The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

A small, captivating painting of a goldfinch lies at the heart of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning third novel. When the life of 13-year-old Theo Decker is set spinning off-course by an act of terrorism, he commits an impulsive act of his own that will come to define the rest of his life. What follows is a haunted odyssey through present-day America, and deep into the art underworld of New York.

The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith

Australian author Dominic Smith tracks a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the Golden Age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated Australian art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth. Our managing director Mark Rubbo says, ‘A wonderful narrative masterfully told and absolutely compelling. It will appeal to a wide range of readers, accessible yet complex in the manner of Geraldine Brooks or Anthony Doerr.’

Theft by Peter Carey

When artist Butcher Bones’ plummeting prices and spiralling drink problem force he and his brother Hugh to retreat from Sydney to northern NSW, the formerly famous artist is reduced to acting as caretaker for his patron and nurse to his idiot-savant brother. That is until mysterious American beauty Marlene turns up one stormy night, clad in a pair of Manolo Blahniks. Claiming that the brothers’ neighbour owns an original Jacques Liebovitz, she sets in motion a chain of events that could be the making or ruin of them all.

Prochownik’s Dream by Alex Miller

Toni Powlett is an artist in the grip of a crisis. Since the death of his father, Moniek Prochownik, four years earlier, Toni has been at a creative standstill – until Marina Golding, the wife of his former teacher and mentor, Robert Schwartz, contacts him, and everything changes. Toni finds in Marina the perfect companion of his life in art and his creative energies are re-awakened. But the more dependent for his art he becomes on Marina, the more potentially destructive become the tensions between himself and his family.

The Strays by Emily Bitto

Emily Bitto’s Stella Prize-winning debut novel was inspired by aspects of the legacy of the renowned Heide group of artists and writers, which included controversial figures such as Sidney Nolan and John and Sunday Reed – whose private lives were as controversial as their creations.

Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson

With the inheritance he received upon his father’s death, Miles has come to Europe on the trail of the Romanian surrealist, who disappeared into a forest in 1967. But in trying to unravel the mystery of Bafdescu’s secret life, Miles must also reckon with his own. Uncanny, occasionally absurd, and utterly original, Fever of Animals is a beautifully written meditation on art and grief.

Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

This bestselling novel from Tracy Chevalier explores the corruption of innocence and the price of genius. 17th Century Holland. When Griet becomes a maid in the household of artist Johannes Vermeer in the town of Delft, she thinks she knows her role: housework, laundry and the care of his six children. But as she becomes part of his world and his work, their growing intimacy spreads tension and deception in the ordered household and, as the scandal seeps out, into the town beyond.

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

Rachel Kushner’s audacious second novel is a blazing read set in the 70s. When Reno mounts her motorcycle and sets a collision course for New York she discovers a city alive with art, sensuality and danger. She falls in with a bohemian clique colonising downtown and the lines between reality and performance begin to bleed. A passionate affair with the scion of an Italian tyre empire carries Reno to Milan, where she is swept along by the radical left and drawn into a spiral of violence and betrayal.

The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

Inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin and first published in 1919, The Moon and Sixpence is both a satiric caricature of Edwardian conventions, and a vivid portrayal of the mentality of a genius. Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. Whilst his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an obsession which carries severe implications.

The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt

The artist Harriet Burden, furious at the lack of attention paid her by the New York art world, conducts an experiment: she hides her identity behind three male fronts in a series of exhibitions. Their success seems to prove her point, but there’s a sting in the tail – when she unmasks herself, not everyone believes her. And then her last collaborator meets a bizarre end…

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

Alessandra is not quite 15 when her prosperous merchant father brings a young painter back with him from Holland to adorn the walls of the new family chapel. She is fascinated by his talents and envious of his abilities and opportunities to paint to the glory of God. Soon her love of art and her lively independence are luring her into closer involvement with all sorts of taboo areas of life.