Raucous adventure. Unfiltered history. A true legend.

About the six-book series Thomas Edward Scoundrel (1848-1941) was born in Western Ohio to an Irish mother and French father. Born Thomas Scanddrél, a botched note written in the heat of battle at the end of the American Civil War changed both Thomas’ name and the course of history. He is always in the thick of things, whether it is battling robber barons and Cheyenne warriors in frontier Colorado in book #1, or navigating court intrigue in turn of the century Berlin in future books. Over the ensuing decades the Scoundrel legend became cemented in history. From the barroom to the bedpost, the pup tent to the palace, on charred battlefields and chandeliered stages, he interacted with dozens of celebrated historical figures at pivotal moments in their lives. He endures a hellish prison in North Africa, triumphs as a performer with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in Europe, and pursues some of the most beautiful women in the world in moonlit hacienda gardens and cobalt-blue Hawaiian lagoons. A chivalrous WW I pilot in the skies above France and in later life a pioneer winemaker, Thomas engages life with passion, unbridled optimism, relentless physical energy, self-deprecating humor, and an unquenchable appetite for the finest things in life––most of which he cannot afford.

Compelling characters, original stories, rousing adventure, robust humor and plentiful surprises are the basic ingredients of each Scoundrel novel.

He joins forces with William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody to defeat a land grabbing robber baron, assists inventor Nikola Tesla, battles Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed, and hunts grizzly bear with President Theodore Roosevelt. Henry Ford becomes a friend, as does the Irish poet & playwright Oscar Wilde and the humorist Mark Twain.Thomas fights alongside Western legend Bat Masterson, rides to the hunt with Kaiser Wilhelm and Prince of Wales George Albert. He dines with Grand Duchess Anastasia, and shares a pipe in the lodge of Lakota Chief Sitting Bull. He befriends WWI flying ace Manfred von Richthofen (the ‘Red Baron’), attends the Moscow Ballet with Peter Tchaikovsky, celebrates a South Seas adventure with famous impressionist artist, swims in a cobalt-blue ocean pool with a Hawaiian princess, and brushes shoulders with dozens of other famous and infamous personalities around the world.

The Man

The Books

Scoundrel in the Thick (Now Available ) Cannon fire and musket shot pepper the infantry encampment where young Pvt. Thomas Scanddrél serves as a cook for the Union Army. At the height of the barrage a terrified clerk tries desperately to write down the orders of the commanding officer, who is issuing final orders before fleeing from the advancing Confederates. In his haste, the clerk misspells Private T. Scanddrél’s last name on an official document. From that day forward, he would be known as Thomas Scoundrel.

In The Thick is set in 1882. Thomas’ friend, Diego de San Martín, needs his help. Diego’s fiancé Rosalilia was kidnapped on the night of their engagement in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Her family home was burned, and her father was murdered. Diego learns that the kidnappers have taken his fiancé to Colorado, and he telegraphs Thomas in New York City with an urgent plea to meet him out West. Thomas grabs the next train to Denver, gets outfitted with a horse and weapons, and joins the search for Rosalilia. In short order he is held captive by hostile Indians, attacked by the hired guns of a powerful cattle rancher, and he is beaten and left to die in a dry creek bed on the desolate prairie.

He makes friends in Colorado, too, among them a wandering paleontologist, a wild itinerant Scottish preacher, and an opera-loving Cheyenne chief. He falls under the spell of Dawn Pillow, the Chief’s daughter, and later finds a kindred spirit in the person of the beautiful and legendary bandit leader, Demetria Carnal.

Much of the book takes place during a weeklong fishing tournament in the trout-filled streams and lakes outside Denver. Adolf Coors serves up beer to participants who have come from all over the world, Mark Twain makes an impassioned speech on opening morning, and Mary Orvis teaches anglers how to tie a fly.

Mix in a ‘flying’ T-Rex, poetry-spouting silver miners, fly-fishing Cheyenne warriors, a plot to steal an entire Mexican state and, of course, plenty of dynamite, and Scoundrel in the Thick takes the historical novel to new heights of adventure and humor. Read about Scoundrel in the Thick’s award-winning cover

Book # 2: Passage to Moorea

Passage to Moorea (Winter 2023) This book takes a step back in Thomas Scoundrel’s life and tells the story of how the 23- year old stows away on a Hawaii bound schooner, becomes the manager and part owner of a sugar plantation, and battles missionary bankers, loan collecting native warriors, and the American art industry.

When he is pursued across the South Pacific by a ruthless assassin and a band of Tahitian warriors, he settles briefly in French Polynesia, where he befriends a talented French impressionist painter, and agrees to represent the artist in New York. Will the villainous snobs of the art world be a match for Scoundrel? Don’t bet on it…

The Ghost of Khartoum Fall 2024

1884- Two years after the action in Scoundrel in the Thick, Thomas Scoundrel is getting bored training new recruits for the Mexican Army and chasing bandits in the northern territories, and so he jumps at an offer to write an article about the new Paris to Istanbul luxury train called the Orient Express. Onboard the train he meets Heléne de Bovet, the beautiful daughter of a famous Egyptologist who is on a quest to salvage her father’s reputation and save his life.

When Thomas accompanies Hélene to the site of her father’s last dig at Luxor in Egypt, they are swept up into the war that is brewing between British forces under the command of General Charles Gordon, and the fanatical warrior chieftain known as the Mahdi whose thousands of devoted followers are bent on ripping off the shackles of European control. In the ensuing weeks Thomas will be flung into pitched battles on the shores of the Nile, captured by the Mahdi, and tossed into a hellish Sudanese prison. He escapes, but only to face another fight for survival as he races across the blistering Sahara Desert to rescue Hélene, who is being held for ransom by a Bedouin warlord.

The Ghost of Khartoum delivers grand adventure, historical realism, and the familiar touch of gourmet food and wine that readers of the Thomas Scoundrel series have come to expect.