Sarah Quigley – författare

Friends call Becca the Overshare Queen, but her tendency for TMI never seemed like a problem to her until she blabs about her sweet band-geek boyfriend’s sloppy kisses—and gets dumped! Realizing it may be better to resist the temptation to overshare face-to-face, Becca decides to blog anonymously about everything instead. On her blog, Too Much Information, Becca unleashes her alter ego, Bella. Bella tells it like it is . . . though perhaps with a bit more drama. After all, no one’s going to read it, right???

Here are three great historical novels in one volume. HABITS OF THE HOUSE: Fay Weldon takes us inside an aristocratic household -- upstairs and downstairs -- in the last three months of the nineteenth century. Tea gowns are still laced with diamonds; there are still nine courses at dinner, but bankruptcy, war and social unrest loom. THE SILVER THREAD: London, 1840. A young woman boards a prison ship bound for the other side of the world. Weaving death, love and adventure, The Silver Thread is plotted like a murder mystery, but narrated with the skill and style of a literary storyteller. THE CONDUCTOR: Winter, 1941. The story of how Shostakovich and one valiant, bedraggled orchestra created a defining moment in the siege of Leningrad – the bloodiest seige in history – is a gripping testament to the life-affirming power of music.

The Conductor reads like a proper up-all-night page-turner, but it also goes deeper than that, conveying the extraordinary life-saving properties of music, and hope'' – Bella Bathurst.The story of how Shostakovich and one valiant orchestra created a defining moment in the siege of Leningrad is a gripping testament to the life saving power of music. June 1941: Nazi troops surround the city of Leningrad, planning to shell and starve the people into submission. Most of the cultural elite is evacuated, but the famous composer Shostakovich stays behind to defend his city. That winter, the bleakest in Russian history, the Party orders Karl Eliasberg, the shy, difficult conductor of a second-rate orchestra, to prepare for the task of a lifetime. He is to conduct a performance of Shostakovich''s Seventh Symphony – a haunting, defiant new piece, which will be relayed by loudspeakers to the front lines. Eliasberg''s musicians are starving, and scarcely have the strength to carry their instruments. But for five freezing months the conductor stubbornly drives on his musicians, depriving those who falter of their bread rations. Slowly the music begins to dissolve the nagging hunger, the exploding streets, the slow deaths... but at what cost? Eliasberg''s relationships are strained, obsession takes hold, and his orchestra is growing weaker. Now, it''s a struggle not just to perform but to stay alive.