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Painting
Jennifer Crusie, Faking It.
An artist trying to retrieve a painting she forged ends up hiding
in a closet with a man trying to get back $3 million that was stolen
from him.
Catherine Dunbar, False Images. Mystery
An art restorer who lost her mother as a child discovers her past
is a lie.
Aaron Elkins, Loot. Mystery
A discovery in a pawn shop begins to unravel a web of deceit that
began 50 years ago when the Nazis hid some of Europe’s great art
treasures.
Michael Frayn, Headlong.
An art historian who recognizes a lost Bruegel in a rundown country
home tries to acquire it without revealing its worth to the owner.
John Harvey, In a True Light. Mystery
An artist and forger learns he has a grown daughter and tracks her
to New York, where she’s a nightclub singer working for a dangerous
man.
Hugh Kennedy, Original Color.
A novel about the cutthroat world of art follows the coming-of-age
of a sincere Princeton graduate who becomes a Machiavellian dealer’s
protégé.
Greg Iles, Dead Sleep.
A woman is shocked to see a painting of her missing sister’s lifeless
body at an art exhibit and is determined to track down the artist.
James McKean, Quattrocento.
A restorer of Italian Renaissance paintings discovers a portrait
of a beautiful woman in a museum basement, and strange things start
to happen when he begins to clean it.
Peter Mayle, Chasing Cezanne.
A photographer stumbles upon a plumber loading a Cezanne into his
truck and follows a trail of culinary delights in France to uncover
an art scam.
Iain Pears, Death and Restoration.
Mystery
Rome’s Art Theft Squad investigates puzzling threats to a monastery
that has a painting attributed to Caravaggio. Part of a series on
art.
John Santlofer, The Death Artist.
A cop who left her job for a career in the arts investigates a series
of murders staged to resemble famous paintings.
Suzanne Strempek Shea, Lily of the Valley.
A woman who makes a living by sign painting and calligraphy receives
a commission to paint the portrait of a wealthy family.
Thomas Swan, The DaVinci Deception. Mystery
A forgery ring steals a sample of Leonardo DaVinci’s drawing from
Windsor Castle.
John Updike, Seek My Face.
A reporter interviews an elderly painter who tells of her life,
her marriages, & her art and of discovering new ways to see
and interpret the world.
Salley Vickers, Miss Garnet’s Angel.
After the death of her longtime companion, an English schoolteacher
travels to Venice, where she opens her heart to love and faith for
the first time.
Susan Vreeland, Girl in Hyacinth Blue.
A painting attributed to Vermeer is traced back through the centuries
through various owners.
Martin Walker, The Caves of Perigord.
A British officer brings a fragment of a 17,000-year-old cave painting
found by his father in World War II to an auction house hoping to
trace its origins.
Paul Watkins, The Forger.
An American painter who receives a scholarship to work in Paris
under the tutelage of a mysterious and brilliant Russian artist
realizes he is being trained to forge masterpieces to sell to Hitler.
Katherine Weber, The Music Lesson.
An Irish-American art historian becomes entangled in a dangerous
web involving a Vermeer painting and an IRA plot.
Sculpture
Deborah Smith, On Bear Mountain.
A man heads to rural Georgia to try to buy one of his father’s sculptures
that’s worth millions from a woman who has it in her backyard.
Barry Unsworth, The Stone Virgin.
A conservation expert who goes to Venice to restore a stone Madonna
is not prepared for the effect the statue’s mysterious past will have
on his life.
Photography
Robert Clark, Mr. White’s Confession.
In 1939 St. Paul, the prime suspect in the brutal murders of two
dancers is a reclusive photographer who took pictures of them.
Robert Goddard, Caught in the Light. Mystery
A photographer leaves his wife for a woman who disappears, and when
he seeks her he uncovers a 170-year-old mystery and a dark secret
in his past.
Theater
Simon Brett, An Amateur Corpse. Mystery
Out-of-work actor Charles Paris takes a job with an amateur theater
company and must help clear his friend of murder charges. Part of
series on acting.
Elizabeth McCracken, Niagara Falls All Over Again.
In their 30-year partnership, a famous comedy team triumphs in vaudeville,
film, radio, and TV, until one of them commits a desperate act of
betrayal.
Jill McGown, Scene of Crime. Mystery
A pregnant British detective drags her partner to an amateur drama
society hoping for a part in Cinderella, not knowing murder lurks
in the wings.
Edward Marston, The Queen’s Head. Mystery
An Elizabethan theater troupe is bedeviled by mishaps, including
the murder of an actor, the theft of a script for a performance
before the Queen, and an attempt to kill the boys who play the female
roles. First in a series on Elizabethan theater.
Michael Meehan, Stormy Weather.
A troupe of vaudeville artists struggling to compete with the advent
of television travel through a storm to give a performance in a
small Australian town.
Susan Sussman, Audition for Murder. Mystery
Chicago actress Morgan Taylor is hoping for a juicy role in a play,
but when her auditioning partner turns up dead she fears the production
may be cursed. First in a series on acting.
Sarah Willis, The Rehearsal.
A theater director invites his company of actors to his upstate
New York farm to prepare for the opening of their production of
Of Mice and Men.
Music
Madison Smartt Bell, Anything Goes.
The adventures of a young musician who hits the road with a
bar band touring the Eastern seaboard.
Kathleen Fleming, The Jazz Age Murders. Mystery
A woman discovers that a murder at a jazz club on Chicago’s North
Side is linked to events that took place during the club’s heyday
in the 1920s.
Sara Frommer, The Vanishing Violinist. Mystery
When a Stradivarius is stolen at the International Violin Competition
in Indianapolis, a woman tries to clear her daughter’s boyfriend
of suspicion.
Robert Hellenga, Blues Lessons.
A white boy who is an aspiring blues musician falls in love
with a black girl and has a child with her.
Oscar Hijuelos, A Simple Habana Melody.
A Cuban musician who was sent to Buchenwald because of his Sephardic
name returns to Habana after the war and looks back on his life.
Angela Huth, Easy Silence.
A violinist falls in love with the new viola player in his quartet
and wonders what to do about his wife.
Bernard MacLaverty, Grace Notes.
An Irish composer struggles to balance her artistic life with
her troubled family relationships.
Daniel Mason, The Piano Tuner.
An Englishman travels to a remote outpost in Burma to tune the
piano of an eccentric and controversial British commander.
Christopher Miller, Simon Silber: Works for Solo Piano.
A frustrated academic writes liner notes for a concert pianist
whom genius has eluded.
Bill Moody, Looking for Chet Baker. Mystery
Jazz pianist Evan Horne tries to determine whether trumpet player
Chet Baker’s fall from a hotel window was accidental. Part of a
series on jazz.
Mark Salzman, The Soloist.
A former cello prodigy’s life changes when he acquires a brilliant
pupil and becomes a juror on a trial about the murder of a Buddhist
monk.
Harrison Gradwell Slater, NightMusic. Mystery
Stranded in Milan, a music scholar discovers a manuscript that
may be a diary kept by Mozart.
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