The Skeleton Cupboard

"Read[ing] like compelling, crafted fiction," this bestselling memoir is a "powerful, vivid and moving" account of the mysteries of the human mind ( Sydney Morning Herald). In The Skeleton Cupboard, Professor Tanya Byron recounts the stories of the patients who most influenced her career as a mental health practitioner. Spanning her years of training—years in which Byron was forced her to contend with the harsh realities of the lives of her patients and confront a dark moment in her own family's past— The Skeleton Cupboard is a compelling and compassionate account of how much health practitioners can learn from those they treat. Among others, we meet Ray, a violent sociopath desperate to be shown tenderness and compassion; Mollie, a talented teenager intent on starving herself; and Imogen, a twelve-year old so haunted by a secret that she's intent on killing herself. Byron brings the reader along as she uncovers the reasons each of these individuals behave the way they do, resulting in a thrilling, compulsively readable psychological mystery that sheds light on mental illness and what its treatment tells us about ourselves. "Moving and thought-provoking" — Sunday Times (London) "Absorbing . . . . A lucid and compassionate memoir." — Kirkus Reviews