The Parisian Heist

by Jo Piazza

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Mystery; Thrillers

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance and Everyone Is Lying to You comes a propulsive dual-timeline mystery drenched in art-world intrigue and brimming with family secrets, betrayal, and the intoxicating lure of power.

Emma, a struggling American artist in Paris, thought she had left her dreams behind when she took a job cleaning for the city’s wealthy elite. Then she meets Stella Swanson, the widow of one of the most notorious art dealers in the business. The Swansons move in a world where billionaires, oligarchs, and heads of state pay fortunes for masterpieces. Drawn in by their dazzling wealth and the pull of a dangerously charming grandson, Emma becomes both a player and a pawn in a family battle to protect their empire and conceal its crimes.

In the late 1800s, the young widow Jo van Gogh inherits hundreds of paintings from her brother-in-law Vincent that the art world deems worthless. Determined to prove their genius, and to secure a future for herself and her young son, she becomes consumed by Vincent’s legacy. As her devotion deepens, a vanished painting and a thwarted love affair leave her unsure who she can trust and how much of herself she’s willing to lose in the process.

From glittering auction houses to the idyllic canals of Amsterdam and the grand museums of Paris, the lives of these two women converge as Emma uncovers the Swanson family’s darkest secrets and agrees to mastermind a daring heist inside the Musée d’Orsay. The stakes have never been higher, and these women refuse to be written out of history, no matter the cost.

Release date: July 14, 2026

Publisher: Dutton

Print pages: 416

Sample

Emma
1996

"It is absolutely terrible to be rich," Stella Swanson wheezes in my general direction as I vacuum the thick layer of dust beneath her feet.

What a ridiculous thing to say to the person cleaning your apartment, but I nod in sympathy. Of course, it must be incredibly difficult to live in this massive two-story penthouse apartment in Paris overlooking both the Seine and the Eiffel Tower.

Maybe she's joking? When I glance up, I spy a small twinkle in the elegant older woman's striking blue eyes, but it could be a trick of the light streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

"I can imagine it's very stressful." I smile sweetly, which makes her raise both her legs in the air with her toes pointed toward the ceiling like a toddler so I can reach further under the couch. This plush velvet sofa probably costs more than my yearly rent. The black fur coat she has wrapped around her tiny frame, despite it being at least seventy-nine degrees in this place, could support my roommates and me for a month.

Madame Swanson has a haughty, moneyed accent that's distinctly American with enough of a European lilt to inform you she's frequently traveling between time zones, that she's the kind of person who belongs everywhere.

This woman isn't just rich. She's stinking, filthy, disgustingly rich. The kind of rich that's impossible for the average person like me to even comprehend. Before the secretary at school recommended this cleaning job to me a couple of months ago, she suggested I read Monsieur Swanson's obituary.

So you know what you're getting into, dear, she'd said kindly. The Swansons are the largest art dealers in the world.

The obit detailed the family's $10 billion art empire in addition to their obscene list of properties. The remaining Swansons-Stella; her stepson, Louis; and his four offspring with three wives-have at least seven homes on three continents; half of a private island; personal chefs; chauffeurs; a stable of racing horses in Chantilly; France; a permanent box at Wimbledon in London; an entire floor of one of the most coveted buildings on the Upper West Side in New York; and their name on thousands of little plaques in museums all over the world reading "on loan from the Swanson art collection."

"Do you recognize that painting?" Madame Swanson gestures to a piece of art on the wall across from her. I crane my neck to admire it even though I clocked it the second I walked through the door. It's clear from her tone that she wants me to say no so she can spend the next twenty minutes explaining the piece to me. It's a framed print, not an original, which seems strange for the widow of the most powerful art dealer in the world, but then again, the real one is probably in a museum somewhere.

Stella Swanson is definitely the kind of rich person who loves explaining things to people she considers beneath her. She also seems terribly bored. Maybe that's why it's so awful to be rich. You can't pay for friends.

But the joke's on her. This painting has always been a favorite of mine. It's a simple peach tree in blossom, a frail little sapling fighting the wind, desperate to hold on to its pale pink flowers but knowing that it will lose the battle. By filling the entire canvas with it, Vincent van Gogh managed to turn the tree into something much more majestic.

