Summary

This absorbing debut is grounded in the real-life theft of 13 artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston that would today be worth $500 million. Eager young artist Claire Roth supports herself by making reproductions of classic paintings. Promised a one-woman show, she agrees to forge a painting that turns out to be one of the stolen Gardner works.


"[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.