The Only Girl in the Car Bookworm and dreamer, Kathy was a young girl with a tender heart, an adventurer’s spirit, and a child’s terrible confusion about her proper place in the world. As the oldest daughter in a family of six children, she seemed trapped in her role as Big Sister and Mommy’s Helper. Then, one day, teetering on the brink of adolescence, hormones surging, she heard someone call her “cheesecake,” and suddenly saw her path. “Cheesecake, jailbait, sex kitten”--the very words seemed to be “doors opening” to a splendid new self. But from the moment she decides to lose her virginity and reels in her prey, a “full-grown man,” fourteen-year-old Kathy is headed for trouble. One cold, raw March night some months later, parked in a car with four boys on the outskirts of her small suburban town, she finds it. Though she could never have foreseen the outcome of that night, the “boys in the car could just as well have been Gypsies foretelling my future,” she writes. Girls who break the rules in small towns like the one she lived in are expected to pay a very high price for their transgressions--and she did. And yet...this young girl, as scrappy a protagonist as any in our literature, manages to transform her fate. The story of how she came to be in that car, and how she stepped out of it forever altered, to be sure, yet not forever damaged, is the theme of this extraordinary coming-of-age tale.

"This is a story of a young girl - the oldest daughter in a Catholic family of six children, with a rebelious older brother, an exhausted mother whose attention Kathy craves, and a glamorous father whom she idolises - struggling to find her proper place in the world. In the spring of her 14th year suddenly 'the earth blossomed with men and boys... they were everywhere', and Kathy sees her path towards power and freedom. Bur girls who break the rules in small towns like hers are expected to pay a high price for their transgressions, and Kathy soon learns the rpice. How she stepped out of that car forever altered, but not forever damaged, and how she learned to fight back after being labelled as a slut, insulted and ostrcised in her own neighbourhood, is also part of her story. Always aware that her ambitions were bigger and more complicated that the suburbs she grew up in, Kathy was determined to come through and to transform her life."

"Maintain your ride, think like a mechanic, get down and dirty under the hood"--from cover.

For readers of Room and The Glass Castle, an astonishing memoir of one woman's rise above an unimaginable childhood. Maude Julien's parents were fanatics who believed it was their sacred duty to turn her into the ultimate survivor -- raising her in isolation, tyrannizing her childhood and subjecting her to endless drills designed to "eliminate weakness." Maude learned to hold an electric fence for minutes without flinching, and to sit perfectly still in a rat-infested cellar all night long (her mother sewed bells onto her clothes that would give her away if she moved). She endured a life without heat, hot water, adequate food, friendship, or any kind of affectionate treatment. But Maude's parents could not rule her inner life. Befriending the animals on the lonely estate as well as the characters in the novels she read in secret, young Maude nurtured in herself the compassion and love that her parents forbid as weak. And when, after more than a decade, an outsider managed to penetrate her family's paranoid world, Maude seized her opportunity. By turns horrifying and magical, The Only Girl in the World is a story that will grip you from the first page and leave you spellbound, a chilling exploration of psychological control that ends with a glorious escape.

Publisher description

A guide to automobile ownership and maintenance discusses what kind of car to buy, safety, inspection, fuel efficiency, avoiding theft, emergency supplies, basic tools, important car parts, and how to deal with mechanics.

There are 15 million women drivers in the UK, yet so often they can feel at a disadvantage when it comes to dealing with the male-dominated motor industry. The solution has generally been seen as to call upon a male partner or family member for help. However, many women don't have a car-savvy bloke easily to hand - and would prefer to be more independent anyway. This is where The Girls' Car Handbookcomes in. A vital reference book, it is packed with useful information designed to give women greater confidence when tackling every aspect of motoring from getting a good deal when buying a car, personal safety when driving, handling accidents and breakdowns, tips for greener motoring and much, much more.