New novels explore the theft of the Mona Lisa and another side of Jane Austen's 'Emma'

Pegasus, 336 pages, $38.95

In her deft retelling of Jane Austen‘s beloved novel from the perspective of ordinary outsider Henrietta Bates, Catherine Cliff adeptly imagines 1769-1819 rural Surrey as we follow Bates from her childhood as the vicar’s daughter through a spinsterhood lived in poverty and grief to a previously unhoped-for future.

Resolving to never marry so she could be “truly alone in her mind,” Henrie accepts her modest lot in life, one that is temporarily touched with joy, thanks to her younger sister Jeannette and her niece Jane. Beset with secret visions of “violent retribution and personal justice,” Henrie compensates by extending genuine kindnesses to show-off Emma Woodhouse Knightley’s neglected young son Albert and her aging father.

This accomplished debut delights on its own but will have Austen enthusiasts especially amused.

The Very Secretive and Passionate Stella Miles Franklin

Alexandra Lapierre, translated by Tina Kover

Europa Editions, 496 pages, $30.95

In 1901, Miles Franklin publishes “My Brilliant Career,” a roman à clef about a girl growing up in rural poverty in New South Wales, which becomes a sensation. The Times of London compares her to Dickens and Zola, suggesting her debut is the greatest Australian novel yet written.

The eldest of seven children, the restless and indefatigable Stella uses her male-identifying name as a nom de plume to try to evade the rampant misogyny of the time. Determined to explore the world, Stella first alights in Sydney where she meets suffragist Rose Scott, a progressive mentor.

Determined to belong to herself entirely by refusing to marry, Stella travels to San Francisco where she arrives in the harrowing days following the devastating 1906 earthquake on which she reports. Making her way to Chicago, she gets involved in the social justice movement and becomes general secretary for the Women’s Trade Union League.

Although a fervent pacifist, during the First World War Stella works as a cook in a hospital unit in Serbia, offering comfort the only way she knows how: by doing for strangers. Returning to Australia in the 1920s, Stella writes immensely popular books under the pseudonym Brent of Bin Bin, beginning with “Up the Country.”

This is a blazing portrait of an indomitable woman ahead of her time, whose legacy endures through the two generous literary prizes that bear her name: the Miles Franklin Literary Award for a novel that represents Australian life in any era, and the Stella Prize for best work in any genre written by an Australian woman.

The Paris Thief

Lisa Rochon

HarperAvenue, 320 pages, $25.99

A dual timeline switches effectively back and forth between 1910 Paris, with Picasso’s coterie of artists and models in the seedy Montmartre piano factory, and 1940, at the massive and mostly derelict Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, where the French government is hiding thousands of its most precious paintings and sculptures from the Nazis.

Louvre archivist Mathilde Payer and the Mona Lisa thread the two narratives together. In the past, Mathilde modelled for Picasso and dated Louvre carpenter Vincenzo Peruggia, the man who pulled off the theft of the century when he lifted the portrait from the museum’s wall after a day’s work. In the present, Mathilde is entrusted by her superiors with protecting da Vinci’s most famous painting long recovered.

Peopled with now-illustrious painters and writers, including Apollinaire, Braque, Colette, Degas, Matisse, Modigliani and Picasso on the cusp of creating his Cubist work, the novel also explores the unsettling effects of the German occupation on ordinary Parisians and the myriad ways they resisted.

A paean to resilience and the risks individuals are willing to take to preserve beauty for future generations.

Daughters of the Sun and Moon

Lisa See

Scribner, 384 pages, $27

In 1870 Los Angeles, two young immigrant Chinese women face their new lives in Gold Mountain. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an impoverished scholar, becomes the second wife to local merchant Old Man Sing, and Petal, the eldest daughter of peasants, is sold into sexual slavery at a local brothel where she is expected to service seven men six days a week. Moon, the kind, educated wife of a gentle doctor of Chinese medicine, witnesses their arrival and resolves to support them emotionally, albeit discreetly.

Told in alternating points of view by each of the women, the novel creates a vibrant and upsetting portrait of the difficult lives they endured.

At the heart of the story is the Night of Horrors, the brutal massacre in October 1871 of 18 Chinese men and boys by a mob of hundreds of white and Latino men and women.

An essential read about the courage of immigrant women in a little-known, dark and shameful period in L.A. history.