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The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser
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The Gardner Heist

The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft

$17.96

Retail price: $19.95

Discount: 9%

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Narrator Stephen Graybill

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Length 8 hours 27 minutes
Language English
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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.

After the death of famed art detective Harold Smith, reporter Ulrich Boser decided to take up the case. Exploring Smith’s unfinished leads, Boser travels deep into the art underworld and comes across a remarkable cast of characters, including a brilliant rock ‘n’ roll thief, a gangster who professes his innocence in rhyming verse, and the enigmatic late Boston heiress Isabella Stewart Gardner herself. Boser becomes increasingly obsessed with the case and eventually uncovers startling new evidence about the identities of the thieves. A tale of art and greed, of obsession and loss, The Gardner Heist is as compelling as the stolen masterpieces themselves.

Ulrich Boser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), where he writes about social issues. Prior to joining CAP, he was a contributing editor for US News & World Report and research director at Education Week. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. He is the author of The Leap and The Gardner Heist, a Boston Globe bestseller. 

Stephen Graybill was recently in HBO's Big Little Lies, opposite Shailene Woodley, Reese Witherspoon, and Nicole Kidman; in Framed, opposite Jordi Vilasuso; in the second season of Game Shakers; and opposite Denise Richards in the feature film Altitude. He has been seen in HBO's The Wire, Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order, Six Degrees, All My Children, As The World Turns, and The Girl's Guide to Depravity. On stage he's appeared with Primary Stages, Drama Dept, NY Theater Workshop, F*It Club (world premieres by Kate Gersten, Mark Schultz, Lucy Boyle, and Nick Jones), Studio 42, Shakespeare Theatre DC, and Woodshed Collective in their acclaimed immersive theater production of The Tenant. He has worked on over fifty audiobooks, was awarded the Readers Choice Award of "Narrator of the Year," and his narrations have fans saying he's "even better than reading the story." He won a Gold Clio Award and a Silver Effie for his work in the award-winning commercial in Vaseline lotion's "Sea of Skin" Campaign (BBH), and his work in promos has included Brian Williams's NBC Nightly News with Edward Snowden. Stephen has produced and written a number of films independently: LA Awake directed by Spencer Grammer and starring Natalie Dreyfuss, On The Hook, Spring Training, and Easter Island. He's written a number of biopics, on topics ranging from Edgar Allan Poe to World War II. He has founded, developed, and financed the producer of a number of other projects as well.

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Reviews

“Boser offers a tantalizing whodunit as he embarks on an exhaustive search for the stolen masterpieces.”

“Boser’s book on it has the feel of a speedy ride down a mountain road spiked with hairpin turns.”

“The book is a thrill.”

“Expos[es] the real world of art theft: It isn’t about glamour and culture—it’s about greed, violence, and irreparable, maddening loss.”

“Boser cracks the cold case of the art world’s greatest unsolved mystery.”

“Boser’s rousing account of his years spent collecting clues large and small is entertaining enough to make readers almost forget that…the paintings have still not been found.”

“A captivating portrait of the world’s biggest unsolved art theft.”

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