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The music of silence: New Edition (Amadeus Ser.)
By Andrea Bocelli. 2011
Using a third-person narrative, opera singer Bocelli, who as a young boy lost his vision to congenital bilateral glaucoma, describes…
his childhood in Italy and his interest, education, and career in music. Relates challenges he faced and overcame. Originally published in Italian. 2011A spotlight for Harry (A Stepping Stone Book(TM))
By Eric A. Kimmel, Jim Madsen. 2009
Story based on childhood events of Harry Houdini (1874-1926), who became a famous magician and escape artist. Describes Harry and…
his brother Dash learning to walk a tightrope after going to the circus with their family for the first time. For grades 2-4. 2009The fabulous feud of Gilbert & Sullivan
By Jonah Winter, Richard Egielski. 2009
In the late nineteenth century, Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan, who write operas together for a theater called Topsy-Turvydom, have…
a falling-out when Mr. Sullivan refuses to write music for another ridiculous story that is like all the others. Caldecott Medalist Richard Egielski teams up with Jonah Winter for a story about how fights sometime make a stronger friendship (and beautiful music to boot!). For grades K-3. 2009Piano starts here: the young Art Tatum
By Robert Andrew Parker, Robert A. Parker. 2008
The haunted sisters: A Biography of Jimmy Stewart
By Jean Plaidy, Jhan Robbins. 1977
In this sequel to The Three Crowns (RC 39450), Britain is on the eve of the 1688 Glorious Revolution. The…
Protestant Stuart sisters, Mary, the queen, and Anne, the future monarch, are continually haunted by their betrayal of their Catholic father, James II, exiled to France. 1966Songs in the whirlwind
By June Masters Bacher, June M. Bacher. 1992
Poverty continues, and, regardless of their faith, a better life on their barren Texas land seems doubtful for Marvel Harrington…
and her family. The winds blow, the water becomes contaminated, and folks get typhoid. Yet in the midst of all this affliction, Marvel hears from Titus, and hope for a future with him becomes real--until her family decides to move to Oregon. Sequel to No Time for Tears (DB 36077)When the stars went to war: Hollywood and World War II
By Roy Hoopes. 1994
Tells the stories of the roles that Hollywood stars played during World War II, both on and off the screen.…
While many stayed home and worked or had affairs with the spouses of those who went off to war, many others contributed actively to the war effort. Some, like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Jimmy Stewart, and Henry Fonda, enlisted and fought. Some, like Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, and Groucho Marx, raised money. Others, like Marlene Dietrich, Mickey Rooney, and Bob Hope, put their lives at risk by entertaining troopsBandbox: A Novel (Harvest Book Ser.)
By Thomas Mallon. 2004
From the author of Henry and Clara, a dazzling, hilarious novel that captures the heart and soul of New York…
in the Jazz Age.Bandbox is a hugely successful magazine, a glamorous monthly cocktail of 1920s obsessions from the stock market to radio to gangland murder. Edited by the bombastic Jehoshaphat "Joe" Harris, the magazine has a masthead that includes, among many others, a grisly, alliterative crime writer; a shy but murderously determined copyboy; and a burned-out vaudeville correspondent who's lovesick for his loyal, dewy assistant.As the novel opens, the defection of Harris's most ambitious protégé has plunged Bandbox into a death struggle with a new competitor on the newsstand. But there's more to come: a sabotaged fiction contest, the NYPD vice squad, a subscriber's kidnapping, and a film-actress cover subject who makes the heroines of Fosse's Chicago look like the girls next door. While Harris and his magazine careen from comic crisis to make-or-break calamity, the novel races from skyscraper to speakeasy, hops a luxury train to Hollywood, and crashes a buttoned-down dinner with Calvin Coolidge.Thomas Mallon has given us a madcap and poignant book that brilliantly portrays the gaudiest American decade of them all.From the Hardcover edition.Tiger Rag: A Novel
By Nicholas Christopher. 2013
The acclaimed author of Veronica and A Trip to the Stars returns with a dazzling new novel based on one…
