RSVP online to receive the Zoom link before the meeting. Please note, registration closes 30 minutes before each session, when we send out the email.

Wed, May 20, 3pm

We will be discussing two books at the May meeting. Read one or both books!

The Blue by Nancy Bilyeau: In eighteenth century London, porcelain is the most seductive of commodities; fortunes are made and lost upon it. For Genevieve Planché, an English-born descendant of Huguenot refugees, porcelain holds far less allure; she wants to be an artist, but nobody takes the idea of a female artist seriously in London and she wishes to travel to Venice. When she meets Sir Gabriel Courtenay, he offers her an opportunity she can’t refuse; if she learns the secrets of porcelain, in particular the color blue, he will send her to Venice. The ensuing events take Genevieve deep into England’s emerging industrial heartlands, where she learns the art of industrial espionage. But how much is she willing to suffer in pursuit and protection of the color blue?

The Raphael Affair by Ian Pear: In the first book in the Art History Mystery series, we are introduced to Jonathan Argyll, an enthusiastic young art scholar from England who has followed his suspicions about a long-lost Raphael painting to a small church in Rome. Not only is the painting in question gone from the site, it has been swiftly purchased, restored, auctioned, and installed in Rome’s National Museum. But when the recovered Raphael is just as swiftly destroyed in a fire, Argyll begins to suspect its authenticity…and the innocence of every person in its path.