HOT WAX

Regular price €25.99
1980s music
A01=M. L. Rio
American road trip
Author_M. L. Rio
beach read
book club
books about bands
BookTok
Category=FH
Category=FS
Category=FXB
coming of age
daisy jones and the six
dark academia
emma cline the girls
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_thrillers
father daughter
graveyard shift
if we were villains
jennifer egan
literary fiction
m l rio
mat osman
music books
road trip
road trip lit
rock and roll
self-discovery
taylor jenkins reid
TikTok
vinyls

Product details

  • ISBN 9781035421169
  • Weight: 620g
  • Dimensions: 164 x 238mm
  • Publication Date: 09 Sep 2025
  • Publisher: Headline Publishing Group
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

Our Delivery Time Frames Explained
2-4 Working Days: Available in-stock

10-20 Working Days: On Backorder

Will Deliver When Available: On Pre-Order or Reprinting

We ship your order once all items have arrived at our warehouse and are processed. Need those 2-4 day shipping items sooner? Just place a separate order for them!

'Sensory and visceral from page one . . . M. L. Rio is a force to be reckoned with' JENNIFER EGAN

'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



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.

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.