Books in Thorndike Press Large Print Biographies series

Clara Kelley is not the experienced Irish maid hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's daughter with nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, so Clara is pretending to be her -- if she can keep up the ruse. Carnegie's Maid tells the story of a brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie toward philanthropy.

A German shepherd police dog witnesses a murder and if his owner - an Iraq war vet and cop-turned-thief - is convicted of the crime, the dog could be put down. No one loves man's best friend more than attorney Andy Carpenter, and he decides to represent the poor canine. When he discovers that the dog and his owner have unwittingly become involved in a case of much larger proportions, Andy will need the help of the police-trained dog.

The acclaimed and beloved author of Hourglass now gives us a new memoir about identity, paternity, and family secrets--a real-time exploration of the staggering discovery she recently made about her father, and her struggle to piece together the hidden story of her own life.What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us? In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history--the life she had lived--crumbled beneath her. Inheritance is a book about secrets--secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in--a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover. Timely and unforgettable, Dani Shapiro's memoir is a gripping, gut-wrenching exploration of genealogy, paternity, and love.

The multi-week USA TODAY BESTSELLER!"Memphis,Tennessee, 1936. The five Foss children find their lives changed forever when their parents leave them alone ... one stormy night. Rill Foss ... must protect her four younger siblings as they are wrenched from their home on the Mississippi and thrown into the care of the infamous Georgia Tann, director of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. South Carolina, present day. Avery Stafford has lived a charmed life. Loving daughter to her father, a U.S. senator, she has a promising career as an assistant D.A. in Baltimore and is engaged to her best friend. But when Avery comes home to help her father weather a health crisis and a political attack, a chance encounter with a stranger le her deeply shaken"--

The sensational true story of Eddie Rickenbacker, America's greatest flying aceAt the turn of the twentieth century two new technologies--the car and airplane--took the nation's imagination by storm as they burst, like comets, into American life. The brave souls that leaped into these dangerous contraptions and pushed them to unexplored extremes became new American heroes: the race car driver and the flying ace.No individual did more to create and intensify these raw new roles than the tall, gangly Eddie Rickenbacker, who defied death over and over with such courage and pluck that a generation of Americans came to know his face better than the president's. The son of poor, German-speaking Swiss immigrants in Columbus, Ohio, Rickenbacker overcame the specter of his father's violent death, a debilitating handicap, and, later, accusations of being a German spy, to become the American military ace of aces in World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient. He and his high-spirited, all-too-short-lived pilot comrades, created a new kind of aviation warfare, as they pushed their machines to the edge of destruction--and often over it--without parachutes, radios, or radar. "Enduring Courage" is the electrifying story of the beginning of America's love affair with speed--and how one man above all the rest showed a nation the way forward. No simple daredevil, he was an innovator on the racetrack, a skilled aerial dualist and squadron commander, and founder of Eastern Air Lines. Decades after his heroics against the Red Baron's Flying Circus, he again showed a war-weary nation what it took to survive against nearly insurmountable odds when he and seven others endured a harrowing three-week ordeal adrift without food or water in the Pacific during World War II. For the first time, "Enduring Courage" peels back the layers of hero to reveal the man himself. With impeccable research and a gripping narrative, John F. Ross tells the unforgettable story of a man who pushed the limits of speed, endurance and courage and emerged as an American legend.

Lone Survivor meets Marley & Me in this inspiring buddy memoir of an extraordinary service dog whose enduring love changed a wounded soldier’s life. This is the story of Napal, a remarkable service dog who brought devastated warrior Jason Morgan back from the brink. It is the story of a funny, lovable dog’s power to heal a family and teach a wounded man how to be a true father. Humorous, intensely moving, and uplifting, Jason and Napal’s heartwarming tale will brighten any day and lift every heart.