Last Verse, The by Caroline Frost; 2024. Hardcover.

From the award-winning author of Shadows of Pecan Hollow comes The Last Verse, a gripping novel set in the country music world of 1970s Nashville about a struggling musician who writes a hit song that both promises her long-sought-after fame and implicates her in a heinous crime. When aspiring musician Twyla Finch arrives in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1977, the nineteen-year-old Texan is dazzled by the fringe-and-rhinestones country music scene. Live music flows from bars, open mic nights tempt with the chance of stardom, and record label execs seek the next hot new act. As Twyla finds her way in this vibrant town, she soon falls for Chet Wilton, country music hopeful and son of blue-blooded Nashvillians. When a night out with Chet goes terribly wrong, Twyla finds herself involved in a shocking crime. Hoping to process what happened that fateful night, she composes a haunting ballad that she performs only once in an empty bar. But weeks later, when she turns on the radio, she hears another woman singing her song. Twyla must decide whether to claim her ballad, securing the fame she's always wanted--but implicating her in the terrible crime she's desperate to put in the past. Seductive and bold, tense and unflinching, The Last Verse is the story of a woman's ambitions, obsessions, and the harrowing road to claiming her voice.