Zoia's Gold (2006)

An elegant amalgam of fact and fiction, Zoia's Gold draws on the life of Madame Zoia, an artist who fled revolutionary Russia for a peripatetic journey accumulating husbands, lovers, and an aura of mystery. Philip Sington, who had access to Zoia's private papers, could have written a compassionate, gripping biography, but he delightfully introduces his own creation, a fallen art dealer whose redemption lies in answering lingering questions about Zoia and her gilded paintings. Sington never sells out the real woman for a mere plot twist. Zoia's Gold is part thriller, part biography, and wholly engrossing.