Release Date: October 21, 2026
About The Book:
In 1938, showgirl-turned-socialite Dorothy Hale falls from a Manhattan skyscraper. Her friend Clare Boothe Luce – writer, diplomat and rising political figure – commissions Frida Kahlo to paint a memorial portrait.
Months later, reporting from Europe, Clare encounters the Duchess of Windsor in Paris and begins to question what really happened that night. In New York, estranged from Diego Rivera and wrestling with betrayal, ambition and the demands of her art, Frida works on the painting that will become one of her most unsettling – and edges closer to the truth.
Was Dorothy Hale’s death an act of despair or something far more dangerous, entangled with the power struggles shaping the modern world?
About The Author:
Oscar de Muriel is a writer, translator, historian and violinist. He is the author of a critically acclaimed series of Victorian mysteries, longlisted for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association’s Gold Crown Award. He is currently collaborating with the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Anahuacalli Museums on an authorized book about Casa Azul, the home where Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera lived and worked. Born in Mexico, he divides his time between Mexico City, Ribble Valley and Edinburgh.
Social Media:
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/oscardemuriel/?hl=en
Book Blurbs:
Oscar de Muriel writes with considerable flair. The prose is often vivid, even painterly… an intelligent, engrossing reimagining of a moment when culture and catastrophe stood perilously close.’ Historical Novel Society
‘An intensely, compellingly visual novel, with images that will haunt long after reading’ Craig Russell, author of The Devil’s Playground
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