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Books About Toxic, Abusive, or Evil Mothers
32
items Not all mothers are nurturing. For some, the maternal bond is a source of manipulation, emotional damage, or even cruelty.
Sections
6
Psychological Insight & Nonfiction 🧠
Fictional Mothers That Chill to the Bone 📖
Memoirs of Survival and Healing 🕯️
Manipulative Mothers 🕸️
Murderous & Wicked Mothers ⚰️
The Mother-in-Law from Hell 🔥👹
Psychological Insight & Nonfiction 🧠
Mothers who are emotionally abusive, narcissistic, or manipulative can leave lasting psychological scars on their children
Forward examines the Narcissistic Mother, the Competitive Mother, the Overly Enmeshed mother, the Control Freak, Mothers who need Mothering, and mothers who abuse or fail to protect their daughters from abuse. Filled with compelling case histories, M...
Mothers Who Can't Love | Susan Forward
In this remarkable self-help guide, Dr. Susan Forward draws on case histories and the real-life voices of adult children of toxic parents to help you free yourself from the frustrating patterns of your relationship with your parents — and discover a ...
Toxic Parents | Susan Forward
Drawn from research and the real-life experiences of adult daughters, Mean Mothers illuminates one of the last cultural taboos: what happens when a woman does not or cannot love her own daughter. Peg Streep, co-author of the highly acclaimed Girl in ...
Mean Mothers | Peg Streep
If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your fee...
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents | Lindsay C. Gibson
A brutally honest memoir about a deeply dysfunctional childhood and mother. Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa a...
Running with Scissors | Augusten Burroughs
An electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl's horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her fat...
Push | Sapphire
In 1987, 16-year-old Claireece Precious Jones lives in New York City's Harlem neighborhood with her unemployed mother, Mary, who has long subjected her to physical, sexual, and verbal abuse. Precious has also been raped by her now-absent father, Carl...
Precious (film): Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
Fictional Mothers That Chill to the Bone 📖
Complex and chilling portrayals of motherhood that linger long after the final page
Features one of the most terrifying and abusive mothers in fiction. An unpopular teenage girl whose mother is a religious fanatic is tormented and teased to the breaking point by her more popular schoolmates and uses her hidden telekinetic powers to ...
Carrie | Stephen King
Sixteen-year-old Carrie White is a shy high school student who is frequently bullied by her peers. When Carrie experiences her first period after gym class, she panics, having never been taught about menstruation. Her classmates laugh and throw tampo...
Carrie (1976 film)
A psychological thriller with a deeply disturbing mother-daughter dynamic. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen gi...
Sharp Objects | Gillian Flynn
A gothic classic about children locked in an attic by their narcissistic mother. In Flowers in the Attic and Petals on the Wind, Chris, Cathy, Cory, and Carrie had the perfect lives—until a tragic accident changed everything. Now they are trapped in ...
Flowers in the Attic/Petals on the Wind | V.C. Andrews
In 1957, the Dollanganger children — 14-year-old Chris, 12-year-old Cathy, and 5-year-old twins Carrie and Cory — live happily with their parents, Christopher and Corrine, in Pennsylvania. This changes when Christopher dies in a car crash, leaving th...
Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)
Astrid is the only child of a single mother, Ingrid, a brilliant, obsessed poet who wields her luminous beauty to intimidate and manipulate men. Astrid worships her mother and cherishes their private world full of ritual and mystery - but their idyll...
White Oleander | Janet Fitch
Fifteen-year-old Astrid Magnussen lives in Los Angeles with her free-spirited artist mother Ingrid. Too young to remember her father, she relies heavily upon her self-centered mother. Ingrid's relationship with a writer, Barry, ends when she discover...
White Oleander (film)
Another haunting tale of twisted family dynamics and psychological control. The idea of her sister hovered above them all. Audrina fiercely desired to be as good as her sister. She knew her father could not love her as he loved that other girl, for h...
My Sweet Audrina | V.C. Andrews
Audrina Adare is a young girl who lives in Whitefern, a Victorian Era mansion, with her father Damian, mother Lucietta, aunt Ellsbeth, and cousin Vera. Audrina suffers from unreliable memory process and her family is overly protective of her due to h...
