Writing
All her life, Caroline has been writing stories, but it was only when she returned to serious music-making that she found a subject about which she was truly passionate.
She successfully completed the selective Faber Academy course, also the Jericho Self-Editing course, and subsequently worked with mentors Shelley Weiner and Emma Darwin to write two music-themed novels.
Solo has been shortlisted for the Jericho Friday Night Live prize; Khrushchev’s Piano was longlisted for the Watson, Little prize and shortlisted for the Jericho FOW Pitch Perfect competition.
Solo
You’ve heard of “girl meets boy”? This isn’t that. It’s “girl meets horn”.
Cate was a top musician with a leading orchestra – until a disastrous solo humiliated her on the world stage. Traumatised, she abandons her instrument, retrains as a language teacher, reinvents herself online, and travels the world.
Ten years later, after her mother’s death, Cate returns to her bleak Midlands hometown where she is drawn in to mentoring Sarah, a talented teenage horn player with no professional training. Sarah dreams of making music her career, but her family can’t afford a decent instrument, or lessons. She learns by ear, her talent undeniable but her future uncertain.
Cate is the only one who can help.
When the local amateur orchestra announces a concert featuring the piece that once destroyed Cate’s career, Sarah’s big break is at stake. For Cate, helping her protégé succeed could mean redemption – if she can finally face her own past.
Solo will be published by The Book Guild on 28th September 2025, and launched in an evening of conversation and live music on Wednesday October 8th at the October Gallery. Caroline will be in discussion with acclaimed novelist Shelley Weiner. Music will be provided by members of French horn ensemble Cor8.
“A fascinating, sensitive exposé of the inside world of classical orchestras and their players. Most professional and amateur musicians will recognise themselves somewhere in this heart-warming story, and the fact that it is a work of fiction does not diminish its communicative power. A delightfully ‘un-putdownable’ novel!”
– Tony Halstead, conductor, harpsichordist and former horn player
Khrushchev’s Piano
To play safe, or risk all to follow your heart?
Sixty years ago, British pianist Evie Mason travelled to Moscow to take part in a piano competition at the height of the Cold War; now in her eighties, she is disabled and impoverished, and lives in an inadequate care home.
Evie’s narrative from the time of the competition is interwoven with the contemporary story of her granddaughter Anna, also once a talented pianist but now a lawyer, and excerpts from a book by her son Paul.
When Paul dies suddenly of a heart attack, Anna finds solace by playing the piano again and is attracted to charismatic but mysterious pianist Thierry. When Evie, near death, reveals secrets of her own youthful mistakes, Anna is forced to choose between her heart and her head.
This fictional plot draws on the real-life story of Van Cliburn, a young American pianist who achieved worldwide fame when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958.
Khrushchev’s Piano will be published in 2026.