Bøger af Claudia Riess

Cuba 1958: American-born William Delany's sugar plantation is attacked by rebels. He is killed and his priceless art collection is presumed taken as plunder.Fifty years later, Delaney's widow dies, and his daughter, Helen Gilmore, endeavoring to understand the father her mother never spoke about, is determined to retrieve what she can of his legacy. In her quest to track down her father's art collection she enlists the help of a young writer named Erika Shawn. Together with seasoned art historian Harrison Wheatley, the two begin their quest to uncover what they can about Delany's collection.What begins as an academic exercise quickly escalates to something much more sinister. When Helen is brutally murdered and Erika is anonymously warned to drop the assignment, they press on undeterred to uncover the culprits and find justice for Helen.Their dogged determination to find Helen's killer as well as the stolen artwork lead them to what may be an historical find. Their sleuthing is complicated by their intensifying attraction, as irresistible and, likely as threatening as their mission.

Love and Other Hazards is a novel about urban singles stumbling toward fulfillment in an odyssey of sex, love, and parenting. Glenda Fieldston is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her seven-year-old daughter, Astrid, when Eugene Lerman comes walking by with his eight-year-old daughter, Meredith, a schoolmate of Astrid's. The families spot each other, Glenda and Eugene engage in long-range cursory assessments, and then they go their separate ways.But not for long. Glenda and Eugene cross paths professionally soon after, and circumstances at work bring them into close association. So begins a friendship fraught with complications. Glenda's independence is self-imposed and fierce. Eugene's was foisted on him by a wife who left him. Although Glenda's and Eugene's personal demons are incompatible, their longings are, confoundedly, in harmony. Their cautious friendship is further inhibited by past and present relationships, and it remains to be seen if they can break out of their set ways to make a break for uncharted love.

Amateur sleuths, Erika Shawn-Wheatley, art magazine editor, and Harrison Wheatley, art history professor, attend a Zoom meeting of individuals from around the globe whose common goal is to expedite the return of African art looted during the colonial era. Olivia Chatham, a math instructor at London University, has just begun speaking about her recent find, a journal penned by her great-granduncle, Andrew Barrett, active member of the Royal Army Medical Service during England's 1897 "punitive expedition" launched against the Kingdom of Benin. Olivia is about to disclose what she hopes the sleuthing duo will bring to light, when the proceedings are disrupted by an unusual movement in one of the squares on the grid. Frozen disbelief erupts into a frenzy of calls for help as the group, including the victim, watch in horror the enactment of a murder videotaped in real time. It will not be the only murder or act of brutality Erika and Harrison encounter in their two-pronged effort to hunt down the source of violence and unearth a cache of African treasures alluded to in Barrett's journal. Much of the action takes place in London, scene of the crimes and quest for redemption.