Orphan Memoir

When a DNA test blows apart her father’s hidden identity many years after his death, Deb finds she has a sister, Barbara, and an entirely new family she never knew. As the sisters work to unravel more of their father’s secrets, they find his connection to a dark chapter of British-Canadian history. Will the sisters finally get to the bottom of their father’s past? Or are some secrets meant to stay buried forever?

Alexandra Aldrich, a direct descendant of the famous Astor dynasty, grew up in the servants' quarters of Rokeby, the forty-three-room Hudson Valley mansion built by her ancestors. Her childhood was one of bohemian neglect and real privation. But it was fairly stable until the summer of her tenth...

This "wise and caring book" (Library Journal) is a guide to understanding and coping with grief and all of the disorienting emotions that accompany the death of our parents. Losing our parents when we ourselves are adults is in the natural order of things, a rite of passage into true adulthood...

The Orphan Who Dared to Dream is a heartfelt journey through the life of Joe Camp Daughtery, a boy who turned hardship into opportunity. Born into a broken home and raised amidst hardship, Joe’s childhood was shaped by resilience, determination, and a dream to overcome the odds. From his early days in a strict orphanage to building a successful career in real estate and venturing into politics, Joe’s story demonstrates the human spirit’s ability to persevere.

In literary circles of the mid-twentieth century, father and son, Ikbal and Idries Shah, spread seductive accounts of a mystical Middle East. Pitching themselves as the authentic voice of the Muslim world, they penned travelogues and exotic potboilers alongside weighty tomes on Islam and politics.

In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites - a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least 30 pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing - not even a football - yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams.

Orphaned by losing his mother at three and his father–who went missing at eight–Sydney author Francis Ravel Harvey avoided the Welfare State by being raised by four older sisters in the colorful environs of Sydney in the 1930s. The search for his cultivated English father is a constant thread throughout the book and reaches an amazing and heartbreaking conclusion when the author finally uncovers the truth surrounding his father’s death.

Euel Lee, alias Orphan Jones, was an African American accused of murdering his white employer and family over a single dollar. The tumultuous events and cast of characters surrounding the racially charged crime garnered national media attention and changed the course of Maryland history. With exacting research, former Maryland State's Attorney Joseph E. Moore reconstructs the murders, the ensuing roller coast of a trial, and the eventual conviction and execution of Orphan Jones. Moore details all of this in the context of Jim Crow and American society during the Great Depression.

Based on the true story of her mother, Mona Golabek describes the inspirational story of Lisa Jura's escape from Nazi-controlled Austria to England on the famed Kindertransport. Jewish musical prodigy Lisa Jura has a wonderful life in Vienna. But when the Nazis start closing in on the city, life...