Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present…

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A riveting page-turner about a Black classical musician’s desperate quest to recover his lost violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world 

“Utterly original and downright gripping.” —Zakiya Dalila Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Black Girl

Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. If he’s lucky, he’ll get a job at the hospital cafeteria. If he’s extra lucky, he’ll earn more than minimum wage. But Ray has a gift and a dream—he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music. 

When he discovers that his great-great-grandfather’s beat-up old fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach. Together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Ray will have to piece together the clues to recover his treasured Strad . . . before it’s too late. With the descendants of the man who once enslaved Ray’s great-great-grandfather asserting that the instrument is rightfully theirs, and with his family staking their own claim, Ray doesn’t know who he can trust—or whether he will ever see his beloved violin again.

Brendan Nicholaus Slocumb was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and holds a degree in music education (with concentrations in violin and viola) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For more than twenty years he has been a public and private school music educator and has performed with orchestras throughout Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC. He is currently working on his second novel.

Edward Kastenmeier is Editorial Director of Anchor Books hardcovers and Executive Editor at the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. A thirty-year veteran of imprint, he has also long overseen the Vintage Crime / Black Lizard publishing program. Edward has edited and published books by Alexander McCall Smith, Jo Nesbø, Robert Harris, Lars Kepler, James Ellroy, Mark Z. Danielewski, Andrea Wulf, Christopher McDougall, Brian Greene, Michio Kaku, Leonard Mlodinow, among many others, and now adds Brendan Slocumb to this impressive list.

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The Violin Conspiracy: An Evening with Brendan Slocumb and Edward Kastenmeier