The memory painter / Gwendolyn Womack.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

What if there was a drug that could help you remember past lives?
What if the lives you remembered could lead you to your one true love?
What if you learned that, for thousands of years, a deadly enemy had conspired to keep the two of you apart?

Bryan Pierce is an internationally famous artist whose paintings have dazzled the world. But there's a secret to his success: Every canvas is inspired by an unusually vivid dream. When Bryan awakes, he possesses extraordinary new skills...like the ability to speak obscure languages and an inexplicable genius for chess. All his life, he has wondered if his dreams are recollections, if he is re-experiencing other people's lives.

Linz Jacobs is a brilliant neurogeneticist, absorbed in decoding the genes that help the brain make memories, until she is confronted with an exact rendering of a recurring nightmare at one of Bryan's shows. She tracks down the elusive artist, and their meeting triggers Bryan's most powerful dream yet: visions of a team of scientists who, on the verge of discovering a cure for Alzheimer's, died in a lab explosion decades ago.

As Bryan becomes obsessed with the mysterious circumstances surrounding the scientists' deaths, his dreams begin to reveal what happened at the lab, as well as a deeper mystery that may lead all the way to ancient Egypt. Together, Bryan and Linz start to discern a pattern. But a deadly enemy watches their every move, and he will stop at nothing to ensure that the past stays buried.

A taut thriller and a timeless love story spanning six continents and 10,000 years of history, The Memory Painter by Gwendolyn Womack is a riveting debut novel unlike any you've ever read.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Starred Review. Bryan Pierce has always had vivid nightmares. These disturbing dreams inspire the riveting paintings that have made him an acclaimed artist. When he meets a young geneticist named Lindsay (Linz) Jacobs, who also lives in Boston, she reacts viscerally to his painting of a woman who was burned as a martyr in ancient Rome. Linz is the daughter of a scientist who had worked on a controversial Alzheimer's drug and who is now the head of a huge pharmaceutical firm. He and his partners had experimented with the drug themselves in the past and two had died in a mysterious lab explosion. In this fast-paced first novel, reincarnation is a dangerous business. Bryan and Linz experience the lives and deaths of people in the past, some of them famous, while being pursued each time by a deadly enemy. VERDICT It's best not to try to analyze the ambitious plot of this thriller, which combines romance, fantasy, and adventure; just hang on for a wild and entertaining ride around the world and through the centuries back to ancient Egypt.-Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

In Womack's debut novel, protagonists Bryan, the memory painter of the title, and Linz, a neurogeneticist studying memory, meet by accident in an exhibit of ancient Egyptian art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. They each discover that the other suffers from powerful dreams; Bryan's are the source of pictures he paints in the style of Jan van Eyck. As the plot lurches from one coincidence to the next, it becomes clear to Bryan that the dreams are related, and that he and Linz have known each other in past lives. Indeed, Bryan has been the ancient Roman priest Origenes Adamantius, Russian writer Alexander Pushkin, a Japanese samurai, a scientist in the 1980s who was on the brink of a breakthrough in Alzheimer's research, and van Eyck as well. As a result he can speak 30 languages, and when he falls in love with Linz he knows it's not the first time. Suffering from the excruciating dreams but gaining more and more knowledge, Bryan begins to suspect that Linz's father, the head of a powerful company called Medicor, is somehow complicit in an evil scheme that has lasted millennia. Bryan only has to wait for Linz's dreams to catch up with his for them somehow to save the world from a threat that began with the ancient Egyptians. The chapters recounting their past lives are chock full of interesting historical tidbits, but careening through them feels more like being on a movie-themed ride at Disneyland than reading a novel. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

When neurogeneticist Linz Jacobs spots a painting depicting a scene from her lifelong recurring nightmare, she unknowingly awakens danger hidden in her past. Bryan Pierce, the enigmatic artist who created the painting, reveals that his works are scenes from past lives relived through dreams and that he awakens gifted with the knowledge and skills revealed in the vision. Although it's impossible to reconcile with Linz's scientific training, she senses an otherworldly connection to Bryan and can't convince herself to dismiss his claims. Then Bryan recalls a more recent life as a neuroscientist who, like Linz, pioneered research to cure memory disorders and was killed with his wife when their lab exploded in 1982. Suddenly, the pair find themselves in a dangerous race to discover the secrets buried in their past lives before a malevolent killer can stop them. Well-drawn historical flashbacks, engaging characters, and a twisty ending make this thrilling blend of neuroscience, romance, and ancient worlds good bets for Da Vinci Code and Outlander fans.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2015 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Four scientists receive a grant to study memory in the hope of finding a cure for Alzheimer's and make the discovery of a lifetimeor lifetimes.Womack's debut novel has many beginnings, but the crux of the story starts in 1982, when a research team led by Michael Backer develops an Alzheimer's drug called Renovo that produces startling results. Michael, amazed by what his patients can now remember, begins to wonder what the drug might do for a healthy mindand the story races off at an ever intensifying rate from there, building layer upon layer. Choices made in 1982 have ramifications in the present, and all comes to a head when Bryan Pierce, an artist who paints the extremely lifelike dreams he suffers from, meets Linz Jacobs, a brilliant scientist also troubled by a childhood dream, and is instantly drawn to her. More than that, he remembers her. But the recognition goes far beyond this life. As Bryan and Linz deepen their connection, it becomes clear their dreams are more akin to "remember[ing] an entire life": they've fallen in love in ancient Egypt and ancient Rome; lived as Vikings and musicians and poets. But how does this connect to Renovo? And how can "the human psycheprocess such information?" At times, the complex plot, which covers thousands of years of history when all is said and done, seems to rely on coincidence and circumstance to propel itself toward a conclusion; readers will just have to try their best to ignore this. Womack makes a romantic case for the existence of destiny, though, and does a beautiful jobespecially in the slower-paced "recall" passagesof building emotional depth that can be achieved only by lovers unbound by time. Dive into this sweeping, romantic journey that will leave you breathless and a little unsure of where in time you've landed. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.