Iain Pears
1) Arcadia
Author
Language
English
Description
In 1960s Oxford, Professor Henry Lytten is attempting to write a fantasy novel that forgoes the magic of his predecessors, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. He finds an unlikely confidante in his quick-witted, inquisitive young neighbor Rosie. One day, while chasing Lytten's cat, Rosie encounters a doorway in his cellar. She steps through and finds herself in an idyllic, pastoral land where Storytellers are revered above all others. There she meets a...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Best-selling novelist and art historian Iain Pears enchants readers with the real-life romance between Larissa Salmina, a Russian art curator, and Francis Haskell, a British art historian. His fabulous book brings into sharp focus the strange world of the Soviet Union, and the even stranger world of a certain variety of the English elite. It seeks to show how leaving the Soviet Union was a sacrifice for her and how it was the English man, not the...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
In an exchange of favors with an art dealer colleague, Jonathan Argyll unluckily offers to transport a painting from Paris back to Rome. It seems routine work, and Jonathan gets to meet his girlfriend, Flavia, who works for Rome's Art Theft Squad. But when a would-be thief tries to take the painting at the train station, and the art dealer seems less interested in his purchase once he sees it, Jonathan wonders why, as events unfold, someone is willing...
Author
Language
English
Description
In this dazzling historical mystery, John Stone, financier and arms dealer, dies falling out of a window at his London home. The quest to uncover the truth behind his death plays out against the backdrop of high-stakes international finance, Europe's first great age of espionage, and the start of the twentieth century's arms race.
Author
Language
English
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Description
A novel on the way we interpret events to suit our purpose. The protagonists are four people giving evidence in a murder in 17th century England. One blames the crime on too much authority, another on the lack of it. A look at the controversies of the day, from medical experiments to religious freethinking.
Author
Series
Jonathan Argyll volume 6
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Detective Flavia di Stefano of Rome's art theft squad joins forces with art historian Jonathan Argyll to investigate the theft of a simple icon of the Blessed Virgin. The object turns out to be worth far more than anyone thought.