Whether you’re a fan of the historical novel or a science-based inquiry into music’s effect on the human brain, a mystery lover or a Beatles fan… there’s something for everyone who loves music on this list of new and classic books of fiction and nonfiction, short stories and memoirs, punk tales and Mozart travelogue.
FICTION
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall
By Kazuo Ishiguro, 2009 (Vintage)
From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize-winning novel, “The Remains of the Day” comes an inspired sequence of stories as affecting as it is beautiful.
With the clarity and precision that have become his trademarks, Kazuo Ishiguro interlocks five short pieces of fiction to create a world that resonates with emotion, heartbreak, and humor. Here is a fragile, once famous singer, turning his back on the one thing he loves; a music junky with little else to offer his friends but opinion; a songwriter who inadvertently breaks up a marriage; a jazz musician who thinks the answer to his career lies in changing his physical appearance; and a young cellist whose tutor has devised a remarkable way to foster his talent. For each, music is a central part of their lives and, in one way or another, delivers them to an epiphany.
Music & Silence
By Rose Tremain, 2000 (Vintage)
In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish court to join King Christian IV’s royal orchestra. From the moment when he realizes that the musicians have to perform in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, he understands that he’s come to a place where the opposing states of light and dark, good and evil, are waging war to the death. Designated the king’s “Angel” because of his good looks, he finds himself falling in love with the young woman who is the companion of the king’s adulterous and estranged wife, Kirsten. With his loyalties fatally divided, how will Peter Claire find the path that will realize his hopes and save his soul?
With a sure, alchemical touch and the narrative finesse that always turns her histories into a kind of magic, Rose Tremain has fashioned a rich, provocative historical romance as pungent as Denmark’s salty air. This is a tale of opposites: light and darkness, tenderness and violence, music and silence.
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
By Oscar Hijuelos, 1989 (Publishers Weekly)
Brothers Nestor and Cesar Camillo arrive from Cuba in 1949 with dreams of becoming famous mambo musicians. This memorable novel traces the arc of the two brothers’ lives—one charismatic and macho, the other soulful and sensitive—from Havana to New York, from East Coast clubs and dance halls to the heights of musical fame.
The basis for a popular film, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love “tells of the triumphs and tragedies that befall two men blessed with gigantic appetites and profoundly melancholic hearts… Hijuelos has depicted a world as enchanting as that in Garcia Marquez’s ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’.”
Bel Canto
By Ann Patchett, 2001 (Harper Perennial)
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. 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 takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
Patchett’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
Angels’ Blood: Murder in the Chorus
By Roberta Mantell, 2025 (Indies United Publishing House, LLC)
It is concert night for the New York Luminoso Chorus, and the conductor is behaving strangely. When a leading soprano is found dead backstage, arts reporter Piper Morgan rushes to the scene and covers the murder for “The New York News.”
The next day, a dispute over two identical music manuscripts erupts in the chorus, drawing Piper to the plight of a forgotten 19th century composer, Lisha Lovington, whose unheard “Requiem” will soon be premiered by the chorus. Did Lovington plagiarize the famous composer rumored to be her lover? If so, the conductor has vowed to strike her name from the music.
Searching Lovington’s old letters for evidence, Piper finds a bombshell—a hundred-year-old coverup that, if revealed, would rock today’s music world. Then a second chorus member is murdered, and Piper realizes her quest for the truth could kill her.
NONFICTION
John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs
By Ian Leslie, 2025 (Celadon Books)
“It is stunning to follow Leslie’s insights into how far and fast John and Paul traveled, how profound their preternatural alliance was, and how epic their heroic journey. I’m sorry John isn’t here to read this book. I hope if Paul does read it he feels the depth of appreciation and gratitude and intelligence it contains.” ―The New York Times
John Lennon and Paul McCartney knew each other for twenty-three years, from 1957 to 1980. This book is the myth-shattering biography of a relationship that changed the cultural history of the world. Few other musical partnerships have been rooted in such a deep, intense and complicated personal relationship.
