The woman on the stairs / Bernhard Schlink ; translated from the German by Joyce Hackett and Bradley Schmidt.

"A missing painting. A mysterious woman. Her husband and her lover... A brilliant and naïve young lawyer's life is changed forever when a painter and his subject--a breathtakingly beautiful woman--appear at his office in Frankfurt. The woman's husband is deliberately marring the painting of his wife he commissioned the artist to make. Now the woman and the artist want the painting back. Simple enough--or so it seems before the lawyer becomes enmeshed in the lives of this toxic trio. Love, theft, and deceit unfold in quick succession when the woman, and the painting, suddenly go missing. It will take a strange turn of fate and a natural disaster to reunite the lawyer, the husband, and the artist with the woman they all love, hiding out in Australia--and when they find her they will be forced to reckon with the lies and betrayals of their shared past."-- Provided by publisher.