100 Books Like Broken Strings

This book has several of my all-time favorite story elements.

First, it’s historical fiction based on an impressive but long-overlooked female pioneer: Kate Warne, the first woman Pinkerton detective.

Second, it has both a high-stakes political story as the characters try to protect the president of the United States from assassination and a high-stakes personal story, as Nell Warne (Kate’s fictional niece) tries to uncover the secret of her father’s death. Did he really kill his own brother? Nell refuses to believe it.

Third, Nell is a funny, spit-fire narrator. And finally, there are secret codes for the reader to solve!

Zoe Washington’s situation grabs at our heartstrings: On her 12th birthday she receives a letter from the father she’s never known - a letter from prison. She knew Marcus had been convicted of a terrible crime, but she’s been growing up happily with her mom and stepdad, with her birth father firmly out of mind.

But in the letter Marcus claims he’s innocent, and Zoe sets out to uncover the secret of his incarceration. The issues in this book go beyond the promising new father-daughter relationship, extending to the systemic racism of the US criminal courts. It’s a challenging but heartwarming read. 

The premise of this book gets big points for originality: Lexington Willow is orphaned as a toddler by a tornado, literally blowing into the life of elephant Nyah, who protects and comforts the little girl in the storm and forms a mysterious connection with her. The wind is also a character in the book, hanging around long after the tornado. It knows things Lex doesn’t, and sometimes whispers to her.

The Elephant’s Girl portrays friendship, secrets, and a family’s pain in search of healing. Toss in a ghost for good measure, and what’s not to love?

By jetting a privileged California tween of Vietnamese descent into her extended family in Hanoi, Thanhhà Lai creates all kinds of expectations and then delightfully subverts them, educating and entertaining readers at the same time.

Although most of the book is about Mai’s culture shock and gradual adjustment, her frail grandmother Bà remains the emotional center of the story. Bà’s loss of her husband during the Vietnam War and her journey to reclaim his secret last message build the story into a dramatic climax unlike any I’ve ever encountered.

This has to be one of the funniest books about music. I bought it maybe ten years ago or so from the children's bookshop Kinderboekwinkel in Amsterdam. It made me laugh out loud, even though I can’t read or speak Dutch. The illustrations speak for themselves.

Valentijn is a terrible violin player, and after ruining a party for the Queen’s birthday, the townsfolk banish him. He can’t understand why as he thinks he’s great. He performs heroic deeds elsewhere using his playing to help folk, even though it’s terrible. He carries on blissfully unaware and ends up helping a knight in peril and eventually saves the town from invaders and finally performs for the King and Queen, even though everyone has their ears covered.

The illustrations are so lively and energetic, and you can hear how bad the violin must sound from all the reactions of the people and animals… show more.

In this perfect pairing of words and pictures, readers count along as instruments are added one by one, with musicians going from solo to duo to trio until a chamber group of ten is formed.

The language flows musically, "Gliding, sliding, high notes go low." 

The images soar and delight with detail. The book ends with calls for an encore and children are bound to ask for encore readings.

Paul Adam takes readers on a tense, insiders journey through the shadowy netherworld of priceless antique violins in search for the holy grail of violins, Stradivari’s “Sister Messiah,” that leaves a trail of dead bodies in its path. The hero, Giovanni Castiglione (like Amadeo Borlotti in my Daniel Jacobus mystery, Playing With Fire) is an under-the-radar violin forger with a conscience. As a professional violinist for a half-century, I can attest that The Rainaldi Quartet is absolutely true to life from start to finish. I was unable to put it down. Adam hits the nail on the head in this gripping tale of byzantine intrigue. A virtuoso tour de force!

Martin Schleske is a German luthier and theologian. My daughter is a violinist. I picked up this book at the recommendation of Byron of Hearts & Minds Books, hoping to learn more about the violin-making process, and it has remained one of my favorite books ever since. Schleske slowly and carefully walks the reader through his process, from choosing the right trees, to designing the structure, to helping “closed” violins discover their sound. Along the way, he shares how his work crafting violins helps him grow in his faith.

I can only read a couple pages of this book at a time, as Schleske’s profound wisdom often leaves me with thoughts I need time to process and sort through. This is a book about how God, as the Artist, will continue to shape me, work with me, and help me be the best instrument I can be to make music… show more.

This fantasy novel is about a girl who can’t cope with the lack of attention she’s receiving since her baby brother was born. He is very ill and has to use an inhaler so Merel’s parents are always tired and don’t notice her. The story is engrossing and heartwarming as Merel has become so angsty that she refuses to sleep and does nothing but scream. Eventually, she loses the ability to sleep at all. During a trip to a fantasy land to try to get her lost sleep back so she can be normal, Merel learns to accept her family and to feel affection for her baby brother. The story deals with regression about a new sibling in a fascinating way.

Oh, Noah. Noah, Noah, Noah. Ask any old-school Emma Scott fan their favorite tortured hero of hers, and their answer will likely be Noah Lake. This one is broken emotionally and physically, which makes it hard to hold a grudge when he lashes out. Not that I even had a grudge to begin with. I mean, think of what he’s suffered! One of the best parts of the angry tortured hero trope is all that delicious groveling, but with Noah, I didn’t need much. (Alright, fine. I didn’t need any.) FYI, Rush is a standalone that’s only connected to the other books in the series by its city setting.