of the great legends of musical history. New Orleans, 1900. The virtuoso cornet player Charles "Buddy" Bolden invents jazz, but after a life consumed by tragedy, the groundbreaking sound of his horn vanishes with him. Rumors persist, though, that Bolden recorded a phonograph cylinder, and over the course of a century it evolves into the elusive holy grail of jazz. Florida, the present day. Dr. Ruby Cardillo's life is falling apart. Her husband, a prominent cardiologist, has left her for a twenty-six-year-old. Her daughter, Devon, a once promising jazz pianist, has recently finished an enforced stint picking up trash along the interstate after a drug conviction. Ruby's estranged mother has just died, but not before conjuring up ghosts that Ruby thought she had put behind her long ago. After a long career as a well-respected anesthesiologist, Ruby suddenly jumps the tracks, forgetting to eat and sleep, indulging her every whim, wearing only purple, consuming only bottles of 1988 Château Latour. Then Ruby enlists Devon to accompany her on an impulsive road trip to New York, and both mother and daughter get more than they bargained for, discovering that their own shrouded family history is connected to the tantalizing search for Buddy Bolden's long-lost cylinder. Ranging from turn-of-the-century Louisiana to Roaring Twenties Chicago to contemporary Manhattan, Tiger Rag is at once a moving story of loss and redemption and an intricate historical mystery from one of our most brilliant storytellers. "A literary omnivore, Nicholas Christopher is versed in classical lore and pulp fiction, and his novels [provide] a thrilling amalgam of the two: erudite, lyrical and breathlessly paced."--The New York Times Book ReviewThe Moon Opera
By Howard Goldblatt, Bi Feiyu, Sylvia Li-chun Lin. 2007
The debut novel of one of China's rising young literary talents--a gem of a book that takes a piercing look…
into the world of Chinese opera and its female stars In a fit of diva jealousy, Xiao Yanqiu, star of The Moon Opera, disfigures her understudy with boiling water. Spurned by the troupe, she turns to teaching. Twenty years later, a rich cigarette-factory boss offers to underwrite a restaging of the cursed opera, but only on the condition that Xiao Yanqiu return to the role of Chang'e. So she does, this time believing she has fully become the immortal moon goddess. Set against the drama, intrigue, jealousy, retribution, and redemption of backstage Peking opera, The Moon Opera is a stunning portrait of women in a world that simultaneously reveres and restricts them. Bi Feiyu, one of China's young literary stars, re-creates all the temptations and triumphs of the stage the world over in this gem of a novel.The Moon Opera
By Howard Goldblatt, Bi Feiyu, Sylvia Li. 2007
The debut novel of one of China's rising young literary talents--a gem of a book that takes a piercing look…
into the world of Chinese opera and its female stars In a fit of diva jealousy, Xiao Yanqiu, star of The Moon Opera, disfigures her understudy with boiling water. Spurned by the troupe, she turns to teaching. Twenty years later, a rich cigarette-factory boss offers to underwrite a restaging of the cursed opera, but only on the condition that Xiao Yanqiu return to the role of Chang'e. So she does, this time believing she has fully become the immortal moon goddess. Set against the drama, intrigue, jealousy, retribution, and redemption of backstage Peking opera, The Moon Opera is a stunning portrait of women in a world that simultaneously reveres and restricts them. Bi Feiyu, one of China's young literary stars, re-creates all the temptations and triumphs of the stage the world over in this gem of a novel.Disgraceland: Musicians Getting Away with Murder and Behaving Very Badly
By Jake Brennan. 2019
From the creator of the popular rock 'n' roll true crime podcast, DISGRACELAND comes an off-kilter, hysterical, at times macabre…
book of stories from the highly entertaining underbelly of music history.You may know Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin but did you know he shot his bass player in the chest with a shotgun or that a couple of his wives died under extremely mysterious circumstances? Or that Sam Cooke was shot dead in a seedy motel after barging into the manager's office naked to attack her? Maybe not. Would it change your view of him if you knew that, or would your love for his music triumph? Real rock stars do truly insane thing and invite truly insane things to happen to them; murder, drug trafficking, rape, cannibalism and the occult. We allow this behavior. We are complicit because a rock star behaving badly is what's expected. It's baked into the cake. Deep down, way down, past all of