Motor City Love Song: A Novel (Dial Delights) - Softcover

Buch 17 von 22: Dial Delights

Peers, Lisa

 
9780593736708: Motor City Love Song: A Novel (Dial Delights)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593736702 ISBN 13: 9780593736708
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

No one knows why the queen of indie rock vanished from the Detroit scene more than twenty years ago. When her ex sets out to find her, the truth will rock both their worlds.

Detroit, 1997. After a showstopping performance at the Artemis Club, Paloma is poised to take the music world by storm and represent her city on the world stage. Her girlfriend and manager extraordinaire, Jace, is determined to make Paloma into the indie star she knows she can be. But when Paloma disappears from the public eye in 2001, Jace is left alone to pick up the pieces.

Two decades later, Jace has built a new life without Paloma. Leaving music behind is the best thing she’s ever done, but when she hears that the Artemis Club is about to go under, she’s willing to do anything it takes to keep this piece of Detroit’s history alive—even if it means searching for Paloma. After all, Paloma’s early 2000s hit has just gone viral on social media, and she’s the one person whose star power can rescue the club. While Jace isn’t eager to reopen old wounds, closure might be nice … plus, she’s still single, having spent twenty years comparing all her potential love interests to Paloma—and they’ve all come up short. But Paloma has her own reasons for not wanting to be found.

With the Artemis Club’s fate hanging in the balance, Jace and Paloma find themselves drawn back into the world they once ruled…and towards each other. This dual POV, second-chance romance is sapphic celebration of the garage band era—and the power of love and music to spark new beginnings.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lisa Peers is a writer with a passion for smart, funny love stories with well-deserved happy endings. She has acted professionally in San Francisco, produced TV and radio programs in Detroit, and is currently a creative director for an international marketing agency. A Harvard graduate with an MFA in acting from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, Lisa lives with her partner, Dani, in metro Detroit, not far from their three grown children, along with their beloved cats and way too much yarn.

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1

Way Back When

June 7, 1997

Jace Randolph had to figure out what she was going to do before the crowd at the Artemis Club started lobbing beer bottles at one another. At 12:48 a.m. on a balmy Detroit summer night, it was like a boiler room inside the club, and the musicians, staff, and standing-­room-­only ticketholders had been waiting way too long for headliner Paloma Doralle to get her ass onstage and start her set. As music booker for the venue, it was Jace’s responsibility to know where Paloma was, and, unfortunately, she had no f***ing idea.

Jace collared Jerome, Paloma’s bassist, in the wings. “When’s the last time you heard from her?” she yelled over the throb of the music coming from the PA system.

“This afternoon,” Jerome yelled back.

“This afternoon,” Jace repeated as calmly as she could. “And at that time, she knew she was booked for midnight. Tonight.”

Jerome nodded. “She said she’d meet us here. She wanted to go record shopping first.”

Jace’s stomach dropped. No record stores would be open at this hour. Had something happened to her—­a car accident, or worse? “She had the map I gave you, right? She knew how to get here?”

The bassist shot her a sardonic smirk. “As far as I know.” He pointed to Richie, the drummer, who was staring at a point on the floor backstage and twirling his sticks over and over through his fingers. “I mean, we got here, so . . .” As Jace turned to leave the stage, Jerome caught her arm. “Hey, if she doesn’t show up, me and Richie can still do the gig. I’ll take over lead vocals.”

“And who’ll play guitar?” Jace said. “Richie? While he’s playing snare with his feet?”

Jerome had no answer for that.

Swearing under her breath, Jace skirted the crowd and entered the club’s business office, which was shoehorned into the former coat check room at the front of the venue. Using the desk phone, she rang Paloma’s listed home number, knowing full well she wouldn’t be there to pick up. The call went to her answering machine, playing a greeting that Jace had suggested she make more professional: “You have a mouth, so use it to leave me a message, cutie pie!”

Jace hung up, frustrated. Was Paloma the type of musician who thought she could drop by whenever she felt like it instead of honoring her call time? Granted, Jace had almost no leverage over her. The Artemis Club paid a minimal appearance fee instead of a cut of ticket sales, and after a couple of failed experiments with an open bar, band members and their entourages could no longer drink for free. But Paloma Doralle had signed a binding contract, and if she didn’t follow through, Jace could theoretically sue her in small claims court. Not that she would.

