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The Stolen Lady cover art

The Stolen Lady

Written by: Laura Morelli
Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan, Caroline Hewitt, Paul Woodson
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Publisher's Summary

From the acclaimed author of The Night Portrait comes a stunning historical novel about two women, separated by 500 years, who each hide Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa - with unintended consequences.

France, 1939

At the dawn of World War II, Anne Guichard, a young archivist employed at the Louvre, arrives home to find her brother missing. While she works to discover his whereabouts, refugees begin flooding into Paris and German artillery fire rattles the city. Once they reach the city, the Nazis will stop at nothing to get their hands on the Louvre’s art collection. Anne is quickly sent to the Castle of Chambord, where the Louvre’s most precious artworks - including the Mona Lisa - are being transferred to ensure their safety. With the Germans hard on their heels, Anne frantically moves the Mona Lisa and other treasures again and again in an elaborate game of hide and seek. As the threat to the masterpieces and her life grows closer, Anne also begins to learn the truth about her brother and the role he plays in this dangerous game.

Florence, 1479

House servant Bellina Sardi’s future seems fixed when she accompanies her newly married mistress, Lisa Gherardini, to her home across the Arno. Lisa’s husband, a prosperous silk merchant, is aligned with the powerful Medici, his home filled with luxuries and treasures. But soon, Bellina finds herself bewitched by a charismatic monk who has urged Florentines to rise up against the Medici and to empty their homes of the riches and jewels her new employer prizes. When Master Leonardo da Vinci is commissioned to paint a portrait of Lisa, Bellina finds herself tasked with hiding an impossible secret.

When art and war collide, Leonardo da Vinci, his beautiful subject Lisa, and the portrait find themselves in the crosshairs of history.

©2021 Laura Morelli (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

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Wonderful story

Kelly Tries
For those who love art and history and Paris, this book is a gem.

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Mispronunciation of “Louvre” nearly drove me nuts.

The Stolen Lady is provides an interesting look at two time periods and is told from the point of view of three engaging characters. Good story. Mostly, the performances were very good but the mispronunciation of “Louvre” was most annoying. You can imagine how many times the name of the museum was used. Does no one vet pronunciation?There are many French-speaking Canadians who would be happy to help rather than suffer this.

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A famous painting survives precarious times

Laura Morelli, an art historian and interpreter of European culture for the American audience, has done a masterful effort of bringing the Mona Lisa story to life in “The Stolen Lady”. She has developed two suspenseful story arcs separated by several hundred years, as seen through the eyes of two historically minor characters, women who may well be fictitious but who seem real. Morelli rounds out our glimpse into the gaps of the historical record with delightful internal commentary by the artist himself, Leonardo da Vinci, at various points in the decades-long drama until the Mona Lisa painting is finally completed and safely in the possession of French royalty. My only quibble with the title of the novel is that the Mona Lisa painting was never actually stolen in either story arc, although its survival was sometimes precarious. The narration of the audiobook was excellent, and the characters were well-differentiated by the voice actors. One puzzling aspect, however, was why some of the characters in the modern story set in France suddenly broke into French dialogue -- when the listener understands very well that all conversations between those characters would have been completely in French. Wasn’t it enough that the narrators were speaking English with believable French accents?

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