Literary forger Henry Slader, assaulted and presumed dead by his longtime nemesis, Will, awakens in a shallow grave, suffocating in dirt. Concussed and disoriented, Slader exhumes himself and sets out to exact revenge on his rival, orchestrate Will’s downfall, and make a fortune along the way—armed with a devastating secret about Will’s past.

Slader quickly draws in Will’s daughter, Nicole, wielding his threats against her father to blackmail her into forging inscriptions by such authors as Poe, Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. As Nicole’s skill grows, so does her devotion to—and doubts about—her father’s integrity, until she commits the ultimate betrayal for the sake of his freedom. With breathtakingly precise background knowledge and virtuoso execution, Nicole forges a suite of brilliantly convincing and surpassingly valuable letters by Frankenstein author Mary Shelley—planting within them the seeds of Slader’s doom.

Moving between upstate New York, a village in Ireland, London, and ending in a shocking standoff at the site of Mary Shelley’s grave in a coastal town in Southern England, The Forger’s Requiem is both a compelling standalone novel and the crescendo ending to the trilogy Joyce Carol Oates has called “lethally enthralling to read.”

Praise for The Forger’s Daughter:

A New York Times “10 Best Crime Novels of 2020” selection
A Publishers Weekly “Best Mysteries & Thrillers of 2020“ selection
An Amazon “Best Books of the Month: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense” selection
A New York Post “Best Books of the Week” selection

“In Bradford Morrow’s The Forger’s Daughter, there is artistry in the successful re-creation of rare books and manuscripts…His sympathetic cast of characters—Henry aside—face difficult moral choices and try to prove the old cliché that there is honor indeed among (literary) thieves.”—Wall Street Journal

“Love is strange. It ennobles some people, makes fools of others, and occasionally leads to murder. In Bradford Morrow’s lovely literary mystery, The Forger’s Daughter, the love of books causes all of the above…The elaborate artistic details that go into a literary forgery is itself a work of art.”—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

“Evocatively rendered and emotionally resonant, this literary crime novel is the real deal. Morrow’s gothic tale bears comparison with Poe’s own work.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The novel flits evocatively from upstate New York farmhouses to Manhattan auction houses, and there’s an aptly gothic tinge to the tense drama that ensues.”—Guardian

“This is a crime novel for booklovers . . . Fascinating and vividly rendered.”—Booklist