The Lightning Bottles

By: Marissa Stapley

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

The author of New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick Lucky returns with a spellbinding story of rock ’n’ roll and star-crossed love—about grunge-era musician Jane Pyre’s journey to find out what really happened to her husband and partner in music, who abruptly disappeared years earlier.

He was the troubled face of rock ’n’ roll…until he suddenly disappeared without a trace.

Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock n’ roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she’s perhaps the most hated—and least understood—woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart—even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame, first in the Seattle grunge scene, then around the world.

But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band’s meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels, and all she wants to do is retreat. What she doesn’t anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenaged girl next door—a Lightning Bottles superfan—who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah still alive, he’s also been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find them right away.

A cross-continent road trip about two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared love of music, The Lightning Bottles is both a love letter to the 90s and a searing portrait of the cost of fame.

©2024 Marissa Stapley (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

Critic reviews

“A fiercely visceral, exquisitely written ode to rock and roll, the 90s, and the power of music to hurt and heal in equal measure . . . both a beautiful love story and a singularly unique mystery . . . The Lightning Bottles [will] take up permanent residence in your head, and in your heart.”—LAURIE ELIZABETH FLYNN, author of Till Death Do Us Part and The Girls Are All So Nice Here

“It’s hard to write a rock’n’roll novel that’s both authentic and entertaining. Marissa Stapley has nailed it with this one.”—ALAN CROSS, radio broadcaster and writer