Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 80 items
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. 2011Piano starts here: the young Art Tatum
By Robert Andrew Parker, Robert A. Parker. 2008
Songs 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)Away from the dead
By David Bergen. 2023
From Giller Prize-winning novelist David Bergen, an electrifying novel set in early-twentieth century Ukraine amidst the chaos of revolution. As…
anarchists, Bolsheviks, and the White Army come and go, each claiming freedom and justice, David Bergen tells a deceptively stunning story of the restorative power of love amidst the destruction of warThe Villa: Escape to Sicily with the Number One Bestseller
By Rosanna Ley. 2014
THE #1 KINDLE BESTSELLER. An unforgettable story set off the sun-soaked coast of Sicily for fans of Dinah Jefferies, Victoria…
Hislop and Santa Montefiore.'The perfect holiday companion' - Heat'The ultimate feel-good read' - Candis'Sun-soaked escapism' - Best**********When Tess Angel receives a solicitor's letter inviting her to claim her inheritance - the Villa Sirena, perched on a clifftop in Sicily - she is stunned. Her only link to the island is through her mother, Flavia, who left Sicily during World War II and cut all contact with her family. When Tess goes to Sicily, Flavia realises the secrets from her past are about to be revealed and decides to try to explain her actions. Meanwhile, Tess' teenage daughter Ginny is stressed by college, by her blooming sexuality and filled with questions that she longs to ask her father, if only she knew where he was...********SEE WHAT EVERYONE IS SAYING ABOUT ROSANNA LEY:'An impeccably researched and deftly written narrative that kept me hooked until the end' - Kathryn Hughes, bestselling author of The Letter 'Loved it from start to finish. A brilliant holiday read' - Amazon reviewer'Perfect for fans of Santa Montefiore, Victoria Hislop and Leah Fleming' - Candis 'On so many levels a fantastic read' - Amazon reviewer'A fascinating story with engaging themes' - Dinah Jefferies, bestselling author of The Tea Planter's Wife 'Warm, enthralling, one of my favourite authors' - Amazon reviewerAmazing People of London: Inspirational Stories
By Charles Margerison. 2010
As you walk around historic London, you are traveling in the footsteps of amazing people including Charles Dickens, Florence Nightingale,…
Charlie Chaplin, Emmeline Pankhurst and Winston Churchill. In their different ways, they made major contributions to London, which in turn helped make the city what it is today. A city tour unlike any other, Amazing People of London takes you on a fascinating journey through the history of one of the world's most celebrated cities. Through BioViews®, you can meet those who contributed to the music, the business, the politics and other vital and fascinating aspects of London. A BioView® is a short biographical story, similar to an interview. These unique stories provide an easy way of learning about amazing people who made major contributions and changed our world.A Man of Genius
By Janet Todd. 2016
"Strange and haunting, a gothic novel with a modern consciousness." Philippa Gregory"A quirky, darkly mischievous novel about love, obsession and…
the burden of charisma, played out against the backdrop of Venice's watery, decadent glory." Sarah Dunant'A mesmerizing story of love and obsession in nineteenth century Venice: dark and utterly compelling."Natasha Solomons"Intriguing and entertaining; a clever, beguiling debut.Todd knows her Venice backwards."Salley Vickers"Revealing, surprising, compelling, gripping." Miriam Margolyes, actressA Man of Genius portrays a psychological journey from safety into obsession and secrecy. It mirrors a physical passage from flamboyant Regency England through a Europe conquered by Napoleon.Ann, a successful writer of cheap Gothic novels, becomes obsessed with Robert James, regarded by many, including himself, as a genius, with his ideas, his talk, and his band of male followers. However, their relationship becomes tortuous, as Robert descends into violence and madness. The pair leaves London for occupied Venice, where Ann tries to cope with the monstrous ego of her lover. Forced to flee with a stranger, she delves into her past, to be jolted by a series of revelations--about her lover, her parentage, the stranger, and herself. Janet Todd is known for her works about Mary Wollstonecraft, Aphra Behn, the Shelley circle, and Jane Austen. Born in Wales, her wandering childhood in the United Kingdom, Bermuda, and Sri Lanka led to work as an academic in Ghana, the United States, and United Kingdom. Her passion has been for women writers, the largely unknown and the famous. A former president of Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, she lives in Cambridge and Venice.London Triptych
By Jonathan Kemp. 2013
"London itself is as powerful a presence here as the three gay men whose lives it absorbs."?The Times Literary Supplement"Vivid…
