Books published by Thorndike Press

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

From the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Homer's Odyssey comes a tender, joyful, utterly unforgettable novel, primarily told through the eyes of the most observant member of any human family: the cat. Humans best understand the truth of things if they come at it i...ndirectly. Like how sometimes the best way to catch a mouse that's right in front of you is to back up before you pounce. So notes Prudence, the irresistible brown tabby at the center of Gwen Cooper's tender, joyful, utterly unforgettable novel, which is mostly told through the eyes of this curious (and occasionally cranky) feline. When five-week-old Prudence meets a woman named Sarah in a deserted construction site on Manhattan's Lower East Side, she knows she's found the human she was meant to adopt. For three years their lives are filled with laughter, tuna, catnaps, music, and the unchanging routines Prudence craves. Then one day Sarah doesn't come home. From Prudence's perch on the windowsill she sees Laura, the daughter who hardly ever comes to visit Sarah, arrive with her new husband. They're carrying boxes. Before they even get to the front door, Prudence realizes that her life has changed forever. Suddenly Prudence finds herself living in a strange apartment with humans she barely knows. It could take years to train them in the feline courtesies and customs (for example, a cat should always be fed before the humans, and at the same exact time every day) that Sarah understood so well. Prudence clings to the hope that Sarah will come back for her while Laura, a rising young corporate attorney, tries to push away memories of her mother and the tumultuous childhood spent in her mother's dusty downtown record store. But the secret joys, past hurts, and life-changing moments that make every mother-daughter relationship special will come to the surface. With Prudence's help Laura will learn that the past, like a mother's love, never dies. Poignant, insightful, and laugh-out-loud funny in t
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Herbalist and ex-lawyer China Bayles is in a class with lady sleuths V. I. Warshawski and Stephanie Plum. * In Widow's Tears, a haunted house may hold the key to solving the murder of one of China's friends... After losing her husband, five children, housekeeper, and beautiful ho...me in the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, Rachel Blackwood rebuilt her home, and later died there, having been driven mad with grief. In present-day Texas, Claire, the grand niece of Rachel's caretaker, has inherited the house and wants to turn it into a bed and breakfast. But she is concerned that it's haunted, so she calls in her friend Ruby--who has the gift of extrasensory perception--to check it out. While Ruby is ghost-hunting, China Bayles walks into a storm of trouble in nearby Pecan Springs. A half hour before she is to make her nightly deposit, the Pecan Springs bank is robbed and a teller is shot and killed. Before she can discover the identity of the killers, China follows Ruby to the Blackwood house to discuss urgent business. As she is drawn into the mystery of the haunted house, China opens the door on some very real danger... * Publishers Weekly
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