Painted Souls · Book One
The Mona Lisa Cage
A Da Vinci Supernatural Thriller
Out now
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Released 26 August 2026
A gift for readers
Bought the book, or read it in Kindle Unlimited? Email hello@leodilux.com and The Letter, 1519 is yours: a sealed chapter no edition will contain. No receipts. I will take your word.
In 1503, Leonardo da Vinci agreed to paint a dead woman. He spent the next sixteen years refusing to let her go.
Florence, 1503. A grieving merchant commissions the city’s most celebrated genius to paint his late wife, a simple portrait, quickly done. But Leonardo carries the unfinished painting with him for sixteen years, across three countries, working at her face every day and never once delivering her.
The world will call it perfectionism. The truth is darker. Ground into her colours is something that should not exist, and the longer Leonardo paints, the more the woman on the panel begins to want.
Built on the real secret history of the Mona Lisa, The Mona Lisa Cage is a slow-burn gothic thriller about obsession, genius, and the hunger that hides inside a masterpiece.
“A captivating story.”
“That is what immortality is, in the end. Not living forever. Forgetting, slowly, across centuries, every reason a person might have for being willing to die. I would rather have my few bad years and remember the reasons.”
For readers of Mexican Gothic, The Historian, and The Binding.
New to the series? Start free with the prequel, Grandfather’s Pigments →
The cage is open
Read The Mona Lisa Cage now. Available in Kindle Unlimited.
Already finished? Book Two, The Collector’s Tithe, arrives 30 September. Pre-order it now →