About this Event
Capping off the day, H&H is hosting M. L. Rio at 7 PM for a sneak preview reading of her new novel HOT WAX, coming out on September 9, 2025. There will be an audience Q&A and refreshments, as well as some early swag and copies of her books GRAVEYARD SHIFT: A NOVELLA and IF WE WERE VILLIANS available for signing! Due to limited seating, RSVP will be required for attendance. RSVP and more info at: theheadandthehand.com/events
M. L. Rio has been an actor, a bookseller, an academic, and a music writer. An avid road-tripper and record collector, when she’s not on the hunt for her next big score, she lives in South Philadelphia with the world’s best road dog, Marlowe. She holds an MA in Shakespeare studies from King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe and a PhD in English from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her bestselling first novel, IF WE WERE VILLAINS, has been published in 22 countries. Her first novella, GRAVEYARD SHIFT, was a USA Today and Sunday Times bestseller.
About HOT WAX:
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 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.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
H&H Books, 2230 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, United States
USD 0.00
