"August, 1911: The Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincent Peruggia. Exactly what happens in the two years before its recovery is a mystery. Many replicas of the Mona Lisa exist, and more than one historian has wondered if the painting now in the Louvre is a fake, switched in 1911. Present day: art professor Luke Perrone digs for the truth behind his most famous ancestor: Peruggia. His search attracts an Interpol detective with something to prove and an unfamiliar...

Turn-of-the-century Paris was the beating heart of a rapidly changing world. Painters, scientists, revolutionaries, poets--all were there. But so, too, were the shadows: Paris was a violent, criminal place, its sinister alleyways the haunts of Apache gangsters and its cafes the gathering places of murderous anarchists. In 1911, it fell victim to perhaps the greatest theft of all time--the taking of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Immediately, Alphonse...

"On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c'est partie! The Mona Lisa, she's gone! No one knew who was behind the heist. Was it an international gang of thieves? Was it an art-hungry American millionaire? Was it the young Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was about to remake the very art of painting? Travel back to an extraordinary period...

The Marquis de Valfierno spent his life preparing to become the man who stole the Mona Lisa. We are introduced to him in Buenos Aires, where the criminal mastermind with exquisite taste in art and women has built a highly profitable business selling fake religious masterpieces to grieving widows. A botched love affair forces him to head for Mexico City, where he discovers new ventures and greater profits for his art. In Mexico, he begins

...

France, 1939. At the dawn of World War II, Anne Guichard, a young archivist employed at the Louvre, arrives home to find her brother missing. While she works to discover his whereabouts, refugees begin flooding into Paris and German artillery fire rattles the city. Once they reach Paris, the Nazis will stop at nothing to get their hands on the Louvre's art collection. Anne is quickly sent to the Castle of Chambord, where the Louvre's most precious...

"A genius immortalized her. A French king paid a fortune for her. An emperor coveted her. No face has ever captivated so many for so long. Every year more than nine million visitors trek to her portrait in the Louvre. Yet while everyone recognizes her smile, hardly anyone knows her story. This book rests on the premise that the woman in the Mona Lisa is indeed the person identified in its earliest description: Lisa Gherardini (1479-1542), wife of...

"Jackie Kennedy loved the arts. And America loved Jackie. The first lady knew she had the country's attention and she wanted to encourage Americans to appreciate art. This is the little-known story about how Jackie Kennedy brought the world's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, to the United States"--

When crooked crooks steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, Special Agent Jack is sent on a dangerous mission to steal it back. Includes facts about the painting.

In Renaissance Italy, Elisabetta longs for romance, and when Leonardo da Vinci introduces her to Guiliano de Medici, whose family rules Florence but is about to be deposed, she has no inkling of the romance--and sorrow--that will ensue.