Read about REALLY BAD MOMS
Discover the best books about really bad moms, from Stephen King's *Carrie* to Jodi Picoult's *Harvesting the Heart*. Explore fiction, true crime, and memoirs about toxic motherhood in this curated reading list for book lovers.
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Small Sacrifices
by Ann Rule
A terrifying true tale of deranged motherhood begins with the shooting of three children and follows a detailed uncovering of facts that seems to lead to the mother as a prime suspect. Reissue.
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A Heart of Stone
by Renate Dorrestein
In a striking coming-of-age novel, a young Dutch woman living in suburban Amsterdam re-examines her past to understand why the heartbreak of her twelfth birthday still haunts her. Reprint.
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Running with Scissors
by Augusten Burroughs
The author describes his bizarre coming-of-age years after his adoption by his mother's psychiatrist, during which he witnessed such misadventures as a fake suicide attempt and front-lawn family/patient sleepovers.
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Harvesting the Heart
by Jodi Picoult
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name, a novel exploring the story of a young woman overcome by the demands of having a family. Paige has only a few vivid memories of her mother, who abandoned her at five years old. Now, having left her father behind in Chicago for dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own. But her mother's absence and shameful memories of her past force her to doubt whether she could ever be capable of bringing joy and meaning into the life of her child, gifts her own mother never gave. Harvesting the Heart is written with astonishing clarity and evocative detail, convincing in its depiction of emotional pain, love, and vulnerability, and recalls the writing of Alice Hoffman and Kristin Hannah. Out of Paige's struggle to find wholeness, Jodi Picoult crafts an absorbing novel peopled by richly drawn characters, and explores motherhood with a power and depth only she is capable of. “A brilliant, moving examination of motherhood, brimming with detail and emotion.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch “Jodi Picoult explores the fragile ground of ambivalent motherhood in her lush second novel. This story belongs to… the lucky reader.” —The New York Times Book Review
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Carrie
by Stephen King
A repressed teenager uses her telekinetic powers to avenge the cruel jokes of her classmates
