Wreck Your Heart

An aspiring country singer grapples with family turmoil and murder in this exceptional standalone from Rader-Day (The Death of Us). The action kicks off with Dahlia Devine at rock bottom: she’s been evicted from her Chicago apartment after her boyfriend, Joey, fled with the couple’s meager savings. A life of hardship—including a childhood spent in the care of a drug-addicted mother—has prepared her to weather the storm, but Dahlia is thrown further off her axis when her mom shows up at McPhee’s Tavern, where Dahlia regularly performs with a country music cover band, after two decades of radio silence. The next morning, her mother is gone again, and a woman claiming to be Dahlia’s half sister arrives trying to find her. While Dahlia absorbs these shocks, someone is murdered outside of McPhee’s, and she concludes that something organized and dangerous is at play just beneath the surface of her troubles. Rader-Day excels at conjuring the sights and sounds of her Chicago setting, and Dahlia is a spunky, unforgettable heroine. The result is a consistently surprising mystery that readers will be hard-pressed to put down. (Jan.)