Meet M.L. Rio, author of ‘If We Were Villains’ and ‘Graveyard Shift’, at University Church in Oxford, hosted by Waterstones, on Wednesday 15th October to celebrate the release of ‘Hot Wax’, Rio’s stunning third novel. 

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 realised, 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. 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.

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.

Book tickets with Waterstones here

University Church, The High Street, Oxford, OX1 4BJ