Effervescent as champagne, Jilly Cooper’s novel brings back again outdated favourites like Rupert and Taggie Campbell-Black.

Abigail Rosen, nicknamed Appassionata, was the sexiest, most flamboyant violinist in classical music, but she was also the loneliest as well as the most exploited girl in the world. When a dramatic suicide attempt destroyed her violin profession, she set her sights around the male-dominated heights from the conductor’s rostrum. Given the chance to take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, Abby about Appassionata: Rutshire Chronicles, Reserve 5 can be ecstatic, not really realising the RSO is composed of the wildest couple of musicians ever to blow a horn or caress a fiddle. Abby discovers it increasingly tough to control her undisciplined rabble and pretend she actually is not madly drawn to the fatally glamorous horn participant, Viking O’Neill. And then Rannaldini, arch-fiend and international maestro, rolls up with Machiavellian plans of his own.

‘Great tasting: light being a souffle and with divine flashes of wit. I could not put the…thing straight down.” Weekend EXPRESS

“Appassionata – the divine Jilly Cooper’s most recent and greatest novel.’ THE Weekend TIMES

‘Triumphant… a boisterous tale of sex and Chopin amongst Rutshire folk.’ TATLER

‘Sexy, amazing protagonists… the humour comes thick and fast.” DAILY EXPRESS