Trailer Park Tuesday: The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.  Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex.  And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video.  So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.

Though the author, B. A. Shapiro, does a good job explaining the setup of her novel The Art Forger in the video above, I'll go ahead and give you the plot summary here as well:

On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art worth today over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there’s more to this crime than meets the eye.  Claire makes her living reproducing famous works of art for a popular online retailer. Desperate to improve her situation, she lets herself be lured into a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel, a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a painting—one of the Degas masterpieces stolen from the Gardner Museum—in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But when the long-missing Degas painting—the one that had been hanging for one hundred years at the Gardner—is delivered to Claire’s studio, she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery.  Claire’s search for the truth about the painting’s origins leads her into a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late nineteenth century may be the only evidence that can now save her life.

The Art Forger was just released by Algonquin Books last month and I immediately added it to my ever-growing To-Be-Read pile.  It certainly looks like one of those multi-faceted literary hybrids--you know, the kind of book that not only tastes good but is also fortified with 8 essential vitamins and minerals.  As Booklist notes: "Shapiro artfully turns a clever caper into a provocative meditation on what we value most."  To learn more about Shapiro, the novel, and fake paintings, visit Shelf Awareness' Maximum Shelf.  And here's a sweet deal: if you purchase a Kobo Mini or Kobo Glo between now and Nov. 26, Algonquin will give you a free copy of the e-book version of The Art Forger.  This is the real deal and not a fake.  (By the way, I recently purchased a Kobo Mini from Fact and Fiction in Missoula, Montana; I'll be blogging about how much I like it sometime here in the near future.)