Listed in the Theater category on Art In Fiction, Bedtrick(2013) is the first entry in the authors Shakespearean Actor trilogy. Once a boy player in Shakespeare's company, Sander Cooke is now a hired man playing female roles. When Frances Field reveals she is pregnant by Sander's brother, Johnny, a fellow actor and aspiring playwright, Johnny makes it clear that marriage is not in his plans. But if Frances gives birth to a bastard, she'll lose her shop on London Bridge and her position as one of Queen Elizabeth's silk women. Sander would like to come to Frances' rescue: only Sander has a secre ..read more

Listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction, The Immaculate Deception (2000) by Iain Pears is the authors seventh Art History Mystery featuring Jonathon Argyll, scholar and sleuth. How do you resolve a scandalous kidnapping without paying the ransom or attracting any attention? It's not a question Flavia di Stefano, acting head of the Italian Art Theft Squad, would normally need to answer. Unfortunately, the Italian prime minister is asking it. As Flavia begins a desperate search for the Claude Lorrain landscape, snatched while on loan from the Louvre, her husband embarks on a rather ..read more

Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, The Swans Nest (2024) by Laura McNeal is an engrossing novel about the unlikely love affair between two great 19th-century poets: Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. On a bleak January day in 1845, a poet who had been confined to her room for four years by recurrent illness received a letter from a writer she secretly idolized but had never seen. I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett, Robert Browning wrote, and I love you too. Elizabeth Barrett was ecstatic. She was famous for her poetry but too frail for the kind of t ..read more

Listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction, The Curse of Pietro Houdini(2024) by Derek B. Miller is a thrilling and moving World War II art-heist-adventure tale. August 1943: Fourteen-year-old Massimo is all alone. Newly orphaned and fleeing from Rome after surviving a bombing raid that killed his parents, Massimo is attacked by thugs and finds himself bloodied at the base of the Montecassino. It is there in the Benedictine abbeys shadow that a charismatic and cryptic man calling himself Pietro Houdini, the self-proclaimed Master Artist and confidante of the Vatican, rescues Massimo ..read more

Listed in the Other category on Art In Fiction, The Time Keepers (2024) by Alyson Richman transports readers from 1979 suburban New York to war-torn Vietnam. Two women from different worlds, Grace and Anh, are indelibly changed when a runaway boy is found on a street in their small Long Island town. Brought together by the love of this child displaced by war, the women find friendship and healing from their own painful pasts when their lives intersect with a mysterious wounded Vietnam vet. The vet, Jack, works at the Golden Hours, a watch store that mends timepiecesand might even mend damaged ..read more

Listed in the Dance category on Art In Fiction, The Myrtle Wand (2022) by Margaret Porter is a retelling and a continuation of the classic ballet Giselle. Princess Bathilde de Sevreau, unlike her school friend Myrte and the peasant Giselle, doubts the existence of legendaryvilis, ghostly maidens who rise from their graves by night to roam the forest to take revenge on faithless lovers. Until she, too, has cause to fear being ensnared by that spectral sisterhood. Destined for a marriage of convenience with Albin, Duc de Rozel, Bathilde leaves her ancestral chteau for the Sun Kings sophisticat ..read more

Listed in the Film category on Art In Fiction, Their Finest (2017) by Lissa Evans was longlisted for the Orange Prize upon its original publication in England. 1940: France has fallen, and only a narrow strip of sea lies between Great Britain and invasion. The war could go either way and everyone must do their bit. Young copy writer Catrin Cole is drafted into the Ministry of Information to help write women into propaganda filmssomething that the men arent very good at. She is quickly seconded to the Ministrys latest endeavor: a heart-warming tale of bravery and rescue at Dunkirk. Its all com ..read more

Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, The Manhattan Girls(2022) by Gill Paul is set in Jazz Age New York. New York City, 1921: The war is over, fashions are daring, and bootleg liquor is abundant. Here four extraordinary women form a bridge group that grows into a firm friendship. Dorothy Parker: renowned wit, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and more fragile than she seems. Jane Grant: first female reporter for The New York Timesand determined to launch a new magazine she calls The New Yorker. Winifred Lenihan: beautiful and talented Broadway actress, a casting-couch target ..read more

Listed in the Decorative Arts category on Art In Fiction, The Last Pearl(2016) by Leah Fleming is a story of one magnificent gem, and three lives bound together by fate. 1879, York: Greta Costello must rely on her wits to survive. She finds refuge as a Saturday girl for an old jeweller, Saul Abrahams, and her eye for detail, her long fingers and appreciation of beauty persuade Saul to train her as a pearl stringer. This skill will lead her through hardship and pain towards a new life. 1879, Scotland: Jem Baillie knows the immense power of a perfect pearl. His father was a fisher on a tributa ..read more

Listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction, Last Day (2020) by Luanne Rice is the story of a seaside community shaken by a violent crime and a tragic loss. Years ago, Beth Lathrop and her sister Kate suffered what they thought would be the worst tragedy of their lives the night both the famous paintingMoonlight and their mother were taken. The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on. Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead ..read more