"Not everyone is who they say they are. Explore a history of pretenders and who they fooled. Don't trust anyone in the Lies and Liars Throughout History series. Each high interest title uncovers some of the most famous fakers, schemers, and cheaters who turned the world, and the truth, upside down across the ages. Readers learn how to spot a lie and confirm the truth for themselves as they look a little closer at the tales people tell. Includes considerate...

After four-year-old Marla Olmstead becomes famous for her paintings, her family is accused of perpetrating a hoax after a news report questions the talent of the young artist.

"Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon--the legacy of P.T. Barnum's 'humbug' culminating with the currency of Donald J. Trump's 'fake news'. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended...

After Mary Turner Thomson discovers her husband is a bigamist, con man, and convicted sex offender and must rebuild her life, while vowing to protect other women from his manipulative and deceptive behavior.

"In the late 19th century, there wasn't much hope for premature babies--until Dr. Couney developed the incubator. The device was so new and strange, hospitals rejected it. So Dr. Couney set up a sideshow at Coney Island, taking care of the tiniest newborns as part of a display to convince the public that incubators worked. Thousands of babies grew into healthy children as Boardwalk Babies, including Dr. Couney's own premature daughter. Many of those...

"The astonishing story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg--a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat--drawing on Mehlberg's own unpublished memoir. World War II and the Holocaust have given rise to many stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess is unique. It tells the remarkable, unknown story of "Countess Janina Suchodolska," a Jewish woman who rescued more...