I want to tell her I know plenty and that I have mixed feelings about van Gogh. Many of his paintings have the power to move me to tears, to shift things around in my brain and make me notice things in the real world that I had never noticed before. But as an artist I find him complicated. I've always wondered if the art world doted on him merely because of his compelling backstory. How many women artists from the same time never had their stories told, never had their paintings shown in grand salons? All because no one kept their letters and their diaries, all because they never had a patron to celebrate them after they died like Vincent van Gogh did.

Even if a female artist's diary or letters had survived and been printed from back then the way van Gogh's had, it wouldn't have been the same. As my roommate Lucie always says, "Hysteria is a bad look on a girl." A man with demons gets to be a madman genius, a martyr to his delusions who overcomes it all to become a master, one of the "greats." A hundred years ago absolutely no one would have guessed that this man would go on to become one of the most celebrated artists of all time. None of the critics or dealers who dismissed him as dark, crude, and unskilled would have dreamed that his turbulent vision of the night sky would be tacked on the walls of a million dorm rooms and bear witness to so many college students awkwardly losing their virginity.

But this particular series of paintings, these frail trees, have always captivated me, have held my attention every time I spy one in a book or on the wall of a museum.

Stella Swanson doesn't know I know any of this. She didn't hire me to be a docent in her own home.

"It's lovely," I say, instead of saying I know it well. I'm eager to finish up and that would lead to more small talk

"Isn't it!" Mrs. Swanson claps her bejeweled hands together so her thick rings clash like cymbals. "It is one of Vincent's best, in my opinion."

Why are wealthy people always on a first-name basis with important dead people? At a gallery opening a few months ago I met the CEO of a private bank in Lichtenstein who, after a few drinks, kept referring to William Shakespeare as Bill.

Stella's still going on about her pal Vincent.

"This is just one in a series. He painted dozens of them, maybe more, at the rate of about one a day. To him they symbolized renewal, hope, the chance at a new kind of life when he was at his lowest," she explains eagerly. "And he thought these would be lucrative as well. He heard from his other artist friends that blossoms were appealing to collectors and buyers and so he focused on painting dozens of them in the hopes of bringing himself some income. Alas, no one bought them. This one hung on the wall of the Parisian apartment owned by Vincent's brother, Theo, and his new bride, Jo. Have you ever heard of Jo van Gogh?" She pronounces the name in the Dutch way, Yo, instead of Jo. Being from Philadelphia, home of Rocky, I enjoy calling anyone Yo!

I also know a little about Jo van Gogh, Vincent's sister-in-law, though some mistake her for his wife or sister. I know she inherited almost all of Vincent's paintings after he and his brother, her husband, died within a year of each other. I know her son, Vincent, went on to found the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. She was a footnote in a single textbook I read on Impressionism, an asterisk in the story of the world's most famous artist. I'm always a sucker for the women in footnotes.

Mrs. Swanson places her ancient hand on my arm to stop me from leaving the room. "Sit with me for a moment, dear?" Her fingers tremble. The naked desire of her request tweaks a nerve in me. I know what it is to be lonely, to be desperate for someone, anyone, to connect with.

So I sit.

"This painting was one of Jo's favorites," Mrs. Swanson continues, apparently on a first-name basis with the whole van Gogh family. "I love it like I would have loved a child if I'd been blessed with one. That's why I have always kept it close to me. I had it in my bedroom in New York." I worry that she doesn't realize this is just a print. How lucid is Stella Swanson?

"This tiny tree could be bent in half by a gust of wind and yet you don't fear for it. It is strong. It belongs there. There is much going on behind it, but the human eye barely notices. An entire forest is in the background, and through the trees the village of Arles, but none of the background matters. All that matters is right in front of you. The tiny, striving tree. I think that tree is very much like Jo, a speck of a thing, battling to get ahead in a world dying to snap her in two. There is much more to know about Jo van Gogh, but few of the art history books ever teach it. She was a brilliant woman. So ahead of her time. She is the reason any of us know Vincent van Gogh's name today."

Despite the fact that I'm already running late and I'm hopeless at small talk, I'm curious now and it's not entirely unpleasant to listen to Madame Swanson while lounging in this gorgeous room. The sitting area almost feels like a Dutch painting with its dark, moody walls; crown moldings; and massive bronze fireplace. Aside from this print the wall space is surprisingly bare, though when I was dusting I made out variations in the paint in the shape of large rectangles. Something used to hang there and had for long enough that the sunlight dulled the paint around it. Empty holes at the top had nails in them recently. An abandoned gallery wall. Where has all of it gone?

