The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers: A Novel

by Sarah Tomlinson

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers is a novel that fully captures the captivating landscape of rock and roll in the 60s and 70s. With a clear connection to The Rolling Stones, this is ripe with genuine human emotion built around a larger-than-life cultural movement.

Perfect for fans of Daisy Jones & The Six and Almost Famous, a gripping debut about the complicated legacy of a legendary rock band and the ghostwriter telling their story

Three Rock & Roll icons. Two explosive tell-all memoirs. One ghostwriter caught in the middle.

Mari Hawthorn has just landed the biggest job of her ghostwriting career. Anke Berben, the legendary model and style icon, needs someone for her hotly anticipated memoir. In the 1960s, Anke reveled in headline-grabbing romances with three members of the hugely influential rock band The Midnight Ramblers. The band became as famous for their backstage drama as for their music. Outside of the bandmembers themselves, Anke is the only one who fully understands the tangled relationships, betrayals, and suspicions that has elevated the Ramblers to mythological status. That could not be clearer than in the enduring mystery around the death of Mal, the band’s lead singer and Anke’s husband, in 1969.


In the decades that followed, rumors have swirled about Mal’s demise, but Anke and the surviving members of the Ramblers have all kept silent. Until now. As her ghostwriter, Mari must ingratiate herself with Anke, coaxing out the stories she needs to write a memoir worthy of such an important band. Mari is deft at navigating the fatal charms of the rich and famous, having grown up with a narcissistic, alcoholic father. But she soon stumbles upon secrets more explosive than anyone could have imagined. It’s now not just about celebrity tell-alls–this is about redemption.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250890481
Publisher:	Flatiron Books
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	66,652
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Sarah Tomlinson, a former music journalist, has been a ghostwriter since 2008, penning more than twenty books, including five New York Times bestsellers. In 2015, she published the father-daughter memoir, Good Girl (Gallery Books). She wrote The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers, her first novel, in-between assignments for a who’s who of celebrity clients.

Editorial Reviews

12/18/2023

Tomlinson (Good Girl, a memoir) draws on her ghostwriting career for a breezy story about a woman who gets paid to write the memoirs of aging rock stars. Mari Hawthorn has grown tired of living in the shadow of her famous subjects. Her fortunes seem to be turning, though, when she gets an opportunity to coauthor a book with former model and socialite Anke Berben, whose mystique was amplified in the 1960s when she married Mal Walker, leader of the Midnight Ramblers, a fictional rock band analogous to the Rolling Stones in their popularity and libidinous excess. Like many famous rockers, Walker “lived too hard and died too young,” but mystery has always shrouded his death by drowning in 1969. Now Berben claims she’s willing to share the true story of what happened to her husband. Recognizing that this could be the big break she’s been desperate for, Hawthorn digs in deep to coax out the truth from Berben and Walker’s bandmates. Tomlinson ably parlays her knowledge of the ghostwriting trade into an entertaining tableau of rock and roll’s grit and glamour. Classic rock fans will find much to enjoy. Agent: Kirby Kim, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

A seductive tale of fame, power, and celebrity. Tomlinson casts a spell over the reader while asking fascinating questions about ways we exchange money for access, secrets, and sometimes even love.” –Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street

“The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers is an observant, suspenseful novel about an ambitious ghostwriter and the celebrities she manipulates, coddles, and sometimes loves. Sarah Tomlinson writes with compassion and sizzle, using her own skills as a ghostwriter to lend earth and substance to larger-than-life characters.” –Steph Cha, author of Your House Will Pay

“Tomlinson’s punky noir about rock stars and the quiet women behind them had me turning pages late into the night. Whether ghostwriters or talented groupies, it's about the voices in the silence, the devastation that the entitled leave behind.” –Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors

From the Publisher

2023-11-17
A ghostwriter finds herself pulled into the mysterious past of a legendary rock band.

When ghostwriter Mari Hawthorn gets the opportunity to work with legendary model Anke Berben, she knows that this could be the boost her career needs. Anke is most famous for having had romantic relationships with three members of the Midnight Ramblers—one of the defining rock acts of the 20th century and still going strong today—and she needs someone to help tell her story. Mari, whose career has stalled, needs to be that somebody. She’s desperate for this job, but she finds herself immediately charmed by Anke—even as she works to uncover what really happened the night the band’s lead singer, who was married to Anke at the time, drowned in 1969. As Mari gets to know Anke, the band’s lead guitarist, Dante Ashcombe, and the rest of the musicians, she finds herself drawn into their world and eager to uncover the band’s mysteries. Tomlinson, a bestselling memoir ghostwriter herself, makes Mari’s job and desire to hunt down the truth feel realistic. As the prologue states, “Ghosts do it for three reasons: money, access, praise.” Although Mari starts out needing the money, it’s easy to understand why she soon wants to be part of the band’s inner circle. The plot itself, though, is quite slow-moving, likely because much of it takes place in conversation rather than action.

An in-depth but sometimes repetitive look at the world of rock ’n’ roll.

Kirkus Reviews

Helen Laser brings a crisp no-nonsense timbre to the lush, narcissistic world of celebrities that ghostwriter Mari Hawthorn must navigate to survive in Palm Springs. Mari gets her big break when she's hired to write notorious model Anke Berben's memoir. Laser makes her excitement and trepidation palpable with a well-chosen combination of hushed tones and even diction. Anke is the widow of Mal, lead singer and founder of the fictional band The Midnight Ramblers, whose death in 1969 remains shrouded in speculation. Laser gives Anke a convincing German accent and a cordial yet distant tone embodying the precarious relationship between her and Mari. The text itself becomes overly ruminative in places, but Laser's expert pacing and phrasing maintain the listener's interest. E.E. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

JULY 2024 - AudioFile