Antique Blues

Antique dealer Josie Prescott is thrilled her friend Mo Shannon has a acquired a beautiful Japanese woodblock print she loved. In Antique Blues by Jane K. Cleland, Josie's friend asks her to appraise her new acquisition.

The print is one of by famed Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige and is part of a series called One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The beautiful, peaceful scene is rendered in shades of white, blue and brown with colors so vibrant and bold it appears to have never been seen in daylight. Original prints from this series are extremely scarce,which leads Josie to doubt the authenticity of this print.

Mo's sister Lydia and her boyfriend Cal try to discourage Mo from getting an appraisal, especially as Cal is the one who sold the print to her. Ever cautious, this also raises concerns for Josie.

When Mo falls to her death a few days later, Jane is glad she had the foresight to bring the print into

her shop and keep it in her possession. Could the print have caused Mo's death? When Cal disappears shortly after Mo's death, Jane continues to search for the provenance of Mo's print.

Josie's business and personal life are as complicated as ever. Mo's father asks her to appraise his blues guitar that he thinks was once owned by blues guitar great Robert Johnson. And Ty wonders when their wedding will take place and encourages Josie to start planning.

The Josie Prescott books are easy to read and offer clear insight into the world of antiques. I always learn something from these books. 

Faberge Eggs and Murder

In Blood Rubies by Jane Cleland, antiques expert Josie Prescott is asked to appraise a one-of-a-kind Faberge Spring Egg snow globe with ruby red tulip gems. Before she is able to appraise the snow globe, it is found smashed beyond repair next to the body of TV show investment guru Jason.

In beautiful New Hampshire Ana Yartsin, budding reality TV show chef and owner of the snow globe, is filming an episode of her show as she bakes a Faberge wedding cake for Jason and his fiance Heather, a friend of Ana's. Complicating the relationship is Ana's brother Peter who was previously engaged to Heather. There are plenty of suspects in Jason's murder as his financial advice was not always sound and he followed the philosophy of "caveat emptor" - buy beware, but who would smash the incredible and priceless Faberge snow globe?

As Josie sifts through the fragments to determine if the snow globe was authentic, she discovers it is a fake. But where is the real one or was there even a real snow globe? Ana insists it has been in her family for decades and that her father brought it with him from Michigan to New Hampshire to be appraised.

Josie's staff eagerly uses their contacts in the appraisal world to discover who could have made a fake good enough to pass as an original. When a Russian artifacts expert from Boston is killed in a car accident on his way to see Josie, there seems to be more to the story than meets the eye. Incredibly the expert had appraised a Fabege snow globe quite recently, and Josie is convinced it must be the one she was scheduled to review. Rare as they are, it is highly unlikely that two snow globes would appear in the antiques world at the same time.

I enjoyed this book and the entire series. I'm sure everyone would love to discover a valuable antique in their own home. It's interesting to see how appraisals are used to authenticate antiques.

The first book in the series is Consigned to Death.