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Review Quotes: Review Quotes: "Suspenseful... armchair travelers will enjoy themselves." -- Publishers Weekly "Lemle offers a complex story of political power, organized crime, and the underworld of antiquities pirating... readers will enjoy connecting the dots as the novel unfolds." --Library Journal Review Quotes: "Natalie Lemle's Artifacts is a sprawling trip through time, weaving together a web of fine art, history, and long-held secrets. Finely written with a master's attention to detail, Lemle guides us deftly through the world of the ancient past, unearthing pockets of deep beauty. This book is twisty, delicious fun." --Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things, With Teeth, and Stop Me If You've Heard This One Biographical Note: Natalie Lemle studied classics and art history at Tufts University and earned an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. She is the founder of art_works, an art advisory connecting contemporary artists with global companies, and previously worked in corporate relations at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She serves on the boards of the ICA/Boston and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She lives outside of Boston with her two kids. Artifacts is her first novel. Review Quotes: "Natalie Lemle is a spectacular new voice in American fiction. Her magnificent debut is the story of Lena Connolly, a hotshot Manhattan attorney assigned to a case regarding looted artifacts in Italy, a case that dredges up her romantic past and youthful dreams of becoming an archaeologist. Artifacts is a novel of lost dreams and the power of love in a practical world where only facts seem to matter, as Lena learns to lead with her heart to finally find her bliss." -- Adriana Trigiani, author of The View from Lake Como Review Quotes: "With Artifacts, Natalie Lemle delivers a novel of rare density and grace, where each layer of the story rises like a stratum of archaeology--the very field that lies at the heart of the book--an accumulation of beauty, vice, hope, life, and the shadow of murder, all held together by a sensibility as precise as it is incandescent." -- Thomas Schlesser, New York Times bestselling author of Mona's Eyes Review Quotes: "For any reader interested in the study of the past, Lemle's story about a quest for self-knowledge explored through the world of cultural heritage will make for a thrilling read." --Science Magazine Review Quotes: "Lemle pens voluptuous prose about unearthing, theft, and change: the stolen glances that permanently shift your perspective, the fragile friendships that trigger tectonic shifts in a personality. The novel is a shapeshifter too, at once a high-octane crime thriller, a bildungsroman, and a dispatch from the rarified world of antiquities dealers. By illuminating the broken economic systems that motor criminal artifact looting, Lemle also reveals the fractured, oppressive systems that organize our romantic lives, feeling for the slivers of space where we can still move freely, towards each other." -- CULTURED Magazine Publisher Marketing: One of The New York Times's Sizzling New Summer Thrillers: "Even now, Lena might be in danger from some of the unscrupulous characters she met all those years ago. Can she put her history behind her?" For fans of The Cloisters and Counterfeit, Natalie Lemle's debut novel offers an insider's view into the world of stolen artifacts and the hidden networks that link museums to organized crime, when a woman is forced to remember the summer she spent on an archaeological dig in Italy, as everyone she knew then may now be in danger. Successful trusts and estates attorney Lena Connolly is asked by a colleague to assist on a case: the Italian government claims an artifact was looted and sold to a museum illegally and is seeking repatriation. The object in question is a cup made of dichroic glass, which would have been rare even in Ancient Rome, let alone thousands of years later. Lena has done everything she can to put the study abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps behind her. Her dreams of being an archaeologist shattered when her mentor Cyrille disappeared and her enigmatic boyfriend Giamma went dark, but with this new case, the past comes roaring back. Told in alternating timelines, Artifacts follows young Lena as she falls in love with both archaeology and Giamma on the streets of Torino while her adult self pieces together what truly happened on the dig, now a fully restored Roman villa with World Heritage status. The dichroic cup, Lena discovers, may have been taken from the very site she helped unearth. Powerful and exuberant, Natalie Lemle's Artifacts brings readers behind the museum glass and asks questions about cultural heritage and the historical preservation of our shared sense of humanity. Review Citations:
Contributor Bio:Lemle, Natalie |
Artifacts
$34.80