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.
Join Lori Rader-Day at Blue House Books on Thursday, January 8th at 6:30 p.m., to talk about her newest release, "Wreck Your Heart". Lori will be discussing her latest book with fellow Midwest author, Andrew Ludington ("Splinter Effect"), answering questions from the audience, and signing books!
This event requires a $5 reservation deposit. Get all the details here:
https://www.blue-house-books.com/events/3732820260108
About WRECK YOUR HEART:
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.
About LORI RADER-DAY:
Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of "Wreck Your Heart" (forthcoming January 2026), "The Death of Us", "Death at Greenway", "The Lucky One", "Under a Dark Sky", and others. Lori earned a master of arts in creative nonfiction and a master of fine arts in creative writing. She lives in Chicago, where she co-chairs the crime fiction readers’ event Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. Visit her at www.LoriRaderDay.com.
About SPLINTER EFFECT:
In "Splinter Effect", an action-packed debut by Andrew Ludington, time traveling archaeologist Rabbit Ward maneuvers through the past to recover a long-lost, precious menorah hidden in ancient Rome.
Smithsonian archaeologist Rabbit Ward travels through time on sponsored expeditions to the past to secure precious artifacts moments before they are lost to history. Although exceptional at his job, Rabbit is not without faults. In a spectacular failure twenty years ago, he lost both the menorah of the second temple and his hot-headed mentee, Aaron. So, when new evidence reveals the menorah’s reappearance in 6th century Constantinople, Rabbit seizes the chance for redemption.
But from the moment he arrives in the past, things start to go wrong. Rabbit quickly finds out that his prime competition, an unlicensed and annoyingly appealing “stringer” named Helen, is also in Constantinople hunting the menorah. And that’s only the beginning. The oppressed Jewish population of the city is primed for revolution, Constantinople’s leading gang seems to have it out for Rabbit personally, and someone local is interested enough in the menorah to K*ll for it.
As the past closes in on him and his previous failures compound, will Rabbit be able to recover the menorah before it's once again lost in time? With new and old dangers alike hiding behind every corner, time might just be up for Rabbit’s redemption—and possibly his life.
About ANDREW LUDINGTON:
Andrew Ludington writes transportive adventure stories intended to make you forget your commute. He graduated from Kenyon College with a BA in English Literature and lives in Evanston, IL where he moonlights as a technologist for Northwestern University. "Splinter Effect" is his first novel.
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