The Forger's Spell The Forger's Spell – Paperback: 384 pages; Harper Perennial; Softcover Ed edition (Jun 16, 2009) Best Seller

As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of three men and an extraordinary deception: the revered artist Johannes Vermeer; the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him years later; and the con man's mark, Hermann Goering, the fanatical art collector and one of Nazi Germany's most reviled leaders.

The Thefts of the Mona Lisa by Noah Charney, Urska Charney (Illustrator), Dr. Derek Fincham (Introduction) – Paperback: 162 pages; ARCA (Aug 4, 2011)

The Mona Lisa (also called La Gioconda or La Joconde) was stolen on 21 August 1911 by an Italian, Vincenzo Peruggia. Peruggia was under the mistaken impression that the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Italy during the Napoleonic era, and he wished to take back for Italy one of his country’s greatest treasures. His successful theft of the painting from the Louvre, the farcical manhunt that followed, and Peruggia’s subsequent trial in Florence were highly publicized, sparking the attention of the international media, and catapulting an already admired painting into stratospheric heights of fame.

The Art of Forgery: The Minds, Motives and Methods of Master Forgers by Noah Charney – Hardcover: 296 pages; Phaidon Press; 1st edition (May 12, 2015)

The Art of Forgery: The Minds, Motives and Methods of the Master Forgers explores the stories, dramas and human intrigues surrounding the world's most famous forgeries - investigating the motivations of the artists and criminals who have faked great works of art, and in doing so conned the public and the art establishment alike.

Females in the Frame: Women, Art, and Crime by Penelope Jackson – Paperback: 238 pages; Palgrave Macmillan; 1st edition (Aug 13, 2019)

This book explores the untold history of women, art, and crime. It has long been widely accepted that women have not played an active role in the art crime world, or if they have, it has been the part of the victim or peacemaker. Women, Art, and Crime overturns this understanding, as it investigates the female criminals who have destroyed, vandalised, stolen, and forged art, as well as those who have conned clients and committed white-collar crimes in their professional occupations in museums, libraries, and galleries

Stealing the Show: A History of Art and Crime in Six Thefts by John Barelli, Zach Schisgal – Hardcover: 232 pages; Lyons Press (Aug 22, 2019)

For the first time, John Barelli shares his experiences of the crimes that occurred on his watch; the investigations that captured thieves and recovered artwork; the lessons he learned and shared with law enforcement professionals in the United States and abroad; the accidents and near misses; and a few mysteries that were sadly never solved. He takes readers behind the scenes at the Met, introduces curators and administrators, walks the empty corridors after hours, and shares what it’s like to get the call that an ancient masterpiece has gone missing.

Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists by Tom Mashberg Anthony M. Amore – Hardcover: 272 pages; Palgrave Macmillan (2011)

Art theft is one of the most profitable criminal enterprises in the world. Anthony M. Amore and Tom Mashberg reveal the actors behind the major art heists of the Dutch Master in the last century, tracking daring entries into and escapes from the world's most renowned museums, and robbers who coolly walk off with multimillion dollar paintings.

Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist by Stephen Kurkjian – Hardcover: 272 pages; PublicAffairs; 1st edition (Mar 10, 2015)

In a secret meeting in 1981, a low-level Boston thief gave career gangster Ralph Rossetti the tip of a lifetime: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was a big score waiting to happen. Though its collections included priceless artworks by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, and others, its security was cheap, mismanaged, and out of date. And now, it seemed, the whole Boston criminal underworld knew it.

Nearly a decade passed before the Museum museum was finally hit. But when it finally happened, the theft quickly became one of the most infamous art heists in history: thirteen works of art valued at up to 500 million, by some of the most famous artists in the world, were taken. The Boston FBI took control of the investigation, but twenty-five years later the case is still unsolved and the artwork is still missing.

Hitler's Art Thief by Susan Ronald – Hardcover: 400 pages; St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (Sep 22, 2015)

The world was stunned when eighty-year old Cornelius Gurlitt became an international media superstar in November 2013 on the discovery of over 1,400 artworks in his 1,076 square-foot Munich apartment, valued at around $1.35 billion. Gurlitt became known as a man who never was - he didn't have a bank account, never paid tax, never received social security. He simply did not exist. He had been hard-wired into a life of shadows and secrecy by his own father long before he had inherited his art collection built on the spoliation of museums and Jews during Hitler's Third Reich. The ensuing media frenzy unleashed international calls for restitution, unsettled international relations, and rocked the art world.

Hermann Goring and the Nazi Art Collection by Kenneth D. Alford – Paperback: 269 pages; McFarland (Apr 4, 2012)

During World War II, the Nazis plundered from occupied countries millions of items of incalculable value estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Spearheaded by Hermann Goring, Reichsmarschall of the Third Reich, the looting program quickly created the largest private art collection in the world, exceeding the collections amassed by the Metropolitan in New York, the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris and the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow. By the end of the war, the Nazis had stolen roughly one-fifth of the entire art treasures of the world. This book explores the formation of the Nazi art collection and the methods used by Goring and his party to strip occupied Europe of a large part of its artistic heritage.

Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman, John Shiffman – Paperback: 336 pages; Broadway Books (Jun 7, 2011)

In Priceless, Robert K. Wittman, the founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, pulls back the curtain on his remarkable career for the first time, offering a real-life international thriller to rival The Thomas Crown Affair.

