Manual of Painting and Calligraphy was José Saramago's first novel. Written eight years before the critically acclaimed Baltasar and Blimunda, it is a story of self-discovery set in Portugal during the last years of Antonio Salazar's dictatorship. It tells the story of a struggling artist who is commissioned to paint a portrait of an influential industrialist. Disheartened by his squandered talent, the artist soon undergoes a creative and political...

Sam Savage's most intimate, tender novel yet follows Harold Nivenson, a decrepit, aging man who was once a painter and arts patron. The death of Peter Meinenger, his friend turned romantic and intellectual rival, prompts him to ruminate on his own career as a minor artist and collector and make sense of a lifetime of gnawing doubt. Over time, his bitterness toward his family, his gentrifying neighborhood, and the decline of intelligent artistic discourse...

New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Lowell creates another masterpiece of excitement and chills, passion and surprise. Die in Plain Sight. When Lacey Quinn inherits the striking landscapes done by her late, much-loved grandfather, she believes they are as good as anything hanging in museums. But the paintings now in her possession are more than the works of a talented master. They are anguished voices from the grave . . . crying murder! Lacey...

"Hurtling past the downtrodden communities of Depression-era America, painter Val Welch travels westward to the rural town of Dawes, Wyoming. Through a stroke of luck, he's landed a New Deal assignment to create a mural representing the region for their new Post Office. A wealthy art lover named John Long and his wife Eve have agreed to host Val at their sprawling ranch. Rumors and intrigue surround the couple: Eve left behind an itinerant life riding...

Kidd is a computer whiz, artist, and professional criminal. when his friend, Bobby, a superhacker, is murdered, Kidd discovers that Bobby's jazzed-up laptop is missing. The murderer now has enough secret information to hang a whole lot of people, including Kidd. He has to move fast if he's going to survive.

Vreeland's third novel focuses on the courageous Canadian painter Emily Carr, who blazed a path for modern women by overcoming the confines of Victorian culture. Carr traveled through native villages and wilderness of British Columbia in the early 1900s, often alone, on a quest to paint totem poles and other artifacts before the indigenous traditions died out and the poles were destroyed or sold.

"Sophie Dupont assists her father in his studio, and in private paints the picturesque north Devon coast -- popular with artists like handsome Wesley Overtree, who's more interested in Sophie than the landscape. Captain Stephen Overtree is accustomed to taking on his brother's responsibilities. Sent to bring Wesley home, Stephen is stunned to learn he has sailed for Italy and left his host's daughter in trouble. Feeling duty-bound, he proposes to...

Despite the success of his first solo show in Paris and the support of his brilliant French wife and young daughter, thirty-four-year-old British artist Richard Haddon is too busy mourning the loss of his American mistress to appreciate his fortune. But after Richard discovers that a painting he originally made for his wife, Anne, has sold, it shocks him back to reality and he resolves to reinvest wholeheartedly in his family life - just in time for...

Welcome to Apple Creek, Ohio, where piano teacher and artist Andrea Wagner has a fascination with painting the rural Amish landscapes around her home. She has made it to her thirties feeling like she has had a charmed life and finally has fallen in love with Brandon Prentice, a local veterinarian. But then she discovers she was adopted and all she thought she knew about herself has crumbled. Andrea becomes so fixated on finding her birth mother that...

Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, devoted to his profession and the painting hobby he loves, has a solitary but ordered life. When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed. Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism....