The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

In the 1600s Sara de Vos, a mother and painter, loses her young daughter suddenly to illness. In her grief, she secretly begins painting a dark landscape of a girl watching an ice skater from the edge of a wood.

In 1950s New York, Martijn de Groot has At the Edge of a Wood hanging above his bed. Though it is a dark, peculiar painting, by a scarcely known female painter of the Golden Age, he holds the painting dear and when it is stolen, he is bereft. In Brooklyn, struggling art student Ellie Shipley accepts a commission to paint an intricate forgery of de Vos' sole surviving work, not realising that her decision will come to haunt her successful academic career.

Gorgeously written, brilliantly conceived and executed, filled with tension and revelation, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is a superb novel, one of those rare books that stops time as you read it, and one that you will want to keep revisiting for the sheer pleasure of watching a master at work.