The bohemians : a novel
by Jasmin Darznik

A dazzling novel of one of America's most celebrated photographers--exploring Dorothea Lange's wild years in San Francisco that awakened her career-defining grit, compassion, and daring. In 1918 Dorothea leaves the East Coast for California, where a disaster kick-starts a new life. Her friendship with Caroline Lee, a vivacious, straight-talking woman with a complicated past, gives her entrâee into Monkey Block, an artists' colony and the bohemian heart of San Francisco. Dazzled by Caroline and her friends, Dorothea is catapulted into a heady new world of freedom, art, and politics. She also finds herself unexpectedly--and unwisely--falling in love with Maynard Dixon, a brilliant but troubled painter. Dorothea and Caroline eventually create a flourishing portrait studio only to have a devastating betrayal push their friendship to the breaking point and alter the course of their lives. Rich with descriptions of San Francisco in the glittering and gritty 1920s, and with cameos from such legendary figures as Mabel Dodge, Frida Kahlo, Ansel Adams, and DH Lawrence, The Bohemians explores the gift of friendship, the possibility of self-invention, and the ferocious pull of history.

Dangerous love : a novel
by Ben Okri

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Famished Road, a classic story of doomed love in a country trying to come to terms with its violent past. An epic of daily life, Dangerous Love is one of Ben Okri's most accessible and most disarming novels. Omovo is an office worker and artist who lives at home with his father and his father's second wife. In the communal world of the compound in which he lives, Omovo has both friends and enemies, but his most important relationship is with Ifeyiwa, a beautiful young married woman whom he loves with an almost hopeless passion-not because she doesn't return his love, but because they can never be together. Set in a Nigeria struggling to cope with the aftermath of civil war, this is a story of star-crossed lovers, separated not by their families, but by the very circumstances of their lives.

The exhibitionist
by Charlotte Mendelson

As the family gathers for famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan's new exhibition, Ray's steadfast and selfless wife, Lucia, an artist, too, who's hiding secrets of her own, decides to put herself first for once and finally makes a choice about which desires to follow.

The flames
by Sophie Haydock

Set in the extravagant, Bohemian art world of early 20th century Vienna, the electrifying untold story of the four women who posed for and inspired the groundbreaking erotic art of controversial painter Egon Schiele.

The forger of Marseille : a novel
by Linda Joy Myers

Sarah is a nineteen-year-old Jewish artist living in Paris at the outset of World War II. Her gift for forgery makes leads her to Marseille, where she joins a secret network dedicated to saving political refugees, writers, and artists from arrest by Hitler's Gestapo. Will passion and cunning be enough to keep them all alive?

The god of endings
by Jakki Holland

A lonely artist heading an elite fine arts school for children in 1984, Collette LeSange, an immortal beauty who has endured centuries of turmoil and heartache, finds her life upended by the arrival of a gifted child from a troubled home and her own mysteriously growing hunger. 

Hello stranger
by Katherine Center

After a routine surgery a struggling artist loses the ability to see people's faces but can still see animal faces in the new novel from the New York Times best-selling author of What You Wish For. 

The henna artist
by Alka Joshi

A talented henna artist for wealthy confidantes finds her efforts to control her own destiny in 1950s Jaipur threatened by the abusive husband she fled as a teenage girl.

Johanna Porter is not sorry
by Sara Read

Twenty years ago, Johanna Porter was a rising star in the art world. Now she's an unknown soccer mom. When an invitation arrives for an elite gallery opening for her former lover, the great Nestor Pinedo, Johanna wants to throw it in the trash where it belongs. But with some styling help from her daughter, she makes an appearance and comes face-to-face with the woman she was before the powerful and jealous Nestor ruined her. La Rosa Blanca is a portrait of Johanna herself, young and fierce and fearless--a masterwork with a price tag to match. When she cuts it out of its frame, rolls it up and walks out, Johanna is only taking back what was stolen from her. Hiding out with La Rosa Blanca in a shack on the Chesapeake Bay, Johanna digs into the raw work of reviving her own skills while battling novice-thief paranoia, impostor syndrome and mom guilt. But Johanna doesn't just want the painting--she wants to paint again. To harness her powerful talent, she must defy everyone's expectations--most of all her own--for what a woman like her should be.

Last words on Earth
by Javier Serena

In exile from his home country of Peru, Ricardo Funes embodies the ultimate starving artist. Fired from almost every job he's held-usually for paying more attention to literature than work-he sets himself up in a rundown shack where he works on writing stories to enter in regional contests across Spain, and foisting his judgements about literature on anyone who will listen as one of the last remaining members of the "negacionismo" poetry movement. Completely dedicated to an unwavering belief in his own art, Funes struggles in anonymity until he achieves unbridled success with The Aztec and becomes a legend . . . at least for a moment. Diagnosed with lung cancer a few years later, Funes will only be able to enjoy his newfound attention for a short time.

The logos
by Mark De Silva

Jaded and adrift, a young painter in New York joins his fate to a mercurial titan of industry in the hopes of finding a new artistic form--and quite possibly a new life. Cutting-edge intoxicants, the vagaries of desire, and an obscure art magazine with unlimited ambitions collide on the ultimate stage, where only delusion can ease the chase of mystique. In an epic new novel ranging across acting, advertising, professional sports, and the city.

Nothing special : a novel
by Nicole Flattery

In 1966 New York City, 17-year-old Mae drops out of school to work as a typist for the artist Andy Warhol and, transcribing the recordings of conversations and experiences with his many famous friends, becomes obsessed with the tapes, grappling with the thin line between art and voyeurism.

The red balcony
by Jonathan Wilson

In 1933 Palestine, Ivor Castle, while preparing for the trial of two men accused of murdering a leader of the Jewish community, falls deeply in love with an artist who may be a key witness and learns the hard way about the violence simmering just beneath the surface of British colonial rule.

Season of love 
by Helena Greer

When she inherits half of her great-aunt's Jewish-run Christmas tree farm, artist Miriam Blum, while sitting shiva and avoiding her parents, must save the business from going under with the help of the farm's grumpy manager, Noelle Northwood, who wants her gone until love enters the picture. 

You made a fool of death with your beauty : a novel
by Akwaeke Emezi

Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again. It's been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she's almost a new person now-an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it's time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn't ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career. She's even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the dangerous thrill Feyi feels every time she locks eyes with the one person in the house who is most definitely off-limits. This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Who is she ready to become? Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there's the biggest question of all-how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love?