John and Paul’s relationship was defined by its complexity: compulsive, tender and tempestuous; full of longing, riven by jealousy. Like the band, their relationship was always in motion, never in equilibrium for long. John & Paul traces its twists and turns and reveals how these shifts manifested themselves in the music. The two of them shared a private language, rooted in the stories, comedy and songs they both loved as teenagers, and later, in the lyrics of Beatles songs. In “John & Paul,” acclaimed writer Ian Leslie uses the songs they wrote to trace the shared journey of these two compelling men before, during, and after The Beatles
I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone
By Nina Simone, 1993 (Da Capo Press)
James Baldwin used to tell Nina Simone, “This is the world you have made for yourself, now you have to live in it.” Simone has created for herself a world of magnificent peaks. Often compared to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, Simone is known as one of the greatest singers of her generation. She has recorded forty-three albums, ranging from blues to jazz to folk, and her hits like “I Loves You, Porgy,” “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” “I Put a Spell on You,” and “Mississippi Goddam” have confirmed her as an enduring force in popular music. Her song “Young, Gifted, and Black” became the anthem for the Civil Rights Movement and thrust her beyond international stardom into the center of activism. But such worlds as Simone’s are not without their grim valleys: disastrous marriages, arrest and the threat of imprisonment, mental breakdown, poverty, and attempted suicide. She has survived these trials and continues to perform throughout Europe and the United States. With undiminished passion and in her unconquerable voice, this is Nina Simone’s powerful memoir of her tempestuous life.
Nina Simone’s Gum: A Memoir of Things Lost and Found
By Warren Ellis, 2021 (Faber & Faber)
‘Such a mad, happy book about art and music and obsession. I’m so glad I got to read it. It made the world feel lighter.’ –Neil Gaiman
“I hadn’t opened the towel that contained her gum since 2013. The last person to touch it was Nina Simone, her saliva and fingerprints unsullied. The idea that it was still in her towel was something I had drawn strength from. I thought each time I opened it some of Nina Simone’s spirit would vanish. In many ways that thought was more important than the gum itself.”
On Thursday, July 1, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave’s Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis, Australian musician, composer and member of the rock groups Dirty Three and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone’s piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, a conduit that would eventually take Ellis back to his childhood and his relationship with found objects, growing in significance with every passing year.
In 2019, Cave—his collaborator and great friend—asked Warren if there was anything he could contribute to display in his “Stranger Than Kindness” exhibition. Warren realized the time had come to release the gum. Together they agreed it should be housed in a glass case like a holy relic. Worrying the gum would be damaged or lost, Warren decided to first have it cast in silver and gold, sparking a chain of events that no one could have predicted. “Nina Simone’s Gum” is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love.
Re-Sisters: The Lives and Recordings of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe and Cosey Fanni Tutti
By Cosey Fanni Tutti, 2022 (Faber & Faber)
From the acclaimed author of Art Sex Music comes a vital meditation on womanhood, creativity and self-expression, and a revelatory exploration into the lives of three visionary artists.
In 2018, boundary-breaking visual and sonic artist Cosey Fanni Tutti received a commission to write the soundtrack to a film about Delia Derbyshire, the pioneering electronic composer who influenced the likes of Aphex Twin and the Chemical Brothers. While researching Delia’s life, Cosey became immersed in her story and uncovered some fascinating parallels with her own life. At the same time Cosey began reading about Margery Kempe, the 15th century mystic visionary who wrote the first English language autobiography.
Re-sisters is the story of three women consumed by their passion for life, a passion they expressed through music, art and lifestyle; they were undaunted by the consequences they faced in pursuit of expanding and enriching their lives and unwilling to conform to the societal and cultural norms of their time.
Waiting on the Moon
By Peter Wolf, 2025 (Little, Brown & Company)
In the tradition of classic collections of observations and musings such as Christopher Isherwood’s “I Am a Camera” and Truman Capote’s “The Dogs Bark,” “Waiting on the Moon” is a treasure trove of vignettes from a legendary musical figure whose career spans more than six decades and is still going strong.
Peter Wolf grew up in the Bronx, a child of “fellow travelers” whose artistic inclinations influenced both his love of music and his initial desire to become a painter. Stories of his loving and sometimes eccentric parents complement scenes depicting a very young Bob Dylan as he arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene. Reflections on Wolf’s studies in Boston—where he shared an apartment with David Lynch—are braided with accounts of first love, an untraditional literary education, and early musical influences such as Muddy Waters.
After Wolf joined the J. Geils Band as their front man and his musical fame grew, he rubbed shoulders with other notables who left significant impressions on him, including members of the Rolling Stones, Sly Stone, Tennessee Williams, Alfred Hitchcock, and Van Morrison. Wolf’s marriage to Faye Dunaway is presented in a clear yet balanced and nuanced light.
