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From award-winning author Lori Rader-Day, Wreck Your Heart is an engaging, "wisecracking and wonderful" crime novel with a big heart, about a country and midwestern singer out to catch her big break before family-or murder-wrecks everything.
Dahlia "Doll" Devine had the kind of hardscrabble beginning that could launch a thousand broken-hearted country songs, but now she's the star of her own stage at McPhee's Tavern. As part of Chicago's-yes, Chicago's-country music scene, Dahlia is an up-and-coming singer in spangles and boots of classic country tunes. Up and coming, that is, until her boyfriend Joey up and went, taking the rent money with him.
So Dahlia is back to square one, relying on Alex McPhee-again. Alex helped her out of a bad situation when she was a kid living rough with her mother. Now he's part landlord, part band booster, all-around rescuer. It's just that Dahlia wishes she didn't keep giving him reasons to have to do it.
Just as Dahlia suspects she's scraped rock bottom, the mother she hasn't spoken to in twenty years shows up with something to say. The next morning, a distraught young woman arrives at the bar, asking after her missing mother-Dahlia's mother, too, even if the missing suburban PTA mom the girl describes sounds pretty different from the one who let Dahlia down all those years ago.
Though no one is using the word sister any time soon, Dahlia lets herself be drawn into reuniting the family that might have been hers. But when a body is discovered outside McPhee's Tavern, the crime threatens not just the place Dahlia has made into a home, but everything she's believed about her past, her dreams for the future, and the people she was just, maybe, beginning to let into her heart. LORI RADER-DAY is the Edgar Award-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of The Death of Us, Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, and others. Lori lives in Chicago, where she co-chairs the crime fiction readers' event Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. Her next novel, Wreck Your Heart, featuring a Midwestern country singer, will be released from Minotaur/SMPG in early 2026. Visit her at www.LoriRaderDay.com.
Dahlia "Doll" Devine had the kind of hardscrabble beginning that could launch a thousand broken-hearted country songs, but now she's the star of her own stage at McPhee's Tavern. As part of Chicago's-yes, Chicago's-country music scene, Dahlia is an up-and-coming singer in spangles and boots of classic country tunes. Up and coming, that is, until her boyfriend Joey up and went, taking the rent money with him.
So Dahlia is back to square one, relying on Alex McPhee-again. Alex helped her out of a bad situation when she was a kid living rough with her mother. Now he's part landlord, part band booster, all-around rescuer. It's just that Dahlia wishes she didn't keep giving him reasons to have to do it.
Just as Dahlia suspects she's scraped rock bottom, the mother she hasn't spoken to in twenty years shows up with something to say. The next morning, a distraught young woman arrives at the bar, asking after her missing mother-Dahlia's mother, too, even if the missing suburban PTA mom the girl describes sounds pretty different from the one who let Dahlia down all those years ago.
Though no one is using the word sister any time soon, Dahlia lets herself be drawn into reuniting the family that might have been hers. But when a body is discovered outside McPhee's Tavern, the crime threatens not just the place Dahlia has made into a home, but everything she's believed about her past, her dreams for the future, and the people she was just, maybe, beginning to let into her heart. LORI RADER-DAY is the Edgar Award-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of The Death of Us, Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, and others. Lori lives in Chicago, where she co-chairs the crime fiction readers' event Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. Her next novel, Wreck Your Heart, featuring a Midwestern country singer, will be released from Minotaur/SMPG in early 2026. Visit her at www.LoriRaderDay.com.
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Reviews
"The expertly plotted mystery perfectly compliments Doll's journey of self-discovery."
People
"I don't know a thing about country music, but Rader-Day makes me understand why people love the songs and the people who sing them. This book is a master class in how to use something a bit different to elevate an ordinary mystery. If you remember Dick Francis's jockeys, you'll love this book."
The Globe and Mail