B. A. Shapiro

“B. A. Shapiro once again pens the art world into vivid, sensual life. Set during World War II and the dawn of Abstract Expressionism,The Muralist is an intriguing story masterfully imagined about art, war, family, truth, and freedom. If you likedThe Art Forger, you're going to love The Muralist!” —Lisa Genova, author ofStill Alice Alizée Benoit, an American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940 amid personal and political turmoil. No one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her artistic patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who while working at an auction house uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind recently found works by those now famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt? Entwining the lives of both historical and fictional characters, and moving between the past and the present,The Muralist plunges readers into the divisiveness of prewar politics and the largely forgotten plight of European refugees refused entrance to the United States. It captures both the inner workings of today's New York art scene and the beginnings of the vibrant and quintessentially American school of Abstract Expressionism. B. A. Shapiro is a master at telling a riveting story while exploring provocative themes. In Alizée and Danielle she has created two unforgettable women, artists both, who compel us to ask, What happens when luminous talent collides with inexorable historical forces? Does great art have the power to change the world? And to what lengths should a person go to thwart evil? “B. A. Shapiro's The Muralist is an expertly constructed, riveting tale of art, politics, love, and consequences in the Depression Era . . . It rings with originality and authenticity. What a compelling read!” —Jami Attenberg, author ofThe Middlesteins “I am a great fan of B. A. Shapiro, especially her new novel The Muralist. It is a tantalizing mystery, as well as an involving meditation on the meaning of art over time.” —Scott Turow, author ofIdentical

The Muralist

The bestselling author of The Art Forger and The Muralist delivers a page-turning historical thriller of art and revenge, of history and love, that will transport readers to 1920s Paris and America. It’s the summer of 1922, and nineteen-year-old Paulien Mertens finds herself in Paris—broke, disowned, and completely alone. Everyone in Belgium, including her own family, believes she stole millions in a sophisticated con game perpetrated by her then-fiancé, George Everard. To protect herself from the law and the wrath of those who lost everything, she creates a new identity, a Frenchwoman named Vivienne Gregsby, and sets out to recover her father’s art collection, prove her innocence—and exact revenge on George. When the eccentric and wealthy American art collector Edwin Bradley offers Vivienne the perfect job, she is soon caught up in the Parisian world of post-Impressionists and expatriates—including Gertrude Stein and Henri Matisse, with whom Vivienne becomes romantically entwined. As she travels between Paris and Philadelphia, where Bradley is building an art museum, her life becomes even more complicated: George returns with unclear motives . . . and then Vivienne is arrested for Bradley’s murder. B. A. Shapiro has made the historical art thriller her own. In The Collector’s Apprentice, she gives us an unforgettable tale about the lengths to which people will go for their obsession, whether it be art, money, love, or vengeance.

A Novel

The Collector’s Apprentice

“[A] highly entertaining literary thriller about fine art and foolish choices.” —Parade “[A] nimble mystery.” —The New York Times Book Review “Gripping.” —O, The Oprah Magazine Almost twenty-five years after the infamous art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum—still the largest unsolved art theft in history—one of the stolen Degas paintings is delivered to the Boston studio of a young artist. Claire Roth has entered into a Faustian bargain with a powerful gallery owner by agreeing to forge the Degas in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But as she begins her work, she starts to suspect that this long-missing masterpiece—the very one that had been hanging at the Gardner for one hundred years—may itself be a forgery. The Art Forger is a thrilling novel about seeing—and not seeing—the secrets that lie beneath the canvas.

The Art Forger

The New York Times bestselling author of The Art Forger delivers a spellbinding and moving novel about what we hang on to, what we might need to let go, and how unexpected events can lead us to deeper truths. Six people, six secrets, six different backgrounds. They would never have met if not for their connection to the Metropolis Storage Warehouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When someone falls down an elevator shaft at the facility, each becomes caught up in an intensifying chain of events. We meet Serge, an unstable but brilliant street photographer who lives in his storage unit, which overflows with thousands of undeveloped pictures; Marta, an undocumented immigrant finishing her dissertation and hiding from ICE; Liddy, an abused wife and mother, who recreates her children’s bedroom in her unit; Jason, a former corporate lawyer now practicing in the facility; Rose, the office manager, who takes illegal kickbacks to let renters live in the building; and Zach, the building’s owner and an ex-drug dealer, who scans Serge’s photos as he searches for clues to the accident. But was it an accident? A murder attempt? Suicide? As her characters dip in and out of one another’s lives trying to find answers and battling societal forces beyond their control, B. A. Shapiro both questions the myth of the American dream and builds tension to an exhilarating climax. Taut and emotional, Metropolis is impossible to put down and impossible to forget.

