Beautifully Unbroken


Book Description

At 9 years old I was popping pills and smoking pot as the result of living in a roach infested drug house, owned by a rage filled uncle in Cleveland, Ohio. 6th grade graduation: I was in juvenile detention 8th grade graduation: I was serving 14 months in reform school 12th grade graduation: I was beginning a six-year prison sentence




The Third Daughter


Book Description

“In The Third Daughter, Talia Carner ably illuminates a little-known piece of history: the sex trafficking of young women from Russia to South America in the late 19th century. Thoroughly researched and vividly rendered, this is an important and unforgettable story of exploitation and empowerment that will leave you both shaken and inspired.” —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris The turn of the 20th century finds fourteen-year-old Batya in the Russian countryside, fleeing with her family endless pogroms. Desperate, her father leaps at the opportunity to marry Batya to a worldly, wealthy stranger who can guarantee his daughter an easy life and passage to America. Feeling like a princess in a fairytale, Batya leaves her old life behind as she is whisked away to a new world. But soon she discovers that she’s entered a waking nightmare. Her new “husband” does indeed bring her to America: Buenos Aires, a vibrant, growing city in which prostitution is not only legal but deeply embedded in the culture. And now Batya is one of thousands of women tricked and sold into a brothel. As the years pass, Batya forms deep bonds with her “sisters” in the house as well as some men who are both kind and cruel. Through it all, she holds onto one dream: to bring her family to America, where they will be safe from the anti-Semitism that plagues Russia. Just as Batya is becoming a known tango dancer, she gets an unexpected but dangerous opportunity—to help bring down the criminal network that has enslaved so many young women and has been instrumental in developing Buenos Aires into a major metropolis. A powerful story of finding courage in the face of danger, and hope in the face of despair, The Third Daughter brings to life a dark period of Jewish history and gives a voice to victims whose truth deserves to finally be told.




Somebody's Daughter


Book Description

They are America's forgotten children, the hundreds of thousands of child prostitutes who walk the Las Vegas Strip, the casinos of Atlantic City, the truck stops on interstates, and the street corners of our cities. Many people wrongly believe sex trafficking involves young women from foreign lands. In reality, the majority of teens caught in the sex trade are American girls--runaways and throwaways who become victims of ruthless pimps. In Somebody's Daughter: The Hidden Story of America's Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them, meet the girls who are fighting for their dignity, the cops who are trying to rescue them, and the community activists battling to protect the nation's most forsaken children. Author Julian Sher takes you behind the scenes to expose one of America's most underreported crimes: A girl from New Jersey gets arrested in Las Vegas and, at great risk to her own life, helps the FBI take down a million-dollar pimping empire. An abused teenager in Texas has the courage to take the stand in a grueling trial that sends her pimp away for 75 years. Survivors of the sex trade in New York, Phoenix, and Minneapolis set up shelters and rescue centers that offer young girls a chance to break free from the streets. &“The sex trade is the new drug trade,&” says one FBI special agent, and Somebody's Daughter is a call to action, shining a light on America's dirty little secret.




Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery


Book Description

They were called "frail sisters," "fallen angels," "filles de Joie, " "soiled doves," "queens of the night," and "whores." They worked the seamy brothels, saloons, cribs, streets, and "hog ranches" of the American frontier. They were the prostitutes of the post-Civil War West. Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery details the destitute lives of these nearly anonymous women. Anne Butler reveals who they were, how they lived and worked, and why they became an essential element in the development of the West's emerging institutions. Her story bears little resemblance to the popular depictions of prostitutes in film and fiction. Far removed from the glittering lives of dancehall girls, these women lived at the boarders of society and the brink of despair. Poor and uneducated, they faced a world where scarce jobs, paltry wages, and inflated prices made prostitution a likely if bitter choice of employment. At best their daily lives were characterized by fierce economic competition and at worst by fatal violence in the hands of customers, coworkers, or themselves. They were scorned and attacked by the legal, military, church, and press establishments; nevertheless, as Butler shows, these same institutions also used prostitutes as a means for maintaining their authority and as a lure for economic development. Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery is based on an enormous amount of research in more than twenty repositories in Wyoming, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Kansas. Using census lists, police dockets, jail registers, military correspondence, trial testimony, inquests, court martials, newspapers, post return, and cemetery records, Butler illuminates the dark corners of a dark profession and adds much to our knowledge of both western and women's history.