Folding her arms tightly, Jace perched on the corner of the desk and fumed. A faded, framed newspaper photo of the Artemis Club’s founder, Stavros Galanis, stared at her from the opposite wall. Had he been alive to see what the club had devolved into seventy years after he’d opened it, he would have dropped dead from disgust. Mr. Galanis had been a civic-­minded Greek immigrant driven by his conviction that the city needed a lecture hall dedicated to the appreciation of high culture, which he’d built here on Cass Avenue back in 1927. Now, Detroit was far from being the glittering Paris of the Midwest it had been at the dawn of the auto industry. After decades of flight and blight, it was more like Rome in ruins, with the Artemis being a battered beacon for the survivors and artists who wouldn’t or couldn’t leave. These days, the concrete statue of Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt, that greeted patrons at the front entrance had been chipped, graffitied, pissed and shit on by dog and man, and occasionally outfitted with a red lace bra and matching panties on Valentine’s Day. The performance space, which had boasted velvet flocked wallpaper and pastoral landscapes in its heyday, had been stripped down and plastered over with decades of posters from local rock bands and nationally known acts that passed through the Motor City on their way to LA or New York or London. The brass-­and-­glass chandeliers had been ripped out to make way for strips of stage lights; the porticos that had held replicas of Hellenic pottery were jammed with stacks of speakers. The stage was besmirched by duct tape residue and dents from mishaps with heavy equipment, and the floor where the general admission patrons stood had been stained over the years by puddles of beer and bodily fluids. The aroma of burnt popcorn, cigarette smoke, and BO was permanently singed into the air. The bathrooms ranged from tolerable to unspeakable.

This was Jace’s place of business, and it was da bomb.

The Detroit punk and garage rock scene had blasted out of the exhaust pipes of the 1960s and fallen in and out of fashion ever since. These days, it was on the upswing once more, with another generation of Michiganders channeling their creative rage through secondhand guitars and dented drum kits, playing at venues that were scattered across the city like crumpled empty cigarette packs.

Jace had first entered the club as a Wayne State University freshman with her roommates, a blue Esprit jacket, and a fake ID to follow up on a rumor that Sammy Sinister would be doing a surprise appearance. Sabine Galanis, the Artemis Club’s late-­twenty-­something owner—­and great-­niece of Stavros himself—­was working the box office that night. Seeing Jace’s disappointment when she learned that Mr. Sinister had already left town, Sabine comped Jace and her friends to stay and hear a local band, Tiny Teacups, instead. As her roommates pressed toward the stage, Jace stayed near the back to take it all in: the décor, the crowd, the staff, and the band. The total chaos left her flushed with excitement. Tiny Teacups took the stage around one in the morning, and they were awful in the best way possible: bold in their ineptitude, ambitious in their mediocrity, and thrilling in their sheer nerve. They gave not one flying f*** what other people thought of them: the exact opposite of Jace’s entire adolescence. She was mesmerized.

Her roommates had been ready to bail after one number, but Jace begged them to stay until closing time. Once the lights went on, while the other girls chatted up the lead guitarist, Jace was deep in conversation with Sabine about what she did for a living. Their flirting for naught, her roommates eventually pushed Jace toward the exit doors. She spotted Sabine in the lobby as she was waving the weary patrons on their way, and before she could be yanked out of the club, Jace asked her for a job.

Since graduating in 1992, Jace had grown out her dark brown hair into a Gina Gershon–­inspired shag and become a bona fide indie music aficionado. She had heard a lot of bands since she started working for Sabine, and she had trained her ear to identify the ones she believed fit the Artemis Club vibe: formidable melodies, powerful lyrics, supreme showmanship, and, ideally, the ability to stay in tune. Jace scouted acts in college town clubs in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti and sorted through piles of cassette tapes and CDs that eager musicians pressed into her hands. Sabine was relieved to have Jace handle the talent decisions as she aimed to raise the Artemis Club’s profile as the premier place to play in the city. Before long, they’d gained a reputation for featuring musicians who were on their way to bigger things.

Musicians like...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593736702
ISBN 13 
9780593736708
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
305
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

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Osnabrück
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