Publication Date: April 21, 2026
Experience the myth and magic of antiquity’s most alluring—and provocative—goddess as never witnessed before, in this gorgeously rendered, unflinching, and deeply vulnerable retelling from the author of Mother of Rome and Medusa’s Sisters.
Two hundred years before the common era, Aphrodite surprises an itinerant sculptor with a shocking request: Hear my story, see me for who I truly am, and carve it into stone. Never before has the goddess posed for her likeness, and as the artist works, she shares pieces of herself.
Her greatest triumphs and most grievous mistakes. The truth behind the tales of her beneficence and vengeance. And the one epic romance that slips through her perfect fingers, time and time again.
Part memoir, part fantasy, and all heart, Aphrodite in Pieces begs the eternal, essential questions: what do love and beauty truly mean? And can they last?
A sculptor seeking inspiration for an exquisite slab of marble gets a visit from an unlikely muse.
Almost immediately, Alexandros of Antioch recognizes the ethereal beauty who commissions him to create an honest reconstruction of her image.
Author Lauren J. A. Bear crafts an exquisite novel in Aphrodite in Pieces. History contains numerous mentions of Aphrodite/Venus, but this story puts her in the narrator’s seat, where she reveals her true self to the sculptor. The end goal is for him to immortalize the Olympian’s faults in stone.
Aphrodite tells her story over the span of one night as she poses, dividing it into six sections. From her gruesome origin story to her summons by Zeus, readers see a radically different woman depicted in the legends.
Her one true love proves to be a tumultuous back-and-forth through the ages, with marriages, children, and battles in between. However, everything she does is always traced back to Ares.
The Olympian gods and goddesses often don’t play well together. The author creates a fascinating and easy-to-follow tale that brings the immortals to life with all their petty jealousies.
Aphrodite in Pieces delivers a perfectly imperfect vision of a woman who transcends time and place.
LAUREN J. A. BEAR was born in Boston and raised in Long Beach. After studying English at UCLA and education at LMU, she taught middle-school humanities for over a decade—and survived! She is a teaching fellow for the Holocaust Center for Humanity and lives in Seattle with her husband and three young children. She likes crossword puzzles and being on or near the water without getting wet. She is the author of Mother of Rome and Medusa’s Sisters.
