10 Stylish Crimes

On the gentlemanly art of stealing beauty.
It's funny what a beautiful word felony is; fittingly, it also describes the flagrant thefts and audacious frauds that infiltrate the worlds of art, precious gems, and other rarified treasures. From master forgeries to jewel heists to shadowy black-market exchanges, these highbrow crimes are no less thrilling for being “gentlemanly” and bloodless (well, usually!). —Kat, Audible Editor
Product List
  • Provenance Audiobook By Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo cover art

    • Provenance

    • How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
    • By: Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo
    • Narrated by: Marty Peterson
    • Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
    • Release date: 12-31-09
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 564 ratings
    • The Great Art Swindle
    • Stories about scammers and con artists are enjoying a resurgence of late, but the tale of John Drewe has to be one of the most outlandish. Commissioning works in the style of masters including Chagall, Le Corbusier, and Matisse from a British painter in need of money, Drewe then sold the forgeries to the world's most reputable auction houses, earning millions of dollars. This fast-paced account of the 20th century's biggest art fraud listens like a thriller—but it's all true.
  • The Feather Thief Audiobook By Kirk Wallace Johnson cover art

    • The Feather Thief

    • Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
    • By: Kirk Wallace Johnson
    • Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
    • Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
    • Release date: 04-24-18
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,919 ratings
    • Why Would Anyone Steal Bird Feathers?
    • In 2009, a young flutist named Edwin Rist robbed a British museum of hundreds of exotic bird skins, many of which had been collected by the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in the 19th century. Turns out, the feathers fetch high prices from collectors who use them in the extremely niche hobby of salmon fly-tying, turning them more into esoteric artworks than the usual fish bait. Full of fascinating twists, this true crime listen is definitely not for the birds.
  • Flawless Audiobook By Scott Selby, Greg Campbell cover art

    • Flawless

    • Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History
    • By: Scott Selby, Greg Campbell
    • Narrated by: Don Hagen
    • Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
    • Release date: 04-19-10
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 532 ratings
    • A Dazzling Jewel Heist Thriller
    • If you're interested in the shadowy side of the world's most coveted gems, look no further than this expose on the group of thieves who brazenly infiltrated the supposedly theft-proof Antwerp Diamond Center to steal more than $100 million of loot. Zeroing in on the "how" of the crime, this masterfully paced thriller ferrets out the true story behind one of the most daring heists in history.
  • The Art Forger Audiobook By B. A. Shapiro cover art

    • The Art Forger

    • By: B. A. Shapiro
    • Narrated by: Xe Sands
    • Length: 10 hrs
    • Release date: 10-23-12
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 3,698 ratings
    • A Fictional Spin on a Real Life Heist
    • The largest unsolved art heist in history involved the theft of 13 works of art, worth more than $500 million, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. That true story is the premise for this twisty, accomplished novel about a struggling young artist who gets pulled into the intrigue by a pact with a powerful gallery owner to forge a masterpiece by Degas. (For a nonfiction account of the Gardner heist, check out Master Thieves.)
  • The Dragon Behind the Glass Audiobook By Emily Voigt cover art

    • The Dragon Behind the Glass

    • A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World's Most Coveted Fish
    • By: Emily Voigt
    • Narrated by: Xe Sands
    • Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
    • Release date: 05-24-16
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 268 ratings
    • A Fish Called Arowana
    • The idea of a shady tycoon with a priceless tropical fish brings me right into Naked Gun territory, but the Asian arowana is real, though you definitely won't find one at your local PetSmart. A single arowana can cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the breed is illegal to bring into the US—so of course there's a thriving black market for the prized specimens. Part natural history, part true crime, stellar reporting makes this especially compelling.
  • Headhunters Audiobook By Jo Nesbø, Don Bartlett cover art

    • Headhunters

    • By: Jo Nesbø, Don Bartlett
    • Narrated by: Steve West
    • Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
    • Release date: 10-11-11
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 748 ratings
    • Riveting Gallery Caper, Nesbø Style
    • If you're looking to nurse your Harry Hole hangover with some hair of the dog, pick up Nesbø's dark, twisty caper about a headhunter who steals a Peter Paul Rubens painting from an enigmatic executive. Sophisticated and addictive, this Nordic noir take on art theft (think Fargo meets Reservoir Dogs meets The Thomas Crown Affair) builds with a seductive slow burn—and even sultrier narration.
  • The Orchid Thief Audiobook By Susan Orlean cover art

    • The Orchid Thief

    • A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
    • By: Susan Orlean
    • Narrated by: Jennifer Meyers
    • Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
    • Release date: 08-03-01
    • Language: English
    • 3.5 out of 5 stars 579 ratings
    • The Blooming of an Obsession
    • Susan Orlean’s jaw-dropping account of the strange, shadowy world of the flower-selling underground is now a classic of modern journalism, brought to life in the Spike Jonze film Adaptation. Orlean follows a charismatic poacher named John Laroche in his quest to clone a rare “ghost” orchid for passion and profit. The prose and story are elegant and eccentric, just like the exotic orchid itself.
  • In Vino Duplicitas Audiobook By Peter Hellman cover art

    • In Vino Duplicitas

    • The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire
    • By: Peter Hellman
    • Narrated by: Charles Constant
    • Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
    • Release date: 08-15-17
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 164 ratings
    • The Biggest Con in Fine Wine
    • I'll cop to having been skeptical about the highfalutin palates of fine wine connoisseurs, till I witnessed some impressive blind tastings—and sampled the goods myself. But a little doubt would have served the billionaire dupes of Rudy Kurniawan, whose cellar was touted as one of the greatest of all time. In fact, its stock was completely fake, but it would take a band of passionate oenophiles, a journalist, and the FBI to pop the cork on a spectacular fraud.
  • The Vanishing Velázquez Audiobook By Laura Cumming cover art

    • The Vanishing Velázquez

    • A 19th Century Bookseller's Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece
    • By: Laura Cumming
    • Narrated by: Siobhan Redmond
    • Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
    • Release date: 04-12-16
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 156 ratings
    • The Madness and the Masterpiece
    • Seeing Las Meninas in real life is at the very top of my art bucket list, but my love of Velázquez doesn’t come close to that of an English bookseller named John Snare. In 1849, he bought a portrait attributed to the painter Van Dyck, but Snare was certain it was a Velázquez—and enamored by it to the point of his own ruin. Laura Cumming’s spellbinding tale is equal parts art history, biography, and cold-case mystery, but at heart it’s an examination of art obsession.
  • Priceless Audiobook By Robert K. Wittman, John Shiffman cover art

    • Priceless

    • How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures
    • By: Robert K. Wittman, John Shiffman
    • Narrated by: Mark Deakins
    • Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
    • Release date: 06-01-10
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 588 ratings
    • His Superpower Is Rescuing Art
    • The founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, Robert Wittman is arguably the world's most famous stolen-treasure detective, having rescued paintings by Rembrandt and Picasso, an original copy of the Bill of Rights, a Rodin sculpture, and a headdress worn by Geronimo. His compelling memoir examines his globetrotting, often undercover, escapades as well as meditations on art and what it means to be "priceless," anyway.