Thomas Gifford: 15 books

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...

Ancient treason threatens to ignite a new skirmish in the Cold War It’s January, 1778, and William Davis is standing guard for the Continental Army at Valley Forge when he witnesses something sickening: an American selling intelligence to the British. The meeting goes wrong, three men die,...

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...

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,...

It is 1982. In the Vatican, priestly vultures gather around the dying Pope, whispering the names of possible successors. In a forgotten monastery on Ireland's gale-swept coast, a dangerous document is hidden, waiting to be claimed. And in a family chapel in Princeton, New Jersey, a nun is murdered...

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...

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,...

A journalist searches for the true story of his glamorous sibling’s death When rock star J. C. Tripper died, only his brother Lee was by his side, and in the decades since, Lee has been deviled by questions of what really happened that night in Tangier. He thinks he knows the truth, but his...

A powerful lawyer’s most famous opponent comes back to kill him On his first day at Harvard, working-class student Charlie Nichols is instantly charmed by the debonair rake Victor Saberdene. While Nichols earns tuition playing football, Saberdene’s wealth and charm rocket him to the top...

Decades after Hitler’s fall, Nazis are still trying to kill John Cooper His marriage destroyed by drinking, John Cooper returns to Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to recapture the joy he felt as an undergraduate in Harvard University’s sacred halls. He is just beginning to piece his life...

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 the start of World War II, a football star fights gangsters on the home front Brooklyn Bulldogs star defensive end Lew Cassidy is on his way to a touchdown when a nasty tackle snaps his leg and ends his career. When he wakes up in the hospital, he learns the Japanese have attacked Pearl...

A mysterious note leads a struggling actress to a strange murder investigation After two decades of striving, Celia is tired of waiting for her big acting break, and finds consolation only in a specific narcotic: mystery novels. After an afternoon binge at the sprawling Strand bookstore, she...

Best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, and Science in Action, Bruno Latour has inspired scholarship across many disciplines. In the past few years, the fields of rhetoric and composition have witnessed an explosion of interest in Latour’s work. Editors Paul Lynch and...