Just A Boy: The True Story of A Stolen Childhood

This is the story of a boy called Richard. One October night in 1975, Richard, aged five, was alone in the house with his three sisters. It was 3am and their mother hadn't come home yet. He and his oldest sister pulled on their coats over their pyjamas and set off through the foggy streets hand in hand to find her. But at dawn they returned home alone. Within a few hours the police arrived and took the children away. They gave them mugs of hot chocolate and then said, 'you won't be seeing your mother again.' She was the first victim of the serial killer who to become known as the 'Yorkshire Ripper' and from that moment on Richard and his sisters' childhoods were destroyed. Passed from one violent home to another, subject to physical and mental abuse, the children were forgotten by all except the press. As the killer claimed one victim after the other, and the salacious magazines and headlines multiplied, Richard and his sisters were never able to grieve or recover from the agonising tragedy of their mother's murder. Whilst Richard tried to handle the terror and shame of his violent and deprived upbringing, his sister struggled to deal with memories of the serious sexual abuse she had suffered. Without love or support, they floundered through their teens from drink to drugs to crime. Until one day in the late Nineties when Richard McCann, having reached suicidal rock bottom, decided that no one was going to rescue their lives but him. That no one could solve the past and only he could remedy the future. It was the beginning of an inspirational transformation that saw Richard rebuild his life. Now he is able to tell the story of how the forgotten children of violence suffer, and how they can heal. This is a heartbreaking, up-lifting story of survival and hope.

Just a Boy: The True Story of a Stolen Childhood

Parenting & Relationships

McCann, Richard

Family Relationships

Ebury Pr

One October night in 1975 Richard, aged five, was alone in the house with his three sisters. It was 3am and their mother hadn't come home yet. The next morning, the police arrived to take the children away. Their mother had become the first victim of a serial killer soon to become known as the 'Yorkshire Ripper'. Passed from one violent home to another, the children were forgotten by all except the press. As the salacious headlines multiplied, Richard and his sisters were never able to recover from their mother's murder. Without love or support, they spiralled away from help or happiness. Then one day Richard, having reached suicidal rock bottom, decided no one was going to rescue their lives but him. It was the beginning of an inspirational transformation. Now he is able to tell the story of how the forgotten children of violence suffer, and how they can heal.

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

Ebury Press

In Richard McCann's best selling account of his childhood, he told the harrowing story of how he and his sisters were left motherless when the Yorkshire Ripper killed his first victim, Richard's mother Wilma McCann. Just A Boy was praised for its unflinching and unsentimental account of a neglected childhood at the hands of an abusive father and uncaring authorities. The only constants in his and his sister's lives were grief for their mother and newspaper coverage of her killer and the gruesome nature of his crimes. With his book in the bestseller charts Richard sets out to make sense of his past, attempting to meet the other children of Sutcliffe's victims and discovering the secrets of the mother that was taken away from him. McCann comes to terms with the loss of his own childhood by talking to others, hearing their stories, and learning about how to accept what has happened and move on.

The Boy Grows Up: The Inspirational Story of His Journey from Broken Boy to Family Man

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Mother of Sorrows

With the breadth and cumulative force of a novel, Mother of Sorrows presents ten interwoven stories of an American family starting out in the post—World War II suburbs of Washington, D.C., a world of identical brick houses and sunstruck, treeless lawns, a world of initial hopefulness from which shame and loss have seemingly been banished. This is the story of two adolescent brothers whose father has suddenly died, and of their beautiful and complicated mother, a mother whom the younger son worshipfully imagines as “Our Mother of the Sighs and Heartaches . . . Our Mother of the Gorgeous Gypsy Earrings . . . Our Mother of the Late Movies and the Cigarettes . . . Our Mother of Sudden Attentiveness . . . Our Mother of Sudden Anger.” This is the brother who narrates these tales as he looks back thirty years later, the only remaining survivor of a world he seeks both to leave behind and to preserve in words forever, a world of sorrow that has held him spellbound even as he has attempted to create a life of his own. Suffused with the beauty of Richard McCann’s extraordinary language, Mother of Sorrows introduces us to a voice that is urgent, contemplative, elegant, angry, revelatory, and like no other in contemporary fiction.

