The Lucy Variations

The Lucy Variations

Sara Zarr

Fiction Z191ℓ  

 

Lucy Beck-Moreau once had a promising future as a concert pianist. The right people knew her name, her performances were booked months in advance, and her future seemed certain.

That was all before she turned fourteen.

Now, at sixteen, it's over. A death, and a betrayal, led her to walk away. That leaves her talented ten-year-old brother, Gus, to shoulder the full weight of the Beck-Moreau family expectations. Then Gus gets a new piano teacher who is young, kind, and interested in helping Lucy rekindle her love of piano -- on her own terms. But when you're used to performing for sold-out audiences and world-famous critics, can you ever learn to play just for yourself?

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr takes readers inside one girl's struggle to reclaim her love of music and herself. To find joy again, even when things don't go according to plan. Because life isn't a performance, and everyone deserves the chance to make a few mistakes along the way. 

(From publisher.)

Chopsticks: A Novel

Chopsticks: A Novel

Jessica Anthony & Rodrigo Corral

Fiction An867c

Glory is a piano prodigy. After her mother died, Glory retreated into herself and her music. Her father raised her with the goal of playing sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall and across the globe. Brilliant and lonely, Glory is drawn to Frank, who moves in next door. She loses herself in his paintings and drawings, mix CDs and late-night IM conversations. Soon, Frank becomes both her connection to the world--and her escape from reality.

Before long, Glory is unable to pay anything but the song "Chopsticks"; F and G notes moving closer together, and farther apart.

Now Glory has disappeared.  But nothing is what it seems. And we must decide what is real, what is imagined, and what has been madness all along....