IMPROVE YOUR
READING EXPERIENCE

While I write, I listen to music, and the music informs my composition.

If you’d like to listen to the same music while you read my books, you can find a small sample of that music listed here. I upload new selections every week, so bookmark this page and come back often to discover and enjoy more exceptional music.

If you hear any pieces you’d like to have for your own, I’ve included links at the bottom of this page for many of the albums these songs come from.

Click on the little speakers lower on this page, and you can choose from any of these playlists:

The Classical playlist really should be called “Opera”, but I avoid using that term because it scares the bewillikers out of most people.

Here you will find ethereal, uplifting, transcendent arias from the greatest vocalists in the world. My favourite soprano of all, Cecilia Bartoli, is here, but so are many other legendary divas performing pieces that you might not be familiar with. You can get lost in these selections as they transport you to the heavens.

I have heard them all a hundred times and I never tire of listening to them.

The “Popular” playlist is a fun selection of tunes that I’ll put on while I’m proofreading. It’s a very personal set of choices and probably won’t appeal to most people.

It features several well known artists, such as Norah Jones and Fiona Apple, but there are also several selections that some of you might call “shmaltz”.

There’s a couple of my favourites by Burt Bacharach (who finally got proper recognition in the “Austin Powers” movies!), and especially prominent are several “Disney” songs — I admit it: I’m a sucker for a good Disney tune, plus listening to them nostalgically reminds me of all the fun Disney cruises my kids and I took when the world was still normal.

The Jazz playlist is often what I play while I’m writing crime noir.

Many of you will recognise the artist Johnny Hodges, who was Duke Ellington’s star tenor saxophonist. I’ve included a few of Hodges’s harder to find selections that I’ve really fallen in love with.

I’ve also included two versions of “Autumn Leaves”, one by Miles Davis, and the other by Duke Ellington. The Ellington version is, to me, one of the most haunting, deeply-affecting renditions I’ve ever heard of this song, and I can’t get it out of my mind.