The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Gallery Assistant: A Novel by Kate Belli

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

The Gallery Assistant: A Novel by Kate Belli Katebelli.com https://www.amazon.com/Gallery-Assistant-Novel-Kate-Belli/dp/1668093650 “A haunting, razor-sharp mystery…With an unforgettable protagonist and a plot that spirals into ever-deeper layers of intrigue.” —Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author of The Ghostwriter This twisty and sinister thriller follows a New York art gallery assistant reckoning with her past and now trapped in a web of deceit after an up-and-coming painter is murdered—perfect for fans of Katy Hays and Julia Bartz. November 2001: Chloe Harlow wakes up late, with hazy memories of the party the night before but no recollection of how she got back to her Brooklyn apartment. Ever since the terrifying and catastrophic terrorist attack, it seems she has been on a collision course with destruction. When she finally arrives at the exclusive Upper East Side art gallery where she works, she is immediately called into her boss’s office. A pair of NYPD detectives greet her, also very curious to know how her evening ended…because the host of the party, a rising painter and the gallery’s newest artist, is dead. Navigating both the sophisticated high-stakes art world and her personal life in burgeoning Williamsburg, Chloe struggles to piece together a complete picture of that lost night. As she digs deeper, inconsistencies emerge between what she remembers and what people tell her actually happened, and more questions are raised. Everything begins to feel like a conspiracy and maybe it is. Because Chloe is the only one who glimpses the secrets the murdered artist left behind, and the closer she gets to the truth…the more deadly it becomes.About the author Kate Belli writes historical mystery and contemporary thrillers. Fascinated by history from an early age, she earned a PhD in American art and has variously worked as an antiques appraiser, a museum curator and a college professor. Kate has lived all over, from Florence, Italy, to Brooklyn, New York, to the Deep South, to a cottage next to Monet’s gardens in Northern France. Today she lives and works in Central Pennsylvania with her husband and son. When not writing, Kate satisfies her wanderlust by traveling with her family as often as possible, touring museums and sampling local food. She is also an avid runner, having completed several marathons, and a yoga teacher. Kate loves hiking, camping, and cooking, and firmly believes red wine and strong coffee qualify as their own food groups.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. Monster Education Roller Coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hello, this Voss here from thecris Foss Show.com. Ladies, gentlemen there, ladies, things that makes it official. What is he left to yield, the intro? Anyway, guys. Anyway, guys, thanks for joining us on the show.

As always, for 16 years, 2500 episodes. We bring you the Chris Voss show because we live in a van down by the river. That's all we had to do every day. So that's what we do, is we bring you an amazing authors, brilliant minds and all those things. And I'm just the idiot with the mic who does it. Go to Goodreads.com, it says Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, Fortez Chris Foss. Chris Foss, one of TikTok, and YouTube.com, for Chess Chris Foss.

There's a lot of Chris Fosses in there. What the hell is that about? Plus, they've been breeding, I hear. They're out, there's a bunch of in the marketplace. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing young lady on the show today. We're going to be talking about her newest book, and she's written many, a book and has quite the fan base. It is called The Gallery Assistant, a novel, Out October 14th, 20205. Now, the Out October 20205 is the title, people.

That's just when it was released. We do that every time on the show, right? Kate Belly joins us in the show. We're going to get into it with her book and find out more about her, what she's up to there writing them during books and learning and stuff, and we're going to find out more. She writes historical mystery and contemporary thrillers, fascinated by history from an early age here and a Ph.D. in American art and has variously worked as an antiques appraiser, a museum curator, and a college professor. She's lived all over from Florence, Italy, to Brooklyn, New York, to the deep south to a cottage next to Mnese Gardens in northern France. Today, she lives and works in central Pennsylvania with her husband and son. She's been all over the place, folks. Welcome to the show, Kay. How are you?

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming. Give us a dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? They can find me at capebelly, one-word.com or at Capebelly author at Instagram and TikTok. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book? The new book, The Gallery Assistant, is about a young woman.

