Book excerpt: A young woman learns about painting—and more—in 1940s Paris in this “outrageously funny” novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Eye of Love (Newark Evening News). Eighteen-year-old Martha is blessed with the opportunity of a lifetime: an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris to study where some of the world’s greatest painters lived and worked. Despite her single-minded pursuit of creativity, she attracts an admirer in the City of Light. It isn’t a debonair Frenchman who seduces her, but a homesick British bank clerk who offers her all the creature comforts of home. And when an unexpected complication arises, Martha deals with the consequences in her usual sensible, independent fashion. Witty, tender, and richly evocative of late 1940s Paris, Martha in Paris is a beguiling portrait of the artist as a young woman as she learns the facts of life.