Clare Bast's love of art saved her from a bleak, predictable life in upstate New York and drew her into the cultured world of Manhattan's Upper East Side. Despite her best efforts, she can't help but feel like an imposter, but when a well-connected wife of her husband's new boss introduces her to influential friends, she begins to feel herself come alive again. After she discovers that an important work of art painted by the artist who is the subject of her abandoned dissertation, she feels that fate is finally leading her to where she belongs--until she finds herself at the center of a gruesome murder and art theft investigation. Suddenly, Clare is trapped inside a dark and treacherous art world filled with unscrupulous dealers and international criminals, trying to figure out how to get herself and her family out.