Introduction

The brand new book from the international bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop!

On any given day, there are thousands of items slowly gathering dust in the Lost and Found of Heathrow Airport. Unknown to anyone, hidden among the clutter, is a very special object that can change the fortunes of those who possess it – a violin of rare beauty and power.

Now, as if by chance, it has fallen into the hands of three strangers…

Baggage claim agent Devlin, retired teacher Walter, and appraiser Gabrielle have nothing in common, but can these three unlikely guardians unlock the secrets of the violin?

With heartfelt moments, unexpected connections, and a mystery that lingers long after the final page, this is Evie Woods at her very best.

Praise for The Violin Maker’s Secret

'A moving story that radiates passion and warmth. I loved every page, this is Evie Woods at her lyrical and magical best!’ Faith Hogan

‘An original and captivating story vibrating with charm, warmth, humour and vitality. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, […] a gripping and full bodied read. Deeply satisfying.’ Santa Montefiore

'The Violin Maker’s Secret moved me to tears. I was deeply drawn into their hopes and dreams. This story will stay with readers long after the final lovely notes fade.’ Madeline Martin, New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Book Society

‘A gorgeous novel, intricately constructed; layer upon layer of story, history and character, all playing off each other in endlessly beguiling ways, never missing a note. A magical delight.’ Eve Chase, author of The Secret Thread

‘For lovers of music, mayhem, and a touch of magic. Evie Woods weaves an irresistible tale that celebrates the enduring power of music, friendships found in unexpected places, and the courage to believe in oneself.’ Lisa Medved

'A love letter to music, a hug for new friendship, and a literary orchestral score conducted in Woods’ spellbinding prose.’ Amanda Geard, author of The Midnight House

'A beautifully melodic tale, full of heart, hope, and mystery.The Violin Maker's Secret is a welcome reminder that there is magic to be found within our everyday lives.' Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of Before Dorothy

‘A spellbinding love letter to music and all who are moved by it. It’s enchanting from the opening page until the gloriously uplifting ending. I adored it.’ Kate Storey

Editorial Review

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Excerpt

Chapter One

London, 2025

The day had started off so well. Another busy morning at Heathrow, with the sun shining high in the bluest

of skies, criss-crossed by the white trails of jetliners carving their way through the atmosphere. Devlin worked as a baggage handler in Terminal 2. He was the right build, or so the interviewer had told him, and he took that as a positive. It was around the same time he had met Melissa, who didn’t always see his build as a positive. She introduced him to juicing.

When most people thought about airports, they thought about leaving. But Devlin always thought about the people coming home, reuniting with loved ones and feeling that sense of familiarity. He liked working there. It was as far away as he could get from his old life. It was steady, reliable. Like the scheduled ?ights that arrived and departed on time (for the most part) his days had the kind

of predictable structure that he could follow with his eyes closed.

And yet a con?uence of two signi?cant events was about to change the course of Devlin’s life. Namely his girlfriend’s birthday and a recent arrival at the Lost and Found department. Devlin had always thought that there was something a bit lonely about the Lost and Found; a room for unclaimed treasures that washed up like ?otsam from discarded lives. He could imagine the passengers setting off with their prized possessions and then for some reason, along the way, being parted from them. Were they forgotten or simply abandoned?

On his morning break with his co-worker, Karim, he spotted it. It looked rather inconspicuous in its black case, battered by age and rough handling. The shape was unmistakable however, the gentle curves betraying the contents.

‘That’s it, it’s perfect,’ he said, running his hands along the edges of the case.

‘Eh, am I missing something here? You planning on a career change, Devlin?’

‘Nah, mate, it’s for Mel.’

‘Does she … play the ?ddle? She doesn’t seem like the musical type.’ Karim’s wonderfully full eyebrows formed an apex shape, giving him a perplexed look.

‘It’s a violin, Karim.’ ‘There’s a difference?’

Devlin wasn’t entirely sure what the difference was, so he said nothing.

‘I thought you got her some perfume from the duty-free?’

‘Yeah, but this is THE gift. She mentioned it years ago; how she always wanted to play the violin but her parents couldn’t afford the classes.’

Judging by the case, this one probably needed a bit of tender loving care, but if he could get it at the right price, he could take it to a repair shop. Or a music store. He really knew very little about violins.

