In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, built at the turn of the century in Germany, on which she discovers everything that she herself can do with music and what music, in turn, does for her. Yet after marrying, she emigrates with her young family from Russia to America, at her husband's frantic insistence, and her piano is lost in the shuffle. In 2012, in Bakersfield,...

The true story of how the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw--and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Żabiński began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Żabińskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts....

"Vienna is an uncanny, magical, and sometimes brutally alienating city. The past lives on in the cafes where lost souls come to kill time and hash over the bygone glories of the twentieth century--or maybe just a recent love affair. Here, in one of these cafes, an anonymous narrator meets a strange character, like someone out of a novel: a decrepit old Russian named Suvorin. A Soviet pianist of international renown, Suvorin committed career suicide...

Minnesota, 1911. Nilda Carlson is torn between life in the city of Blackduck and spending time with her family back home on the farm. Her employer, Mrs. Schoenleber, gives her more and more responsibility and experience. Still new to America herself, Nilda focuses on the area's immigrant community, but she'll have to fight to get her ideas accepted by the locals and donors alike. One of her greatest joys is her weekly piano lesson with Fritz Larsson....

"A long-married couple is forced to confront their friend's painful past when a church revival comes to a nearby town... A woman in an arranged marriage struggles to connect with the son she hid from her husband for years... A well-meaning sister unwittingly reunites an abuser with his victims... Through the lives of an indelible array of individuals--musicians, housewives and pastors, children and grandparents, the men and women who own the dry cleaners...

"Welcome to Apple Creek, Ohio, where piano teacher and artist, Andrea Wagner, has a fascination with painting the rural Amish landscapes around her home. She has made it to her thirties feeling like she has had a charmed life and finally has fallen in love with Brandon Prentice, a local veterinarian. But then she discovers she was adopted and all she thought she knew about herself has crumbled. Andrea becomes so fixated on finding her birth mother...

Aside from his trusty piano, Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his town for his music and songs, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days, occasionally performing the classics in small venues--never in the stadiums he could fill when in his prime. On the night before receiving his town's highest honor, Busi is wrested from bed by noises in his courtyard and then stunned by an attacking...

"Aeham Ahmad was born a second-generation refugee--the son of a blind violinist and carpenter who recognized Aeham's talent and taught him how to play piano and love music from an early age. When his grandparents and father were forced to flee Israel and seek refuge from the Israeli--Palestinian conflict ravaging their home, Aeham's family built a life in Yarmouk, an unofficial camp to more than 160,000 Palestinian refugees in Damascus. They raised...