Simon Prebble

Drawing on the individual experiences of patients, musicians, composers, and ordinary people, the author explores the complex human response to music, and how music can affect those suffering from a variety of ailments.

For the Wittgenstein family, the summer of 1915 was a time of both prosperity and unease, as the guns of war sound in the distance. But for eldest daughter, Beata, it was a time of awakening. By glimmering Lake Geneva, the Jewish beauty met a young French officer and fell in love. Even though her parents would never accept her marriage to a Catholic, Beata followed her heart anyway. As the two built a new life together, Beata's past would stay with...

"Courageous, insightful and candid thoughts on malady and mortality from one of our most celebrated writers"--Provided by the publisher.

In August, 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton, renowned explorer set sail with 27 men on his ship The Endurance. His plan was to be the first expedition to cross the Antarctic continent. Marooned on four feet of ice, in over 8,000 feet deep water, Shackleton and his crew survived some 635 days and nights, without proper shelter or rations, enduring the harshest conditions imaginable.

In the ruins of Yorkshire's Fountains Abbey lies the body of a man wrapped in a cloak, the face covered by a gas mask. Next to him is a book on alchemy, which belongs to the schoolmaster, a conscientious objector in the Great War. Who is this man, and is the investigation into his death being manipulated by a thirst for revenge?

Meanwhile, the British War Office is searching for a missing man of their own, someone whose war work was so secret

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"In Eastvale, a young Middle Eastern boy is found dead, his body stuffed in a wheelbarrow on the East Side Estate. Detective Superintendent Banks and his team know they must tread carefully to solve this sensitive case. But tensions rise when they learn that the victim was stabbed somewhere else and dumped. Who is the boy, and where did he come from? Then, in a decayed area of Eastvale scheduled for redevelopment, a heroin addict is found dead. Was...

Chief Inspector Alan Banks faces his most personal case, from New York Times best-selling author Peter Robinson. A bullet to the brain abruptly halted a terrified young woman's desperate flight. In her pocket is the name of a policeman whose own life was brutally invaded, mercilessly shaken, and very nearly erased - a policeman who has since gone missing. The dead woman in the car had been running from something - but she didn't run far or fast enough....

Challenged by departmental red tape and a dearth of clues, British detective Peter Diamond must solve the murder of a down-on-her-luck soap opera actress, who was found floating face down in a reservoir.