A Novel Look at Artists and Writers

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 Peale, Samantha - American Painter Emma Dial
An insider’s depiction of the contemporary New York art scene -- penned by real-life artist Jeff Koons’ former studio assistant Peale -- centers on a smart young woman’s choice between a world of glamour or hard work and the risk to attain personal achievement. A witty and observant debut novel.

Cooley, Martha - Archivist
Matthias Lane is the keeper of an unnamed university library's special collection, which includes letters that T.S. Eliot wrote to an American woman. When young poet Roberta requests access to the sequestered papers, Matthias must confront a long-buried personal history he's been avoiding. A literary treasure about memory and desire which flows like a psychological thriller.

Drakulic, Slavenka - Frida's Bed
A moving account of the inner life of one of the world’s most influential female artists, weaving Frida Kahlo’s memories into descriptions of her paintings. An original take on creativity (and chronic pain).

Krauss, Nicole - History of Love
The History of Love spans a period of over 60 years, from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe to present day Brighton Beach Brooklyn. Old man Leo Gursky and fourteen-year old Alma Singer are wholly original characters enmeshed in the issue of loneliness and the need to fill a void left empty by lost love. Complex and haunting.

Cunningham, Michael - Hours
Both an homage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own construct, the author brings his literary idol back to life while seamlessly intertwining her story with those of two contemporary women Clarissa Vaughan and Laura Brown. Altogether absorbing.

Anderson, Robert - Little Fugue
The Syvia Plath/Ted Hughes story has been told and retold but this provocative novel breathes new life into their relationship as it chronicles the aftermath of Plath's 1963 suicide from the perspective of real and fictional characters. Irreverent and erudite.

Horan, Nancy - Loving Frank
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney's love story was little-known in its time, and often dismissed as scandal. This historically imagined novel – based in fact yet tender and even-handed -- gives us two fully realized people, entirely, irrepressibly, in love.

Toibin, Colin - Master
It's a bold writer who dares to put himself inside the mind of novelist Henry James, but that is what talented Toibin has ventured here -- with subtlety, empathy, and with remarkable success. Based on biographical material and family accounts, this is a superb novel about a great artist.

Vreeland, Susan - Passion of Artemesia
Narrated in the first-person voice of Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), we’re told the story of her life and career in Renaissance Italy. Beyond the paintings Artemisia left behind, Vreeland's fiction helps us understand the anger and ambition that kept this talented woman at the doors of the Accademia, in a time when respectable women rarely left their homes. A stunning, detailed and visual account.

Lively, Penelope - Photograph
Glyn Peters, a famous British archeologist, discovers a compromising photograph of his wife, Katherine Targett, sealed in an envelope in a closet at home. Reverting to professional habits, he treats Kath's infidelity as a sort of archeological dig. As the reader wonders about the nature of Kath's death, the author craftily reveals the culpability of Kath's survivors. Engrossing.

Setterfield, Diane - Thirteenth Tale
There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life. Ultimately, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. Enjoy this clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths.

Hustvedt, Siri - What I Loved
After buying an astonishing painting in a SoHo gallery, art historian Leo Hertzberg tracks down the artist, Bill Wechsler, launching a lifelong friendship with all the attendant joys and sorrows. An ardent exchange of ideas underlies all manner of passionate action in this seductive tale of two intertwined New York families.

Horn, Dara - World to Come
Using a real-life art heist as her starting point, Horn traces the life and times of several characters, including Russian-born artist Marc Chagall, the New Jersey-based Ziskind family, and the "already-weres" and "not-yets" who roam an eternal world that exists outside the boundaries of life on earth. A profound mix of mystery, spirituality, redemption, piety, and passion.


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