Portrait of an Unknown Woman

A stunning fictionalized portrait--the story-behind-the-story--of an iconic painting crafted by famed Austrian artist, Gustav Klimt.

Parisian-born author Camille de Peretti takes readers on a labyrinthine fictional journey that explores the alluring, unnamed woman behind a mysterious portrait painted by Austrian visual artist Gustav Klimt.

 

Portrait of an Unknown Woman commences with actual facts about the painting and its origins. The author explains how it was always believed that Klimt painted two images of the same woman: “Damsel” (1910) and “Portrait of a Lady” (1917). In 1996, however, it was discovered by an art student that the two paintings were actually “one and the same.”  For some reason, Klimt altered (painted over) the original painting. Soon after this discovery, the two-in-one painting was stolen on February 22, 1997 and wasn’t found again until 2019, when a gardener at the famed Ricci Oddi Art Gallery in Piacenza, Italy found it perfectly preserved--wrapped in a garbage bag and stashed behind some overgrown ivy.

 

Who was the woman behind the mystery of this sought-after portrait? Why did Klimt paint her twice? And why might the painting have gone missing? These questions drive de Peretti’s passionate imagination as she unfurls a riveting novel about the mysterious woman, Klimt’s model and muse, whose turbulent life mirrors that of the iconic long-lost painting. Readers--those with a penchant for history and art dramas--will be beguiled by a truth-melded-with-fiction-epic that crosses continents from 1900s Vienna to New York City during the Great Depression, all the way to modern-day Italy. de Peretti’s well-conceived, beautifully rendered narrative is anchored in well-researched and documented facts as she creates a stunning, lyrical portrait about family loyalty, secrets and betrayals, and star-crossed love.

 

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Camille de Peretti (Translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle)

Europa Editions, paperback $19.00, 9798889661788, 256 pages

Publication Date: April 14, 2026

To order this novel on Bookshop.org, link HERE

Learn more about Camille de Peretti HERE

Favorite Reads 2025: Mona's Eyes by Thomas Schlesser

My Favorite Novel of the Year: Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser 

A tender, inspiring and beautifully rendered story about what it means to have true vision—in life and in art. 

A ten-year-old French girl who inexplicably starts to go blind shares an enriching 52-week experience with her attentive, maternal grandfather, visiting museums and studying five centuries worth of great visual art. 

Traversing works in Parisian galleries from DaVinci to Kandinksy, Rafael to Magritte, Whisler to O’Keefe, all the way to Basquiat, the author entwines the enlightening journey shared between grandfather, Henry, and suddenly disabled granddaughter, Mona, with the beauty and wisdom behind each great work of art—and those who created them.

Thomas Schlesser is a thoughtful, exquisite craftsman of tender prose and plotting. Mona’s Eyes is an unforgettable, visionary gift for readers—a tender, life-affirming story of love and the transformative power of life when it is lived as an art.

Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser (translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle)

Europa Editions, $30.00 hardcover, 432 pages, 9798889661115, 432 pages

Publication Date: August 26, 2025

To order this book via Bookshop.org link HERE

Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife

A fascinating glimpse into the life of an eccentric, legendary photographer whose work came to prominence only after her death.

Pamela Bannos, a professor at Northwestern University, frames a fascinating portrait of Vivian Maier, the mysterious nanny who was also a gifted, self-taught photographer who chose to remain unknown. The biography also examines the astonishing circumstances and coincidences by which Maier's photographs emerged into the public eye and her meteoric posthumous rise in the art world. Bannos pieces together clues about the woman behind the camera, dispelling myths that have been perpetuated and shaped since her death in 2009.

Vivian Maier was--and continues to remain--an enigma. Eccentric, fiercely independent and intensely private, she was born illegitimately in Manhattan to a French mother, whose own birth was illegitimate. Both Maier's mother and grandmother were live-in servants. That paved the way for Vivian, throughout her adult life, to work as a nanny for several well-to-do U.S. families. This enabled her to support herself while also secretly pursuing her craft as a visual artist for decades. Those closest to her knew that Maier liked to take photographs, yet no one knew the extent of her passion and drive--and the scope of her talent. It was only near the end of Maier's life that her work was discovered: photographs, thousands of negatives and more than 1,000 rolls of undeveloped film.

Bannos's engrossing, meticulously researched biography sensitively reconstructs Vivian Maier's very private life in conjunction with her posthumous legacy as a visionary photographer. Many questions remain and always will. However, Bannos's comprehensive narrative ensures that Vivian Maier's story and the treasure trove of her work will live on. 

Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife  by Pamela Bannos

University of Chicago Press, $35.00 Hardcover,  9780226470757, 352  pages

Publication Date: October 10, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (November 3, 2017), link HERE

Merry Christmas!

Opinion:   

Can We Imagine a World Without Christmas?

How would the world be different--beyond spirituality and religion;

in a cultural sense--if Jesus Christ had never been born?

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Opinion/Editorial: "Other Views/ Guest Columnist" (Section A-13)

BY KATHLEEN GERARD

To read the article in its entirety, click on the highlighted title above

Owls: Our Most Charming Bird

Artist and avid ornithologist, Matt Sewell, has built a brand writing and distinctively illustrating informative, yet accessibly appealing books about birds. In Our Garden Birds and Our Songbirds, he presented two volumes, each exploring 52 favorite species from England—one bird for each week of the year. In Owls: Our Most Charming Bird, Sewell branches out beyond Great Britain and offers a world-wide compendium of various owls: multi-faceted, nocturnal birds of prey. Watercolors rendered in Pop-Art style and concise, lively prose highlight the individuality of 50 different species of owls that are indigenous to diverse regions of the world.

Sewell explores Woodland varieties like the Northern Saw-whet Owl--native to North America--which is "smaller-than-a-blackbird and fluffier-than-a-three-week-old Labrador" and has "pleading, puppy-dog eyes" etched with a permanent look of surprise. The Great Gray Owl, with a head like a "geodesic dome inhabited by a bunch of strung-out hippies," is considered a Wilderness variety that is a stealthy hunter built to survive in northern, glacial environments. The Elf Owl is one of the smallest that loves cacti and inhabits Wild West deserts of the USA and Mexico. While the Crested Owl is indigenous to tropical Central and South American climates and has eyebrows that appear like "incredible appendages" that serve to aid his camouflage efforts when pretending to be a branch.

This playful, well-conceived collection enhances--and also shatters--myths and folklores surrounding these "all-seeing, all-knowing" mysterious and imperious bird-hunters and proves fiercely entertaining and enriching in the process.

Owls: Our Most Charming Bird by Matt Sewell

Ten Speed Press, $12.99 Hardcover, 9781607748793, 128 pp

Publication Date: September 22, 2015

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (10/2/15), link HERE