Still Lives: A Novel

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Twelve shocking paintings. Eleven famous murders. One missing artist . . . and one woman driven to find her-this Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine Selection is a "stunning achievement" (Los Angeles Times). Kim Lord is an avant-garde figure, feminist icon, and agent provocateur in the L.A. art scene. Her groundbreaking new exhibition Still Lives is comprised of self-portraits depicting herself as famous, murdered women_x2015_the Black Dahlia, Chandra Levy, Nicole Brown Simpson, among many others_x2015_and the works are as compelling as they are disturbing, implicating a culture that is too accustomed to violence against women. As the city's richest art patrons pour into the Rocque Museum's opening night, all the staff, including editor Maggie Richter, hope the event will be enough to save the historic institution's flailing finances. Except Kim Lord never shows up to her own gala. Fear mounts as the hours and days drag on and Lord remains missing. Suspicion falls on the up-and-coming gallerist Greg Shaw Ferguson, who happens to be Maggie's ex. A rogue's gallery of eccentric art world figures could also have motive for the act, and as Maggie gets drawn into her own investigation of Lord's disappearance, she'll come to suspect all of those closest to her. Set against a culture that often fetishizes violence, Still Lives is a page-turning exodus into the art world's hall of mirrors, and one woman's journey into the belly of an industry flooded with money and secrets. "It's a thrilling mystery that will leave you wondering which characters you can and can't trust . . . There's a twist at the end that still keeps us up at night, it's THAT good." -Reese Witherspoon (A Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine Selection)

Reviews

Its a thrilling mystery that will leave you wondering which characters you can and cant trust . . . Theres a twist at the end that still keeps us up at night, it's THAT good. Reese Witherspoon (A Reeses Book Club x Hello Sunshine Selection)

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB x HELLO SUNSHINE Selection
A BOOK OF THE MONTH Selection
An Amazon Best Mystery/Thriller of the Year
Named a Best Book to Read byTime,Entertainment Weekly,Bustle,Buzzfeed,The Daily Beast,The Guardian,Refinery29, and more.

Praise for Still Lives

[A] mysterious page turner. TIME, 1 of 22 New Books to Read This Summer

Mystery and murder cloud this feminist story set in the heart of Los Angeles art scene. When an avantgarde artist goes missing on the day her groundbreaking exhibition opens, the story spins out in many provocative directions. Entertainment Weekly, 1 of 20 New Books to Read in June

Its a thrilling mystery that will leave you wondering which characters you can and cant trust . . . Theres a twist at the end that still keeps us up at night, it's THAT good. Reese Witherspoon (A Reeses Book Club x Hello Sunshine Selection)

A suspenseful, splashy story about fame, sex, and how our culture views womens bodies . . . I also loved that it tackled the sticky subject of how women are portrayed in art, culture, and the mediaand the consequences of those portrayals. This is a thrilling book, and a muchneeded one. Read it and youll see what I mean. Book of the Month

[A] splendid artworld thriller . . . Ms. Hummel captures characters in a single stroke . . . Having herself worked in a museum, she speaks with authority of that sealed world . . . Still Lives is both savvy and lyricalthe perfect beach read for either coast. The Wall Street Journal

This is not only a satisfying mystery, but also an ambitious, intelligent and often uncomfortable study of gender, violence and art. The Guardian

Yet while Still Lives, evidently, has a heck of a hook to draw in a wide swath of readers, the book isnt quite the escapist thriller the bones of the plot might indicate. Indeed, its a provocative book that digs deeply into arts history of depicting women brutally and fetishistically, and that probes difficult questions about Western cultures view and treatment of womens bodies. It manages an impressive twofer: It sucks you into a compelling story, before forcing you to contemplate the big, uncomfortable ideas its considering. Its a fresh choice for Reeses Book Club, to be sure. Entertainment Weekly

Reese Witherspoon's new book club pick is a dark, feminist thriller, and you're not going to want to miss it. Bustle

Maria Hummel's Still Lives is moody and restless, propelled by a gradually intensifying sense of unease. Hummel envelops the reader in the LA art scene . . . Her journey illuminates the misogyny which allows a culture to turn murdered women into objects for consumption. BuzzFeed, 1 of 30 Exciting New Books to Add to your Summer Reading List

Hummels fourth novel shows her genius for layering levels of meaning, and her sophisticated sense of the mercurial, sometimes corrupt art world, from dealers to wealthy patrons, including those so secretive they want to purchase work (and drive up an artists worth) without leaving a trail . . . Maggies stake in this story makes for unrelenting suspense. BBC Culture, 1 of 10 Books to Read in June

A delicious Los Angeles noir that combines the glitz and glamor of fine art with the grit and grime of crime and sexual objectification, Still Lives is a thoughtprovoking novel packaged in one hell of a mystery. The Daily Beast, One of The Best Summer Beach Reads of the Year

Maria Hummels novel is classic noir made modern. Refinery29, One of the Best Books of June 2018

