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 : My Brilliant Friend Deluxe Edition by Elena Ferrante

My Favorite Gift Book of the Year: My Brilliant Friend Deluxe Edition by Elena Ferrante

This is a beautifully presented collection of four unforgettable novels, each exploring a universal story of love, friendship, family, and belonging.

In My Brilliant Friend Deluxe Edition, Elena Ferrante’s quartet of novels are culled into one distinctive volume. If you’re not already familiar with the four books she previously released as standalone Neapolitan-themed novels (My Brilliant Friend; The Story of a New Name; Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay; The Story of the Lost Child), this is a chance to read all the books between two covers. This beautifully presented, deluxe cloth hardcover edition features sprayed edges and colored endpapers illustrating the Bay of Naples. 

When Elena Ferrante set out to write the story of Elena and Lila, she conceived it as one single work of fiction, one expansive novel that would capture the reality and ambivalence of female friendship, motherhood, marriage, class, and adolescence. This year, 2025, marks 10 years since the quartet of novels was completed and this one book, filled with all four of the novels, has been issued to celebrate that anniversary and honor the author’s original conception.

If you are a reader or writer--or maybe you love to collect books--this is a MUST to add to your cherished collection.  Or better yet, give this one as a gift!

NOTE: My Brilliant Friend was named the #1 Best Book of the Century by the New York Times.

My Brilliant Friend Deluxe Edition (The Four Volumes) by Elena Ferrante

Europa Editions, $65.00 hardcover, 9798889661443, 1248 pages

Publication Date: October 7, 2025

To order this book via Bookshop.org, link HERE

To learn more about author Elena Ferrante, link 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

The Book of I

A dark, serio-comic novel about how an ancient bloodbath at a monastery on a tiny Scottish island ultimately provokes redemption for three unlikely survivors.

A jarring, bloody opening scene launches The Book of I, a dark, compact, first novel rife with astonishing comical twists by Scottish playwright David Greig.

The setting is the year 825 at a monastery on the tiny isle of Iona off the west coast of Scotland. Viking Norsemen raid the island in search of a silver reliquary said to house the bones of Saint Columba, an Irish Catholic Priest (and later canonized saint) who established the remote religious enclave. The 70 devout monks who live in humble isolation on the island seem to rejoice at this invasion, willing and eager to be martyred for Christ in order glorify God—all except for one monk: Brother Martin resists the pull of glorified eternity and salvation. Amidst his cowardice, he hides deep in an outhouse—yes, a punishment as fetid as imagined!

In the aftermath of a particularly gruesome and graphically depicted battle (readers will shiver at Greig’s detailed literary descriptions of beheadings and slayings), Brother Martin survives along with, Una, a “handsome woman,” a beekeeper and medicinal mead maker, who is secretly happy to be liberated from her ogre, now dead husband. One of the aging, elder Viking leaders, Grimur, a bombastic brute with a sensitive side, also survives—this after he is mistakenly taken for dead and buried alive. His “resurrection” certainly doesn’t make for congeniality among this unlikely trio. However, there lies the great dramatic irony in Greig’s clever, inventive story that delivers a host of humorous twists about their survival and ultimate forced camaraderie while also reflecting on more sobering issues of forgiveness and trust, love and redemption.  

The Book of I by David Greig

Europa Editions, $21.25 hardcover, 9798889661276, 160 pages

Publication Date: September 9, 2025 

To order this book on Bookshop.org (formerly Indiebound) link HERE

Link HERE to learn more about dramatist/author David Greig

Forgotten on Sunday

 

An emotionally engrossing novel that exposes the ways losses sustained by two French women, born generations apart, come to define their lives. 

An unlikely friendship is forged between two women, born generations, apart in Forgotten on Sunday, a profound, emotionally complex novel written by Valérie Perrin and translated from the French by Hildegard Serle.

 

For years, 21-year-old Justine Neige has lived in Milly, a small French village, while happily working as a nursing assistant at the Hydrangeas, the local retirement home. There, Justine is most intrigued by Hélène, an enigmatic, 96-year-old nicknamed “The Beach Lady.” Drawn to Hélène and her stories, Justine willingly collects and record her remembrances in a notebook at the behest of Hélène’s grandson. In doing so, Justine uncovers details of Hélène’s long, fascinating life that include romantic passions; a bistro job where she catered to the poet Baudelaire; and the harrowing atrocities of World War II. These incredibly moving stories of love, loss, and forgiveness awaken Justine’s desires: “I feel nostalgic, nostalgic for what I’ve not yet lived.” These feelings deepen when anonymous, mysterious phone calls are made from the Hydrangeas that falsely notify relatives that their loved ones have died. The contacts have either forgotten or refused to keep in touch with the geriatrics; the calls finally force folks to visit.  As a police investigation ensues, Justine probes the history of her own family—and questions are suddenly raised regarding the long-ago, tragic car, accident that claimed her parents’ lives.

