{"title":"Sean Michaels","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"us-conductors-book-sean-michaels-9781408868669","title":"Us Conductors","description":"‘I come from Leningrad. With my bare hands, I have killed one man. I was born on August 15, 1896, and at that instant I became an object moving through space toward you…’       Locked in a cabin, on a ship bound for Leningrad, Lev Termen types a letter to Clara, his ‘one true love’ and remembers his early years as a brilliant young scientist. Inventor of the ethereal, musical theremin, Termen performed in the gilded concert halls of Russia and Europe to rapturous applause. The toast of the Soviet Union, he was sent to New York with a plan to infiltrate capitalism itself, to win its heart and capture its secrets.        But instead, Manhattan infiltrates Termen and in the city of dreams he rubs shoulders with Gershwin and Rachmaninoff, the Rockefellers and the Astors, Charlie Chaplin and Glenn Miller, and dances night after night with the beautiful young violinist Clara Rockmore. But when his spy games fall apart and he is forced to return home, he finds the Motherland not quite as he left it.       Exiled to a Siberian Gulag, with nothing but his wits to keep him alive, Termen is drawn ever deeper into the labyrinth of Stalin’s Russia, where only his feelings for Clara, passing through the ether like the theremin’s song, seem to show a way out.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49539914367249,"sku":"GOR006643681","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51855813902609,"sku":"GOR007396987","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1408868660.jpg?v=1751241474"},{"product_id":"us-conductors-book-sean-michaels-9781408868690","title":"Us Conductors","description":"'A wonderful book ... His story is so extraordinary and so beautifully and deftly told ... heartbreaking' Observer, Books of the Year   'The grace of Michaels’s style makes these times and places seem entirely new. He succeeds at one of the hardest things a writer can do: he makes music seem to sing from the pages of a novel' Giller Prize Jury  Locked in a cabin, on a ship bound for Leningrad, Lev Termen types a letter to Clara, his ‘one true love’. He recalls his early years as a scientist, inventing the musical theremin and other electric marvels, and the Kremlin’s dream that these creations could help infiltrate capitalism itself. Instead, Manhattan infiltrated Termen – he fell in love with the city’s jazz clubs and speakeasies, and with Clara, a beautiful young violinist.   When Termen’s spy games fall apart, he returns to find the Motherland not quite as he left it. Exiled to a Siberian gulag, with nothing but his wits to keep him alive, Termen is drawn ever deeper into the labyrinth of Stalin’s Russia. Only his feelings for Clara, passing through the ether like the theremin’s song, seem to show a way out.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49592801198353,"sku":"GOR007307276","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50725896159505,"sku":"GOR007396991","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1408868695.jpg?v=1751114919"},{"product_id":"wagers-book-sean-michaels-9781947793637","title":"The Wagers","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen Theo Potiris performed his stand-up comedy act on Conan at 25, he thought he'd hit it big. But ten years later, he's still spending his days working at his parents' grocery store, bicycling to the local open mic, and writing letters to a girlfriend who lives halfway around the world. Theo's desperate for a break. But when he brings his thirteen-year-old niece to the horse track to place a birthday bet--a Potiris family tradition--the goddess of good luck strikes her instead, in the form of a small fortune. Try as he might to be happy for her, Theo's shock and envy finally push him out of the family nest, away from his comedy dreams and toward a new calling.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFirst: a mysterious corporation called The Rabbit's Foot, which carefully quantifies and cashes in on luck. Then: to a gang of vigilantes, who recruit Theo to help them steal luck from those who carry more than their fair share. The Wagers is a literary motorcycle chase, carried by stylish prose and delightful invention. But it's also an investigation of work and purpose, happiness and art, the randomness of good fortune, and all the ways we choose to wage our lives.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49609246507281,"sku":"GOR011552542","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51330925429009,"sku":"CIN1947793632VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1947793632.jpg?v=1765447539"},{"product_id":"do-you-remember-being-born-book-sean-michaels-9781662602320","title":"Do You Remember Being Born?","description":"\u003cb\u003eScotiabank Giller Prize winner Sean Michaels's moving, innovative and deeply felt novel about an aging poet who agrees to collaborate with a Big Tech company's poetry AI, named Charlotte\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMarian Ffarmer is a world-renowned poet and a legend in the making--but only now, at 75 years old, is she beginning to believe in the security of her successes. Unfortunately, a poet's accomplishments don't necessarily translate to capital, and as her adult son struggles to buy his first home, her confidence in her choices begins to fray. Marian's pristine life of mind--for which she's sacrificed nearly all personal relationships, from romance to friendship to motherhood--has come at a cost. