John Singer Sargent has fled Paris after the debacle of "Madame X", the painting that destroyed his reputation--but he begins to heal and paint again in the Cotswolds village of Broadway. There, in a Bohemian enclave of American and British artists, writers, illustrators, poets and actors, he begins to create a painting that will make him famous once again--the luminous portrait of two little girls in a garden: "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose". But all is not well in the garden, and when the mysterious death of "the blue bird" and other strange incidents occur, John calls on his old friend Violet Paget to travel down to Broadway and help solve the mystery. Violet is happy to leave London after her "tell-all" novel Miss Brown has led to her being shunned by the people she didn't think she was exposing...but she finds new friends in Broadway while the simple mystery turns into a much more complex one when a dead body is discovered in the garden. This is the fifth mystery in the John Singer Sargent/Violet Paget Mysteries series.
Author Biography:
Mary F. Burns writes historical fiction, including an historical mystery series featuring the artist John Singer Sargent and the writer Violet Paget (aka Vernon Lee). She is a member of and frequent speaker for the Historical Novel Society, as well as the Henry James Society and the International Vernon Lee Society. Ms. Burns was born in Chicago, Illinois and attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb (BA/MA English Lit); J.D. from Golden Gate University School of Law. She lives in San Francisco with her husband. Before she wrote novels, her career focused on media relations, corporate communications, crisis communication consulting, and event organization.
As an independent scholar, Mary has focused her studies and writing on Vernon Lee, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf. Her novels frequently include noted authors as characters, such as Jack London, George Sand, John Singer Sargent, Vernon Lee, and Henry James. Her literary essay "Reading Mrs. Dalloway" was published in 2020, and the Henry James Review published her paper on Vernon Lee and Henry James in the Winter 2023 issue. She has presented papers at various academic conferences: The Sargentology Conference, York University, 2016; Henry James Society Annual Conference, Trieste University, 2019; Vernon Lee: Aesthetics & Empathy at Churchill College, Cambridge, 2022; Keynote Speaker, Teesside University Postgraduate Conference 2023: Ethics, Literature, Culture. Her website is www.maryfburns.com
Mary F. Burns writes historical fiction, including an historical mystery series featuring the artist John Singer Sargent and the writer Violet Paget (aka Vernon Lee). She is a member of and frequent speaker for the Historical Novel Society, as well as the Henry James Society and the International Vernon Lee Society. Ms. Burns was born in Chicago, Illinois and attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb (BA/MA English Lit); J.D. from Golden Gate University School of Law. She lives in San Francisco with her husband.
