Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, Close to Death (2024) by Anthony Horowitz is the author’s ingenious fifth literary whodunit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series. Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate. It is the perfect idyll until the Kentworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, a gaggle of shrieking children and ..read more

Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, Yellowface (2023) by R. F. Kuang grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American. Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So, when June witness ..read more

Listed in the Film category on Art In Fiction, Strangers in the Night (2023) by Heather Webb is the story the tumultuous romance that scandalized the world. In the golden age of Hollywood, two of the brightest stars would define—and defy—an era… She was the small-town southern beauty transformed into a Hollywood love goddess. He was the legendary crooner whose voice transfixed the world. They were Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra. Separately they were irresistible; together they were an explosive combination. Ava’s star is rising just as Frank’s career—and public image as a family man—is taking a ..read more

Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, Hemingway’s Girl (2012) by Erika Robuck gives life to the women behind novelist Ernest Hemingway. In Depression-era Key West, Mariella Bennet, the daughter of an American fisherman and a Cuban woman, knows hunger. Her struggle to support her family following her father’s death leads her to a bar and bordello, where she bets on a risky boxing match...and attracts the interest of two men: world-famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, and Gavin Murray, one of the WWI veterans who are laboring to build the Overseas Highway.   When Mariella is hire ..read more

Listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction, The Florentine’s Secret (2021) by Jane Thornley is Book 3 in the Agency of the Ancient Lost & Found series. Florence, Italy 1996: a young archaeologist follows a hunch that compels her to knock down a wall and retrieve a hidden sketch which may be by the renown Renaissance master Botticelli. But before she can alert the authorities and claim the find, the sketch is stolen leaving her standing in the rubble. Three decades later, the drive for retribution brings this woman to Phoebe McCabe’s door. The sketch may have been a study for a se ..read more

Listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction, The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York (2023) by Joseph Horowitz is set in a fin-de-siècle world music capital teeming with fabled personalities. Gustav and Alma Mahler arrived in New York City in 1907. He had been invited to lead the Metropolitan Opera; his glamorous wife accompanied him to the New World. His embattled American career places their legendary marriage in sharp relief. Nineteen years Gustav’s junior, Alma was his constant companion and occasional soulmate, sometimes his muse, always his caretaker, a woman otherwise restless and unfu ..read more

Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, Bloomsbury Girls (2023) by Natalie Jenner is a compelling and heartwarming story set in post-war London. Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare bookstore that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager's unbreakable fifty-one rules. But in 1950, the world is changing, especially the world of books and publishing, and at Bloomsbury Books, the girls in the shop have plans:   Vivien Lowry: Single since her aristocratic fiancé was killed in action during World War II, the b ..read more

Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, Moonflower Murders (2020) by Anthony Horowitz is the Book 2 in the Magpie Murders series. Farlingaye Hall is a beautiful hotel in Suffolk on the east coast of England. Unfortunately, it is also the site of the brutal murder of Frank Parris, a retired advertising executive. Stefan Codrescu, a Romanian maintenance man, is arrested after police discover blood spatter on his clothes and bed linen. He is found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison. It appears to be an open-and-shut case, but there is more to it than meets the eye. Al ..read more

Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, The Honeymoon (2017) by Dinitia Smith is based on the life of George Eliot, famed author of Middlemarch. When George Eliot agreed to marry John Walter Cross, twenty years her junior, in Venice in June 1880, Eliot was recovering from the death of George Henry Lewes, her beloved companion of twenty-six years. Eliot was bereft, left at the age of sixty to contemplate profound questions about her physical decline, her fading appeal, and the prospect of loneliness. In her youth, Mary Ann Evans—who would later be known as George Eliot—was a c ..read more

Listed in the Other category on Art In Fiction, The Perfumist of Paris (2023) by Alka Joshi is the 3rd novel in The Jaipur Trilogy. Paris, 1974: Radha is now living in Paris with her husband, Pierre, and their two daughters. She still grieves for the baby boy she gave up years ago, when she was only a child herself, but she loves being a mother to her daughters, and she’s finally found her passion—the treasure trove of scents.   She has an exciting and challenging position working for a master perfumer, helping to design completely new fragrances for clients and building her career one sc ..read more