"Liverpool, 1935: Raised in a strict Catholic family, Viv Byrne knows what's expected of her: marry a Catholic man from her working-class neighborhood and have his children. However, when she finds herself pregnant after a fling with Joshua Levinson, a Jewish man with dreams of becoming a famous Jazz musician, Viv knows that a swift wedding is the only answer. Her only solace is that marrying Joshua will mean escaping her strict mother's scrutiny....

Ballads & bossa novas with quartet and orchestra.

"From T.J. English, the New York Times bestselling author of Havana Nocturne, comes the epic, scintillating narrative of the interconnected worlds of jazz and organized crime in 20th century America"-- "Dangerous Rhythms tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: a relationship fostered in some of 20th century America's most notorious vice districts. For the first half of the century mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial...

An engaging biography of a living musical legend, Oscar Peterson. A man Duke Ellington once called the "maharajah of the piano." Gene Lees carefully builds up the portrait of Peterson, his childhood and what it meant to be black and talented in Montreal in the 1940s, hist three marriages and six children, his musical partners (Ray Brown, Herb Ellis and Ed Thigpen), his musical friends and colleagues (Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum and...