My Sweet Audrina (2016 film)
Ten years after escaping from Foxworth Hall, the surviving Dollanganger children—Cathy, Chris, and Carrie—attend the funeral of their adoptive father, Paul Sheffield, who took them in. They are still traumatized by their grandmother's abuse and their...
Petals on the Wind (film)
Memoirs of Survival and Healing 🕯️
For anyone seeking to understand or move beyond a painful maternal relationship, these memoirs offer validation, empathy, and hope.
The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination,...
The Glass Castle | Jeannette Walls
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one ...
Educated: A Memoir | Tara Westover
No one could have imagined how as a child Beverly Engel could have managed to become who she is today—an internationally known expert on abuse recovery and the best-selling author of twenty-two self-help books. This is the raw, candid story of how sh...
Raising Myself | Beverly Engel
Harrowing story of child abuse at the hands of his mother. This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his em...
A Child Called It | Dave Pelzer
For those who grew up feeling emotionally starved, this explores unmet maternal needs. Many of us find ourselves stuck in unhealthy habits simply because we don't see a better way. With Mother Hunger, McDaniel helps women break the cycle of destructi...
Mother Hunger | Kelly McDaniel
Manipulative Mothers 🕸️
The hidden dynamics behind maternal manipulation
Maternal pressure disguised as care. “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents ...
Everything I Never Told You | Celeste Ng
Focuses on daughters of narcissistic mothers. The first book for daughters who have suffered the abuse of narcissistic, self-involved mothers, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? provides the expert assistance you need in order to overcome this debilitating ...
Will I Ever Be Good Enough? | Dr. Karyl McBride
Memoir and life lessons from a deeply complex and manipulative mother. Toler credits her mother’s “rules” for life – a life that saw her grow up the daughter of a poor teen mother and endure a husband who suffered mental illness and alcoholism – with...
My Mother's Rules | Lynn Toler
Murderous & Wicked Mothers ⚰️
These women don't just fail their children—they destroy them.
Explores the chilling case of Theresa Knorr, who murdered her daughters. In June 1985, Theresa Cross Knorr dumped her daughter Sheila’s body in California’s desolate High Sierra. She had beaten Sheila unconscious in their Sacramento apartment days ea...
Mother's Day | Dennis McDougal
MEET HANNA: Seven-year-old Hanna is a sweet-but-silent angel in the eyes of her adoring father Alex. He’s the only person who understands her. But her mother Suzette stands in her way, and she’ll try any trick she can think of to get rid of her. Idea...
Baby Teeth: A Novel | Zoje Stage
Two true stories of women so deranged that they murdered both their own children and those of others. One of these women is, Amelia Dyer who is considered one of the most prolific serial killers in history. Her reign of terror lasted over twenty year...
Mothers Most Evil | Janet Cole
The shocking true story of Mary Thompson, a Eugene, Oregon, anti-gang activist who secretly ran her own murderous mob of teenagers—including her own son. Aaron Iturra was just eighteen years old when he was found dead in the bedroom of the Eugene, Or...
Gang Mom | Fred Rosen
The Mother-in-Law from Hell 🔥👹
She criticizes your choices, undermines your confidence, and masks cruelty behind a polite smile.
A fiancé’s mom will do anything to get rid of her son's girlfriend. HE LOVES YOU: Adam adores Emily. Emily thinks Adam’s perfect, the man she thought she’d never meet. BUT SHE LOVES YOU NOT: Lurking in the shadows is a rival, a woman who shares a dee...
The Other Woman | Sandie Jones
There's something strange about Loren's new mother-in-law... When Loren meets Jack, she's sure he's the man she's been waiting for-a perfect husband and a father for her young daughter. Shortly after their wedding, their plans to start a life togethe...
The Mother-in-Law | Kiersten Modglin
When Ralph and Abby Lamb move in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, Abby hopes it’s just what she and her mother-in-law need to finally connect. After a traumatic childhood, Abby is desperate for a mother figure, especially now that she and Ralph are trying...
Motherthing | Ainslie Hogarth