Hot Wax: A Novel

M.L. Rio

Language: English

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: Sep 9, 2025

Description:

Hot Wax is "a propulsive father-daughter story" (Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad) and a journey of self-discovery that "captures the joy and danger of rock 'n' roll" (Publishers Weekly) through one woman's reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood.
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...