our self-righteous notions of justice and right and wrong, when it comes down to it, we want our rock stars to be bad. We know the music industry is full of demons, ones that drove Elvis Presley, Phil Spector, Sid Vicious and that consumed the Norwegian Black Metal scene. We want to believe in the myths because they're so damn entertaining.DISGRACELAND is a collection of the best of these stories about some of the music world's most beloved stars and their crimes. It will mix all-new, untold stories with expanded stories from the first two seasons of the Disgraceland podcast. Using figures we already recognize, DISGRACELAND shines a light into the dark corners of their fame revealing the fine line that separates heroes and villains as well as the danger Americans seek out in their news cycles, tabloids, reality shows and soap operas. At the center of this collection of stories is the ever-fascinating music industry--a glittery stage populated by gangsters, drug dealers, pimps, groupies with violence, scandal and pure unadulterated rock 'n' roll entertainment.An Unofficial Marriage: A Novel about Pauline Viardot and Ivan Turgenev
By Joie Davidow. 2021
For Fans of Alexander Chee's best-selling novel, The Queen of the Night and opera fans everywhere. Set against the backdrop of the…
tumultuous events of 19th century Europe, An Unofficial Marriage dramatizes the equally tumultuous real-life love affair of two great artists—the famous Russian author, Ivan Turgenev, and the celebrated French opera singer, Pauline Viardot. From the moment he encounters her on the St. Petersburg stage, Ivan falls completely for Pauline. Though Pauline returns his feelings, she is bound by her singular passion for her art and her devotion to her gentle, older husband, Louis. Nevertheless, Ivan pursues Pauline across countries and continents—from Russia to France to Germany to Prussia—and in the decades that follow their fateful meeting, the lives of Pauline, Ivan, and Louis remain permanently intertwined as the lovers face jealousy, separation, the French Revolution of 1848, the cholera epidemic of 1849, the Franco-Prussian War, Turgenev&’s arrest in Russia, Louis&’s heartbreak and resignation, and the highs and lows of their artistic careers. &“You know those unofficial marriages,&” Turgenev would write almost thirty years after meeting Pauline, &“They sometimes turn out more poisonous than the accepted form.&” With beautiful and compelling prose and employing multiple perspectives, Joie Davidow (who herself has a background in opera) illuminates not only the interior lives of these two intensely passionate artists, but also the grand historic moments that Pauline and Ivan experienced and the celebrated figures who moved in their circles—including George Sand, Leo Tolstoy, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Ary Scheffer—providing insight into the dynamic worlds of 19th century opera, literature, art, and politics. Epic in the tradition of the Russian writers whom we encounter, and as romantic and tragic as the operas that Pauline Viardot performs in, An Unofficial Marriage brings to life with great scope and great humanity this captivating story from the past and explores timeless questions about the relationship between art and passion and the complex workings of the human heart.Young Man with a Horn
By Gary Giddins, Dorothy Baker. 1938
Rick Martin loved music and the music loved him. He could pick up a tune so quickly that it didn't…
matter to the Cotton Club boss that he was underage, or to the guys in the band that he was just a white kid. He started out in the slums of LA with nothing, and he ended up on top of the game in the speakeasies and nightclubs of New York. But while talent and drive are all you need to make it in music, they aren't enough to make it through a life. Dorothy Baker's Young Man with a Horn is widely regarded as the first jazz novel, and it pulses with the music that defined an era. Baker took her inspiration from the artistry--though not the life--of legendary horn player Bix Beiderbecke, and the novel went on to be adapted into a successful movie starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Doris Day.Mesmerized
By Alissa Walser. 2010
Mozart's Vienna. A crucible for scientific experimentation and courtly intrigue, as Europe's finest minds vie for imperial favour. In a…
