Lola on Fire: A Novel

Written by Rio Youers

Narrated by Jim Meskimen

Arthur Ellis Award finalist Rio Youers combines vengeance and deceit, love and bullets, secrets, and twists in this high-octane action thriller with a vibrant emotional core.

Brody Ellis is short on luck and even shorter on cash to buy the medication his sister Molly needs.

Desperate, he robs a convenience store, but on the way out, he bumps into a young woman and loses his wallet. Just when he expects the cops to arrive, the phone rings. It’s Blair Mayo—the woman he bumped into—and she’s got the missing billfold.

Brody will get it back, but only if he does her a favor: steal her late mother’s diamonds from her wicked stepmom. But when he gets to the house, he finds a gruesome crime scene—and a security camera. Brody knows he’s been framed.

Back home, the terrified young man gets another call. The police won’t get the incriminating video footage, Blair says. Instead, her daddy, the notorious mobster Jimmy Latzo, will exact his own kind of revenge. 

Brody and Molly realize that they’ve become pawns in a mysterious game—one that involves a notorious enforcer named Lola Bear who brutally crossed paths with Jimmy Latzo twenty-six years before. . . a ghost from the past who is intimately connected to their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Feb 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9780063001039

Rio Youers

Rio Youers is the British Fantasy and Sunburst Award–nominated author of Lola on Fire and No Second Chances. His 2017 thriller, The Forgotten Girl, was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. He is the writer of Sleeping Beauties, a comic book series based on the bestselling novel by Stephen King and Owen King. Rio lives in Ontario, Canada, with his wife and their two children.

Reviews for Lola on Fire

[Edward Lorn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book has rockets for shoes. One of the best thrillers I've read. Characters, action, pacing, all on point. Dig it.

[Daisy Kirby · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great narrator, interesting story, and personally, I had no issues with the writing style.

[marple21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Brody Ellis is a desperate man. In an attempt to take care of his sister he decided to rob a bank to help pay the bills and by a stroke of, quite horrible, luck he is led to Blair and that is where his nightmare begins as his life seems to spiral out of control. He soon learns his life isn't quite what it seemed and that he is going to have to fight or be killed to get to his nightmare to end. I was quite skeptical of this book at first. I am not really one for mobster stories, movies, or honestly anything of the sort. This book though was quite interesting. To me it seemed to play like an action movie that you would see. I think that this says a lot for how great Youers is at writing and conveying this story. I think that the story had decent pacing and that it was easy to keep up with the switches in the point of views, as well. You do get drawn into liking the characters, even though they may not be the best of people. And as well you really dislike the antagonists. I think a reader would generally want to continue to see how everything fits together and to, ultimately, see the end. I think that I could have enjoyed this story a little more and that it was just missing a little something to bring the story more life. But overall it was an enjoyable read. (I got this book as an Advanced Readers Copy from Goodreads.)