num_pages: 355
description: A Barbara A. Shapiro tour de force.On March 18 1990 thirteen works of art worth today over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history and Claire Roth a struggling young artist is about to discover that theres more to this crime than meets the eye.Claire makes her living reproducing famous works of art for a popular online retailer. Desperate to improve her situation she lets herself be lured into a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a paintingone of the Degas masterpieces stolen from the Gardner Museumin exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But when the long-missing Degas paintingthe one that had been hanging for one hundred years at the Gardneris delivered to Claires studio she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery.Claires search for the truth about the paintings origins leads her into a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late nineteenth century may be the only evidence that can now save her life. B. A. Shapiros razor-sharp writing and rich plot twists make The Art Forger an absorbing literary thriller that treats us to three centuries of forgers art thieves and obsessive collectors. its a dazzling novel about seeingand not seeingthe secrets that lie beneath the canvas.
language: English
title: The Art Forger
publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill