Set across a Provencal summer in 1920, Lucy Steeds’ The Artist follows an enigmatic painter, his niece and a British journalist.

A romantic-mystery debut novel based in sun-soaked southern France has won the 2025 Waterstones Book of the Year.

Set across a Provencal summer in 1920, Lucy Steeds’ The Artist follows an enigmatic painter, his niece and a British journalist who is keen on writing a piece about him, before tensions begin to build between them all.

Steeds, from London, who also claimed the 2025 Waterstones’ Debut Fiction Prize, began writing the novel while living in France and beat shortlisted authors including Sir David Attenborough and Colin Butfield’s Ocean, and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise On The Reaping.

Bea Carvalho, Waterstones’ head of books said

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