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Fiction featuring Care Experience Into the Water Paula Hawkins 2017 Into the Water (2017) by Paula Hawkins is a thriller. Nell Abbott's dead body has been retrieved from the river that runs through Beckford and Nell's sister, Jules, arrives from London to care for her 15-year-old niece, Lena Abbott. The story is about 'troublesome' women and the men who get rid of them. One man decides that it would be better for him to avoid prison for his crime otherwise his son "would have put in care. I've seen what happens to kids who grow up i care, there's not one of them that doesn't come out damaged and perverted." An odd comment from a man "damaged and perverted" enough to kill a woman and who didn't grow up in care. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Greenwood Michael Christie 2020 2038. On a remote island off the Pacific coast of British Columbia stands the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, one of the world’s last forests. Wealthy tourists flock from all corners of the dust-choked globe to see the spectacle and remember what once was. But even as they breathe in the fresh air and pose for photographs amidst the greenery, guide Jake knows that the forest is dying, though her bosses won’t admit it. 1908. Two passenger locomotives meet head-on. The only survivors are two young boys, who take refuge in a trapper’s cabin in a forest on the edge of town. In twenty-six years, one of them, now a recluse, will find an abandoned baby — another child of Greenwood — setting off a series of events that will change the course of his life, and the lives of those around him. Structured like the rings of a tree, this remarkable novel moves from the future to the present to the past, and back again, to tell the story of one family and their enduring connection to the place that brought them together. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience No One Was Watching Annie Horner 2018 No One Was Watching, is a work of fiction. These stories, although informed by factual events, do not intend to speak for people who endured living in out-of-home ‘care’ during part or all of their childhood but instead provide an alternative, imaginative entrée into this once-hidden Australian history. No One Was Watching is a creative response to a seminal Senate report of 2004 entitled Forgotten Australians. Just as earlier reports had revealed serious abuses perpetrated against Indigenous children and the unaccompanied children sent as migrants from Britain and Malta, this report found that the same types of violations were committed against institutionalised Australian-born, non-Indigenous children. The men and women who experienced such childhoods self-identify as ‘forgotten Australians’, ‘care-leavers’, ‘care-survivors’, ‘Homies’ or ‘Wardies’. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Innocent Blood P.D. James 2011 If you are a PD James fan, I should say up front that Innocent Blood is very different from the Adam Dalgliesh detective series. It is a psychological thriller, a slow-building mystery which starts with little steps then, as the odd details start to make sense, the tension builds. It is the story of a young woman who knows she is adopted, who exercises her right to know the names of her birth parents, and finds something she never in a million years expected. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Crow Lake Mary Lawson 2002 Crow Lake (2002) by Canadian Mary Lawson tells the story of a family of 4 siblings after the death of their parents. Luke, the oldest of the 4, gives up a plan to become a teacher so he can stay at home and care for his youngest siblings, while the 2nd oldest, Matt, gets to finish school. The narrator is Kate, 7 when her parents died and now a successful academic. She thinks she's outgrown her siblings but ... External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Before We Were Yours Lisa 2018 Memphis, Tennessee, 1939 Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge, until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents - but they quickly realize the dark truth... Aiken, South Carolina, present day Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family's long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption. ********************* Based on one of America's most notorious real-life scandals, in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country, Before We Were Yours is a riveting, wrenching and ultimately uplifting global bestseller. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Runaway Martina Cole 1997 A thriller which features the character of Cathy Connor who is forced into social care where she is abused. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Looked After Kid Paolo Hewitt 2003 Placed in care at a very early age, Paolo Hewitt went to live with a foster family where he endured extreme abuse and humiliation. Following years of abuse he was sent to Burbank children's home at the age of ten where he met a gang of children. Like him they were outsiders struggling to find their place in the world. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Common People Tony Birch 2017 In this unforgettable new collection, Tony Birch introduces a cast of characters from all walks of life. These remarkable and surprising stories capture common people caught up in the everyday business of living and the struggle to survive. From two single mothers on the most unlikely night shift to a homeless man unexpectedly faced with the miracle of a new life, Birch's stories are set in gritty urban refuges and battling regional communities. His deftly drawn characters find unexpected signs of hope in a world where beauty can be found on every street corner - a message on a T-shirt, a friend in a stray dog or a star in the night sky. Common People shines a light on human nature and how the ordinary kindness of strangers can have extraordinary results. Included in these stories are several Care Experienced Characters, eg, Joe Roberts who was in a Children's Home, the narrator in 'Harmless' who was in kinship care; and the narrator of 'Colours' who lives with Aunt Beryl. External Website

