KDL Recommends

This novel re-imagines an infamous 19th-century Shakespeare forgery. When a young bookseller claims to possess a ‘lost’ Shakespearean play, all of London is eagerly awaiting opening night of a production of the play.

At the end of her life, wife of Charles Dickens gave her letters from her husband to their daughter Kate, asking her to donate them to the British Museum, “so the world may know that he loved me once.” This remark inspired the novel.

Harriet Scott Chessman takes us into the world of Mary Cassatt’s early Impressionist paintings through Mary’s sister Lydia, whom the author sees as Cassatt’s most inspiring muse. Ill with Bright’s disease and conscious of her approaching death, Lydia contemplates her world narrowing.

Camille, painter Monet’s muse, best friend, and lover, stayed with him as they suffered the indignities of destitution. But Camille had her own secrets, including one that would pain Monet so deeply that he would never fully recover from its impact.

When John Singer Sargent unveiled his famous portrait of Virginie Gautreau, its subject’s pose and dress shocked the public and the critics. In this novel, Diliberto tells Virginie’s story, and re-creates her tempestuous personality.

Florence is changing, subject to suppression by the monk Savonarola. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of learning and art and the violence of the monk.

Escaping the sack of Rome in 1527, their stomachs churning on the jewels they swallowed, Fiammetta and her companion, Bucino, head for Venice. But here their partnership comes under threat.

Beatrice wants Ludovico to love her, but he seems more taken with her sister Isabella. Isabella hopes to use Ludovico’s desire for her to obtain her a sitting with Ludovico’s court painter, the renowned Leonard da Vinci.

Based on the painting, The Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris, this novel recounts the history of the painting and its affects on those who owned it. Forster gives the painting a life of its own, evoking passion, yearning, and hope in those who possess it.

Recounting the story of her life, Oei plunges us into the world of nineteenth-century Edo, in which courtesans rub shoulders with poets, warriors consort with actors, and the arts flourish in an unprecedented moment of creative upheaval.

When painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art, psychiatrist Andrew Marlow finds himself going beyond his own legal boundaries to understand what torments this genius.

A story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Hadley.

Cornelis commissions a portrait of himself and his wife, Sophia. But as painter Jan van Loos begins to capture Sophia’s likeness on canvas, a slow passion begins to burn between the beautiful young wife and the talented artist.

F. Scott Fizgerald was haunted by his great first love — a socialite named Ginevra. Alluring, capricious, and unavailable, she becomes the inspiration for Gatsby’s Daisy and Isabelle Borge in This Side of Paradise.

Following Michelangelo’s life from birth to death, this novel offers a portrait of the artist’s dangerous, impassioned loves, and the God-driven fury from which he wrested the greatest art the world has ever known.

A professor invites a colleague to see a Vermeer painting that he has kept secret for decades. But why has he hidden this work? The reasons unfold in a series of events that trace the ownership of the painting back to World War II and to the moment of the work’s inspiration.

Vreeland once again focuses on a single painting—Auguste Renoir’s masterpiece, which depicts a gathering of Renoir’s real friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a café terrace along the Seine. Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models, the novel illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era.