The Muse of Mozart, and an Atomic Attack 

The composer Mozart has sparked scholarly research and fictional ideas exploring the composer’s brilliant output and complicated place in history. The latest is David K. Israel’snovel The Lost Mozart, whichimagines a college music student discovering an unearthed Mozart sketch of a string quartet and deciding to finish the piece and give its world premiere in the 1980s. The twists and turns come with interesting insights, humor and determination in the novel, which was published this summer and earned early praise. Which makes sense as author Israel’s first job out of college was working as an editor for Leonard Bernstein, producing and publishing definitive score editions of West Side Story and On the Town. That was before Israel went on to compose extensively for dance, including commissions from Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, and New York City Ballet. Israel discusses the novel at Chaucer’s on Thursday, September 24. 

Three days later, it’s Steve Hawk’s turn with a much darker work, Nearshore, a novel that dives into what happens after a “small” nuclear bomb detonates beside an Appalachian highway in history’s first act of nuclear terrorism, albeit one with a very low casualty list. Months later, a surfer and lifeguard at a treacherous stretch of wild California coast gets involved as he learns of a link between a Silicon Valley megacorporation, its sociopathic billionaire founder, and the nuke in West Virginia shortly before a second device is detonated. Nearshore has been called an immersive and disturbingly plausible story. Hawk, brother of skating legend Tony Hawk and a former editor of Surfer, Sierra, and Stanford Business magazines, talks about his debut novel with award-winning Santa Barbara surf filmmaker Chris Malloy on Sunday, September 27. 

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