Art History Mystery Thriller

When Jonathan Argyll is arrested for breaking into an obscure church in Rome, he claims that it contains a long-lost Raphael hidden under a painting by Mantini. The painting disappears - then reappears in the hands of the top British art dealer, Edward Byrnes. How has Byrnes found out about the hidden masterpiece, and whom is he acting for? There is also the curious matter of the safe deposit box full of sketches closely resembling features of the newly discovered painting.

This is Irving Stone's powerful and passionate biographical novel of Michelangelo. His time: the turbulent Renaissance, the years of poisoning princes, warring popes, the all-powerful Medici family, the fanatic monk Savonarola. His loves: the frail and lovely daughter of Lorenzo de Medici; the...

In an exchange of favors with an art dealer colleague, Jonathan Argyll unluckily offers to transport a painting from Paris back to Rome. It seems routine work, and Jonathan gets to meet his girlfriend, Flavia, who works for Rome's Art Theft Squad. But when a would-be thief tries to take the painting at the train station, and the art dealer seems less interested in his purchase once he sees it, Jonathan wonders why, as events unfold, someone is willing to kill for it.

Narrated by Jennifer Jason Leigh Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited first work of fiction — at once hilarious, delicious, and brutal — is the always surprising, sometimes shocking new novel based on his Academy Award- winning film. RICK DALTON – Once he had his own TV series, but now...

A mysterious forger. A plot to empty the world’s museums. Can this champion of culture stop it before all our history is fake? A forensic audit at the Vatican Museum reveals looting on a grand scale. A corrupt antiquities dealer has been plundering Europe's institutions—replacing priceless originals with copies. Darwin Lacroix, the Pope’s new Director of Special Archaeological Investigations, is repulsed by self-serving curators, profit-hungry auction houses, and secretive government Freeports. But he cannot stem the loss of artistic heritage. Until a sale goes wrong. When a ...

"Narrator Susan Bennett offers a moving performance of this multilayered story of two women whose lives are affected by a WPA mural...Overall, Bennett adds an exciting dimension to a gripping story of racism, madness, murder, and even romance." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner From...

A New York Times bestseller. In a Paris cafe, American surgeon Paul Osborn looks across the room and spots the man who murdered his father 30 years before. In London, a grizzled L.A. homicide cop named McVey joins Scotland Yard to unravel the mystery of a severed head and seven headless...

Ancient secrets. Hidden danger. A lost masterpiece. Darwin Lacroix seeks a tranquil year in Paris guest lecturing at the esteemed École du Louvre, but fate has other plans. Beneath the museum's grandeur lie secrets of a murky past. A clandestine group formed in the Age of Enlightenment secretly controls the collections. During the wars, its unscrupulous curators conspired to squirrel away booty, cutting out the rightful owners. Billions in art: bought and sold for private gain. When French authorities pressure Darwin to expose the group’s dark agenda, he pushes back. But he soon ...

The Black Arts of Atlantis by Steven Detmers is an paranormal and occult fiction book set in 19th Century San Francisco. Follow the harrowing journey of Doron Avital and his companions as they delve into the dark secrets of a lost civilization. What would you do to escape starvation? For Doron Avital, the answer is to embrace the unknown and practice the dark arts of Atlantis. Forced into a second-hand bookshop by a rainstorm, Doron stumbles upon an ancient tome that promises unimaginable power and wealth through occult rituals. Desperation breeds daring: As Doron and his friends, Matt ...

Told in emails, text messages, and essays, this unputdownable mystery follows a group of students in an art master’s program that goes dangerously awry, from the internationally bestselling “new queen of crime” (Electric Literature) Janice Hallett. Gela Nathaniel, head of Royal Hastings...

This 21st Century thriller may be just up your street if you are already a fan of Patterson, Clancy or Larsson and like a storyline with more twists and turns than a sun bathing rattlesnake. For example, did greed ridden Atlanta billionaire Levi Goldman really understand that once he made a contract with the ‘Yegg’ man … he was committed? A secret vault nearly 200 feet below London’s Bryanston Street, built by the controversial wartime British Special Operations Executive to protect the names of its spies, is now the resting place for other priceless WWII memorabilia … billions of...

America in the 1920s was a country alive with the wild fun of jazz, speakeasies, and a new kind of woman—the flapper. Vera Abramowitz is determined to leave her gritty childhood behind and live a more exciting life, one that her mother never dreamed of. Bobbing her hair and showing her knees...

Robert Langdon, experto en simbología, recibe una llamada en mitad de la noche: el conservador del museo del Louvre ha sido asesinado en extrañas circunstancias, y junto a su cadáver ha aparecido un desconcertante mensaje cifrado. Al profundizar en la investigación, Langdom descubre que las...

A friend in his cigar club asks Antoine Verlaque to visit Rene Rouquet, a retired postal worker who has found a rolled-up canvas in his apartment. As the apartment once belonged to Paul Cezanne, Rouquet is convinced he's discovered a treasure. But when Antoine arrives at the apartment, he finds Rene dead, the canvas missing, and a mysterious art history professor standing over the body. When the painting is finally recovered, the mystery only deepens.

One perfect red rose, a one-way ticket to Stockholm, and a cryptic "message" consisting of two Latin words intrigue art historian Vicky Bliss—as they were precisely intended to do. Beautiful, brilliant, and, as always, dangerously inquisitive, Vicky recognizes the handiwork of her former lover, the daring jewel thief John Smythe. So she takes the bait, eagerly following Smythe's lead in the hope of finding a lost treasure.

Glamorous international art-dealer Elizabeth Teerlinc knows a thing or two about fakes. After all, she is one herself. Her real identity, Judith Rashleigh, is buried under a layer of lies. Not to mention the corpses of the men foolish enough to get in her way. But now, caught in the murderous crossfire between a Russian Mafia boss and a corrupt Italian police detective, Judith is forced to create an even more daring work of art - a fake masterpiece she must take to the world-famous auction house where she used to be a lowly assistant and sell for $150 million.

The Interpretation of Murder opens on a hot summer night in 1909 as Sigmund Freud arrives in New York. Among those waiting to greet him is Dr. Stratham Younger, a gifted physician who is one of Freud’s most ardent American supporters. And so begins the visit that will be the great genius’s...

When 28-year-old San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer at a local bathhouse in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. As Twain steamed, played cards, and drank beer with Sawyer (a volunteer firefighter, customs inspector, and local hero responsible for having saved 90 lives at sea), he had second thoughts about Shirley Tempest, his proposed book about a local girl firefighter, and began to envision a novel of wider scope.

In the magical and historically rich city of Siena, Italy, old paintings are as common as cobblestones. But what if some of those paintings are forgeries? And what if your employers at Restauro Lorenzetti, a respected firm of art conservators, might be smuggling antiquities? After colleague and roommate Ernst Mann is found dead in the street below their apartment balcony, Flora Garibaldi suspects her bosses are crooks. The Italian police, after ruling Flora innocent of murder, persuade her to spy on her employers.

From Sara Shepard, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars, comes The Heiresses—a novel about the Saybrooks, a diamond family blessed with beauty and fortune yet plagued by a string of tragic and mysterious deaths. The only thing more flawless than a Saybrook’s...