Before Reese Witherspoon made it her August book club pick, this reader fell headoverheels for Maria Hummels captivating thriller Still Lives. A pulsating mystery about a famous artist who goes missing on the opening night of her biggest exhibit yet, this tense narrative explores not only the dark underbelly of the Los Angeles art scene, but our cultures disturbing obsession with violence against women, and I savored every last word of it. Bustle, 1 of 5 Thrillers & Mysteries That Made Me Fall in Love with the Genre Again

While Still Lives is a deeply affecting examination of how our culture fetishizes female victims of crimebe it in art, news, or publishingit will also have readers feverishly turning pages to discover the fate of engaging characters who are more than symbols of whats wrong or right about Los Angeles. Its a stunning achievement for a writer who perfectly captures an outsiders ambivalence about the citys pluses and minuses, and most notably its sensational crimes and the dark angels we make of its victims. Los Angeles Times

Still Lives, both the fictional exhibit and the actual book itself, make an important statement about how our society too often fetishizes violence against women. Plus, its the perfect companion to this weeks other big artcentric story: Oceans 8. HelloGiggles, 1 of 15 Books Coming Out This Week That You Don't Want to Miss

Witherspoon loves a good thrillerand so do we. If you haven't picked up Hummel's fastpaced mystery yet, consider it the perfect winter break read. Apartment Therapy

[A] spellbinding new novel . . . No doubt comparisons to Raymond Chandlers best work will rain down upon Still Lives, dotted as it is with trenchant observations of LA and the human condition. Like Chandler, Hummel is capable of limning out a ripping yarn replete with high fashion, high finance and high society . . . And not unlike another master of the mystery, Erle Stanley Gardner, Hummel includes an intellectually satisfying Perry Mason moment that also provides an interesting twist. It would be damning with faint praise to call Still Lives a contender for best beach read of the yearlike calling Pablo Picasso a really good painterbut Still Lives is both that and so much more. BookPage

Does your book club love art, feminism, and a riveting mystery If so, Still Lives is the ideal novel to discuss over a glass of wine and some snacks . . . Book clubs will love dissecting the gender commentary and the interpersonal relationships in Maria Hummels novel. Bookish, A June Book Club Pick

There's so much to recommend about Maria Hummel's Still Lives. It's a pageturner, for one. There's also some profound commentary on art and societyand, almost magically, she does it without sacrificing the pure story. The settingthe Los Angeles art sceneis cool, a little foreignfeeling, and really fun to read about. In a mystery, setting can lift the story to a higher realm. Such is the case in Still Lives. Omnivoracious

Within Still Lives, the new novel by Maria Hummel (Motherland, Wilderness Run), is a taut thriller with enough compelling elements for a propulsive book . . . Still Lives is an effective thriller with a delectable final 100 pages. It reaches an addictive pitch that all books of this ilk aspire to. The more Hummel settles into the plot machinations the better the novel gets, as the hazy ideological questions and confusing passages fall away . . . Hummel engages with complicated and challenging questions about the meaning and impact of art that depicts violence, and she writes a hell of an ending. Los Angeles Review of Books

One of the smartest thrillers Ive read in a long time . . . Still Lives is a gripping pageturner, but its also more than that. I appreciate how Hummelmuch like Kim Lordused the art of storytelling to make me consider the ways in which our culture is complicit in violence against women. In the wake of the Me Too movement, I think a book like this is necessary. It prompts readers to look inward at how we view women and how we consume stories about violence against them. Adison Godfrey, BookMark, WPSU

Still Lives [is] the fastpaced feminist thriller about the L.A. art world you don't want to miss this summer . . . Still Lives is at once a gripping and entertaining mystery, and a biting cultural critique that seeks to understand our obsession with the violent deaths of beautiful women . . . Reading Still Lives is like being frozen in that feeling of fear, like being stuck in that moment right before the mysterious stranger lurches out from the darkened alley to grab you . . . Still Lives doesn't just ask why we are obsessed with female murder victims. It also asks how: how we interpret violence against women, how we consume and commodify it, and how use it as tool of oppression . . . Still Lives is a electrifying mystery, one that crackles with suspense and intrigue. But it is not just an exploration of the shady underside of the L.A. art scene, or a warning about the dangerous combination of fame, money, and sex, and it is certainly not just a titillating tale about a missing woman. Like the fictional exhibit it was named after, Still Lives is an indictment of how women's bodies are treated by a society that is determined to control and consume them, and it's so much more than a story. Because when it comes to fear, anxiety, violence, and abuse, as Maggie puts it, 'It's not a story to us,' it's an experience we face every day. Bustle

Her prose packs both a lyrical punch and evokes the authenticity to make the work truly sing. The tapestry woven by Hummel in these pages is

Author Bio

MARIA HUMMEL is a novelist and poet. Her novel, Still Lives, was a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club pick, Book of the Month Club pick, and BBC Culture Best Book of 2018, and has been optioned for television and translated into multiple languages. She is also the author of, most recently, Lesson in Red; as well as Motherland, a novel, a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year; and House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman Poetry Prize. She has worked and taught at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stanford University; and the University of Vermont. She lives in Vermont with her husband and sons.