The release date for the English version of 'The Art Forger' by
Barbara A. Shapiro is Oct 2012. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
A masterwork by Barbara A. Shapiro.
Thirteen artworks valued at more than $500 million now were taken from the Boston-based Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990. Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is going to learn that there's more to this crime than meets the eye. This is the greatest unsolved art theft in history.
Claire is a professional art replicator for a well-known internet business. She allows herself to be seduced into a deceptive deal by the formidable gallery owner Aiden Markel out of a desperation to get well. She accepts a one-woman exhibition at his esteemed gallery in return for forging a painting—one of the Degas masterworks pilfered from the Gardner Museum. However, Claire starts to believe that the long-missing Degas painting—the one that had been hanging at the Gardner for a century—might be a fake when it is brought to her studio.
Claire's quest to learn the truth about the painting's provenance leads her into a maze of lies where the only thing that could save her life today is information that has been kept secret since the late nineteenth century. The Art Forger is a captivating literary thriller that introduces us to three centuries of art thieves, obsessive collectors, and forgers thanks to B. A. Shapiro's razor-sharp prose and clever narrative turns. This brilliant work explores the themes of seeing and not seeing the truths hidden behind the paint.