Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2018
352 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
From the bestselling author of The Art Forger and The Muralist.
It's the summer of 1922, and nineteen-year-old Paulien Mertens finds herself in Paris - broke, disowned, and completely alone. Everyone in Belgium, including her own family, believes she stole millions in a sophisticated con game perpetrated by her then-fiancé, George Everard. To protect herself from the law and the wrath of those who lost everything, she creates a new identity, a Frenchwoman named Vivienne Gregsby, and sets out to recover her father's art collection, prove her innocence—and exact revenge on George.
When the eccentric and wealthy American art collector Edwin Bradley offers Vivienne the perfect job, she is soon caught up in the Parisian world of post-Impressionists and expatriates - including Gertrude Stein and Henri Matisse, with whom Vivienne becomes romantically entwined. As she travels between Paris and Philadelphia, where Bradley is building an art museum, her life becomes even more complicated: George returns with unclear motives ... and then Vivienne is arrested for Bradley's murder.
B. A. Shapiro has made the historical art thriller her own. In The Collector's Apprentice, she gives us an unforgettable tale about the lengths to which people will go for their obsession, whether it be art, money, love, or vengeance.
"Shapiro delivers a clever and complex tale of art fraud, theft, scandal, murder, and revenge...readers will be swept away by this thoroughly rewarding novel." - Publishers Weekly
"Less might have been more in this increasingly convoluted fusion of history and fantasy centered on an ambiguous central figure." - Kirkus
"If you can put The Collector's Apprentice down, you're made of stronger stuff than I am. I read it in one sumptuous sitting. This is a big story, from a big talent." - Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean
"I was engrossed in every twist and turn in this compulsively captivating page-turner, all the way until its astonishing denouement. Shapiro has done it again!" - Thrity Umrigar, bestselling author of The Space Between Us
"Dazzling and seductive, a tour de force, The Collector's Apprentice is an exhilarating tale of shifting identities, desire, and intrigue set between 1920s Paris and Philadelphia." - Dawn Tripp, bestselling author of Georgia
This information about The Collector's Apprentice was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Lynn Wayne
B. A. Shapiro is the bestselling author of The Collector's Apprentice, The Muralist, and The Art Forger, which won the New England Book Award for Fiction and the Boston Authors Society Award for Fiction, among other honors. Her books have been selected as community reads in numerous cities and translated throughout the world. Before becoming a novelist, she taught sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University. She and her husband, Dan, divide their time between Boston and Florida.
Daughters of Shandong
by Eve J. Chung
Eve J. Chung's debut novel recounts a family's flight to Taiwan during China's Communist revolution.
The Stolen Child
by Ann Hood
An unlikely duo ventures through France and Italy to solve the mystery of a child’s fate.
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
