Now, she’s back with another thrilling tale from the art world, set right on the brink of World War II.” -Entertainment Weekly Shapiro captivated us in 2012 with her “addictive” novel The Art Forger. As tens of thousands of modern-day asylum-seekers from the Middle East and Africa surge into Europe, and pictures of their mistreatment are broadcast around the world, “The Muralist” is a grim reminder that history continues to repeat itself.” -The Washington Post Like her well-received 2012 novel, “The Art Forger,” this new story takes us into the heart of what it means to be an artist. “Shapiro’s plotting is deft, and the anonymous paintings and Alizée’s disappearance add mystery and intrigue to the tale. Shapiro also does a wonderful job of restoring complexity to the historical moment and stripping away the clarity of retrospection.” - The Boston Globe

The novel evokes the horror and sorrow of the Holocaust in just their tedious administrative tasks of retracing steps, of sifting through wreckage. …It has more emotional ballast and is more skillfully written than what one customarily finds. Shapiro makes the radical, varied, and sometimes enigmatic world of abstract expressionism altogether human and accessible in her smart new historical thriller. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt? And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who while working at Christie’s auction house uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind works by those now-famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Not her close-knit group of friends, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. Not her artistic patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. When Alizée Benoit, an American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940, no one knows what happened to her. Now, she’s back with another thrilling tale from the art world.” - Entertainment Weekly Shapiro captivated us in 2012 with her ‘addictive’ novel The Art Forger.

Like The Art Forger, this new story takes us into the heart of what it means to be an artist.” - The Washington Post Shapiro's new novel, Metropolis, available now!

The muralist a novel