Classical music can be a dangerous pastime... What with love affairs, their conductor dropping dead, a stolen cello and no money, Stockwell Park Orchestra is having a fraught season. After Mrs Ford-Hughes is squashed and injured by a dying guest conductor mid-concert, she and her husband withdraw their generous financial backing, leaving the orchestra broke and unsure of its future. Cellist Erin suggests a recovery plan, but since it involves their unreliable leader, Fenella, playing a priceless Stradivari cello which then goes missing, it’s not a fool-proof one. Joshua, the regular conductor, can’t decide which affair to commit to, while manager David’s nervous tic returns at every doom-laden report from the orchestra’s treasurer. There is one way to survive, but is letting a tone-deaf diva sing Strauss too high a price to pay? And will Stockwell Park Orchestra live to play another season? What people are saying about Life, Death and Cellos: “I was charmed... a very enjoyable read.” Marian Keyes “Life, Death and Cellos is a witty and irreverent musical romp, full of characters I’d love to go for a pint with. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the Stockwell Park Orchestra and can't wait for the next book in the series.” Claire King, author of The Night Rainbow “Life, Death and Cellos is that rare thing – a funny music book. Rogers knows the world intimately, and portrays it with warmth, accuracy and a poetic turn of phrase. Sharp, witty and richly entertaining.” Lev Parikian, author of Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? “With its retro humour bordering on farce, this novel offers an escape into the turbulent (and bonkers) world of the orchestra.” Isabel Costello, author of Paris Mon Amour “Dodgy post-rehearsal curries, friendly insults between musicians, sacrosanct coffee-and-biscuit breaks, tedious committee meetings: welcome to the world of the amateur orchestra. Throw in a stolen Stradivarius, an unexpected fatality and the odd illicit affair and you have Life, Death and Cellos, the first in a new series by Isabel Rogers.” Rebecca Franks, BBC Music Magazine “...a very funny tale of musical shenanigans set in the febrile atmosphere of the Stockwell Park Orchestra” Ian Critchley

A delightful biography of a celebrated Stradivarius cello and an inviting overview of cello music and its preeminent composers and performers by world-famous concert cellist Carlos Prieto.

'Just as a cello's voice is divided across four strings, each with its own colour and character, this is a journey in four parts, in search of four players and their instruments...' In Cello, Kate Kennedy weaves together the lives of four remarkable cellists who suffered various forms of persecution, injury and misfortune. The Hungarian Jewish cellist and composer Pál Hermann managed to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo for much of the Second World War but was eventually captured and murdered. Lise Cristiani, the first female professional cello soloist, undertook an epic – and ultimately fatal – concert tour of Siberia in the 1850s, taking with her one of the world's greatest Stradivari cellos. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was incarcerated in both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen camps, only surviving because she was the cellist in the Auschwitz-Birkenau women's orchestra. Amedeo Baldovino of the Trieste Piano Trio was forced to jump from a burning ship with his 'Mara' Stradivari, losing the cello, and nearly losing his own life when the boat was shipwrecked near Buenos Aires. Counterpointing the themes raised by these extraordinary stories are a sequence of interludes that draw together the author's reflections on the nature and history of the cello, and her many interviews and encounters with contemporary cellists. Kate Kennedy's own relationship with the cello is a complicated one. As a teenager, she suffered an injury to her arm that imposed severe limitations on her career as a performer on the instrument that was her first love. She realised that, in order to start to understand what the cello meant to her, she needed to find out what the cello – and, crucially, the absence of the cello – had meant to some other cellists, past and present. Kate Kennedy has written an eloquent and multitextured homage to this warmest of stringed instruments – part quest narrative, part detective story, part philosophical meditation.

Monterini, Italy. 1921. Yacobo Levi, an intellectual dreamer, works in the family bookshop. Angelo Ghione, a contadino, makes good wine by singing to the grapes. Lifetime best friends, their Jewish and Catholic families live side by side amidst a backdrop of village communal life, Etruscan tales and the growth of Benito Mussolini. Born on the same day, their children grow up and fall in love. When the 1938 racial laws are passed, the love between Bella and Rico thrives amidst and perhaps because of the fear and uncertainty. When Angelo discovers their liaison he suggests they marry but life is complicated and tensions simmer beneath the surface of love and friendship. When war is declared on the day of Bella's wedding to Michele a fellow Jew, the peaceful village they live in is torn apart, and the Levis find themselves displaced and fighting for their lives. Will life ever be the same again?The Tears of Monterini is a story of love and betrayal, loyalty and friendship. Inspired by true events, this beautifully written debut will appeal to readers interested in history, Italy, romance, family dynamics and conflict.

Tom feels out of place. He's attracted to boys, not girls, and he's a promising cellist, which the school bullies see as a reason to pick on him. The story follows him through his adolescence, as he becomes more aware of his sexuality, and more commited to his music. This is set against the background of a rising tide of hysteria on Tom's estate and a witchhunt against suspected paedophiles. Through it all, Tom moves towards a satisfying resolution.

The lives of three families are vividly chronicled in this novel that details 40 years during the Cold War and its aftermath. The experiences of each family—one British, one Hungarian, and one Russian—reflect the brutality, danger, bravery, heartbreak, hope, and disappointment during the days when the world was divided by the Iron Curtain. The book builds on confidential Communist Party documents released by President Yeltsin to Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky and the author’s numerous conversations with real people who were persecuted or imprisoned by the Gestapo or KGB. It is an account that skillfully portrays how the children, as they grew up, and their families in their respective countries were affected by world events—including the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Solidarity movement in Poland in the early 1980s, and the end of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991.

The second installment in Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint challenges the traditional solemnity that characterizes nonfiction books of grief, loss, and sorrow. “Few readers will fail to be gripped by this tragically common story about death and what comes after for those left behind . . . A haunting and thought-provoking consideration of death and ‘how utterly it rips apart our lives.'” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review Planet Claire is the story of the untimely death of the author’s wife and his candid account of the following year of madness and grief. As his life unravels, Porter analyzes his sadness with growing interest. He talks to Claire as if to evoke a presence, to mark a space for memory. He reports on his daily walks and shares observations of life’s sadness, while reminiscing about various moments in their life together. Like Orpheus, the author searches for a lost love, and what he finds is not the dog of doom but flashes of an intimate symmetry that brighten the darkest places of sorrow. The second title from Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint, Planet Claire takes readers on a journey of sorrow that recalls memorable works by C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed), Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking), and Julian Barnes (Levels of Life). Porter’s memoir, however, is also playful, quirky, and self-ironic in a way that challenges the genre’s traditional solemnity. Like the novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, this is an unpredictably funny account of heartbreak, as if to say there’s something about the magnitude of loss that troubles even earnestness.