HOT WAX

A nostalgic love-letter to the 80s rock and roll scene, Hot Wax follows a band of rocker misfits, rivals and trailblazers on the tour that could have catapulted them to super-stardom, if it all hadn't come crashing down.

A vivid and immersive tale of one woman's reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood, and made her who she is.

Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father's forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills' wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning - one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.

The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father's sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers.

Hitching her fate and Gil's beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she'd lost forever: desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country - and drives her to a desperation all her own.

Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back - where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.

Review

The sleaze of the Stooges, the energy of the Ramones and the glamour of the Cramps-Hot Wax is a pure foot-on-the-monitors, amps-up-to-ten rock 'n' roll classic. -- MAT OSMAN, bassist for Suede and author of The Ghost Theatre

Sensory and visceral from page one, Hot Wax is a propulsive father-daughter story infused with rock and roll down to its very cadences. M. L Rio is a force to be reckoned with. -- JENNIFER EGAN, author of, A Visit From The Goon Squad

M.L. Rio's electric, immersive writing makes you feel every beat of the music, every bead of sweat, every broken guitar string and split knuckle and spray of blood. By the end of this feverishly-composed rock 'n' roll masterpiece, you'll be on your feet shouting for an encore. -- LAYNE FARGO, bestselling author of The Favourites

Rio captures the joy and danger of rock 'n' roll in her raucous latest . . . Rio keeps the reader guessing-and turning the pages-while shining a light on Suzanne's emotional scars. This electrifies. ― Publishers Weekly

About the Author

M. L. Rio is the author of international bestseller and BookTok sensation If We Were Villains. She holds an MA in Shakespeare Studies from King's College London and Shakespeare's Globe and a PhD in early modern English literature from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research explores representations of madness and mood disorder on the early modern stage. She lives in Washington, D. C. with too many books, too many records, and a mutt called Marlowe.