“If Angela’s Ashes and My Dark Place had a . . . love child, it might look . . . like [this] riveting family chronicle. . . . harrowing, heartbreaking . . . horrifying.” —Mark Sarvas, author of. Memento ParkIn the gritty docklands of south-east England, Alix Sharkey and his younger siblings grew up in awe of their charismatic yet violent father, a vicious alcoholic. Yet it was Alix’s kid brother Stuart who defended his siblings at home, at school and on the streets. Their fraternal bond was deep and powerful until Alix moved away from their rough hometown. Stuart remained—and slid into a furtive life of sexual violence against teenage girls, punctuated by prison time.Having started out inseparable, their paths diverged radically. Alix became a journalist, cosmopolitan and bilingual. Today, Stuart remains incarcerated in Britain’s most notorious high security prison. Twenty years ago, he was convicted of the kidnap and murder of his 15-year old niece Danielle. Despite his conviction, a lost appeal, and repeated pleas by her parents, Stuart has steadfastly refused to reveal the location of his victim’s remains, condemning the girl’s parents to unresolved grief.How do two brothers choose such different paths? Could anything have prevented Stuart from becoming a killer? What factors contributed to his fall? What does Alix owe to Stuart—the fiercely protective kid brother—and what does he owe to the truth? In this piercing memoir, Alix tackles these questions and confronts a harsh reality: that the younger brother he once adored not only deceived their own family for decades, but destroyed another with his truly heinous crime.“Sharkey offers an intimate, thought-provoking meditation on how his brother’s childhood and adolescence affected his later actions.” —Library Journal

Award-winning author: 2020 Readers' Favorite Silver Medal
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‘A fun mix of facts that will surprise and amuse you.’ The Wishing Shelf Book Awards
This book is full of fun and verified facts, presented in an accessible manner that I hope will provide you with hours of entertainment. My objective has been to provide you with a lifetime supply of icebreakers and points of discussion. Amaze your friends and family by telling them that pistachios can combust spontaneously or that the holes in pen caps are there to save people from choking to death!
Following the success of my site RaiseYourBrain, I decided to collect the best trivia gems and present you with a fact compendium suitable for a wide audience. This is the product of years of sifting through history and references books on a myriad of subjects as well as searching the Internet and paying attention to the news. In 2016, I published “1123 Hard to Believe Facts”, which was read by tens of thousands and accumulated hundreds of 5-star reviews on Amazon and GoodReads. As it has remained in the Top 10 of its category for almost two years now, I decided that another instalment was merited, this time with more illustrations and detailed explanations.
This book is suitable for most audiences across the age spectrum. The “spiciest” entries are neatly separated in the chapter “Facts about human and animal sexuality”. They remain factual and abstain from profanity. To my greatest delight, an avid reader of my website explained that he was preparing daily fact sheets for his son’s lunch box. He prints out three facts every day to create some lunchtime fun for his child in the hope of sparking intellectual curiosity. I honestly wish my parents had done the same for me when I was a lad!

An unexplained disappearance spirals into an unrelenting murder mystery.   In October 2014, local Michigan police chief Laura Frizzo faced a perplexing missing-person case.  It was not like Chris Regan, a devoted father and dependable employee, to take off without explanation. When Frizzo learned Chris was having an affair with Kelly Cochran, a married co-worker, suspicion fell on Kelly’s hulking husband, Jason. Soon after that the Cochrans abruptly moved to Indiana.   Sixteen months later, Jason Cochran died from a drug overdose. Friends and family rallied around the grieving Kelly. But when the coroner ruled Jason’s death a homicide, no one reacted more bizarrely than his widow. Detectives tried to put Kelly’s past into focus. But the horrific truth was hidden under a near-perfect patchwork of lies. Veteran investigative journalist M. William Phelps expertly reveals Kelly Cochran’s staggering saga of murder, revenge, and payback.   “Anything by Phelps is an eye-opening experience.”  —Suspense Magazine “Phelps knows how to work it.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Master of true crime.”   —Real Crime magazine