Nightshade

A lean, taut novel about an artist—a painter—at the height of her career, about the art world, about love, fidelity, fame, betrayal, and the large choices and prices paid in the quest for art for art's sake. By the much-admired author of The Spoiler ("cutting wit and razor-sharp writing"—NYTBR; "a dark, sparkly gem of a book"—Christopher Buckley) and Hame ("I couldn't put it down"—Patrick McGrath).Eve Laing, celebrated artist, once the muse of legendary painter and "monstre sacré" Florian Kiš, is a photorealist painter of flowers at the peak of her career, with her work in international galleries and museums.Now Eve is embarking on her most ambitious work to date—seven enormous, elaborate panels of the world's deadliest plants. In psychic preparation, she has taken a wrecking ball to her opulent high-wire life, jettisoning her marriage for a beautiful young lover, a drifter half her age, who...