Chip told us not to go out. Said, don't you boys tempt the devil. But it been one brawl of a night, I tell you, all of us still reeling from the rot – rot was cheap, see, the drink of French peasants, ...

HALF-BLOOD BLUES, by Esi Edugyan. Picador, 319 pp., $15 paper. "Half-Blood Blues" takes its title from a jazz disc that doesn't exist, but you wish you could hear anyway. It was, according to Canadian ...

Before they were soldiers, they were family. Before they were legends, they were heroes. Before there was a nation, there was a fight for freedom.

"Berlin, 1939. The Hot-Time Swingers, a popular German American jazz band, have been forbidden to play live because the Nazis have banned their 'degenerate music.' After escaping to Paris, where they ...