Rare Nest is delighted to present a new novel by Gallery friend Robert Archambeau. We’ve read the galleys of Alice B. Toklas is Missing and can report that this is a fascinating, intense and deep dive into the art world of 1920’s Paris - with connections to Chicago’s North Shore. Please join us as we celebrate with the author. Advance copies will be available or preorder from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

ALICE B. TOKLAS IS MISSING is a novel of comic suspense set among the artists, writers and musicians of Jazz Age Paris.

When aspiring painter Ida Caine’s wanna-be writer husband Teddy drags her to Gertrude Stein’s famous artistic salon in Paris, she finds herself exiled to a corner with the wives of swaggering male geniuses. Will this be her fate? Before Ida can summon the courage to prove herself as an artist, she stumbles onto a plot to kidnap Gertrude Stein’s romantic partner, Alice B. Toklas.

Soon after Alice disappears, Teddy vanishes as well, and Ida is drawn into a world of subterfuge, jealous artists, and outsized literary egos. Surrealism, a young T.S. Eliot, and a journey through the eerie catacombs of Paris lead Ida to the discovery of an avant-garde plot to destroy the Louvre and all the art within it.

 Aided by a cast of sharply-drawn historical figures, Ida must foil the plot, and discover whether Teddy really is the man she thought he was. The action comes to a head at the premiere of Ballet Mécanique, a concert of modern music where rival factions of artists and writers battle in the aisles.

 Alice B. Toklas is Missing combines the American-in-Paris Jazz Age milieu of Midnight in Paris with the satiric bite of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle and takes us on one woman’s voyage to discover art, love, and her own hidden courage and talent.

Professor Robert Archambeau, Lake Forest College

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Robert Archambeau is the author of two books each of poetry, literary essays, and academic scholarship. He has worked as a professional art critic, and his work has appeared in Hudson Review, Poetry, Boston Review, and many other venues, and he has received awards and grants from the Swedish Academy, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Academy of American Poets. He chairs the English department at Lake Forest College, keeps adding to his burgeoning art collection, and will soon complete a sequel to Alice B. Toklas is Missing set in the London of Virginia Woolf and her peers, The Bloomsbury Forgery.