Lost Botticelli (ePub)

New mystery novel features art and history, conspiracy and murder

What if a lost Botticelli painting should turn up after five hundred years in hiding? Who would own it, who might claim it, and to what desperate ends might someone go to steal the painting? Author Paul Stephano uses these questions to drive a new mystery novel, The Lost Botticelli, pitting a young art curator and his aging Italian professor against unscrupulous collectors and aggressive museums. There are no dead bodies until halfway through the novel, but after that the story roars from Florence to Rome to a decrepit castle outside Munich until justice, of some sort, is finally done.

"I wanted to create a novel that would use the elements of art and art history in an exciting story," says author Paul Stephano. Stephano is a writer and teacher living in Italy, and this is his first novel written in English. "It wasn't easy to work in a North American context for the novel," says HIP VP Ron Selavy, "but our author used information and advice from Toronto and Chicago museum curators to give the book a truly international scope."

The result is a top-notch mystery. Author Sandra Gulland, famous for her historical novels about Josephine Bonaparte, says, "The Lost Botticelli is an excellent page-turner of a story, told with humor and wit and full of fascinating details about the art world, both contemporary and ancient."

The Lost Botticelli website has more information about the book, a full author interview, and a walking tour of Botticelli's Florence.