Here's the cover. Here it is. The titular gallery assistant named Chloe Harlow, who is suffering from some post-9-11 PTSD and memory loss. So the book takes place in the immediate months following 9-11 in New York City. And one night she goes to a pretty wild party at the newest painter to be represented by the gallery at that woman's loft. And the next morning comes home, comes to work to find out that that woman has been murdered. Chloe was the last person to leave the party and she has no memory of how she got home. And from there, things just spiral, even more out of control in her world.

Wow. That's the spiraling. That'll do it. That's what I found any time I got a bottle of vodka in front of me. Yeah, don't be the last first to leave the party, right? Yeah, yeah. At least not face down. Yeah. So how many books have you written here? This is my fifth published novel. There you go. Congratulations. Thank you. That's quite a, you know, most people can't even get one book out, let alone five.

Now, is this part of a series at all, this new book? Or, uh, or, uh, or, uh, or, uh, any of your other books, part of a series, or are they standalone? That my first four books are part of a series. They're called the Gilded Gotham Historical Mystery Series. They take place in Gilded Age, New York City. There are four books in that series, and they follow a society girl-turned journalist, investigative journalist, very loosely inspired by Nellie Bly, a real investigative journalist in the era, and who teams up with a reclusive millionaire, and they, you know, solve many

murder's most foul all around Gilded Age New York. So if you like the show the Gilded Age or you like Scarlett and the Duke on PBS, those kinds of shows, that series would probably be up your alley. People love these stories. That's what I found. That's why they write books and TV and movies and we tell stories and yada, yada. So now this, so is this kind of a departure from the program you've been operating? Because you put four books out in the series, if I show on Amazon here correctly. And then now this is kind of a stand-alone. Is there a reason you decided to go down that route? You know, it is really a left turn for me, or it was a left turn.

I decided I wanted to write thriller. I just became interested in that while writing the mysteries. I wrote one. I wound up going in a drawer. Maybe I'll come back to it. But that gave me sort of the, you know, the courage to play with this book and this story. This is something that had been banging around in my head a long time. And so, and this one worked out.

So, yeah. There you go. And do you anticipate this might be a series? I probably have to ask that because maybe your audience is like, is she going to make this a four book series? I don't think so. If you read the book or when you hopefully read the book, you'll find that poor Chloe really goes through the ringer.

And I feel like she has had enough adventures. I don't want to give too much away, but I feel like it ends in sort of a nice place that I want to leave it at that. But, you know, never say never if somebody, you know, really wanted a series, if the press or, you know, if that really was in demand, you know, I'll give the people what they want. I could make that work.

Yeah, I've had a few authors that have done that. They're like, yeah, I just spun it off as a one-off and people fell in love with the characters. And like, more, more! And they showed up at the house with pitchforks and flame. And they were like, yeah, give us more or else. And so I had to write another book. Yeah, who am I? Then they had a check from the publisher.

Right. yes if it all went that way 100% I could I'd find more adventures for them you know that would be a funny movie I think they've done movies where it breaks the fourth wall or something where an author writes about a character and somehow the character comes to life into the real life and then there's whatever struggle you know goes on for the

for the narrative but maybe that would be a good that would be a good uh sort of movie where like uh the character comes to life and goes hey man I've had enough I'm done With a gal I'm done I'm not doing any more

of this with you you put me through hell in this book and I've had enough and yeah well you think about some of those long running mystery series

like murder she wrote and you think how many murders can happen in this tiny town you know more and more things this poor town

yeah yeah all of Stephen King's characters have come to life and be like who hurt you man right

so did you find it you know you're kind of writing and let's see, you're writing, this is a thriller or a mystery? You're writing mysteries before, and now you've switched to a thriller genre. Was it hard to broach that? Is it easy to broach that? Because you're kind of in that same darkish vein, maybe?

