First published 2026
Mia Voss returns to her dead mentor's house carrying the weight of two losses. Ryder Wakefield, the minimalist composer who made her career possible, has died suddenly. Oliver, Ryder's son and Mia's former lover, took his own life years earlier. Now Mia holds Ryder's final composition, Death Music for Orchestra, an incomplete work that demands finishing. She leaves her girlfriend behind and isolates herself in Ryder's home, determined to complete what he started. The manuscript consumes her thoughts. Ryder had concealed his Jewish and gay identities to build his reputation as a major American composer. Mia, like Oliver, grew up as an Asian American adoptee navigating a world that never quite fit. As she works on the Death Music, the boundaries between her grief, her guilt over Oliver's suicide, and her musical ambitions begin to blur. The composition pulls her deeper into obsession. Her grip on reality weakens as the notes on the page seem to write themselves.
Genres: drama, literary-fiction, grief, contemporary, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, haunting, introspective, melancholic, obsessive, psychologically-intense
Tropes: isolation, obsession, unfinished-legacy, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Ryder's house
272 pages · Paperback · St. Martin's Griffin
Content warnings: death, mental-illness, suicidal-ideation, suicide