The Museum of Lost Art by Noah Charney – Hardcover: 296 pages; Phaidon Press (May 4, 2018) Best Seller

True tales of lost art, built around case studies of famous works, their creators, and stories of disappearance and recovery.

The Woman Who Stole Vermeer by Anthony M. Amore – Hardcover: 272 pages; Pegasus Crime (Nov 10, 2020)

The extraordinary life and crimes of heiress-turned-revolutionary Rose Dugdale, who in 1974 became the only woman to pull off a major art heist.

Art Theft and the Case of the Stolen Turners by Sandy Nairne – Hardcover: 280 pages; Reaktion Books (Sep 15, 2011)

In 1994 two important paintings by J.M.W. Turner—then valued at twenty-four million pounds—were stolen from a German public gallery while on loan from Tate Britain. In this vivid, personal account, Sandy Nairne who was then Director of Programmes at the Tate and became centrally involved in the pursuit of the paintings and the negotiations for their return, retells this complex, 8-year, cloak-and-dagger story, which finally concluded in 2002 with the pictures returning to public display at the Tate.

The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser – Paperback: 260 pages; Harper Paperbacks (Mar 16, 2010) Best Seller

Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and committed the largest art heist in history. They stole a dozen masterpieces, including one Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and five Degas. But after thousands of leads—and a $5 million reward—none of the paintings have been recovered. Worth as much as $500 million, the missing masterpieces have become one of the nation's most extraordinary unsolved mysteries.

Lost Lives, Lost Art by Melissa Müller, Monika Tatzkow, Ronald S. Lauder (Foreword) – Hardcover: 256 pages; Vendome Press; 1st edition (Nov 1, 2010)

The legendary names include Rothschild, Mendelssohn, Bloch-Bauer—distinguished bankers, industrialists, diplomats, and art collectors. Their diverse taste ranged from manuscripts and musical instru­ments to paintings by Old Masters and the avant-garde. But their stigma as Jews in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe doomed them to exile or death in Hitler’s concentration camps.

Here, after years of meticulous research, Melissa Müller (Anne Frank: The Biography) and Monika Tatzkow (Nazi Looted Art) present the tragic, compelling stories of 15 Jewish collectors, the dispersal of their extraordinary collections through forced sale and/or confiscation, and the ongoing efforts of their heirs to recover their inheritance. For every victory in the effort to return these works to their rightful heirs, there are daunting defeats and long court battles. This real-life legal thriller follows works by Rembrandt, Klimt, Pissarro, Kandinsky, and others.

The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World by Anthony M. Amore – Hardcover: 272 pages; St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (Jul 14, 2015)

Art scams are today so numerous that the specter of a lawsuit arising from a mistaken attribution has scared a number of experts away from the business of authentication and forgery, and with good reason. Art scams are increasingly convincing and involve incredible sums of money. The cons perpetrated by unscrupulous art dealers and their accomplices are proportionately elaborate.

Art and Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World by Noah Charney – Hardcover: 261 pages; Praeger (May 14, 2009)

Through the use of case examples and careful examination, this book presents the first interdisciplinary essay collection on the study of art crime, and its effect on all aspects of the art world. Contributors discuss art crime subcategories, including vandalism, iconoclasm, forgery, fraud, peace-time theft, war looting, archaeological looting, smuggling, submarine looting, and ransom. The contributors offer insightful analyses coupled with specific practical suggestions to implement in the future to prevent and address art crime. This work is of critical importance to anyone involved in the art world, its trade, study, and security.

The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Lynn H. Nicholas – Paperback: 512 pages; Vintage; Reprint (Apr 25, 1995)

The real story behind the major motion picture The Monuments Men. The cast of characters includes Hitler and Goering, Gertrude Stein and Marc Chagall--not to mention works by artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso. And the story told in this superbly researched and suspenseful book is that of the Third Reich's war on European culture and the Allies' desperate effort to preserve it.

Hitler's Last Hostages: Looted Art and the Soul of the Third Reich by Mary M. Lane – Hardcover: 336 pages; PublicAffairs (Sep 10, 2019)

Adolf Hitler's obsession with art not only fueled his vision of a purified Nazi state--it was the core of his fascist ideology. Its aftermath lives on to this day.

Munich Art Hoard: Hitler's Dealer and His Secret Legacy by Catherine Hickley – Hardcover; Thames and Hudson; 1st edition (2015)

This book illuminates a dark period of German history, untangling a web of deceit and silence that has prevented the heirs of Jewish collectors from recovering art stolen from their families more than seven decades ago by the Nazis.

Caveat Emptor by Ken Perenyi – Hardcover: 368 pages; Pegasus Books; 1st edition (Aug 15, 2012)

It is said that the greatest art forger in the world is the one who has never been caught―the astonishing story of America’s most accomplished art forger.

Chasing Aphrodite by Jason Felch, Ralph Frammolino – Hardcover: 384 pages; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (May 24, 2011)

In recent years, several of America’s leading art museums have voluntarily given up their finest pieces of classical art to the governments of Italy and Greece. The monetary value is estimated at over half a billion dollars. Why would they be moved to such unheard-of generosity?

The answer lies at the Getty, one of the world’s richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it had been buying looted antiquities for decades. Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and frank interviews, Felch and Frammolino give us a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of a world-class museum and tell the story of the Getty’s dealings in the illegal antiquities trade.