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Inkberry Books: June 20th at 7:00

A Musical Mystery--and the Story of a Lie

As the Great War rages, a French pianist sits down to play a breathtakingly original sonata--a piece so strange and inspired that it could change the course of classical music. The moment is captured on wax cylinders, the recording medium of the day. But in the tumult of war the fragile cylinders vanish, and with them the identities of the brilliant composer and the virtuoso pianist.

A century later, five timeworn wax cylinders land on the desk of Ben Weil, a revered classical music producer. From the moment he first plays them in his Chicago studio, Ben knows he 's in the presence of genius. The dazzling piece is fifty years ahead of its time, more Coltrane than Debussy--how could it be?

Brought low by a painful divorce, Ben throws himself into unlocking the sonata's mysteries. But when the renowned pianist Ana Clara Matta stumbles upon the work and takes credit for unearthing it, he 's swept into a lie that could shatter his reputation and his private life at a stroke. Somehow Ben must find a way to tell the truth--a dangerous quest that will lead him not only to the sonata 's surprising origins, but to his own.

Edward Hamlin is the winner of the Nelson Algren Award, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Nelligan Prize and a Colorado Book Award. Pulitzer Prize finalist Karen Russell called his prizewinning short story collection, NIGHT IN ERG CHEBBI AND OTHER STORIES, "sweeping and intimate and awesomely confident," while two-time National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard found it "beautifully written and politically astute."

Publishers Weekly named NIGHT IN ERG CHEBBI a "memorable read from a writer with considerable talent"; Foreword Reviews found the work "beautiful, terrifying and compassionate." His debut novel, SONATA IN WAX, will be published in April, 2024.

Since 2012 Edward Hamlin has published more than twenty-five stories in Ploughshares, Missouri Review, Colorado Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Chariton, the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere, garnering three Pushcart Prize nominations along the way. His work has been shortlisted twice for the Bridport Prize (UK) and has been a finalist for the Flannery O 'Connor Award, the Grace Paley Award, the Narrative Story Prize, the Raymond Carver Award and others. Stories of his have also been performed on stage and published by Audible.

A New York native and an accomplished composer, Edward Hamlin spent his formative years in Chicago and now lives in the Colorado foothills. He is represented by Deborah Schneider of Gelfman-Schneider/ICM, [email protected].

www.edwardhamlin.com