Book cover of The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece

Book description

Told with consummate skill by the writer of the bestselling, award-winning A Civil Action, The Lost Painting is a remarkable synthesis of history and detective story. 

An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facing the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Lost Painting as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Harr is best known for his blockbuster legal thriller A Civil Action, but the work that has stuck with me is his 2005 follow-up about a high-stakes quest to find a lost masterpiece by the Renaissance master Caravaggio.

Stretching from a hilltop village on the Adriatic Sea to the alleyways of Rome to an unexpected discovery in a dusty old house in Ireland, The Lost Painting taught me that a single incredible object—in this case, Caraggio’s extraordinary The Taking of Christ – can be the central character of a book, taking readers across centuries and from one exotic…

From Joel's list on nonfiction on international capers.

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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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