M. Terrill
Author
Publication: October 13, 2026 (Koehler Books)
In 1950 Thomas Barlow, a violin dealer in Manhattan, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend and fellow WWII veteran Jonathan DeWitt, who is seeking his appraisal for an old Italian cello. The cello is purported to be the work of Andrea Guarneri, a famous luthier from Cremona. The deeper Barlow dives into his search for information, the more certain he becomes that the cello is not the work of Andrea Guarneri. This revelation propels him unrelentingly towards the confrontation he has tried for years to avoid with Jon DeWitt, with whom he shares a dangerous secret he’d thought was buried forever under the war-torn ground in Europe.
In Italy, 1693, Pietro Guarneri emerges from an unspeakable tragedy to find himself snarled in a treacherous political web, due to the meddling of his employer, the Duchess Gonzaga of Mantua. With the sole aim of protecting the family he has left and concealing the identity of the female apprentice he smuggles into his workshop to teach, Pietro reluctantly begins constructing the only cello of his instrument-making career. The result will alter the foundations of Pietro’s life, and reverberate through the centuries, shrouding the truth of the cello’s origins in secrecy.
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Hospital of Mercy
In development.
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In September, 1711, on the eve of Antonio Vivaldi's reinstatement as the orchestral director at the famed Ospedale della Pieta in Venice, a Jewish slave escapes the Ottoman warship where he has been imprisoned for six years. He arrives in the city intending to drown himself in one of the canals, to escape the torment his life has become. There is only one problem; the canals of Venice have run bone-dry.
The dry canals threaten to derail Venice's Carnival season, a grim prospect for the new soloist in the Ospedale's orchestra, and her benefactor, the formidable Admiral of the Venetian Arsenal.
As the tales of these three characters become ever more entangled, their success, safety, and indeed their survival, depends more and more upon the outcome of the fragile alliances they have forged with one another.