Thomas Gifford

A daring fraud makes one man a titan, and brings a nation to its knees. The son of a failing undertaker, Alves Reis learned early on that death comes quickly and a man must make his fortune while he can. In 1916, Reis left Portugal for Angola, where the hardships of colonial life dashed his dream of easy riches. In desperate straits, Alves discovers his true talent: forgery.   With an unerring hand, Alves begins to counterfeit. He falsifies diplomas,...

A woman's life is upended after she witnesses the aftermath of a deadly crime Natalie should have gone home after the party. One of New York's hottest literary agents, she was celebrating her latest coup-next year's mega-thriller, sold at auction for $1.5 million. As the industry bows at her feet, Natalie can't help but think of her boss, Jay, a handsome dynamo who has been in love with her since her first day on the job. When the party ends, Natalie...

A mad Nazi plot gives Cassidy a chance to save his estranged wife-or lose her forever As the dust settles on World War II, detective Lew Cassidy's wife has come back from the dead. A German figure skater with a film-star face, she had returned to her home country when the war began to care for her ailing father; Cassidy later heard she died during an Allied bombing raid. But in the weeks after the German surrender, the US Army finds her in Bavaria,...

At the apex of the New York art world, murder is the newest fad Harry and Sally, Belinda and Jack-two couples, four best friends. Inseparable since college, they stay close through their twenties and thirties, as they make their way to the top of the New York arts scene. Harry is a playwright, Jack a novelist, Belinda a painter, and Sally, well, Sally has always been happy just to be Harry's wife. But as Harry and Belinda's careers take off, Jack's...

Convicted of murder, a screenwriter gets a chance to clear his name The police find Toby Challis clutching his bloodstained Oscar statuette, his wife dead at his feet. He claims innocence, but the jury doesn't buy it, believing that such a cinematic murder could spring only from the mind of one of Hollywood's finest screenwriters. Nearly driven mad by the time spent waiting for the verdict, Challis has no idea how he will survive more than a decade...

Backwoods treachery links a string of grisly Minnesota murders Reporter Paul Cavanaugh is coming home from an afternoon tennis match when he sees an ambulance outside his building's door. A half hour earlier, the mild-mannered Larry Blankenship walked into the lobby, said hello to the doorman, and blew his brains out in front of the elevator bank, leaving behind a note apologizing for the mess. Cavanaugh retreats to his apartment to forget this disturbing...

John Cooper, a Boston bookseller, flies to Germany to help his sister find a missing daughter. In the process he discovers her husband is the leader of neo-Nazis. Once again he takes them on, something he did 20 years earlier in The Wind Chill Factor.