explanation. The truth is, yet again, stranger and more sinister than fiction. For the true monsters do not reside in the recesses of our minds, but in the shadows of dimly lit sidewalks, blind corners, and even - most menacingly - in the eyes of the seemingly innocent.