After some lengthy negotiations with Pete, the guy in charge, who insisted that every item had to be kept for three months before it could be sold – ‘In case the owner comes back’, he’d explained – Devlin had bought himself a violin. And somehow, he just knew it would change everything.

The evening took a turn for the worse when the paramedics arrived. After that the guests had made a hasty escape from the party and Melissa opened a bottle of champagne that Devlin could not recall having bought. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever having bought an ice bucket either, but there it sat, on the kitchen counter, floral bouquets reflecting in the gleam. Now those he could explain. The multicoloured arrangement that resembled cuttings from an exotic forest was from James at the hair salon. The plant was from her mother, practical as ever. The dozen red roses were his own contribution. He had planned on getting thirty, one for every year of her life, but they were all under strict orders to avoid any reference to numerology.

‘Do you think we should have brought your mum to the emergency room?’

‘She’ll be ?ne, you know what she’s like,’ Mel answered dismissively.

He did know. Melissa’s mother was often prone to heart palpitations at moments of high drama. Fit of passion, her father would say, with a tone of admiration for his wife’s Italian roots.

Melissa sat rigidly on the bespoke window seat she and Devlin had built together the summer before. She’d watched a couple build something similar on Instagram and insisted on ?lming it for her socials. In the end, she had to cut most of it out, as they’d spent the entire time swearing at each other. The whole apartment was an Instagrammer’s dream: white walls, clean lines, and countless framed prints of botanical drawings and motivational quotes. Devlin was surrounded by other people’s words: Let your smile change the world, but don’t let the world change your smile. At least that made more sense than the nonsensical advice of Follow Your Karma! Surely it was karma’s job to follow you?

He liked it, though, even if nothing in it belonged to him. The last of his possessions to go was the wicker coffee table he had brought from his old bedsit, replaced by a glass table that always threatened to bruise a leg if approached from the wrong angle. He missed the way his table tended to sag in the middle, as though the wicker was forming a protective hug around whatever items he put on it, including his feet.

Plus, second-hand stuff felt like less of a commitment. Easy come, easy go, it seemed to say. There was no point clinging on to things. Or people. Melissa called him a drifter and saw it as her personal project to de-drift him. Or un-drift him. They lived in the flat above Melissa’s hair salon, Haute Couture. It had all been part of her master plan since she got her first summer job as a hairdresser. As Francesca’s catchphrase went, ‘People will always need their hair cut!’ Based on this sound business advice, Melissa built up her empire. He admired her vision, her determination. Everyone did. Her life worked like a well-oiled machine and Devlin understood, not for the first time, that he was the spanner causing the whole thing to malfunction.

‘I’ve never been so embarrassed,’ she said, swallowing half a glass of champagne and ?lling it up again.

‘What do you mean?’ The violin lay quietly in its case on the gleaming coffee table. She hadn’t looked at it since she’d opened it in front of all of their friends and family, letting out a high-pitched shriek.

‘Are you really that clueless?’

There were tears now, which she immediately wiped away roughly with the back of her hand. Devlin ran his hands through his hair, as though he might ?nd the answers there. He couldn’t understand it; he thought he had outdone himself this time. Really listened to her. He stood halfway between the kitchen and the living room. He knew this because there were different coloured rugs marking out the areas.

‘What’s wrong, Mel?’ He tried to strike a tone somewhere between concern and mysti?cation.

‘Look around you; look at what I’m wearing.’

Devlin blinked. He was never any good at cryptic clues. Just as he raised his shoulders helplessly, she got up and waved the back of her hand in his face.

‘The manicure? Surely that gives it away.’

He noticed that one of her ?ngernails was a slightly different colour to the rest and had some sparkly stuff on it.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Devlin, I thought you were going to propose. We all did. It’s my thirtieth!’ Her voice cracked when she said her age, the disappointment plainly evident and the blame laid squarely at his feet.

‘Mel, I … I…’ The words wouldn’t come. Because the truth was, he had known. Deep down. He had thought about it every year. Every Valentine’s Day, Christmas Day, birthday, equinox. As time marched on, the inevitability of it was beginning to choke him. He challenged himself to come up with increasingly thoughtful gifts, over-compensating for the lack of a marriage proposal. He spoke to Karim about it at work. Younger than Devlin, he had been married for ?ve years already. And was a father to two kids.