Children's Fiction The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L Frank Baum 1900 Dorothy Gale is living in kinship care on a farm in Kansas. After a cyclone she and her dog, Toto, are propelled into the magical Land of Oz. Dorothy is told by the Good Witch of the North that the way home is via the yellow brick road to the Emerald City where she can ask the Wizard of Oz for help. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience 1989 Val McDermid 2022 Val McDermid's 1989 (2022) has Allie Burns investigate mischief by Big Pharma in the context of the AIDS crisis. Tucked into the background is the WWII story of a Jewish baby being given away to a Polish couple to save the child's life. In 1989, that baby's son wants to find out more about his Jewish heritage and in the process a media moghul's 'dark secret' is exposed. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Agony of desertion (out of print) Melissa Barron 1994 The true story of a mother's betrayal and the devastating effects it had on her five young children. They endured a mental institution, various hospitals and a convent described as a living hell as a result of the neglect of their mother. A final betrayal was yet to come, the agony of desertion. Out of print External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Kirkland Revels Victoria Holt 1962 Kirkland Revels is a Gothic novel by Victoria Holt. Set in a 16th-century former abbey in Yorkshire, this melodrama deals with the life of a young unexpected bride. The novel follows its first-person narrator, Catherine Corder (later Rockwell) as she goes to live in her husband’s manor house, Kirkland Revels, where he apparently commits suicide by jumping from a balcony. Catherine is not convinced that his death is suicide and sets out to prove that he was murdered. Her investigations uncover a range of family secrets. She discovers that her mother is not dead, as she supposed, but confined in a private asylum and is not her biological mother but rather her adoptive mother and also her aunt. The local doctor, Deveril Smith, believes himself to be the unacknowledged, illegitimate son of Catherine’s wealthy father-in-law. Deveril feels that he should be the heir of Kirkland Revels, but is prevented from inheriting by his illegitimacy. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Insidious Intent Val McDermid 2017 Number one bestseller Val McDermid returns with a pulse-pounding, suspenseful novel featuring two of the most distinctive and iconic characters in crime fiction: Tony Hill and Carol Jordan. The story features a 14 year old boy who is living in foster care after the murder of his mother. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Sins of the Father Sharon Bairden 2020 Lucas Findlay thinks he has struck gold when he marries Rebecca (who grew up in state care), but she married him for one reason only - to destroy him. Trauma runs deepWhen her past comes back to haunt her, Rebecca begins to disconnect from herself and the world around her. As secrets are unearthed, she begins to fear for her sanity ... and her life.Truth will outWith her world unravelling around her, Rebecca clings to her determination to make Lucas pay, whatever the cost.Forgive his sinsBut someone must pay for the sins of the father... External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Shadow Baby Margaret Forster 2000 Evie is born in Carlisle in 1887, and her earliest memories are only of being brought up by the woman called her grandmother. Evie and Shona, born almost seventy years apart, are women of very different personalities. And Hazel – unmarried and pregnant in the 1950s, her mother arranges for her to have her child in Norway, where it is adopted out and Hazel never wants to hear or think about it (and she considers the child an ‘it’) again.But as their stories unfold, it becomes apparent that they share much more than their yearning to find the mothers they never knew. External Website

Children's Fiction Great Expectations (adapted) Charles Dickens 2002 Great Expectations is one of the best-loved stories of all time, reissued in Puffin Classics, bringing classic literature to each new generation. As a small boy at Joe Gargery's forge, orphan Pip meets two people who will affect his whole life - an escaped convict he is forced to help, and the eccentric Miss Haversham, whose beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella young Pip adores. But when a secret benefactor pays for him to go to London to become a gentleman, Pip never dreams he will meet the dreadful Magwitch again, nor just how wrong his expectations are. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Kemosha of the Caribbean Alex Wheatle MBE 2022 Kemosha and her brother have lived their whole lives in slavery. Sold away to work in lawless Port Royal, Kemosha takes her chance to escape brutal treatment. With fortune on her side, Kemosha befriends Ravenhide, a man with a mysterious past who teaches her the art of swordfighting, and introduces her to the beautiful runaway Isabella. Yet Kemosha's greatest test yet is upon the deck of the Satisfaction: the notorious Captain Morgan’s ship. His next adventure on the high seas could be the making of Kemosha – and her one chance to earn enough pieces of eight to buy the freedom of her brother... External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience A Tall History of Sugar Curdella Forbes 2019 A haunting epic following an unusual couple's mysterious love affair from childhood to adulthood, across rural Jamaica, Kingston and England. Discovered amidst a tangle of sea grape trees by the childless Rachel Fisher, baby Moshe's provenance is a thing of myth and mystery; his unusual appearance, with blueish, translucent skin and duo-toned hair, only serves to compound his mystique. Beginning in the late 1950s, four years before Jamaica's independence from colonial rule, and ending in the era of Brexit and Donald Trump, A Tall History of Sugar's epic love story sweeps between a rural Jamaica, scarred by the legacies of colonialism, and an England increasingly riven by race riots and class division. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Seven Sisters Alex Wheatle 2003 Inspired by personal experience, the Seven Sisters explores the lives of children in care. Glenroy, Bullett, Curvis and Carlton – the best of friends, as tight as blood brothers. They all live in Pinewood Oaks, a home for orphans and children in care, besides the great forest named after the legend of the Seven Sisters. At the home they are looked after by ‘Uncles’ and ‘Aunts’, go to the local school and try to live like normal children. But, of course, they’re not. The four friends decide to run away from the horror of their everyday lives in a children's home in the English countryside. They head for the woods, their sense of freedom surprises them, and for the first time they feel the exhilaration of adolescence. Yet the forest slowly asserts its own power and what happens there will affect the four boys' lives forever. External Website