Books published by Parker Ridge Publishing

The book honors the lives of Marilyn, Mariuca and all of the courageous women who have broken free from the undue influence of a high-control pseudo-religious group or a destructive relationship. In Mariuca and Marilyn's case, it was Jehovah's Witnesses who were the abusers. An aberrant-Christian group whose leaders treat women as second-class citizens and "quote mine the Bible" to support their discriminatory policies. Mariuca and Marilyn's stories are about second-generation Jehovah's Witnesses, and how girls are unduly influenced. Breaking free from black and white thinking, misinformation, loaded language, guilt and induced phobias is not easy. But stories of women reclaiming their authentic identity and finding meaning and happiness in their lives after living many years in an abusive relationship should inspire all of us who believe in the fundamental human rights for all human beings.

The Ghosts from Mama's Club is a fast-moving tell-all story about escaping from the clutches of a cult. Children molded by a high-control religious experience are cursed with toxic residue-ghosts-that make it a challenge, crazy at times, to walk away unscarred, as adults. This book is a sequel to Growing Up in Mama's Club, a memoir about the author's sixteen-year experience growing up as a Jehovah's Witness. Ghosts not only chronicles Mr. Kelly's unlikely adulthood but the improbable lives of his wife of forty-eight years and a sister who paid dearly for her dysfunctional childhood.

This book is a candid narrative of a tireless warrior and her valor to protect children against the policies of a worldwide religion, one that most people have seen as harmless until now.

"Growing Up in Mama's Club" is a compelling, coming-of-age story about a boy who is a victim of sixteen years of emotional, religious abuse. His day-to-day life and his attempts to conform to a belief system at odds with his intellectual skills are at times both heart-rending and humorous. But his ultimate triumph over religious indoctrination should be inspirational for people of all ages, especially for anyone growing up in an abusive environment. When he was four years of age, during his mother's turbulent five-month conversion process, he thought she was joining a club. Once she became a member, his mama insulated him from an outside world she believed would be destroyed before he reached the age of twenty. While he didn't know it at the time, his childhood was similar in many ways to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-forced to live with Nurse Ratchet-type rules and surrounded by a supporting cast of unusual and colorful characters. While most books about cult-like groups are written by theologians or angry ex-members, this book engages the reader with amusing ironies, unique events, and graphic scenes-all presented in a warm, accessible tone. The book also includes interesting information about the non-mainstream beliefs and checkered history of Jehovah's Witnesses, and what it was like, as a child, to be forced to live under "the rule of truth." "Mama's Club" should prompt readers to rethink the influences that underlie their own childhood, encouraging them to better understand that a full life is created not by what happens to us, but by how we make sense of events over which we had no control.