 

Perrin (Freshwater for Flowers) skillfully juggles the storylines of Justine and Hélène, heightening the drama of each with unexpected revelations. Delicate plot points--infused with elements of historical fiction juxtaposed against contemporary themes--will keep readers, charmed and deeply engrossed. 

 

Forgotten on a Sunday by Valérie Perrin (translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle)

Europa Editions, $28, hardcover, 304 p., 9798889660187

Publishing Date: June 4, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (June 14, 2024), link HERE 

 

To read a longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (April 4, 2024), link HERE

A Good Life

An evocative, powerful love story about two adult sisters forced to reconcile their lives at their grandmother's seaside home in the Basque Country.

In A Good Life, French author Virginie Grimaldi delivers a sensitive, familial love story about the unrivaled, transformative bond of sisterhood. The novel is set in the beautiful Basque countryside, where the adult Delorme sisters, Emma and Agathe, are reunited after a five-year estrangement. The two were forced to come together to spend one last summer vacation at the home of their beloved--now deceased--grandmother Mima. The seaside dwelling, about to be sold, holds dear memories that have anchored the sisters throughout their lives, despite their differences.

 

During the week shared at Mima’s house for the last time, the Delorme sisters revisit bygone stories. Short, evocative chapters render slice-of-life remembrances that take readers through episodes that defined and shaped the women’s childhood and teenage years—and probe stories of family and other loves and losses sustained into adulthood. These enlightening scenes are contrasted against the women’s lives in the present. They come to discover how Mima and the “good times” they shared via her influence at the house every summer served to calm and steady them through the storms of life. The deep challenges that befall the family mark the women’s identities, personalities, and coping methods. Tensions build in the narrative as Emma and Agathe ultimately confront each other and tend to the wounds that drove them apart.

 

Grimaldi’s concise pros, translated by Hildegard Searle, is striking and vivid, painting a sympathetic portrait of the enduring bond of sisterhood. Readers will fall under the spell of a compassionately revealed story that blends poignancy and humor in depicting the transcendental nature of familial love and forgiveness.  

 

A Good Life by Virginie Grimaldi (Translated from the French by Hildegarde Searle)

Europa Editions, $28 hardcover, 288 pages, 9798889660248

Publishing Date: May 28, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (May 31, 2024), link HERE 

 

A longer-form review of this novel was also published at Shelf Awareness on March 26, 2024.  Link HERE to read the review in its original long-form.

The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress

"When I write a novel, I'm writing about my own life; I'm writing a biography almost always. And to make it look like a novel, I either have a murder or a death at the end."  ~ Beryl Bainbridge

I had never heard of the British novelist, Beryl Bainbridge until she died on July 2, 2010. It was by perusing her obituaries, and learning her take on writing and craft, that I became interested in seeking out more of her work. She didn't have an easy life or road to publication, but that didn't stop her from trying to make sense of the world by writing stories. She was a career novelist, and at the time of her death, she left behind twenty books. Her historical fiction was critically acclaimed and launched by her interest in real life figures (Adolf Hitler in her novel, Young Adolf) or topics (the Titantic in Every Man for Himself). She could construct an entire fictional universe around small kernels of truth.

The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress was the novel Bainbridge had been working on at the time of her death. It was "re-mastered" and published posthumously. The story is classic Bainbridge - a compressed read (under 200 pages) where every word and scene is carefully chosen and infused with great wit and absurdity, however dark the themes.

The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress grew out of Bainbridge's interest in the mystery girl who was reportedly involved in the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The story is also said to be based on Bainbridge's own experiences while traveling through the United States in the 1960s. 

Bainbridge sets this novel in 1968. It traces the cross-country adventure of two misfits: Rose, a young dental hygienist, who arrives in the U.S. from London; and Harold, an older man, a widower from the States, stuck in a psychological state of inertia. What brings the two, very different characters together is their mutual search to find Dr. Wheeler, a man working on the campaign trail for Robert Kennedy.

The doctor holds a sense of personal significance to both Rose and Harold. For Rose, Dr. Wheeler was a force for good amid her troubled childhood (although as the story unravels, "good" becomes a rather questionable adjective). For Harold, Dr. Wheeler represents a force of evil that led to the greatest calamity of his life. Over the course of the story, Dr. Wheeler is a presence that continues to elude the duo as they travel from Baltimore to Los Angeles. Thus, the doctor's absence drives the plot. However, the true resonance of the story lies in the numerous encounters Rose and Harold have along the way. The eccentricities of each person they meet reveal something more about Rose and Harold, while also making larger statements about the menacing nature of the world, especially in the 60s.

What I found most intriguing about The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress was how the reader knows exactly where the story is headed and yet, via Bainbridge's presentation--the nuances of her characters and themes of sin, sudden death and violence--she adds surprising twists and levity to what becomes an immensely gripping story. In the end, the book becomes less about the destination and more about the journey, which is especially apropos in terms of the "unfinished" nature of the book and Bainbridge's immortality on the page.

The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge

Europa Editions, Trade Paper, 978-1609450564, 162 pp.

Publication Date: August 30, 2011

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE