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The Lost Woman
Karen Mulvahill

An ingeniously plotted fiction debut with well-drawn characters and plenty of historical depth.
Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)
Riveting, exploring the strength of the human spirit in the face of terrifying adversity.
Publishers Weekly
About the book
Paris, 1940. Nicole Cassin is a Jewish teenager living above her family’s art gallery when the Nazis occupy the city. Overnight, everything is taken: her home, her security, her future, and Nicole is forced to grow up fast.
As Paris sinks deeper into fear and suspicion, she is drawn into the Resistance and into a world where a whispered name or a single painting can mean the difference between freedom and tragedy.
Decades later in New York, Nicole—widowed and running out of time—receives a letter that upends the life she has spent years trying to build. Determined to reclaim her family’s legacy, she hires Robert, an art historian with ties to the wartime efforts to save Europe’s cultural treasures, to trace the fate of her parents’ stolen collection, including a portrait of her mother painted by Pablo Picasso.
What begins as a search for lost paintings becomes something far more dangerous. Robert’s investigation leads into a shadowy network of collaborators, ex-Nazis, and art dealers, where fortunes were made in the ruins of war, and where the truth about Nicole’s past has been waiting, buried in plain sight.
Perfect for fans of The Nightingale and The Postmistress of Paris.
Karen Mulvahill
About the author