Lesson In Red

By Maria Hummel

List Price: $27.00

June 1, 2021 | Hardcover | 6 x 9, 320 pages | ISBN 9781640094314

A companion to Still Lives–a Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine selection–this savvy thriller exposes dark questions about power and the art world and reveals the fatal mistakes that can befall those who threaten its status quo.

Brenae Brasil is a rising star at Los Angeles Art College, the most prestigious art school in the country, and her path to art world celebrity is all but assured. Until she is found dead on campus, just after completing a provocative documentary about female bodies, coercion, and self-defense.

Maggie Richter’s return to L.A. and her job at the Rocque Museum was supposed to be about restarting her career and reconnecting with old friends. With mounting pressure to keep the museum open, the last thing she needs is to find herself at the center of another art world mystery. But when she uncovers a number of cryptic clues in Brasil’s video art, Maggie is suddenly caught up in the shadowy art world of Los Angeles, playing a very dangerous game with some very influential people. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more lies she threatens to expose.

Maria Hummel, praised for her “genius for layering levels of meaning” (BBC), has brought us back to her provocative noir Los Angeles with this haunting investigation into power and the art world.

About Maria Hummel

Maria Hummel is a novelist and poet. Her most recent novel, Still Lives, was a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club pick, Book of the Month Club pick, and BBC Culture Best Book of 2018, and has been optioned for television and translated into multiple languages. She is also the author of Motherland, a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year; and House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman Poetry Prize. She has worked and taught at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stanford University; and the University of Vermont. She lives in Vermont with her husband and sons.

Praise

Praise for Still Lives:

"It's a thrilling mystery that will leave you wondering which characters you can and can't trust . . . There's a twist at the end that still keeps us up at night, it's THAT good." —Reese Witherspoon

"Both savvy and lyrical-the perfect beach read for either coast." —The Wall Street Journal

"An ambitious, intelligent and often uncomfortable study of gender, violence and art." —The Guardian

"Has a heck of a hook to draw in a wide swath of readers. . . . It manages an impressive twofer: It sucks you into a compelling story, before forcing you to contemplate the big, uncomfortable ideas it's considering. It's a fresh choice for Reese's Book Club, to be sure." —Entertainment Weekly

"Aa stunning achievement for a writer who perfectly captures an outsider's ambivalence about the city's pluses and minuses, and most notably its sensational crimes and the dark angels we make of its victims." —Los Angeles Times

"A delicious Los Angeles noir that combines the glitz and glamor of fine art with the grit and grime of crime and sexual objectification, Still Lives is a thought-provoking novel packaged in one hell of a mystery." —The Daily Beast

Still Lives was also an Amazon Top 20 Mystery/Thriller of 2018, one of BBC Culture's "10 Best Books of 2018," CrimeReads's "Best Psychological Thriller of 2018," featured on Time's list of "Best New Books to Read This Summer," a Daily Beast "Best Beach Read of 2018," one of Buzzfeed's "30 Summer Books to Get Excited About," an Entertainment Weekly "June Must-Read," Chicago Review of Books's "Best Book of June 2018," Read It Forward's "Best Books of June," one of Purewow's "Nine Books We Can't Wait to Read in June," a Refinery29 "Best New Book of June," and one of PopSugar's 50 "New Books to Wow Your Book Club With"