and visceral, London Triptych cuts deep to reveal the hidden layers of a secret history."?Jake Arnott, author of The Long FirmRent boys, aristocrats, artists, and criminals populate this sweeping novel in which author Jonathan Kemp skillfully interweaves the lives and loves of three very different men in gay London across the decades.In the 1890s, a young man named Jack apprentices as a rent boy and discovers a life of pleasure and excess that leads to new friendships, most notably with the soon-to-be-infamous Oscar Wilde. A century later in 1998, David tells his own tale of unashamed decadence from prison, recalling life as a young man arriving in the city in the mid-'80s just as the scourge of AIDS hit. Where their paths cross, in the politically sensitive 1950s, when gay men were the target of police and politicians alike, the artist Colin tentatively explores his sexuality while working on his painting "London Triptych."Moodily atmospheric and rich with history, London Triptych is a sexy, resplendent portrait of the politics and pleasures of queer life in one of the world's most fascinating cities.Jonathan Kemp lives in London, where he currently teaches creative writing at Birkbeck College. London Triptych, his first novel, was published in the United Kingdom in 2010 and won the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award.A Jew Must Die
By Jacques Chessex, Donald Wilson. 1973
Praise for A Jew Must Die:"Chessex, our new Flaubert, has no equal when describing horror without flinching, screaming sotto voce…
and exploring guilt in taut prose."--Le Nouvel Observateur"A masterpiece. Beauty of the world, ubiquity of evil, God's silence, it's all there, delivered like a slap to the face."--Le Point"A great author explores a nightmare not as anachronistic as it might appear."--L'HebdoA novel based on a true story.On April 16, 1942, a handful of Swiss Nazis in Payerne lure Arthur Bloch, a Jewish cattle merchant, into an empty stable and kill him with a crowbar. Europe is in flames, but this is Switzerland, and Payerne, a rural market town of butchers and bankers, is more worried about unemployment and local bankruptcies than the fate of nations across the border. Fernand Ischi, leader of the local Nazi cell, blames it all on the town's Jewish population and wants to set an example, thinking the German embassy would be grateful. Ischi's dream of becoming the local gauleiter is shattered, however, when the milk containers used to dissimulate Bloch's body parts is discovered floating in a lake nearby, leading to his arrest.Jacques Chessex, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, is one of Switzerland's greatest authors. He knew the murderers, went to school with their children, and has written a terse, implacable story that has awakened memories in a country that seems to endlessly rediscover dark areas of its past.Bandbox: 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 ReviewLiar Moon
By Ben Pastor. 2001
Praise for Ben Pastor's Lumen: "Pastor's plot is well crafted, her prose sharp. . . . A disturbing mix of…
detection and reflection."--Publishers Weekly "Rivets the reader with its twist of historical realities. A historical piece, it faithfully reproduces the grim canvas of war. A character study, it captures the thoughts and actions of real people, not stereotypes."--The Free Lance-Star "And don't miss Lumen by Ben Pastor. . . . An interesting, original, and melancholy tale."--Literary Review Italy, September 1943. The Italian government switches sides and declares war on Germany. The north of Italy is controlled by the fascist puppets of Germany; the south liberated by Allied forces fighting their way up the peninsula. Having survived hell on the Russian front, Wehrmacht major and aristocrat Baron Martin von Bora is sent to Verona. He is ordered to investigate the murder of a prominent local fascist: a bizarre death threatening to discredit the regime's public image. The prime suspect is the victim's twenty-eight-year-old widow Clara. Haunted by his record of opposition to SS policies in Russia, Bora must watch his step. Against the backdrop of relentless anti-partisan warfare and the tragedy of the Holocaust, a breathless chase begins. Ben Pastor, born and now back in Italy, lived for thirty years in the United States, working as a university professor in Vermont. The first in the Martin Bora series, Lumen, was published by Bitter Lemon Press in May 2011.The 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.25 Days 'til Christmas: The perfect feel-good holiday romance to curl up with this festive season
By Poppy Alexander. 2018
'a fabulous uplifting, festive, feel-good, joyous read that will leave you smiling from ear to ear.' Netgalley reviewerChristmas is a…
time to get together... Kate Thompson used to love Christmas. But that was before her husband went away with the army and didn't come home. Now she can hardly stand the festive season. But Kate knows there is more to life than this, and her son Jack needs a Christmas to remember. What she needs is a Christmas miracle, and if there isn't one on its way, she'll just have to make her own. So begins Kate's advent countdown to the best Christmas ever. She has it all planned out, but you can't plan for the unexpected, and when her life starts to unravel can her friends and the community around her help her save Christmas for all of them...?Curl up and countdown to Christmas with a heart-warming festive romance, perfect for fans of Jenny Colgan, Debbie Johnson, and Holly Martin.'A great Christmas read' Netgalley reviewerDisgraceland: 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."Love, suspense, nature and superstition are woven together in this powerful novel" MAJA LUNDE, author of The History of Bees"Lars…
