When the Piano Stops: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse

'I squeezed through the narrow gap and out into the hallway and I stood for a moment, unable to decide where to go. Should I make a dash for the kitchen, where my mother would be swigging from a bottle? Or should I run upstairs and try to find somewhere to hide? It was a choice I didn't really need to make, because there was no escape'

Anna Lowe grows up on the doorsteps of pubs, waiting for her mum to come out. Having to give up her bedroom to her mother's drunken friends. And regularly calling out the ambulance, after finding her mother unconscious and covered in vomit.

But it is when they move in with her mother's boyfriend Carl that things take the ugliest turn. Not only is he violent with her mother, but he also sexually abuses Anna from the age of six - destroying any semblance of normal childhood she had left.

Wake Up, Mummy is the heartbreaking true story of a little girl who eventually found the courage to break free from the past.

'If you read the papers, you'd think that the only girls to get hooked are from dysfunctional families. But what happened to me could happen to anyone. Your child, your sister, your friend - even yourself if you are young and naive enough, like I was'

Emma was just 13 when her happy childhood came crashing down. A nice girl from a good home, she had no idea the young lads she and her friends met every Saturday in the shopping mall weren't all they seemed.

The boys were part of an organised child sexual exploitation gang targeting innocent young girls, grooming them for prostitution. Captivated by the ring leader, and the alcohol and drugs he freely handed round, Emma didn't see the first brutal rape coming. From that moment, her life was never her own.

Emma found herself drawn into a trap of degradation and violence, frightened for her life and not knowing where to turn. But Exploited is also the story of how she found the courage and inner strength to risk everything, and escape.

Exploited is an updated edition of Emma's book The End of My World - brought bang up to date with a brand new chapter.

'I hated the thought of his child growing inside me...but at least I'd soon have somebody to love and, finally, somebody to love me back.'

Tina has never had a stable upbringing. Aged seven, she has a paranoid schizophrenic for a mother and her father is a distant memory. So when Tina gets a new step-dad, who lavishes sweets and cuddles upon her, she feels wanted for the first time ever.

Sadly, her new daddy isn't all that he seems. He begins to sexually abuse Tina, using chilling threats to scare her into silence.

Tina is so terrified, she even gives birth to four of her step-father's children without breathing a word. Her world becomes so warped the cruelty she endures seems normal. Until eventually, the tragic death of one of her innocent children makes her see otherwise...

This is the inspiring true story of how a frightened little girl grew into a fighter and finally found the strength to escape the man who stole her childhood.

'In many ways we were an ordinary family: mum, dad, two kids, three dogs, one rabbit, two guinea pigs. I stayed at home, studying with the Open University, and dad worked, and the kids went to private schools. We lived in a rather nice semi in a rather nice area of Edinburgh, with a rather nice Volvo in the drive, and took rather nice holidays, wearing rather nice clothes. I loved Daniel deeply and I thought - no, I was sure - he loved me deeply, too. And we both loved our kids deeply (I thought). And that was as it should be. We had it made.

In some ways we weren't a completely ordinary family. There was Daniel, for one; he worked for most of the time we were married as a ship's engineer, and so he was away from home for up to four months and then home on leave for up to two. And Tamsin, our fifteen-year-old daughter, had specific learning difficulties.

But I'm pretty ordinary: an unlikely heroine. I am disabled because of back problems. I'm pretty fat - I've put on a lot of weight through lack of exercise and, yes, comfort-eating! Not the stuff of movies.

But I never for a moment dreamt that my family was all that extraordinary - until that day when Tamsin broke down and told me that her father, my loving husband, had been sexually abusing her.'

Born in 1970, Alice grew up in the impoverished backstreets of an industrial Northern town with her parents and seven brothers and sisters. She was first raped by her father when she was 11. From the age of 15, she was made pregnant six times by him in an effort to secure additional state benefits. All bar one of her pregnancies failed, but her daughter never made it through her first year.