The author of the bestselling Leonardo’s Swans traverses the centuries into the hearts of two extraordinary women to reveal the passions, ambitions, and controversies surrounding the Elgin Marbles.

The Elgin Marbles have been displayed in the British Museum for nearly two hundred years, and for just as long they have been the center of a raging controversy. In Stealing Athena, Karen Essex chronicles the Marbles’ amazing journey through the dynamic narratives of Mary Nisbet, wife of the Earl of Elgin, the British ambassador to Constantinople, and Aspasia, the mistress of Perikles, the most powerful man in Athens during that city’s Golden Age.

At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, the twenty-one-year-old, newly wed Countess of Elgin, a Scottish heiress and celebrated beauty, enchanted the power brokers of the Ottoman Empire, using her charms to obtain their permission for her husband’s audacious plan to deconstruct the Parthenon and bring its magnificent sculptures to England. Two millennia earlier, Aspasia, a female philosopher and courtesan, and a central figure in Athenian life, plied her wits, allure, and influence with equal determination, standing with Perikles at the center of vehement opposition to his vision of building the most exquisite monuments the world had ever seen.

Rich in romance and intrigue, greed and glory, Stealing Athena is an enthralling work of historical fiction and a window into the intimate lives of some of history’s most influential and fascinating women.

"Lord Elgin may be famous for bringing the Parthenon's sculptural masterpieces to England during the Napoleonic wars, but for Essex (Leonardo's Swans), it's Lady Elgin who pays for it, in fortune and in reputation. More about money than sex, and more about art than either, Essex's latest alternates the story of Scottish heiress Mary Hamilton Nisbet Bruce, countess of Elgin, with that of Aspasia, courtesan lover of the great Pericles and the inspiration for the Parthenon's Athena. Essex begins with 21-year-old Mary, newly wed and pregnant, en route to Constantinople with her diplomat husband. She soon discovers his obsession with dismantling the Ottoman-controlled Parthenon and his plan to reconstruct it in his Greek revival home. Over years, Mary endures his neglect and gives him five children before turning to fellow Scot Robert Ferguson, a powerful Englishman who stands by her during a racy divorce trial. That trial, in which English society spurns Mary, is mirrored by Aspasia's run-in with an Athenian court for sexual impropriety. Both of their stories are overshadowed by the marbles themselves; their creation, recovery, transport and restoration provide the most vivid passages of the novel. Essex shines light on the women who inspired and protected some of the greatest art ever created, and the men who exploited them. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Rich in romance and intrigue, greed and glory, "Stealing Athena" is an enthralling work of historical fiction and a window into the intimate lives of some of history's most influential and fascinating women.

KAREN ESSEX is the author of Kleopatra, Pharaoh, and the international bestseller Leonardo’s Swans, which won Italy’s prestigious 2007 Premio Roma for foreign fiction. An award-winning journalist and a screenwriter, she lives in Los Angeles, California.