Told with gentle humor and often heart-rending poignancy, the word portraits in “Waiting on the Moon” provide a revealing glimpse of artists, writers, actors, and musicians as they work—the creative forces that drive them to achievement; the demons they battle; the patterns of their human relationships. They are meant to inspire not only empathy but also admiration.
Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures
By Noah Adams, 1996 (Random House)
Piano Lessons is Noah Adams’s delightful and moving chronicle of his fifty-second year—a year already filled with long, fast workdays and too little spare time—as he answers at last a lifelong to learn to play the piano. The twelve monthly chapters span from January—when after decades of growing affection for keyboard artists and artisans he finally plunges in and buys a piano—through December. Among the up-tempo triumphs and unexpected setbacks, Noah Adams interweaves the rich history and folklore that surround the piano. And along the way, set between the ragtime rhythms and boogie-woogie beats, there are encounters with—and insights from—masters of the keyboard, from Glenn Gould and Leon Fleisher (“I was a bit embarrassed,” he writes; “telling Leon Fleisher about my ambitions for piano lessons is like telling Julia Child about plans to make toast in the morning”) to Dr. John and Tori Amos.
As a storyteller, Noah Adams has perfect pitch. In the foreground here, like a familiar melody, are the challenges of learning a complex new skill as an adult, when enthusiasm meets the necessary repetition of tedious scales at the end of a twelve-hour workday. Lingering in the background, like a subtle bass line, are the quiet concerns of how we spend our time and how our priorities shift as we proceed through life.
Mozart in Italy: Coming of Age in the Land of Opera
By Jane Glover, 2024 (Picador UK)
‘You don’t have to be able to hum Mozart to find this book utterly engrossing… I couldn’t put it down’ —Joanna Lumley
At thirteen years old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who had captured the hearts of northern Europe, but his father Leopold was now determined to conquer Italy. Together, they made three visits there the last when Mozart was seventeen, all vividly recounted here by Jane Glover, acclaimed British conductor and renowned Mozart specialist, scholar and author. Glover is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music and has been the Music Director of the Chicago ensemble Music of the Baroque since 2002. Between 2009 and 2016 Glover was the artistic director of opera at the Royal Academy of Music and prior to that she was the Music Director of the London Mozart Players from 1984 to 1991. In December 2013, Glover conducted the Julie Taymor’s production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan Opera of New York.
Glover captures father and son as they travel from the theatres and concert salons of Milan to the church-filled streets of Rome to Naples, poorer and more dangerous than the prosperous north, and to Venice, the carnivalesque birthplace of public opera. All the while Mozart was absorbing Italian culture, language, style and art, and honed his craft. He met the challenge of writing Italian opera for Italian singers and audiences and provoked a variety of responses, from triumph and admiration to intrigue and hostility: in a way, these Italian years can be seen as a microcosm of his whole life.
Evocative, beautifully written and with a profound understanding of eighteenth-century classical music, Mozart in Italy reveals how what he experienced during these Italian journeys changed Mozart—and his music—for ever.
Living with Music: Ralph Ellison’s Jazz Writings
By Ralph Ellison, Edited by Robert O’Meally, 2001 (Random House)
Before Ralph Ellison became one of America’s greatest writers, he was a musician and a student of jazz, writing widely on his favorite music for more than fifty years. Now, jazz authority Robert O’Meally has collected the very best of Ellison’s inspired, exuberant jazz writings in this unique anthology. In this excerpt, you can see his writer’s ear meld with his musician’s sensibility to capture the distracting effect on his own writing time by an upstairs neighbor who was also a singer.
“The objectives of these jazzmen were not at all those of the singer on our ceiling, but though a purist committed to the mastery of the bel canto style, German lieder, modern French art songs and a few American slave songs sung as if bel canto, she was intensely devoted to her art. From morning to night she vocalized, regardless of the condition of her voice, the weather or my screaming nerves. There were times when her notes, sifting through her floor and my ceiling, bouncing down the walls and ricocheting off the building in the rear, whistled like tenpenny nails, buzzed like a saw, wheezed like the asthma of a Hercules, trumpeted like an enraged African elephant, and the squeaky pedal of her piano rested plumb center above my typing chair.”
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Oliver Sacks, 2007 (Knopf)
With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition.
In “Musicophilia,” he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds—for everything but music. Illuminating, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable.
What a great list of books! I’ve read a few but I see lots of future options.
I loved the Amazon series, ” Mozart in the Jungle” videos as another suggestion. Wonderful magical realism.