Mytting writes with an insight, empathy and integrity few others can match" JO NESBØ"An exquisitely atmospheric novel . . . The Bell in the Lake does what fiction promises: to steal you away to another world and ask you, if unfairly, to leave a little of your heart behind" DEREK B. MILLER, author of Norwegian by Night"Lyrical, melancholy and with beautifully drawn characters, this pitches old beliefs against new ways with a haunting delicacy that rings true." DAILY MAILTHE TIMES' "Historical Fiction Book of the Month"The first in a rich historical trilogy that draws on legend, by a literary craftsman and the author of The Sixteen Trees of the Somme Norway, 1880. Winter is hard in Butangen, a village secluded at the end of a valley. The lake has frozen, and for months the ground is too hard to bury the dead. Astrid Hekne dreams of a life beyond all this, beyond marriage, children, and working the land to the end of her days. Then Pastor Kai Schweigaard takes over the small parish, with its 700-year-old stave church carved with pagan deities. The two bells in the tower were forged by Astrid's forefather in the sixteenth century, in memory of conjoined twins Halfrid and Gunhild Hekne. They are said to hold supernatural powers. The villagers are wary of the pastor and his resolve to do away with their centuries-old traditions, though Astrid also finds herself drawn to him. And then a stranger arrives from Dresden, with grand plans for the church itself. For headstrong Astrid this may be a provocation too far.Talented architecture student Gerhard Schönauer is an improbable figure in this rugged community. Astrid has never met anyone like him; he seems so different, so sensitive. She finds that she must make a choice: for her homeland and the pastor, or for an uncertain future in Germany. Then the bells begin to ring . . .Translated from the Norwegian by Deborah DawkinAn 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.Lord of All the Dead: A Nonfiction Novel
By Javier Cercas. 2019
"A remarkable act of personal history: brave, revelatory and unflinchingly honest" WILLIAM BOYD"There is no-one writing in English like this:…
engaged humanity achieving a hard-won wisdom" DAVID MILLS, The TimesLord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war. The author revisits Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to research the life of Manuel Mena. This ancestor, dearly loved by Cercas' mother, died in combat at the age of nineteen during the battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest episode in Spain's history. Who was Manuel Mena? A fascist hero whose memory is an embarrassment to the author, or a young idealist who happened to fight on the wrong side? And how should we judge him, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, interpreting history from our supposed omniscience and the misleadingperspective of a present full of automatic answers, that fails to consider the particularities of each personal and family drama?Wartime epics, heroism and death are some of the underlying themes of this unclassifiable novel that combines road trips, personal confessions, war stories and historical scholarship, finally becoming an incomparable tribute to the author's mother and the incurable scars of an entire generation.A Place to Belong: A gripping, heartwrenching saga set in World War Two Ireland
By Cathy Mansell. 2019
Set against the glorious backdrop of World War Two Ireland, this dramatic, emotional and romantic novel is perfect for fans…
of Maeve Binchy, Lorna Cook, Tracy Rees and Jenny Ashcroft!'A romantic saga writer to watch' PETERBOROUGH TELEGRAPHShe lost everything in one night. Now she must fight for happiness.It's 1943 and Ireland has escaped the worst of the war raging in Europe, but life is not without its hardships. When fire breaks out at the convent in Cavan where she has spent the past ten years, orphan Eva Fallon barely escapes with her life.She's offered a bed for the night by Ma Scully, whilst her nephew Cathal, visiting from Dublin, helps battle the blaze. Seventeen-year-old Eva has never known such kindness but she's too proud to take advantage, and finds a job at Blackstock's farm, setting in motion a chain of events that will change her life forever.Amidst tragedy and hardship, the only ray of light is the friendship of Ma Scully and her growing, secret love for Cathal. And through it all Eva clings to her hope that one day she will find a place where she can truly belong.Don't miss Cathy Mansell's next powerfully heartrending family saga of three sisters in 1950s Ireland - The Dublin Girls - out now! Here's what readers are saying:'Glorious - a cross between Maeve Binchy and Catherine Cookson' 5* early reader review'A superb saga' PETERBOROUGH TELEGRAPH'A heart-warming story full of characters you'll come to love' ROSIE GOODWIN'Page-turning and compelling... Most highly recommended' MARGARET KAINE'Rarely have I read a book where every character springs from the pages so authentically' JEAN CHAPMAN'A warm-hearted, engaging story' MARGARET JAMES, WRITING MAGAZINE