Sonia's Daughters


Book Description

"This excellent treatment of Russian prostitution during the late tsarist era . . . expands our growing knowledge of the dark side of Russian society."--David Ransel, author of "Mothers of Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia" "This book will contribute significantly to our understanding of late Imperial Russian history. Not only does it constitute the first comprehensive treatment of the phenomenon of prostitution in the Russian empire during this period, but it uses this phenomenon to illuminate a number of important issues that have concerned scholars over the past several years."--William G. Wagner, author of "Marriage, Property, and Law in Late Imperial Russia"




The Prostitute's Daughter


Book Description




Somebody's Daughter


Book Description

A stunning exposé of prostitution in Canada, where a criminal syndicate traffics young women across the country, selling their bodies and murdering them at will. Annie Mae Wilson was nineteen years old on the night she died. After five years working the streets of Nova Scotia, she had found a new pimp and cut ties with supermarket bag boy Bruno, who had called himself her man. Bruno was furious and demanded to be compensated. When Annie Mae refused, he lost his temper and killed her with a single punch. People like Bruno call prostitution “The Game,” and Annie Mae lost. Annie Mae was one of twenty-two prostitutes killed in Canada in 1992, victims of an oppressive system of terror and violence that often leads to addiction, rape, and death. In this groundbreaking piece of investigative journalism, Annie Mae’s story is finally told, along with those of other young women caught in the vice of prostitution. Impeccably researched and engagingly written, this true crime account from veteran reporter Phonse Jessome approaches a difficult subject without judgment. Relying on first-person testimony from prostitutes and their pimps, Jessome explores a side of modern life that few people have seen but which no one can afford to ignore.




Somebody's Daughter


Book Description

First released in 1996, Somebody's Daughter takes us inside the lives of real players in Canada's prostitution game. This book is about what we don't know about prostitution and perhaps what we don't want to know; what goes on inside that violent underworld know as The Game, and who the girls in the tight skirts really are. Author and reporter Phonse Jessome traces the short careers of several young girls actively recruited by pimps and describes the anti-pimping efforts of law enforcers who work to get teenage girls out the The Games and off the streets.




The Prostitute's Daughter


Book Description

Kamada, whose mother, Tara, is a prostitute solicited by wealthy men in Mumbai, prefers to live in her own world of magic, where her imagination shields her from her reality. She is on a mission to escape the streets of the city and her mother’s house, which feels like a prison. Only her magical friends, a parrot astrologer who tells of the future and a neighbouring family know that her dream is to leave home to study in America, for which she has been conscientiously making arrangements studying for the GRE, collecting all the necessary documents and taking care of the finances. As she plans her escape, the 16-year-old’s world is turned upside down when her mother reveals a secret, adding to the many upheavals already assailing her teenage mind. Will her dream and the future she envisages for herself in a faraway land come true? Praise for The Prostitute’s Daughter While reading this book, I was wishing I could reach out to Kamada and tell her that everything will be okay in the end. A lovely bit of writing. Maria Goretti (author, food blogger and former MTV VJ) (Kamada’s) means of escape is the blue folder she carries everywhere. She also escapes via her own imagination, which conjures fantasy creatures everywhere, animates the fruits at vending stalls and lends voices to the city’s potholes. It’s this overlay of fantasy, always evocatively but matter-of-factly interwoven with the real-world narrative, that lends the book its greatest charm. The sheer manic detail of it all speaks eloquently of Kamada’s fever-pitch desperation for a new life, and its resolution at the book’s end is touchingly bittersweet. An extremely memorable and winning tale of the perseverance dreams require. Kirkus Reviews Juliet Philip loves magic, white feathers, faeries, wine, the sound of the rain, glowworms, ponies, majestic elephants, fresh coffee, dance, waterfalls, castles (both real and in the air), rainbows, blowing bubbles, deep belly laughs, the smell of wet earth, and creating things. She likes to make books, drawings, doodles, banana bread, fish curry in coconut milk, silly randomness, magic, and connections with people and the universe. Her stories are based in enchanting India because she grew up there. Talking Points A heartwarming tale about making dreams come trueEvocative of a teenager’s struggle in trying circumstancesA moving portrayal of unlikely friendships and escapist imaginationsWorldwide readership/marketLovers of young adult and general fiction, commercial fiction readers, general-trade readers.




The Pope's Daughter


Book Description

Lucrezia Borgia is one of the most vilified women in modern history. The daughter of a notorious pope, she was twice betrothed before the age of eleven and thrice married—one husband was forced to declare himself impotent and thereby unfit and another was murdered by Lucrezia’s own brother, Cesar Borgia. She is cast in the role of murderess, temptress, incestuous lover, loose woman, femme fatale par excellence. But there are two sides to every story. Lucrezia Borgia is the only woman in history to have serve as the head of the Catholic Church. She successfully administered several of Renaissance Italy’s most thriving cities, founded one of the world’s first credit unions, and was a generous patron of the arts. She was mother to a prince and to a cardinal. She was a devoted wife to the Prince of Ferrara, and the lover of the poet Pietro Bembo. She was a child of the renaissance and, in many ways, the world’s first modern woman. In this richly imagined novel, Nobel laureate Dario Fo reveals Lucrezia’s humanity, her passion for life, her compassion for others, and her skill at navigating around her family’s evildoings. The Borgias are unrivalled for the range and magnitude of their political machinations and opportunism. Fo’s brilliance rests in his rendering their story as a shocking mirror image of the uses and abuses of power in our own time. Lucrezia herself becomes a model for how to survive and rise above those abuses. Part Wolf Hall, part House of Cards, The Pope's Daugther will appeal to readers of historical fiction and of contemporary fiction alike and will delight anyone fascinated by Renaissance Italy.