Jacqueline Friedland & David K. Israel at Zibby's Bookshop!
About this Event
About the Books:
BREATHING UNDER WATER
The current is threatening to pull them under.
Berry thought she had it figured out—juggling her vice-principal role while raising her sixteen-year-old autistic son, Leo. But when a promotion opportunity collides with her family's deepest needs, she must confront whether she's been fighting the wrong battles all along.
McKenna is drowning. Between caring for her grandmother with dementia, losing her swimming scholarship, and facing homelessness, the college student's carefully constructed world is crumbling. Her only lifeline? Teaching swim lessons to children with autism—including Leo.
As these two women's paths converge in the most unexpected way, they discover that sometimes the people who need saving the most are the ones who end up saving you.
A deeply moving exploration of motherhood, sacrifice, and the extraordinary connections that emerge when we're brave enough to let others see our struggles.
THE LOST MOZART
A college music student discovers a long-lost Mozart sketch and sets out to finish the piece and give its world premiere.
Noah Wideman is an overqualified music student trying to graduate with a degree no one asked for. It’s 1987. His parents had hoped for medicine or law—anything with a parking space—but instead, he’s scraping by on odd jobs and the kind of hope only a twenty-one-year-old with a library card can muster. One of those jobs is at Allegro FM, the local classical station, where he stumbles into an unlikely friendship with Bertram Bobker: honey-voiced, immaculately dressed, and somewhere north of eighty.
When Noah is unceremoniously fired, Bertram quits in protest. Soon, Noah is spending afternoons with Bertram’s closest friends: aging gentlemen who sip Poire Williams, collect dusty manuscripts, and speak of dead composers as if they might still RSVP to dinner.
That’s where Noah discovers a handwritten sketch which looks suspiciously—impossibly—like Mozart. An unfinished string quartet. The kind of thing you don’t just find. But Noah is young and full of gumption, so he decides to finish it and bring it to the world, thinking this is the answer to everyone’s problems.
Enter Eos: a fellow student, brilliant and intimidating, with a silence that unnerves professors. Together, they launch a wild plan, part heist, part heartfelt gamble on the power of music, friendship, and second chances. Because who’s to say one more piece by Mozart can’t still upend a few lives, mend a few hearts, and maybe even cover first and last month’s rent?
Jacqueline Friedland is the USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of both historical and contemporary women’s fiction. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and NYU Law School, she practiced as a commercial litigator for as long as she could stand it. She then returned to school to earn her Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has been writing ever since.
Jackie’s books have been awarded the 2020 and 2021 gold medals in fiction from Readers’ Favorite. Her novels have also been named the 2021 Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of the Year, the SheReads Best Book Club Pick of 2021, and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star finalist for 2022. She regularly reviews fiction for trade publications and appears at schools and other locations as a guest lecturer. Her fifth novel, Counting Backwards, was released by Harper Muse in March 2025.
Jackie lives in Westchester, New York with her husband, four children, and two dogs.
David K. Israel is a novelist and composer. His first job out of college was working as an editor for Leonard Bernstein, producing and publishing definitive editions of West Side Story, On the Town, and Mass. He has composed extensively for dance, receiving commissions from Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, and New York City Ballet, among others. His debut novel in 2005, Behind Everyman was praised by People as “loads of mensch-y charm…leavened with heart and humor.” David has also been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. He was a frequent contributor to the NPR show Ask Me Another and has written and sold numerous projects for the big and small screen out in Hollywood.
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