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• MAL Book Club: "The Lost Masterpiece" by B.A.Shapiro

  • When
    Thursday, April 16, 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    MAL Studio, 4069 Washington Rd., McMurray, PA 15317
  • Registered
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  Please join Marlene Boas and Jan Pini for the next meeting of the MAL Art and Artists Book Club! Come even if you haven't read the book! 

  We will meet to discuss "The Lost Masterpiece" by B. A. Shapiro. 

  Feel free to read the book and add to the discussion. And bring friends and snacks! A voluntary donation of $5 is requested.
  

  Here's Amazon's synopsis: 
  "In a gripping novel full of plot twists, B. A. Shapiro embeds us in a circle of famous painters in late-nineteenth-century Paris, centering on the anguished Impressionist artist Berthe Morisot—the one woman in their midst who never got her due—and the story of Morisot’s great-great-great-great granddaughter, Tamara Rubin, who has inherited Édouard Manet’s Party on the Seine, a painting that completely upends her life. 
  
  When Tamara inherits Party, she discovers a long-hidden family history replete with unanswered questions: How had it been stolen by the Nazis? How had the painting managed to survive three disasters that destroyed every other artwork around it? And most of all, why had she never known about her ancestor, Berthe Morisot? As the painting begins to metamorphose into darker and more terrifying versions of itself, Tamara’s ordinary life is thrown into turmoil. What wounds and resentments plagued Morisot, and to what lengths will her spirit go for revenge?
  
  The Lost Masterpiece is a story of love, adultery, betrayal, family secrets, and the grueling birth of Impressionism, taking the reader on a whirlwind adventure from the streets of Paris in the late 1800s and the studio Berthe Morisot shared with Manet, Degas, and Renoir to the present day. Shapiro brings Berthe’s world to life, tracing her work through generations of descendants and introducing us to a painter as brilliant and original as her male counterparts across 150 years of triumphs, struggles, passions, animosities, and malevolence."

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• MAL Book Club: "The Indigo Girl: A Novel" by Natasha Boyd

  • When
    Wednesday, May 13, 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    MAL Studio, 4069 Washington Rd., McMurray, PA 15317
  • Registered
    Be the first

  Register

  Please join Marlene Boas and Jan Pini for the next meeting of the MAL Art and Artists Book Club! Come even if you haven't read the book! 

  We will meet to discuss "The Indigo Girl: A Novel" by Natasha Boyd. 

  Feel free to read the book and add to the discussion. And bring friends and snacks! A voluntary donation of $5 is requested.
  

  Here's Amazon's synopsis: 
  "In this incredible story of ambition, betrayal, and sacrifice, an extraordinary sixteen-year-old girl in Colonial South Carolina defies all expectations to achieve her dream.

  The year is 1739. Eliza Lucas is sixteen years old when her father leaves her in charge of their family’s three plantations in rural South Carolina and then proceeds to bleed the estates dry in pursuit of his military ambitions. Tensions with the British, and with the Spanish in Florida, just a short way down the coast, are rising, and slaves are starting to become restless. Her mother wants nothing more than for their South Carolina endeavor to fail so they can go back to England. Soon her family is in danger of losing everything.

  Upon hearing how much the French pay for indigo dye, Eliza believes it’s the key to their salvation. But everyone tells her it’s impossible, and no one will share the secret to making it. Thwarted at nearly every turn, even by her own family, Eliza finds that her only allies are an aging horticulturalist, an older and married gentleman lawyer, and a slave with whom she strikes a dangerous deal: teach her the intricate thousand-year-old secret process of making indigo dye and in return—against the laws of the day—she will teach the slaves to read.

  So begins an incredible story of love, dangerous and hidden friendships, ambition, betrayal, and sacrifice.

  Based on historical documents, including Eliza’s letters, this is a historical fiction account of how a teenage girl produced indigo dye, which became one of the largest exports out of South Carolina, an export that laid the foundation for the incredible wealth of several Southern families who still live on today. Although largely overlooked by historians, the accomplishments of Eliza Lucas influenced the course of US history. When she passed away in 1793, President George Washington served as a pallbearer at her funeral.

  This book is set between 1739 and 1744, with romance, intrigue, forbidden friendships, and political and financial threats weaving together to form the story of a remarkable young woman whose actions were before their time: the story of the indigo girl."

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• MAL Book Club: "The Thread Collectors: A Novel"

  • When
    Thursday, June 11, 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    MAL Studio, 4069 Washington Rd., McMurray, PA 15317
  • Registered
    Be the first

  Register

  Please join Marlene Boas and Jan Pini for the next meeting of the MAL Art and Artists Book Club! Come even if you haven't read the book! 

  We will meet to discuss "The Thread Collectors: A Novel" by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman. 

  Feel free to read the book and add to the discussion. And bring friends and snacks! A voluntary donation of $5 is requested.
  

  Here's Amazon's synopsis:

  1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not only her efforts but her love for William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.

  Meanwhile, in New York City, a Jewish woman stitches a quilt for her husband, who is stationed in Louisiana with the Union Army. Between abolitionist meetings, Lily rolls bandages and crafts quilts with her sewing circle for other soldiers, too, hoping for their safe return home. But when months go by without word from her husband, Lily resolves to make the perilous journey South to search for him.
  
  As these two women risk everything for love and freedom during thebrutal Civil War, their paths converge in New Orleans, where an unexpected encounter leads them to discover that even the most delicate threads have the capacity to save us. Loosely inspired by the authors' family histories, this stunning novel will stay with readers for a long time.

  
  

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