Artist Steeds Lucy (2025)

In 1920, a remote farmhouse in Provence is home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie. Joseph, a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe, enters their strange, silent household, but the more deeply he becomes entangled in it, the more his curiosity grows. Ettie cooks and cleans for her uncle, prepares his studio, scrubs his paintbrushes and creates the perfect environment for him to work. She has never gone farther than the local village, and beneath her cool, watchful exterior Joseph senses something simmering. Throughout the hot, crackling summer, Ettie, Joseph and Tartuffe circle one another until they finally collide. This English-language historical novel is about two people taking each other by the hand and pulling each other into life.