I'd like to paint in here, to show how the sunlight bounces off the nearly black interior. Some of the light is absorbed by the dark but not all. I'd like to paint Stella too, perhaps sitting by the fireplace, an ode to Whistler's Mother, fire licking at her stockinged feet.

Listening to Stella feels like being back in art school, a time when all I had to do was learn and create, when there was less pressure to hustle for money, but since my scholarship was canceled last semester, I don't know how I'll ever afford that sort of time again.

Suddenly a door slams in the hallway, causing a teacup to shudder precariously on the table in front of us. I grab for it, but not before it crashes, scattering the tiniest of shards across the recently vacuumed floor.

"Stella?" A confident male voice booms in a smooth and well-mannered British lilt.

"In here, Matthew. I'm just chatting with the cleaning girl."

"Bonjour, bonjour," the voice comes again. This time it's firmly attached to a body striding through the foyer.

It's not just any body, but one of the more perfect specimens of a body I've ever seen, or at least that's what I would think if I hadn't firmly sworn off men after what happened with Pascal.

This guy is in his early thirties, so two decades younger than Pascal. He stands a couple of inches over six feet, which usually turns me off since I'm barely over five foot one. His camel hair overcoat hangs neatly over his arm and he's wearing the kind of well-tailored suit that only European men, or those who spend a lot of time in Europe, can pull off. The pants are ever so much tighter around his waist, legs, and ass than their American counterparts. They fall right at his ankle and the jacket nips in at his trim waist. There's an actual yellow pocket square in his pocket. The slight stubble on his tanned cheeks is a direct contrast to how neat and proper the whole outfit is.

"And who do we have here?" He offers me his hand despite the fact that I've already been identified as the help. His palm is Oil of Olay soft, his fingernails buffed and shined. Never trust a man with a manicure, Emma. I hear my mother's voice so clearly in my head.

He picks Madame Swanson up and swings her around like she's his long-lost lover and they have been reunited after a war. I'm worried he'll break her.

The woman's entire demeanor changes in his presence. "This is Matthew, my step-grandson." She practically giggles as he plunks her back down on the couch.

He shakes his head. "I don't refer to Stella as step-anything. She's more my blood than my own mother. I adore this woman. Don't I?" He gives her a wet kiss on her cheek that causes her face to light up the same way it did when she admired van Gogh's blossoms.

"Emma is taking a break from cleaning the floors." Stella Swanson titters again, patting her knee and indicating that he should sit down. For a moment it's hard to suppress a smile as I imagine him plopping onto Stella's lap like a child. He opts for the couch instead.

I stand, cupping the shattered pieces of the teacup in my hand. "Be careful where you walk. I'll get a broom after I finish the kitchen. And I can be back tomorrow to take care of the linens, madame."

"I can do it." Matthew pulls out the pocket square and leans down to wipe up the rest of the tiny shards before handing them to me. "I didn't mean to interrupt." He lights a cigarette. The entire apartment already smells like smoke, much like Pascal's always had.

"I'm glad you've finally found some help," he says to Stella.

The Swansons are the level of rich that would seem to employ an entire staff, and yet there's no evidence of anyone besides me working here these days.

"You're American?" Matthew asks me as I try to sneak out of the room. "What are you doing in Paris?"

He's clearly the kind of man who can chat up anyone, about anything. The opposite of me. I prefer to blend in with the wallpaper and wait for people to share the secrets they only whisper alone in the dark.

"I came here to clean apartments." The sarcasm trickles out before I can stop myself and I instantly regret it. "I mean . . ." I stammer.

But both Matthew and Madame Swanson laugh. The sound isn't cruel. They do it in a way that feels like we're all in on the joke.

"Isn't that what they all say?" Matthew says. "Every single American girl I meet at the bars in the Marais tells me the exact same thing. Everyone comes here to clean apartments." I can feel his gaze on me, and I wish I didn't enjoy it. Being invisible is preferable.

"How long have you been here in Paris?"

"Two years," I say, no longer in the mood to lie. But even though it's the truth, it sounds impossible. Has it really been two years since I came here as a bright-eyed young art student hoping to study with some of the most exciting instructors in Paris? Sometimes I look back on that first year now with shame because I enjoyed myself too much. I fell in love with the wrong man. I spent all my savings in the first few months and maxed out half a dozen credit cards. When the scholarship was abruptly canceled due to lack of funding, I was left with less than nothing.