‘Do you love her?’ Karim asked during one of their shifts, taking off his protective headphones.

‘Of course I love her!’ Devlin responded, throwing a bulky suitcase into a luggage bin.

‘Then what’s the problem? Afraid she’ll say no?’

That wasn’t it. He’d even got as far as the jewellers on the high street once, spoken to the assistant. But his mouth started to go dry and his heart suddenly started hammering, as if he’d been running a marathon. He began feeling dizzy, and when the assistant went to get him a glass of water, he ran out of the shop. It took a good ten minutes for his breathing to return to normal. He wanted to move on with his life. He wanted to settle down; he wanted stability. He wanted kids and he knew that Mel wanted them sooner rather than later. And he wanted to be the one to give her all of that. Yet when the moment came, he bottled it.

His awareness returned to the present, where Melissa was now shouting and gesticulating. Phrases like ‘morti?ed’, ‘marriage material’ and ‘not getting any younger’ snagged on his conscience. It was all his fault. He had caused all the upset; or at least that’s what she was telling him, and he had no defence. How many more times would they go through this routine before she dumped him for good and found someone who would marry her? Without breaking her ?ow, she reached down and took the violin out of its case, shoving it into Devlin’s arms.

‘I don’t even play the bloody violin!’

He held the instrument tentatively, with arms outstretched. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, it felt like he was holding a living, breathing thing. He had only peeked at it earlier, making sure it was actually a violin he had bought and not an empty case. But now he brought it closer to him. It had the deepest amber hue that looked as though you could dive into it and lose yourself forever. It seemed both powerful and yet strangely fragile. Without thinking, he held it protectively to his chest. A peculiar feeling rose from within him, a strange sense of certainty. With this, his mind began to clear. His shoulders straightened. Suddenly, he found the words.

‘Last Christmas, we had coffee in that place in Covent Garden, and there were those buskers, remember? And you said you’d always wanted to play the violin.’

Silence descended. A brief respite.

‘What?’ she asked, cocking her head to the side.

Just as Devlin was about to add more details to the memory – it had been snowing, it was the day before Christmas Eve, they’d gone in to see the lights – Melissa threw her hands up and left the room. The echo of the front door banging con?rmed that she had gone out.

Devlin sat down on the sofa and held the violin in front of him, turning it this way and that. It had been a long time since he’d held a musical instrument in his hands. Nine years, four months and seven days, to be precise. It was a day in his life that he couldn’t permit himself to think about. Yet now, he felt oddly calm. Relaxed even. The opposite to how he should have felt, given the fact that Mel had just walked out on him.

He let his thumb pluck the ?rst string. The sound it made was unexpectedly rich and golden. It resonated around him like a force?eld. He plucked it again and without thinking, he hummed the note. G. The vibration of sound in his throat was both familiar and strange, opening up a chasm inside of him. The before and after; two parts of him that never communicated. Until now. It felt as though, after years of travelling further and further away from himself and everything he knew to be true, he was ?nally back home. A place that had been inside of him all along. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher--added by Pauline:

1. Do you believe objects can hold genuine power to transform lives, or is the change more about the meaning we give them? What items in your own life hold special significance?

2. Which timeline—past or present—did you find most compelling? How did Clara and William's story enhance the modern narrative?

3. By the end, Verity realizes her decades-long pursuit of the violin was misguided. What does the novel say about revenge and obsession? Can you sympathize with her motivations?

4. Multiple characters find healing through music after trauma. Do you agree that creative pursuits can help process difficult experiences?

5. How do Gabrielle and Verity's relationships with their fathers compare? How does the book discuss parental responsibility and family legacy?

6. Walter, Devlin, and Gabrielle are all isolated at the beginning. How does their unlikely friendship transform each of them?

7. What effect did having the violin narrate portions of the story have on your reading experience? How did it change your relationship to the instrument?

8. Many characters get unexpected second chances. Which character's transformation moved you most? Do you believe we all deserve second chances?

9. The novel explores how music connects people across time, language, and culture. What moments in the book best illustrated music's power to communicate what words cannot?

10. How does the novel explore the value of lost or forgotten art? Should all art be preserved and shared?

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