Night Songs
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Aug 11, 2026
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
In this haunting family saga, a young woman must delve into her country star mother’s music to break a curse that has plagued the women in her family for generations—before her time runs out.
On the morning of Rhea’s eighteenth birthday, she makes a shocking discovery—her mother was the famed singer of some of country music’s most iconic tunes, the legendary Lulabelle “Belle” Powers, and she’s just inherited her massive estate. Eager to know more about this woman she barely remembers, Rhea travels to Nashville to retrace her mother’s footsteps. But as she gets to know Belle’s closest friends and learns more of her story, she can’t help but think something is being kept from her.
It isn’t until years later that her mother’s best friend Hess reveals the truth—her mother believed all the women in her family were cursed to die at thirty-three—Belle’s exact age when she passed away in a mysterious plane crash. Hess dismisses the curse as pure superstition, but Rhea feels something sinister stalking her, her own life beginning to mirror her mother’s as she gets closer to her thirty-third birthday. Desperate for answers, Rhea delves deeper into her mother’s music, uncovering Belle’s last unpublished album Night Songs, which leads her back to her roots in ways she never could have imagined.
Alternating between Rhea’s journey and Lulabelle’s untold rise to country queen, Night Songs is an electric story of inheritance and resilience, love and freedom, and the power of music to connect across generations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dyer (Strange Folk) delivers a tender if occasionally sluggish family saga about a late country music star, her daughter, and their purported family curse. When orphaned narrator Rhea turns 18 in 1995, she learns from an estate lawyer that her mother, who died when Rhea was five, was famous country singer Lulabelle Powers, and that Rhea now has control over Lulabelle's $10 million fortune. Rhea, whose father died before she was born, was regularly told by her mean-spirited and God-fearing paternal aunt Lorraine, who raised her, that she was a "demon child." Seeking to understand her heritage, given that Lorraine only told her lies about her mother, she sets off to Nashville. Dyer alternates Rhea's journey with chapters narrated by Lulabelle, who believes she comes from a "long line of cursed women" destined to die at 33. As Lulabelle rises to fame, she enters a marriage of convenience with singer Clayton Redd—"a little love story for the fans"—before striking out on her own and entering a musical and romantic partnership with Rhea's father. In 1995 Nashville, Rhea learns about the curse from one of Lulabelle's friends, further complicating her understanding of her mother's legacy. Dyer pulls off a convincing dual portrait of two searching young women, though the pacing lags at times and the country music mythology feels a little stock. It's a mixed bag.
