The Prize Racket

With a huge reward on the line, the Stockwell Park Orchestra will need to play on a whole new scale to win big… After a brief and disastrous Resident Poet episode, Stockwell Park Orchestra is invited to take part in a TV competition for classical music. For a GBP50,000 prize some competitors are tempted to stretch the genre to ‘crossover’ and beyond. Can a full concert orchestra compete with jazz bands, horn quartets, harp ensembles, and Mrs Ford-Hughes singing in Portuguese with nine cellos? Or will the competition be derailed by the poet’s return, this time sporting live Ambient Sounds? The TV producers aren’t worried: they know a good fight means great ratings. What was supposed to be a quirky diversion threatens to take over the orchestra’s rehearsals for their own concert, but discovering a voting scam means they must fix things in the TV studio first. AUTHOR: Isabel Rogers writes poetry and fiction, but never on the same day. She won the 2014 Cardiff International Poetry Competition, was Hampshire Poet Laureate 2016, and her debut collection, Don’t Ask, came out in 2017 (Eyewear). Life, Death and Cellos is her first novel to be published. She had a proper City job before a decade in the Scottish Highlands, writing and working in the NHS. She now lives in Hampshire, laughs a lot, and neglects her cello.