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B. A. Shapiro
The Art Forger
A Novel
“A clever, twisty novel about art, authenticity, love, and betrayal. B. A. Shapiro knows
about Degas, and she knows about art theft and forgery, and she also knows how
to tell a gripping story.” —Tom Perrotta
October
Fiction
368 pages, 5 ½" x 8 ¼"
ISBN 978-1-61620-132-6
$23.95 Hardcover
No. 73132
world (excluding Can)
E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-180-7
• BEA ARC giveaway and signing
• Prepublication sell-in tour
• 5-city author tour
• National publicity
• Regional trade show appearances
• Online marketing campaign
• Special $75 newsletter allowance
• Essay and excerpt in the Algonquin Reader
• Prepublication advertising, including
Shelf Awareness and Publishers Weekly
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 there’s 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 painting—one of the Degas masterpieces stolen from the
Gardner Museum—in exchange for a one-woman show in his
renowned gallery. But when the long-missing Degas painting—the
one that had been hanging for one hundred years
at the Gardner—is delivered to Claire’s studio, she begins to
suspect that it may itself be a forgery.
Claire’s search for the truth about the painting’s 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. Shapiro’s 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. It’s a dazzling novel about seeing—and
not seeing—the secrets that lie beneath the canvas.
“An engaging journey. Will not only keep you as entertained as
any thriller but leave you with a new appreciation of how paintings
are made, evaluated, and understood—not to mention
how they’re copied.” —Arthur Golden, bestselling author of
Memoirs of a Geisha
“Blazingly good. Shapiro drops you where you’ve never been before,
into the whole, crackingly alive world of art galleries, art
forgeries, and the unexpected recesses of the human heart. As
original as a real Degas, it’s also as unforgettable.” —Caroline
Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You
B. A. Shapiro lives in Boston and teaches fiction writing at
Northeastern University. Author website: www.barbarashapiro
.com.
Algonquin Books Fall/Winter 2012 | 1
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