The Forger’s Daughter

In Morrow’s sterling sequel to 2014’s The Forgers, the enviable life that erstwhile literary forger Will has painstakingly crafted since he survived a savage attack by criminal rival Henry Slader two decades earlier threatens to come crashing down. One evening outside Will’s farmhouse in New York’s Hudson Valley, a spectral figure springs from the bushes and shoves a package at the younger of Will’s two daughters, 11-year-old Maisie, with the order to deliver it to her father. Inside is what appears to be the rarest book in American literature—Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane and Other Poems—along with a letter from Slader asking for a meeting. When Will, now a beyond-reproach manuscript expert at a Manhattan auction house, meets Slader at a local tavern, his nemesis demands that he forge the Poe book or his most shameful secret will be exposed. Will feels he has no choice but to agree. What he doesn’t realize is just how dangerous the gamble could prove for his family, especially for his coolly enigmatic 20-year-old daughter, Nicole, whose sublime artistic skills he will need in order to create the forgery. Evocatively rendered and emotionally resonant, this literary crime novel is the real deal. Morrow’s gothic tale bears comparison with Poe’s own work. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary. (Sept.)