Good classical music fiction
Discover the best classical music fiction books with our curated list. Dive into captivating stories where music and literature harmonize, perfect for classical enthusiasts and book lovers alike.
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An Equal Music
by Vikram Seth
The author of the international bestseller A Suitable Boy returns with a powerful and deeply romantic tale of two gifted musicians. Michael Holme is a violinist, a member of the successful Maggiore Quartet. He has long been haunted, though, by memories of the pianist he loved and left ten years earlier, Julia McNicholl. Now Julia, married and the mother of a small child, unexpectedly reenters his life and the romance flares up once more. Against the magical backdrop of Venice and Vienna, the two lovers confront the truth about themselves and their love, about the music that both unites and divides them, and about a devastating secret that Julia must finally reveal. With poetic, evocative writing and a brilliant portrait of the international music scene, An Equal Music confirms Vikram Seth as one of the world's finest and most enticing writers.
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Murder in C Major
by Sara Hoskinson Frommer
Oliver, Indiana. Quiet streets. Deep roots. Families and neighbors. Young widow Joan Spencer returns, wondering if anyone can really go home again. She finds few familiar faces, but from those old friends spring connections—and reminders of what long memories exist in small towns. Actually Oliver is not so small. It has a busy college where Joan’s son grows fascinated with biological research. A senior center, where she lands the director’s job. An amateur orchestra where she settles into the viola section—and right next to an unpleasant oboist who drops from his chair during rehearsal. Rushed to the hospital, the man dies, if not to universal applause, then to a general sense of relief. A young Japanese violinist is puzzled: the victim displayed all the symptoms of fugu poisoning. The autopsy confirms he’s been murdered. Enter police lieutenant Fred Lundquist. Investigation determines more than one source for the poison, not necessarily the deadly puffer fish, and a wide circle of suspects. He and Joan gradually make connections until—not quite to crashing chords and drum rolls—she realizes they’ve looked at it all the wrong way round...
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Carnal Innocence
by Nora Roberts
New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts provides a potent mix of small-town secrets, scandalous romance, and down-home Southern atmosphere as a young woman searching for some bayou R&R finds herself entangled in a serial killer’s wicked web. Burned out and still reeling from a love affair gone bad, world-class violinist Caroline Waverly goes to her grandparents’ home in Innocence, Mississippi, for some much-needed rest and relaxation. Instead she finds herself overwhelmed all over again—first by Tucker Longstreet, a charming local with a sideline in no-strings-attached relationships, and then by a deadlier, more disturbing development. For Innocence is being stalked by its very own serial killer, whose brutal knife blows have pierced the veil of tranquillity in this sleepy Southern town and left a trail of mutilated female corpses in their wake. When a federal agent arrives to investigate, the town’s deepest secrets bubble to the surface and suspicion turns on Tucker as the most likely suspect. After Caroline finds the latest murder victim floating in the murky waters behind her house, she too is inexorably drawn into the path of a crazed killer who may be closer than she could have ever imagined.
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Orchestrated Death
by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Slider would rather do things his own way, even if that means rubbing the brass the wrong way. He may never make it from London's Metropolitan Police to the more glamorous ranks of Scotland Yard, but to his sergeant, Atherton, he's the best there is.
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The Hallie Lawrence Story
by Joyce Walter
Everything is going smoothly for the extremely handsome, extremely successful, shy Jewish lawyer Hallie Lawrence, until he falls in love with Martha Housewright, the ultimate, irresistable WASP goddess who becomes his central obsession
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Aria
by Susan Segal
When her husband and two small children are killed in an ocean sailing accident, Eve Miller, the sole survivor and narrator of this story, finds refuge in the home of Isabel Stein, an aging opera diva who met Eve in the hospital.
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A Traitor to Memory
by Elizabeth George
When Eugenie Davies is killed by a driver on a quiet London street, her death is clearly no accident. Someone struck her with a car and then deliberately ran over her body before driving off, leaving nothing behind but questions. What brought Eugenie Davies to London on a rainy autumn night? Why was she carrying the name of the man who found her body? Who among the many acquaintances in her complicated and tragic life could have wanted her dead? And could her murder have some connection to a twenty-eight-year-old musical wunderkind, a virtuoso violinist who several months earlier suddenly and inexplicably lost the ability to play a single note? For Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, whose own domestic life is about to change radically, these questions are only the first in an investigation that leads him to walk a fine line between personal loyalty and professional honor. Assigned to the case by his superior, Superintendent Malcolm Webberly, Lynley learns that Webberly's first murder investigation as a DI over twenty years ago involved Eugenie Davies and a sensational criminal trial. Yet what is truly damaging is what Webberly already knows and no doubt wants Lynley to keep concealed. Now the pressure is on Lynley to find Eugenie Davies' killer. For not only is he putting his own career into jeopardy, but he is also attempting to safeguard the careers of his longtime partners Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata. Together, they must untangle the dark secrets and darker passions of a family whose history conceals the truth behind a horrific crime. From the Hardcover edition.
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Don Giovanna
by Amanda Prantera
Life begins to imitate art when a group of well-heeled expatriates, living in the Tuscan countryside, decide to stage an amateur production of Don Giovanni. Joanna Volpi knows that her handsome Italian husband is having yet another affair, but now she has had enough of her married life the way it is, and has a die of her own to cast.
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Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different countries and continents become compatriots. Without the demands of the world to shape their days, life on the inside becomes more beautiful than anything they had known before. At once riveting and impassioned, the narrative becomes a moving exploration of how people communicate when music is the only common language. Friendship, compassion, and the chance for great love lead the characters to forget the real danger that has been set in motion and cannot be stopped. Ann Patchett has written a novel that is as lyrical and profound as it is unforgettable. Bel Canto engenders in the reader the very passion for art and the language of music that its characters discover. As a reader, you find yourself fervently wanting this captivity to continue forever, even though you know that real life waits on the other side of the garden wall. A virtuoso performance by one of our best and most important writers, Bel Canto is a novel to be cherished.
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The Music Room
by Dennis McFarland
A debut novel of haunting beauty and rare sensibility that tracks a young man's search for the causes of his brother's suicide.