Chance brought Katie Evans and Adrien Darrow to jobs at the Paris office of the Veronique Aubert Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to recovering lost and stolen artwork and antiquities.
Together with their colleague Lopez, founder Henry Robeson, and others who support the Aubert Foundation’s efforts, Katie and Adrien work to solve mysteries in the complex field of art restitution, uncovering past and present crimes and injustices.
They never expected to be targets of criminals themselves. Caught in a dangerous and perplexing game, Katie, Adrien and Lopez search for answers in order to defend their clients, their livelihoods, and even their very lives.
Unrecovered
Graduate student Katie Evans began her Friday like any other, attending art history classes at NYU and studying at her favorite café. But by the time the day has ended, she’ll have received an extraordinary offer: the chance to work for a foundation dedicated to recovering lost and stolen art and artifacts. It’s a decision that will change the course of her life.
Katie joins a small team in Paris, along with cybersecurity expert Lopez and legal researcher Adrien Darrow. Like Katie, both have pasts they’d prefer not to discuss. And both are as troubled as she is when they arrive one morning to find that the foundation office has been the target of a bizarrely unlikely break-in.
Whoever did it wasn’t looking for valuables. But why would someone want to access the foundation’s case files? What are they really after?
As the team begins to investigate, every answer leads to more questions, pulling them deeper into a tangled conspiracy of lies, secrets and betrayal, facing villains who’ll stop at nothing to get what they want.
The Second Smith
A month after arriving in Paris to work for the Veronique Aubert Foundation, Katie Evans is settling into her new life, recovering lost art, exploring the city, and growing closer to her enigmatic colleagues, Adrien Darrow and Lopez.
With no villains to chase, the team turns its attention to a missing altarpiece in Belfast, shifting relationships, and the arrival of a new pet. And then the news breaks that Katie’s predecessor at the foundation, Julian Ortley, has been arrested for conspiracy to commit murder. Desperate to prove his innocence, he asks Adrien to help clear his name.
What begins as a search for answers puts Katie, Adrien, and Lopez in jeopardy, forcing them to decide how much they’re willing to risk to uncover the truth.