colourful, chaotic private hospital that echoes with the shrieks of hysterical patients, Franz Anton Mesmer is developing a series of controversial cure-alls for body and mind. When he is asked to help restore the sight of a blind musical prodigy favoured by the Empress herself, he senses that fame, and even immortality, is within his grasp. Mesmer knows that he will have to gain her trust if he is to open her eyes. But at what cost to her fragile talent? And will their intimacy result in scandal?Mesmerized
By Alissa Walser. 2010
Mozart's Vienna. A crucible for scientific experimentation and courtly intrigue, as Europe's finest minds vie for imperial favour. In a…
colourful, chaotic private hospital that echoes with the shrieks of hysterical patients, Franz Anton Mesmer is developing a series of controversial cure-alls for body and mind. When he is asked to help restore the sight of a blind musical prodigy favoured by the Empress herself, he senses that fame, and even immortality, is within his grasp. Mesmer knows that he will have to gain her trust if he is to open her eyes. But at what cost to her fragile talent? And will their intimacy result in scandal?The Dark Lady
By Akala. 2020
A natural storyteller with a vision of his own, THE DARK LADY, Akala's debut novel for teens will enthuse and…
entertain teenagers and young adults, showing that reading is a true super-power. A PICKPOCKET WITH AN EXCEPTIONAL GIFTA PRISONER OF EXTRAORDINARY VALUE AN ORPHAN HAUNTED BY DREAMS OF THE MYSTERIOUS DARK LADYHenry is an orphan, an outsider, a thief. He is also a fifteen-year-old invested with magical powers ...This brilliant, at times brutal, first novel from the amazing imagination that is Akala, will glue you to your seat as you are hurled into a time when London stank and boys like Henry were forced to find their own route through the tangled streets and out the other side.Katherine: The classic historical romance
By Anya Seton. 1954
Katherine comes to the court of Edward III at the age of fifteen. The naïve convent-educated orphan of a penniless…
knight is dazzled by the jousts and the entertainments of court. Nevertheless, Katherine is beautiful, and she turns the head of the King's favourite son John of Gaunt. But he is married, and she is soon to be betrothed.A few years later their paths cross again and this time their passion for each other cannot be denied or suppressed. Katherine becomes the prince's mistress, and discovers an extraordinary world of power, pleasure and passion.(P)2009 ISIS Publishing LtdAltar of Blood: Empire IX (Empire series #9)
By Anthony Riches. 2016
'A master of the genre' The TimesThe ninth novel in the thrilling Empire sequence leads Centurion Marcus Aquila and the…
Tungrians to the battlefield that was one of Rome's most disastrous defeats.The Tungrians have no sooner returned to Rome than they find themselves tasked with a very different mission to their desperate exploits in Parthia. Ordered to cross the river Rhenus into barbarian Germany and capture a tribal priestess who may be the most dangerous person on the empire's northern border, they are soon subject to the machinations of an old enemy who will stop at nothing to sabotage their plans before they have even set foot on the river's eastern bank. But after their Roman enemy is neutralised they face a challenge greater still. With two of the Bructeri tribe's greatest treasures in their hands they must regain Roman territory by crossing the unforgiving wilderness that was the graveyard of Roman imperial strategy two hundred years before. And capture by the Bructeri's vengeful chieftain and his warband can only end in one way - a horrific sacrificial death on the tribe's altar of blood.(P)2016 Hodder & StoughtonThis Year, Maybe: From the author of A Gift in December
By Jenny Gladwell. 2021
The new heart-warming novel from the Kindle bestselling author of A Gift in December, Jenny Gladwell, about a widowed mother…
and daughter coming together to pull together the perfect family Christmas.Sometimes you have to fall apart to become whole again... Kate is a successful interior designer with two wonderful kids. Kate is also a recent widow, a grieving daughter and worrying about how to pay the bills. Her life might look perfect from the outside, but making things look better than they are is just how Kate copes. Her mother, Jean, worries about her - but she has her own problems. A mystery from the past has come back to haunt her, and she decides now is the time to put the pieces together. When romance makes an appearance in both their lives, can mother and daughter lay the past to rest - and begin again?(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd