Marissa Stapley will join us to discuss her most recent novel, The Lightning Bottles. It’s part love story, part searing examination of the cost of fame, and a whole lot of rock n’ roll. The story of two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared passion for music interwoven with flashbacks to Jane and Elijah’s love story and their rise to fame during the grunge era, THE LIGHTNING BOTTLES is a poignant and gritty love letter to music–and a searing look at what happens when the stars we idolize come crashing back to earth.

MARISSA STAPLEY is the New York Times bestselling author of Lucky, which was the first-ever Canadian Reese’s Book Club pick (December 2021), as well as bestsellers Mating for Life, Things to Do When It’s Raining, and The Last Resort. Her next novel, The Lightning Bottles, a story of nineties rock and star-crossed love, will be published by Simon & Schuster in Fall 2024. She has also co-written the bestselling holiday rom-coms The Holiday Swap (a Book of the Month pick) and All I Want for Christmas under the pen name Maggie Knox. Her next rom-com, Three Holidays and a Wedding (September 26, 2023), is a collaboration with bestselling author and playwright Uzma Jalauddin. Many of her novels have been optioned for television and her journalism has appeared in publications across North America. She has also worked as a sports reporter, cemetery gardener, bartender, destination travel rep, stable hand, and magazine editor — but becoming an author is a dream she has harboured since the age of seven, when she decided she was going to be the next L.M. Montgomery. She lives in Toronto with her husband, two children and the best cat in the world — and is happiest while lakeside in Northern Ontario, a good novel or notebook and pen in hand.