Rose Valland watched the largest art theft in history happen in front of her, wrote it all down in secret, and was then very nearly written out of the story.

Michelle Young comes to New Canaan Library to talk about The Art Spy, her narrative nonfiction account of the French curator who worked inside the Nazi leadership as its undercover adversary while Hitler amassed stolen masterpieces for a museum he would never build. The New York Public Library named it a Best Book of 2025. Young is in conversation with Suzanne Nelson, whose adult fiction debut The Librarians of Lisbon is set in the same war, in neutral Lisbon, and turns on subterfuge and an unexpected romance.

About the authors. Young is an author, journalist, photographer and cellist, founder of the online magazine Untapped New York and an adjunct professor of architecture at Columbia. Nelson has written dozens of middle-grade novels, one of which became a Hallmark Channel film, and lives in Ridgefield.

Make an afternoon of it. Elm Street Books will be on site selling both authors’ books and running a signing after the discussion.

Check before you go. Registration is required. New Canaan Library does not publish a price for this program — confirm the cost on the library’s event page before you plan around it.