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThen comes a cryptic invitation from the Tech Company. Come to California, the invitation beckons, and write with a machine. The Company's lucrative offer--for Marian to co-author a poem in a 'historic partnership' with their cutting-edge poetry bot, named Charlotte--chafes at everything she believes about artmaking as an individual pursuit . . . yet, it's a second chance she can't resist. And so to California she goes, a sell-out and a skeptic, for an encounter that will unsettle her life, her work and even her understanding of kinship. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBoth a love letter to and interrogation of the nature of language, art, labor, capital, family, and community, \u003ci\u003eDo You Remember Being Born?\u003c\/i\u003e is Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Sean Michaels's empathetic response to some of the most disquieting questions of our time--a defiant and joyful recognition that if we're to survive meaningfully at all, creative legacy is to be reimagined and belonging to one's art must mean, above all else, belonging to the world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745031004433,"sku":"NGR9781662602320","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49758749655313,"sku":"CIN1662602324VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50481016176913,"sku":"CIN1662602324G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50935415505169,"sku":"GOR014131555","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53020296642833,"sku":"NIN9781662602320","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1662602324.jpg?v=1751432925"},{"product_id":"us-conductors-book-sean-michaels-9781935639817","title":"Us Conductors","description":"Locked in a cabin aboard a ship bearing him back to Russia and away from the love of his life, Lev Sergeyvich Termen begins to type his story: a tale of electricity, romance and the invention of the world's strangest instrument, the theremin. He recollects his early years as a scientist forging breakthroughs during the Bolshevik Revolution and his decade as a Manhattan celebrity and reluctant Soviet spy. Against the backdrop of Prohibition and the 1929 Crash, Termen spends his days in his workshop, devising inventions, and his nights in Harlem clubs, jostling with famous bandleaders and falling in love with the young violinist Clara Reisenberg. When the boat reaches his homeland, Termen finds it is not the Russia he remembers. He is imprisoned in the Gulag system, sent first to a Siberian work camp and then to a secret laboratory. In the face of all this, his love for Clara remains constant, passing through the ether like the theremin's song.Steeped in beauty, wonder, and looping heartbreak, Sean Michaels's debut novel explores the lies we tell, the truths we imagine, and the lengths we go to survive.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49926158942481,"sku":"CIN1935639811A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50094164246801,"sku":"CIN1935639811G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50426716782865,"sku":"CIN1935639811VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53056662569233,"sku":"GOR007872270","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53068398199057,"sku":"GOR006646747","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1935639811.jpg?v=1765447301"},{"product_id":"us-conductors-book-sean-michaels-9780345815767","title":"Us Conductors","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eUs Conductors\u003c\/i\u003e is the imagined story of Lev Sergeyvich Termen, inventor of the theremin--one of the first electric musical instruments--and his unrequited love for Clara Rockmore, its greatest player. A tale of espionage and electricity, it takes listeners from the gardens of St. Petersburg to the Jazz Age nightclubs of New York, through concert halls, speakeasies, and the Siberian wastes. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSean Michaels' debut novel is based on the true events of Termen's life: his invention of the theremin in Russia shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution; his decade as a Manhattan celebrity and secret spy, jostling with Gershwin and building weapon detectors for Alcatraz; and his eventual return to Stalin's USR. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs the novel reaches its devastating climax, Termen is sent out into the gulag--first to a forced labor camp and then to a prison for scientists--and bears witness to some of the Cold War's deepest atrocities. But like the theremin, \u003ci\u003eUs Conductors\u003c\/i\u003e is also an eerie and magical invention. Subtle, thrilling, and melancholy, it is a story of secrets, of human ingenuity, of the lengths one goes to survive, and ultimately of the undiminishing hope for love that keeps us alive.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50498067628305,"sku":"CIN0345815769VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51325062152465,"sku":"CIN0345815769A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51334502088977,"sku":"CIN0345815769G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0345815769.jpg?v=1751227924"},{"product_id":"volunteer-book-sean-michaels-9798230797333","title":"The Volunteer","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53658623344913,"sku":"NIN9798230797333","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9798230797333.jpg?v=1781426868"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-sean-michaels.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}