It's in the same darkish vein, but I think a thriller has different beats. It has different sort of a different energy, right? The characters are in a little bit more danger. Excuse me. And then a mystery where there's sort of always this thing to solve. especially the historical mystery. My historicals, I don't think, are what they call cozy mystery. They're not bloodless.

There's blood. There will be blood. But they're not, neither are they, you know, as quite as danger fraught, perhaps, as what happens in the thriller. So it was a bit of a transition. I think maybe that droard book helped find my footing with the thriller genre as opposed to mystery. And especially after four books with the mystery series, I felt like I knew those characters really well, speaking of knowing your characters, right?

Like, I kind of knew how they were going to act and what they were going to do. But if this is a standalone, it was a whole new set of characters I had to get to know and figure out what their motivations were and what they were going to do in any given situation. Yeah. And, you know, that's when you find out

you get in those situations of crisis and thrillers and danger and lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my. So, do anything in the future maybe you're working on that you want to tease out? Any future books or anything? Yeah, I'm working on a dark academia. I'm an academic. That's my other job.

And I love dark academia novels that take place. Oh, it's a dark academia novel. Yeah. I didn't even know that was a thing. It's a total thing. Yeah. Like I just imagine it's just a really negative thesaurus. No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah. how many words for yeah that was i didn't go to college so that's the only book i can reference it's probably in a college uh itinerary oh i'm sure that's not doing hey they're teaching stephen king at many college kids yeah that's academia then yeah you know i mean we all have to learn to bury body sometimes that's the one thing i found the order i get because you know the enemies tend to pile up and uh you got to have a place to put them and the fridge can only hold so much it can only And you have to know who to call to help you with that, right? Got to have your person.

By the way, that's a quote from Jeffrey Dahmer. Anyway, too soon. Anyway, guys. So anything else you're up to? Any book tours, any signings, maybe anything you want to promote events you might be at here in the future. I'll be in Leesburg, Virginia, at Birch Tree Books. It's in northern Virginia, not very far outside Washington, D.C. on Saturday, November 1st, from 630 to 8.

So if you are in the D.C. North Virginia area, please come say hi. I would love to hang out and talk all things, gallery assistant or mystery thriller, whatever other book you're reading. I love talking books. So that's coming up. A lot of things just happened last week because that was the launch week. The book has been out one week today.

So that's been kind of fun and exciting. But that's my only scheduled event so far. But I think more are going to pop up on the horizon. And I know I've already got a few planned for 2026. So keep an eye on the website. Well, we'll look forward to more works for me and please come back. We'd love to have you back in the future. I would love that.

Thank you so much. There you go. We have all these authors that come back and some of are pretty prolific. Like those one guys, the Jack Ryan folks from, I forget the names of the books. We have all them on and all their books. It's like you guys are pretty wild at your output and stuff. I think we have people in the show every three to six months. And you're like, you write a lot.

Yeah. They're super prolific like that. I'm more of a one book a year kind of gal, but, you know, I would be more than happy to come back and talk about the dark academia when that's out. It's like a college reunion gone wrong. That sounds like my days of attending college parties. I didn't go to college, but I went to college parties. See how that works?

Yeah. Yeah, I just went straight. I just went straight for the learning. I just went straight for the learning. And the drinking and the parting. So, well, this would be fun. Thank you very much, Kate, for coming the show. We really appreciate it.

My pleasure. Thank you so much. And any dot coms you want to plug as we go out? Again, just capebelly.com. That's one word. Or again, at Katebelly, author on Instagram and TikTok. That's where I'm most active. Well, thank you very much for coming the show.

Thanks, thanks for tuning in or upper book where refined books are sold or else, damn it. Don't mean we pull the car over and come back there. her book is entitled The Gallery Assistant The novel out October 14th, 2025. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreason.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, forechess, Chris Foss won the TikTok

Gitty, Facebook.com, Fortresschusvoss, and YouTube.com, Fortess, Chris Foss. Or else, damn it, be good at each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. It's good to threaten the on.