Susanna Hoffs Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Susanna Hoffs
Susanna Hoffs, boasting one of pop’s most beloved voices, grew up in Los Angeles with an ever present soundtrack of 60s music. She grew up surrounded by thinkers, writers, filmmakers, and painters. She loved singing and playing guitar, going on to study the arts while in college. Stirred by new wave and punk, and stirred by seeing the last ever Sex Pistols and the Patti Smith Group at Winterland, she started her first band with David Roback during her time at UC, Berkeley. The group was meant to explore and express their shared passion to the darkly beautiful aspects of theatre, music, art, and photography.

Upon coming back to LA, she put a want ad in The Recycler which led her to Debbi and Vicki Peterson. In December of 1980, they met in the garage at Susanna’s parents’ home and from there a band was born. The girls hit the club circuit hard, and signed to Columbia Records in the year 1983.

Blending 60s garage rock, jangly guitars, and lush harmonies, the Bangles became a seminal band of the 80s with a series of hits from their three platinum selling albums. Over the years since, the Bangles continued touring and releasing LPs.

In 1991, she issued “When You’re A Boy”, a pop heavy solo album. This was in an effort to capitalize on the momentum of the Bangles, with Capital putting her right to work on the album. Five years later, her eponymous second LP brought her much closer to her musical roots than she had been in a very long time which was met with critical praise.

After they worked together in the Austin Powers films as members of Ming Tea, Matthew Sweet and Susanna formed Sid ‘n Susie, releasing three volumes of their acclaimed “Under the Covers” series. Each album covered a different decade with the first covering the 60s, the second covering the 70s, and the third covering the 80s. The magical blend of each of their voices, combined with this roughly hewn power pop sound, has transformed the Sid ‘n Susie project into a cult favorite, along with a critics’ pick.

She stole away to the studio in 2011 for “Someday”, which is a retro modern solo album which served as a stylish homage to the 60s pop which she grew up on. This was an effort to capitalize on a burst of creative energy that was sparked by the presence of Andrew Brassell, a new songwriting partner and indie musician from Nashville. Painted with some catchy-as-anything melodies using this palette of flutes, horns, and strings, the album conjured up this era when melody was king, all while staying ever fresh and contemporary.

Then she followed that up in short order with two stripped down EPs, “From Me To You” and “Some Summer Days”, which were released in 2012 and 2013 respectively.

She has regularly appeared on film soundtracks, including “Meet the Parents”, “A Dog Named Gucci”, “Red Roses and Petrol”, and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, as well as others.

She’s collaborated with Tom Petty, Jack Antonoff, Chris Martin, Aimee Mann, Mike Campbell, Andrew Bird, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, Maya Rudolph, and the Zombies, as well as others.

Being a part of Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s Portlandia Live, Mike Campbell’s Merry Minstrel Circus, and a variety of shows at Cafe Largo in tandem with Jon Brion, Aimee Mann, Andrew Bird, Maya Rudolph, and others has inspired and renewed her for live performances. She looks forward to playing live shows in intimate settings where she’s got the freedom to pull out her favorite songs from her whole discography, as well as some choice covers. With some special guests stopping in to jam with her, every show is this one-of-a-kind adventure for both the audience and her.

Susanna wrote a novel because she has always been a reader and loved disappearing into the stories of other people, whether in a play, a film, a novel, a song, or a painting. She dreamed of one day writing a novel of her own. Then it hit her: if not now, then when? And she just took the plunge.

To her delight, she found this unexpected sense of freedom sitting all alone in her room, writing for hours at a time. This possibly has got something to do with the escapist nature of her novel, which explores, partly, that first blush of a sexy new romance.

Writing the novel gave her permission to fully escape into her fictional world with her characters, which was an exhilarating process for her, and almost like she had gone through a portal into another world. Music informed her journey. Songs would trigger her characters to begin talking, and she would scramble to write down what they were doing and saying, even the expressions they had on their faces as they did.

The character Tom Hardy is named for author Thomas Hardy, who wrote one of Susanna’s favorite novels “Tess of the d’Ubervilles”.

“This Bird Has Flown” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2023. A delightfully funny and steamy debut about fate, music, and love.

Jane Start is recently single, thirty-three years old, and broke. Ten years before, she had a hit song, which was written by the world famous superstar Jonesy, however she’s not had a breakout since then. Now she lives out of these four garbage bags at her parents’ place, reduced to performing to Karaoke tracks in Las Vegas, Rock bottom.

However when Pippa, her manager, sends her to London in order to regroup, she gets seated next to this intriguing stranger on the flight, the other Tom Hardy, who is this elegantly handsome Oxford professor of literature. She is smitten by Tom instantly, and soon, is truly inspired. However it is not her past alone which haunts her second chance at stardom, and at love. Could Tom be all that he appears? And can she emerge out of the shadows of Jonesy’s earlier hit, and into the light of one of her own?

In turns utterly joyful, deeply sexy, and riotously funny, “This Bird Has Flown” explores passion, love, and the ghosts of our past, and offers up a glimpse inside of the music business which could only come from beloved songwriter Susanna Hoffs.