Artifacts - by Natalie Lemle (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Natalie Lemle is the author of Artifacts. She 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 visual artists with global companies, and serves on the boards of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She lives in Boston.