Isabella’s Painting Press Release
On March 18, 1990, after midnight, two men dressed as police obtained entry 
into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The pair blindfolded and handcuffed the guards and proceeded to steal thirteen pieces of art valued at $500 million. Twenty-eight years later the art is still missing – until now. When Karina Cardinal accidentally glimpses an infamous stolen painting, she faces a dangerous choice. Should she back off while she still can? Dig deeper? Or seek help from her old flame who is now a FBI agent? Either way, the next move she makes could destroy innocent lives-including her own. In Isabella’s Painting bestselling author, Ellen Butler, sets in motion the new Karina Cardinal mystery series with a captivating thrill ride into a notorious art heist.
The Gardner museum robbery is considered one of the highest valued thefts of private property in history. FBI agents, investigative reporters, professional art recovery specialists, and amateur detectives have spent hundreds of man hours trying to locate the paintings. Karina Cardinal, an intelligent D.C. lobbyist with a sharp wit, and a curiosity to rival Jessica Fletcher, stumbles across something she shouldn’t. Her subsequent actions lead her down a dangerous path.
According to retired FBI Special Agent Robert K. Wittman, Founder of the FBI Art Crime Team and New York Times bestselling author of Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures, “Isabella’s Painting takes the reader on a rollicking ride through the high-stakes world of art thieves and the investigators who work to get them back… it is a fast-paced, entertaining and engrossing fictional exposé of the shady underbelly of the art world.” In the words of an InD’tale Magazine reveiw, “The creative take on documented historical events enriches the reader, and the descriptions make one feel drawn into the tale. Karina has a lot of spunk and doesn’t put up with a lot of nonsense, making her a character that one can get behind. The relational conflict is riveting, making the reader eager for the next book in the series.”