Portrait of an Unknown Woman Audiobook

Portrait of an Unknown Woman Daniel Silva Audiobook 🎧

Gabriel Allon embarks on a high-stakes search for the greatest art forger who ever lived in a spellbinding new masterpiece by #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva.

Gabriel Allon, the legendary spy and art restorer, has finally severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice, the only place he has ever truly known peace. Chiara, his lovely wife, has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their two young children are secretly enrolled in a nearby Scuola elementare. Gabriel, for his part, spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, escaping the demons of his tragic, violent past.

But when eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to look into the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse in which nothing is as it appears.

Gabriel quickly realizes that the work in question, a portrait of an unknown woman attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck, is almost certainly a deviously clever forgery. Gabriel concocts one of his most elaborate deceptions in order to track down the mysterious figure who painted it and expose a multibillion-dollar fraud at the pinnacle of the art world. If he is to succeed, he must become the exact inverse of the man he seeks: the world’s greatest art forger.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman is a wildly entertaining journey through the dirty side of the art world, where unscrupulous dealers routinely deceive their customers and deep-pocketed investors treat great paintings as if they were just another asset class to be bought and sold at a profit. The novel is a tour de force of storytelling, from its elegant opening passage to the shocking twists of its climax. It is among the finest pieces of heist fiction ever written. And it’s yet more proof that Daniel Silva is unrivaled in terms of international intrigue and suspense.

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Daniel Silva Biography

Daniel Silva (born 1960) is the best-selling author of 14 thrillers and spy thrillers in the United States. His most recent novel, «Portrait of a Spy» was released on July 19, 2011, and quickly became a #1 best-seller. His last three books, The Rembrandt Affair (2010), «The Defector» (2009), and «Moscow Rules» (2009), all debuted at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. His books have been translated into over 30 languages and are international best-sellers. Some of his stories are set against Islamic terrorism, while others are about Russian villains and historical events such as World War II and the Holocaust. Gabriel Allon, an art restorer, spy, and assassin, appears in his books. Silva was selected to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s United States Holocaust Memorial Council in January 2009.

Life and work

Silva was reared in Michigan as the son of Portuguese immigrants from the Azores. In 1984, Silva began his writing career as a journalist with a temporary position at United Press International. He was tasked with covering the Democratic National Convention. Silva’s position was made permanent, and a year later, he was transferred to the company’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. After two years, he was named UPI’s Middle East correspondent and relocated to Cairo, Egypt.

Silva relocated to Washington, D.C., to work for CNN’s Washington Bureau. He worked as a producer and executive producer on various television shows for the network, including Crossfire and Capitol Gang.

He began writing his first novel, The Unlikely Spy, in 1994. (1996). When the novel was published, it became an instant New York Times best-seller, and Silva quit CNN in 1997 to pursue writing full-time.

Silva has now authored 13 more spy books, all of which have become New York Times best-sellers. His novels Moscow Rules (2008), starring art restorer and assassin Gabriel Allon, The Defector (2009), and The Rembrandt Affair (2010) were all New York Times best-sellers (2010). Portrait of a Spy (2011), his new book, was released on July 19th and quickly became a #1 best-seller.

Honors

The Messenger received the Barry Award in 2006. (2005).

Silva was selected to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s United States Holocaust Memorial Council in January 2009.

Family and marriage

His wife, NBC Today program national correspondent Jamie Gangel, and their children, Nicholas and Lily, reside with him.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman Audiobook Excerpt Transcript

Of your senses at least show to Ronnie Ronald Sumner. Lloyd was Julian’s, pricey Barkley square attorney. I have a better idea. He said it was then at 11 36 a.m.

With Sarah looking on in disapproval, Julian dangled the letter over his ancient metal dustbin a relic of the gallery’s glory days when it was located on the stylish, new bond street or new bond, as it had been known in some quarters of the trade. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to let the damn thing slip from his fingers, or perhaps he thought later. It was madame Berenger’s letter that had clung to him. He set it aside, reviewed the remainder of the morning post returned a few phone calls, and interrogated. Sarah on the details of a pending sale and having nothing else to do headed off to the Dorchester for lunch.

It was accompanied by an employee of a venerable London auction house, the female of course, recently divorced, no children, far too young, but not inappropriately. So Julian astonished her with his knowledge of Italian and Dutch renaissance painters and regaled her with tales of acquisitional daring. Do it was a character he had been playing too modest to claim for longer than he cared to remember. He was the incomparable Julian, issued Julie to his friends juicy Julie to his partners in the occasional crime of drink. He was loyal as the day was long, trusting to a fault and English to the core, English as high tea and bad teeth.

As he was fond of saying, and yet were not for the war, they would have been someone else entirely. Returning to the gallery, he found that Sarah had adhered a fuchsia-colored sticky note to madame Berenger’s letter advising him to reconsider. He read it a second time slowly, its tone was as formal as the linen-like stationery upon which it was written, even Julian had to admit she sounded entirely reasonable and not at all like an extortionist. Surely he thought there would be no harm in merely listening to what she had to say if nothing else, the journey would provide him with a much-needed respite from his crushing workload at the gallery. Besides the weather forecast for London called for several days of nearly uninterrupted cold and rain, but in the southwest of France it was springtime already among the first actions that Sarah had taken after coming to work at the gallery was to inform Ella Julian’s stunning, but useless Receptionist that her services were no longer required, Sarah had never bothered to hire a replacement.

She was more than capable she said of answering the phone returning the emails, keeping the appointment book, and buzzing visitors upstairs when they presented themselves at the perpetually locked door in mason’s yard. She drew a line, however, at making Julian’s travel arrangements, though she consented to peer over his shoulder while he performed the chore himself if only to make certain. He didn’t mistakenly book a passage on the orient express to Istanbul rather than the Eurostar to Paris from there. It was a scant two hours and fourteen minutes by tej to Bordeaux he successfully purchased a first-class ticket and then reserved a junior suite at the intercontinental for two nights just to be on the safe side. The task complete he repaired to the barred Wiltons for a drink with Oliver Dimbleby and roddy Hutchinson, widely regarded as London’s most disreputable art dealers.

One thing led to another, as was usually the case when Oliver and roddy were involved, and it was after 2 am by the time Julian finally toppled into his bed. He spent Saturday tending to his hangover and devoted much of Sunday to packing a bag once he would have thought nothing about hopping on the Concorde with only an attache case and a pretty girl, but suddenly the preparations for a jaunt across the English channel required all Of his powers of concentration, he supposed it was but another unwanted consequence of growing old like his alarming absent-mindedness or the strange sounds he admitted or his seeming inability to cross a room without crashing into something. He kept a list of self-deprecating excuses at the ready to explain his humiliating clumsiness. He had never been the athletic type, it was the bloody lamp’s fault. It was the end table that had assaulted him.

He slept poorly, as was frequently the case, the night before an important journey and awoke with a nagging sensation that he was about to make yet another in a long series of dreadful mistakes. His spirits lifted. However, as the Eurostar emerged from the channel tunnel and surged across the grey-green fields of the padekale toward Paris, he rode the metro from the garden north to the german Parnassus and enjoyed a decent lunch in the buffet car of the tejevae. As the light beyond his window gradually took on the quality of a Cezanne landscape, he recalled with startling clarity the instant he had seen it for the first time of your senses at least, show it to Ronnie Ronald Sumner. Lloyd was Julian’s, pricey Barkley square attorney.

I have a better idea. He said it was then at 11 36 a.m. With Sarah looking on in disapproval, Julian dangled the letter over his ancient metal dust a relic of the gallery’s glory days when it was located on the stylish newborn street or bond stress.