Books set in or about Museums
Discover thrilling museum mysteries and captivating fiction in this curated book list. From art heists in *The Da Vinci Code* and *The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa* to archaeological suspense in Douglas Preston’s *Relic* and *Reliquary*, explore novels set within museum walls. Featuring Margaret Atwood, Iain Pears, and more, this guide highlights gripping reads about curators, priceless artifacts, and hidden histories. Perfect for book lovers seeking literary journeys through galleries and exhibits.
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Life Before Man
by Margaret Atwood
While married couple Elizabeth and Nate are both having affairs, their adolescent daughters become pawns in the ongoing drama.
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Relic
by Douglas Preston
Relic: The #1 New York Times bestselling thriller by Douglas Preston's and Lincoln Child, with more than one million copies sold to date Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human... But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders. Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who--or what--is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?
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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.
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The Bowl Is Already Broken
by Mary Kay Zuravleff
In this big, rewarding novel about art, politics, family, terrorism, courage, and happiness, Promise Whittaker, the diminutive but decisive acting director of the National Museum of Asian Art, is pregnant again--and that's just the beginning of her difficulties.
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The Bride's Kimono
by Sujata Massey
Antiques dealer Rei Shimura has managed to snag one of the most lucrative and prestigious jobs of her career: a renowned museum in Washington, D.C., has invited her to exhibit her kimonos and give a lecture on them. Accompanied by a gaggle of Japanese office ladies bent on a week of shopping, Rei lands in the capital. But her big break could ultimately break her. Within hours one of the kimonos is stolen, and then Rei's passport is discovered in a shopping mall dumpster—on the dead body of one of the Japanese tourists. Trouble is only beginning, though, for now Rei's parents have arrived and so has her ex-boyfriend. To track down the kimono and unmask a killer, Rei's got to do some clever juggling, fast talking, and quick sleuthing, or this trip home could be her last.
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The Bernini Bust
by Iain Pears
A bust of Pope Pius V is smuggled out of Italy by a California museum owner and subsequently he is murdered. Art historian Jonathan Argyll calls on his old sweetheart, Flavia di Stefano of the Italian national art theft fund, to join him in Los Angeles to find the bust and the killer. By the author of The Titian Committee.
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Reliquary
by Douglas Preston
Reliquary is the smash hit second book in the Pendergast series, from New York Times bestselling authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child Hidden deep beneath Manhattan lies a warren of tunnels, sewers, and galleries, mostly forgotten by those who walk the streets above. There lies the ultimate secret of the Museum Beat. When two grotesquely deformed skeletons are found deep in the mud off the Manhattan shoreline, museum curator Margo Green is called in to aid the investigation. Margo must once again team up with police lieutenant D'Agosta and FBI agent Pendergast, as well as the brilliant Dr. Frock, to try and solve the puzzle. The trail soon leads deep underground, where they will face the awakening of a slumbering nightmare... in Reliquary, from bestselling coauthors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.
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The Man who Stole the Mona Lisa
by Robert Noah
A fictionalized account of the real-life theft from the Louvre museum in Paris in 1912 of Leonardo da Vinci's painting, Mona Lisa. The protagonists are an aristocratic Argentinian who masterminds the operation, his assistant who is a painter good at forgery, and a crippled urchin who is the actual thief.
