Tundra is very excited to be publishing The Kiss of the Nightingale on October 1, 2024! Written by Adi Denner, The Kiss of the Nightingale is a young adult romantasy novel set in an alternative historical Paris.
Scroll down for the full cover plus an excerpt from Adi Denner’s essay, “The Nightingale’s Legacy in Classical Music”.
Cover Design: Tim Byrne
The Kiss of the Nightingale
By Adi Denner
384 Pages | Ages 14+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9781774885253 | Tundra Books
Release Date: October 1, 2024
1890, Lutèce: In this city, Talents are everything: precious gems that gift unrivaled skills to their owners. The most coveted, Elite Talents, are claimed by the aristocracy, passed through generations by blood magic. Cleodora dreamed of inheriting her father’s Tailoring Talent, but when he died, the magic died with him. Now she’s left with empty promises, a dress shop she can’t keep afloat, and her bedridden younger sister. But everything changes when she meets the dark-eyed Lady Dahlia Sibille. Dahlia offers Cleodora a Singing Talent – a chance to save her beloved sister and rewrite her own fate. From the first instant, Cleodora is bewitched . . . There’s just one catch: she needs to steal an Elite Talent from the prestigious Lenoir family. As Lutèce’s nightingale, Cleodora is the star of the opera’s galas and balls, worlds away from the darkness and dust of home. But the handsome yet infuriating Vicomte Lenoir is nothing like she expected. Soon, the Vicomte’s teasing smiles win her over, even as Dahlia’s seductive whispers linger in her ears. Torn between Dahlia, who gave her everything, and the Vicomte, who holds the price of her freedom, is Cleodora in danger of losing it all? Or can she prove that magic isn’t the only gift that counts?
“The Nightingale’s Legacy in Classical Music”
By Adi Denner
The nightingale’s timeless song has soared through the ages, each note a heartbeat in literature and each trill a permanent mark on the pages of musical history. Its voice, at once both a whisper and a cry, has resonated through the ornate halls of the Baroque, the grand theaters of the Romantic era and beyond, echoing the human condition in a symphony of endless melodies. Tracing the nightingale’s passage through the realms of classical music uncovers a story not just of a bird, but of humanity’s ceaseless quest to find beauty in expression, to sing against the silence, to turn life’s vast experiences into art.
When I first sat down to write The Kiss of the Nightingale and started to think about names for the book, I knew I wanted to showcase the Nightingale and its deep symbolism within the world of classical music and opera.