Motherless Child — Marianne Langner Zeitlin

In her third novel Motherless Child, Marianne Langner Zeitlin explores the world of classical music, where powerful managers can make -- and break -- the careers of aspiring artists. The book opens with Elizabeth Guaragna, under an assumed name, taking a job in the new agency of famed music impresario Alfred Rossiter, a man she was raised to despise. She wants to glimpse the man who had destroyed her father's piano career and family life years earlier, when he took Elizabeth's mother as his lover.

As Elizabeth is given opportunities to exercise her artistic judgment in her new job, she becomes involved in the business itself, despite her continuing misgivings. Soon she meets George Wentworth, who is writing a biography of Rossiter. Through him and the relationship they develop, she learns that the truth she is seeking is quite different from what she was raised to believe. When her fear of identifying her real background to Rossiter threatens her own love of George, she must finally confront Rossiter and her own past, learning that there are no villains in the tale.

Marianne Langner Zeitlin has spent her adult life in the world of music -- as the wife of acclaimed violinist Zvi Zeitlin, as one of the first women to manage an orchestra herself, and, in her young adulthood, as an employee at one of the largest music management firms in the United States. She brings her wealth of knowledge about the field to this engaging and suspenseful story.