22 Novels about museums

The Aesthetics of Resistance is a three-volume novel by the German-born playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and painter Peter Weiss.

The Arcanum is a 2005 novel by Thomas Wheeler. Set in 1919 it concerns the last case of occult-busters Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, H. P. Lovecraft, and voodoo queen Marie Laveau.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum is the first novel of British novelist Kate Atkinson. The book covers the experiences of Ruby Lennox, a girl from a working-class English family living in York. The museum of the title is York Castle Museum, which includes among its exhibits the façades of old houses from the city, similar to the one in which Ruby's family lives.

Belphégor is a 1927 crime novel by French writer Arthur Bernède, about a "phantom" which haunts the Louvre Museum, in reality a masked villain trying to steal a hidden treasure.

The British Museum is Falling Down (1965) is a comic novel by British author David Lodge about a 25-year-old poverty-stricken student of English literature who, rather than work on his thesis in the reading room of the British Museum, is distracted time and again from his work and who gets into trouble instead.

The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons. The Da Vinci Code follows "symbologist" Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris causes them to become involved in a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene having had a child together.

The Diviners is a 2012 young adult novel by Libba Bray. The book was published on September 18, 2012 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and is set in New York City during the 1920s. The plot follows seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill as she helps her uncle Will - curator of the fictional "Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult" - uncover the killer behind a mysterious series of murders.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is a novel by E. L. Konigsburg. The book follows siblings Claudia and Jamie Kincaid as they run away from home to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was published by Atheneum in 1967, the second book published from two manuscripts the new writer had submitted to editor Jean E. Karl.

The Golden Child is a 1977 mystery novel by the British author Penelope Fitzgerald, her first published work of fiction. Written while her husband was terminally ill, and partly for his benefit, the novel offers a satirical version of the 1972 Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum, and pokes fun at museum politics, academic scholars, and Cold War spying.

The Goldfinch is a novel by the American author Donna Tartt. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other honors. Published in 2013, it was Tartt's first novel since The Little Friend in 2002.

Gradiva is a novel by Wilhelm Jensen, first published in instalments from June 1 to July 20, 1902 in the Viennese newspaper "Neue Freie Presse". It was inspired by a Roman bas-relief of the same name and became the basis for Sigmund Freud's famous 1907 study Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva. Freud owned a copy of this bas-relief, which he had joyfully beheld in the Vatican Museums in 1907; it can be found on the wall of his study in 20 Maresfield Gardens, London – now the Freud Museum.

The Great Dinosaur Robbery is a now out-of-print book released in 1970 and written by David Eliades and Robert Forrest Webb under the pseudonym of David Forrest. The book was later the basis for the 1975 film One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing.

Life Before Man is a novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1979 and was a finalist for the Governor General's Award.

Little Hands Clapping, is a novel by British author Dan Rhodes, published in 2010 by Canongate. Its title comes from a line in Robert Browning's poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Masterpiece is a 2008 novel written by Elise Broach, illustrated by Kelly Murphy, and published by Christy Ottaviano Books. It won a 2008 Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year in Children’s Fiction, the 2009 E.B. White Read Aloud Award, a 2009 ALA Notable Children's Book, and is a New York Times Best Seller.

The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned is a 1989 horror novel by American writer Anne Rice. Taking place during the early twentieth century, it follows the collision between a British archeologist's family and a resurrected mummy. The novel ends with the statement, "The Adventures of Ramses the Damned Shall Continue", and twenty-eight years later, Rice fulfilled this promise with Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra, written in collaboration with her son, novelist Christopher Rice.

The Museum of Innocence is a novel by Orhan Pamuk, Nobel-laureate Turkish novelist published on August 29, 2008. The book, set in Istanbul between 1975 and 1984, is an account of the love story between the wealthy businessman Kemal and a poorer distant relative of his, Füsun. Pamuk said he used YouTube to research Turkish music and film while preparing the novel.

Neverwhere is the companion novelisation written by English author Neil Gaiman of the television serial Neverwhere, written by Gaiman and devised by Lenny Henry. The plot and characters are exactly the same as in the series, with the exception that the novel form allowed Gaiman to expand and elaborate on certain elements of the story and restore changes made in the televised version from his original plans. Most notable is the appearance of the Floating Market at Harrods rather than under Battersea power station. This is because the management of Harrods changed their minds about proposed filming. The novel was originally released by BBC Books in 1996, three episodes into the television series run. It was accompanied by a spoken word CD and cassette release, also by the BBC.

Origin is a 2017 mystery thriller novel by American author Dan Brown and the fifth installment in his Robert Langdon series, following Inferno. The book was released on October 3, 2017, by Doubleday. The book is predominantly set in Spain and features minor sections in Sharjah and Budapest.

Outside the Dog Museum is a novel by the American writer Jonathan Carroll, published in 1991. It tells the story of Harry Radcliffe, a successful architect commissioned to design a Dog Museum for the wealthy Sultan of Saru. In the process, he finds a magical new world.

Relic is a 1995 novel by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and the first in the Special Agent Pendergast series. As a horror novel and techno-thriller, it comments on the possibilities inherent in genetic manipulation, and is critical of museums and their role both in society and in the scientific community. It is the basis of the film The Relic (1997).

The Smithsonian Institution is an alternate history novel by Gore Vidal, first published in 1998.