During intermission at the famed La Fenice opera house in Venice, Italy, a notoriously difficult and widely disliked German conductor is poisoned—and suspects abound. Guido Brunetti, a native Venetian, sets out to unravel the mystery behind the high-profile murder. To do so, he calls on his knowledge of Venice, its culture, and its dirty politics. Along the way, he finds the crime may have roots going back decades—and that revenge, corruption,...

"Willa Cather's third novel, The Song of the Lark, depicts the growth of an artist, singer Thea Kronborg. In creating Thea's character, Cather was inspired by the Swedish-born immigrant and renowned Wagnerian soprano Olive Fremstad, although Thea's early life also has much in common with Cather's own. Set from 1885 to 1909, the novel traces Thea's long journey from her fictional hometown of Moonstone, Colorado, to her source of inspiration in the...

The Venice commissioner, Guido Brunetti, investigates the murder of a museum director who was involved in the traffic of Chinese antiques. Suspicion falls on a wealthy collector.

Set during the 1920s, Prairie Nocturne finds Susan Duff, the young songbird from Doig's Dancing at the Rascal Fair, now a middle-aged singing coach living in Helena. When her old flame Wes Williamson asks her to mentor his black chauffeur, Monty, she agrees. But racial tensions erupt when Susan's private lessons with Monty attract the attention of the KKK.

At the dawn of rock'n'roll, a down-and-out woman falls for a budding musician. With a ten-city tour.

Greed, lust, power, and murder are words not commonly associated with the world of classical music. Yet this is the setting into which blind Daniel Jacobus, a reclusive, cantankerous violin teacher living in self-imposed exile in rural New England, is inexorably drawn. For Jacobus, who spends his time chain smoking, listening to old LPs, and berating students in the hope they will flee, the evils of that world are epitomized by the "Piccolino" Stradivarius,...

An experimental composer becomes a fugitive after his home microbiology lab, set up to find music in surprising patterns, results in a Homeland Security raid.

In post-World War I England an aspiring singer marries a wealthy war hero only to discover that his family's façade of respectability conceals a terrifying combination of repression, jealousy and violence.

Two-time Edgar Award winner Rupert Holmes–author of the critically acclaimed Where the Truth Lies and creator of the Tony Award-winning musical whodunit The Mystery of Edwin Drood–now fuses gripping suspense and evocative music in an innovative novel of intrigue set in 1940, during the very heart of the Big Band era. Swing is a multimedia experience, it contains musical tracks which give clues to the mystery.Jazz saxophonist and arranger Ray Sherwood,...