Hello friends! We’re back! After an extended winter hiatus, a cross-country move (for me), and several weeks spent charting our course for 2013 we’re ready to dive back into the world of books and reading and conversation. We hope you’re well rested and ready to join us.
Over the coming days we’ll be sharing a number of things we have planned for you this year, but for now we’d like to kick off 2013 with a new book club pick: THE ART FORGER by B.A. Shapiro.
Discussing our featured novels is integral to what we do here at She Reads, so we’re giving away TEN copies of THE ART FORGER (courtesy of Algonquin Books). Simply leave a comment on this post to enter. Winners will be chosen on Wednesday and we’ll get the books in the mail this week so you can read the book in time to discuss along with our online book club on Friday, February 1st.
I love fiction and I love art (my mother is an artist) and I know this book will leave you just as breathless and enthralled as it did me. So without further ado, here’s a bit about THE ART FORGER:
In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police officers bound and gagged two guards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, and stole thirteen works of art worth today over $500 million. Despite thousands of hours of police work and a $5 million reward, the artwork has never been recovered. Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there’s more to this crime than meets the eye.
After a scandal involving the provenance of an acclaimed modern painting derails Claire Roth’s career, the promising young Boston artist, now a pariah in the art world, makes a living reproducing famous works of art for the popular online retailer, Reproductions.com. In a desperate move to improve her situation, Claire makes a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel, a powerful gallery owner, to forge a Degas masterpiece stolen during the Gardner Museum heist, the largest unsolved art theft in history, in return for a one-woman show at his gallery. Their romantic entanglement adds danger to their business arrangement and heightens the possibility of betrayal as each struggles to achieve the end that initially drove them into their illegal pact.
But when the long-missing Degas painting—the one which had been hanging for 100 years at the Gardner Museum—is delivered to Claire’s studio, she begins to suspect that it may not be the original, but a forgery itself. As she begins her search for the truth about the painting’s origins and its possible link to a secret relationship between Edgar Degas and Isabella Stewart Gardner–revealed to the reader through Isabella’s letters to her niece—Claire finds herself in a breathless race through a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late 19th century may hold the key to the mysteries of the present.
B.A. Shapiro is the author of The Art Forger, a literary thriller about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist that spans three centuries of forgers, art thieves, and obsessive collectors. Writing as Barbara Shapiro, she is also the author of five suspense novels The Safe Room, Blind Spot, See No Evil, Blameless andShattered Echoes as well as the non-fiction book, The Big Squeeze. She lives in Boston and teaches creative writing at Northeastern University.
About Ariel Lawhon
Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.
Please consider sending the copies to our book club, The Book Chatters! We have about twenty members, but at our age, ten to fifteen usually show up. We eat visit and discuss the books we have read. Then we leave books on a table for others to select and read. We also discuss books we have not enjoyed personally, but others might like to try them!
We have decided that we do not have to finish a book just because we have started it!
We do read the same book at times, but for financial reasons, we usually like to read different books so we can share them.
This book sounds perfect for us…and if we do not win this treasure, I will still buy the book and then share it with other Chatters!
Thanks for giving us a chanceA,
This looks like an excellent book. Would love to read it.
I would like to have a copy of this book so I could share it with my sister…of course, I’d have to read it too:)
Just found your blog. This book sounds intriguing. Please count me in if this is open to overseas readers.
I have been wanting to read this book. It sounds GREAT.
I just saw this book at the store this weekend! It looks like one that’s right up my alley. Thank you so much for the chance to win.
I always love reading books that She Reads recommends but I most appreciate all your hard work at finding great authors who’s books are worth reading. I have suggested many books to my friends now they all come to me to find a new book to read! Thanks alot! Nanci
I have read great things about this book. I definitely want to participate. Sounds like fun!
Sounds Fascinating!!!!
Yeah!! I new book – can’t wait to read and discuss!!
Oooh, I SO want this book! I’ve resolved to read only from my own shelves until April 1, so I can’t read The Art Forger unless I win it. Here’s hoping!
Looks intriguing!
I have been trying for weeks to borrow this book from my local library – with no luck
… Winning this book would make my week!
Would love to start the 2013 reading season with this book! Sounds intriguing! Thank you! Happy New Year! Brooke
I’d love to read this, then pass it on to my son, who is an art major in college.
I would love to win this! Thanks!
Hoping it’s not too late to enter. I’d love to read this with the group!!
So exciting to read everyone’s comments. Wow.
I would love to win if it is not too late to enter!