Literature & Fiction

United States

Pantheon

Exotics such as Bugatti, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Ferrari and Maserati mix it with Fords, Austins, MGs and many more in a roller-coaster of blow-ups, crashes, fixes, bodges, bleeding knuckles and speeding tickets!
This is a collection of often hilarious true stories from the 1920s to the present day, written by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts.
Funny, informative, thrilling, inspiring and heart-warming. You can almost smell the 5-star fuel and the hot Castrol R!
During the past few decades the values of classic cars have skyrocketed. Many popular models are now priced well beyond the reach of most regular enthusiasts, unless they were fortunate enough to own – or have access to – classic cars when they were little more than cheap transport for youngsters and eccentrics!
This book brings together tales, not of investors and playboys, but of ordinary ‘car people’. Call them what you will: Petrolheads, car guys (and gals), Gearheads… we all know what we are and we can recognise a fellow ‘sufferer’ in seconds.
There are stories here of help from mums and dads, of winds fixed with filler, and engines botched together just well enough to survive another week’s motoring. There are stories of intrepid foreign adventures, of racing, sprinting, rallying, and just plain getting down and oily with the machines we love.
So fold down that main screen, adjust the little ‘Aeros’, stick on your goggles and join us for a high-octane ride from the past to the present!
Richard McCann has spent a lifetime collecting, restoring and racing many exciting vintage and classic sports cars and racing cars.
In this book he brings together a collection of stories from the 1920s to the present day, involving the exploits of enthusiasts from all walks of life – but all ‘car crazy’ and each with a great tale to tell!

Classic Car Adventures: Old car tales from enthusiasts.

Engineering & Transportation

Automotive

Friday's Media Group Ltd

In these ten interwoven stories,two adolescent brothers face a world in which their father has suddenly died, a world dominated by their beautiful and complicated mother. Thirty years later, one of the brothers–the only remaining survivor of a family he seeks both to leave behind and to preserve in words forever–narrates these precise and heartbreaking tales. Suffused with the beauty of Richard McCann’s extraordinary language, Mother of Sorrows introduces us to an elegant writer like no other in contemporary fiction.

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Richard McCann was just five when his mother became the first victim of Peter Sutcliffe, the man who came to be known as the 'Yorkshire Ripper'. He and his three sisters, forced to return to their estranged father, were never allowed to heal or forget, their grief caught up in the media circus of a serial killer. Yet Richard and his eldest sister Sonia were forced to endure violent abuse and keep the silence of forgotten children. This is the moving and inspirational story of how two small children stuck together through unimaginable pain and just when they hit rock-bottom, on the road to ruining their own lives forever, decided to make a change.

Just A Boy

Ulverscroft

'Into The Light' is a gripping insight into how children damaged by violent crime and abusive childhoods can heal and triumph.

Into the Light

Charnwood Pub

Fiercely passionate and deeply elegiac, Richard McCann's Ghost Letters chronicles the intersection of grief and desire. These are poems of memory, but they are made of the body--the consoling body; the wounded body; the sexual body, both loved and unloved.

Ghost Letters

Poetry

Alice James Books

Lets face it, you will never be as good as you have the potential to be. It applies to each and every one of us. We have an unlimited amount of potential waiting to be unleashed. In this, his 3rd Book, Richard McCann shares not just his story but the way in which he transformed both his life and his business too. It's full of practical and easy to apply tips that can help you grow both as a person and your business. Its also full of inspirational individuals who Richard has encountered along his extremely inspirational journey. Richard McCann is a Sunday Times No.1 Bestselling author and his first book sold almost 1/2 million copies and was translated into many languages around the world. He went from being written off to now being written about. A play inspired by his life has been seen in Leeds and London. He has now become one of the busiest inspirational speakers in the UK speaking around 200 times a year and in this book you will get to see just what the fuss is about.

iCan - two words that will change everything

Self-Help

Sunmakers

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McCann, Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McCann, Richard

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McCann, Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Just a Boy: The True Story of a Stolen Childhood

Just A Boy: The True Story of A Stolen Childhood

The Boy Grows Up: The Inspirational Story of His Journey from Broken Boy to Family Man

Mother of Sorrows

Classic Car Adventures: Old car tales from enthusiasts.

Mother of Sorrows

Just A Boy

Into the Light

Ghost Letters

iCan - two words that will change everything