The Lost Tarot Launch Party

Join Governor General’s Award-winning author Sarah Henstra on the summer solstice at Toronto’s Society Clubhouse to celebrate the publication of her novel The Lost Tarot.

• Onsite tarot-card readings by professional tarot reader and educator Liz Worth
• Art exhibit of paintings, drawings, sculptures and collage from the Artist Tarot Project, a growing collection of tarot-card images based on The Lost Tarot (several of the artists will also be in attendance)
• Author interview by novelist and writing coach Heidi Reimer
• Free snacks, cash bar, book sales by Type Books, reading and book signing by the author

“Offbeat, quirky, and powerfully beguiling—a glittering treasure of a book.”

— Jane Johnson, bestselling author of The White Hare

A lost set of tarot cards is the key to unravelling decades of secrets in this dazzling novel about the power of art and deception

Theresa Bateman, a struggling junior art historian in Toronto, receives a single tarot card in the mail. The image is unmistakably the work of celebrated avant-garde artist Lark Ringold, and its discovery would mean a breakthrough in Theresa's career. But the legendary Ringold Tarot doesn't exist. . . . Its paintings were lost in a fire that claimed Lark's life along with dozens of others—the final, horrific implosion of a notorious cult called the Shown.
Sixty years earlier in England, Lark and his twin sister Nell join a bohemian commune led by their charismatic uncle. While Lark settles happily into his work on the tarot project to aid in his uncle's occult teachings, Nell finds it harder to adjust. Just beneath the Shown's golden surface she uncovers secrets that, if revealed, threaten to erupt into chaos.
Why was the tarot card sent to Theresa? How can she prove its connection to Ringold when her art-world superiors declare it a fake? And who has been holding onto it for all these years—and why? As Theresa follows the trail of the lost tarot, she is drawn into the deeply entwined mysteries of Nell, Lark and the Shown. What begins as the tale of one artist and the battle over his legacy unspools into a web of passion, violence and deceit. In twist after startling twist, and in vibrant, exquisite prose, The Lost Tarot is a landmark novel about love, creativity, power and perception.

Sarah Henstra is the author of The Red Word, which won the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Dublin International Literary Award. She is also author of the young adult novels Mad Miss Mimic, a Canadian Library Association Best Book for Teens and a finalist for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People, and We Contain Multitudes, which was the 2022 Vermont Reads title and was nominated for the White Pine Award. Sarah holds a PhD in English, and her scholarly publications include the book The Counter-Memorial Impulse in Twentieth Century English Fiction. She is a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she teaches courses in creative writing, critical theory, fairy tales and the Gothic.

Host or Publisher Penguin Random House Canada