Metropolis

In a “wonderfully crafted” supernatural thriller by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Art Forger, a forensic psychologist fights for her child (Robert B. Parker). Blind Spot is a supernatural thriller set in an upscale suburb of Boston. It opens as forensic psychologist Suki Jacobs—a single mother struggling with a big mortgage and an ex-husband in New Zealand—receives a phone call from the police informing her that her seventeen-year-old daughter, Alexa, is at the station, claiming that her ex-boyfriend, Jonah, has been murdered. Upon further investigation, Jonah is found alive, healthy, and playing basketball. But when Jonah is killed in a drive-by shooting the next day, Alexa becomes the prime suspect. Now Suki is plunged into a fight for her daughter’s life as well as a struggle over what is—and isn’t—possible. This story of a mother-daughter relationship caught in the crossfire of modern life, kids with too much knowledge of the world, and adults with too little, is a vision of all that is possible if we are willing to take off our blinders.

Blind Spot

A pre–Civil War era murder haunts a present-day family in this atmospheric suspense novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Art Forger. How long can murder haunt a family? Until the wrong is put right and the victim is able to rest in peace. Set in Lexington, Massachusetts, The Safe Room is a story of such a murder and such a haunting. A psychological thriller, the tale toggles between the eve of the Civil War and present day. It follows the doomed love affair of Silas Person, a runaway slave riding the Underground Railroad, and Sarah Harden, the daughter of a famous abolitionist. Sarah and Silas’s story is intertwined with that of Lee Seymour, a modern-day descendant of the Harden family who must suddenly grapple with a world in which murder and ghosts are all too real. The Safe Room is a suspenseful tale that employs love and the paranormal to explore the ugliness of injustice and the beauty of human hope.

The Safe Room

A New England academic uncovers a dangerous world of witches in this “engrossing” thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Art Forger (Mystery News). See No Evil is a supernatural thriller about witchcraft, reincarnation, and murder in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The story opens as Lauren Freeman touches the worn leather binding of The Chronicle of the Coven. She sees a flash of knives and hears a strange chorus of voices in her head. Lauren is undeterred. A newly divorced single mother, she is a graduate student in history writing a book about American witch trials with her professor Jackie Pappas. Lauren needs the money the book will bring. Its focus is a mysterious event that took place in 1692 when seven convicted “witches” vanished from their prison cells on the eve of their executions and were never seen again. Lauren and Jackie’s research begins to uncover bizarre reports. Then, suddenly, Jackie is dead, and Lauren is left to write their book alone. Lauren knows that Jackie was murdered and that if she is not careful, she will be next. Lauren’s battle to avenge Jackie’s death and save her own life takes her from Wiccan festivals to ancient cemeteries to the bowels of dark libraries. After her son’s kidnapping, multiple murder attempts, and a chase through labyrinthine subway tunnels, Lauren finally confronts the perpetrator of these horrific events and acknowledges that, even in the everyday, things are often not as they seem.

See No Evil

A Boston psychologist fights for her life—and her unborn child—in this “compelling” thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Art Forger (Boston Herald). In Blameless, a psychological thriller set in Boston’s Back Bay, psychologist Diana Marcus must fight to save her good name, career, and marriage when a patient, James Hutchins—who suffers from borderline personality disorder—commits suicide, and his family files charges of malpractice, sexual abuse, and wrongful death against her. Although she is far from blameless, Diana clears her name by proving that James did not commit suicide—a revelation that throws her into a battle for her life, as well as that of her unborn child, when she becomes the prime suspect in James’s murder—and perhaps the real murderer’s next victim.

B. A. Shapiro

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