Here are 100 books that Dirty Like Me fans have personally recommended if you like
Dirty Like Me.
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I’ve always adored romance books—there’s nothing like the thrill of meeting characters that you know you’re going to fall in love with just as much as they’re going to fall in love with each other. I didn’t start out intending to write about rock stars. But when I was sitting down in front of that first blank screen looking for inspiration, it was a rock star that took shape in my mind. There is something so inherently appealing about the artistic, tortured souls of musicians. Relationships in the spotlight come with very special challenges, and I love exploring how characters navigate these while still developing passionate, soul-deep emotional bonds.
A.L. Jackson is a fantastic writer, who sucks you into the world of her rock stars and makes it so you never want to leave. Her books are emotional and gripping, and she’ll have you smiling and crying—sometimes at the same time. Beneath the Stars is the last book in her Falling Stars series, but it’s my favourite. This story of a broken, damaged soul hiding his pain from the world, only to be rescued by a woman who has survived her own trauma, is absolutely gorgeous. If you enjoy sexy, southern rock stars, a forbidden, brother’s best friend romance, and a love that will sweep you off your feet, you’ll adore this book!
A friends-to-lovers romance about an unattainable rockstar and his best friend’s younger sister from NYT and USA Today bestselling author A.L. Jackson
Maggie Fitzgerald is the last girl I should think about taking to my bed.
On the cusp of turning 21, she has her whole life waiting out ahead of her. Sexy AF while still radiating an innocence that I know better than to taint.
And here I am, itching to reach out and touch a girl who is so forbidden that just thinking about her feels like committing a mortal sin.
I’ve always adored romance books—there’s nothing like the thrill of meeting characters that you know you’re going to fall in love with just as much as they’re going to fall in love with each other. I didn’t start out intending to write about rock stars. But when I was sitting down in front of that first blank screen looking for inspiration, it was a rock star that took shape in my mind. There is something so inherently appealing about the artistic, tortured souls of musicians. Relationships in the spotlight come with very special challenges, and I love exploring how characters navigate these while still developing passionate, soul-deep emotional bonds.
Paula Dombrowiak writes non-traditional rock star romances that will absolutely touch your heart. This is the first book in her Blood & Bone series and tells the story of middle-aged rock star Jack, who is being interviewed by Erin about the rise and fall of his nineties grunge band, including his tumultuous relationship with his former bandmate and collaborator, Mia. Paula paints a vividly realistic picture of the nineties grunge scene, skillfully mixing past and present to tell Jack’s heartbreaking story. This book is a beautifully written and emotional look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of the rock star life.
A steamy, exciting, and emotional rock star romance with a bit of a slow burn, a love triangle and a '90s grunge aesthetic.
Two Days, One Interview, Twenty-Five Years of Rock 'N Roll. Telling his story might just repair past relationships and ignite new ones.
Jack O’Donnell is a middle-aged rock star with a long history of bad decisions. When unimaginable circumstances bring Jack and journalist Erin Langford, together, the two embark on a journey through Jack’s past where he recounts the rise and fall of his band and the profound bond he shared with his former bandmate and collaborator.…
I’ve always adored romance books—there’s nothing like the thrill of meeting characters that you know you’re going to fall in love with just as much as they’re going to fall in love with each other. I didn’t start out intending to write about rock stars. But when I was sitting down in front of that first blank screen looking for inspiration, it was a rock star that took shape in my mind. There is something so inherently appealing about the artistic, tortured souls of musicians. Relationships in the spotlight come with very special challenges, and I love exploring how characters navigate these while still developing passionate, soul-deep emotional bonds.
I love Carian Cole’s books. She writes the most beautifully emotional rock star romances, and the final book in her Ashes and Embers series is an unapologetic tear-jerker. This book asks the question: if two soulmates meet and fall in love, and then tragedy fundamentally changes one of them, are they still soul mates? The answer Carian Cole provides is a breathtakingly romantic story that will make you believe in true love that lasts forever. The fact that Asher is a sexy rockstar who could make anyone swoon is absolutely the icing on the cake.
Carian Cole unapologetically pulls out all the feels in this romance! Reading this book will have you asking yourself if you would stay committed to your spouse in the face of unspeakable tragedy. And would they stay committed to you?
I should have died. I should have been forgotten. But I didn’t, and I wasn’t.
Living the life most women only dream about, I was madly in love with my soulmate—Asher Valentine—amazing husband, loving father, and rock’s favorite kick-ass frontman. A man who loved me every day, in every way, since we first met as teens. We were blessed with…
I’ve always adored romance books—there’s nothing like the thrill of meeting characters that you know you’re going to fall in love with just as much as they’re going to fall in love with each other. I didn’t start out intending to write about rock stars. But when I was sitting down in front of that first blank screen looking for inspiration, it was a rock star that took shape in my mind. There is something so inherently appealing about the artistic, tortured souls of musicians. Relationships in the spotlight come with very special challenges, and I love exploring how characters navigate these while still developing passionate, soul-deep emotional bonds.
Lick was another of my earliest rock star romance reads. It takes the rock star trope and combines it together with the accidentally married trope, and I loved every second of it! It was so much fun reading about how these strangers deal with waking up after a wild night out on the town in Las Vegas only to realize they’re now married. That would be difficult enough without one of them being a very famous rock star. This story is sexy, entertaining, heartbreaking, and heartwarming, all at the same time. Not always an easy combination to pull off, but Kylie Scott manages it beautifully.
Waking up in Vegas was never meant to be like this.
Evelyn Thomas's plans for celebrating her twenty-first birthday in Las Vegas were big. Huge. But she sure never meant to wake up on the bathroom floor with a hangover to rival the black plague, a very attractive half-naked tattooed man in her room, and a diamond on her finger large enough to scare King Kong. Now if she could just remember how it all happened.
One thing is certain, being married to one of the hottest rock stars on the planet is sure to be a wild ride.
Richard Niles was born in Hollywood but grew up in London where his 50-year professional career as a composer, arranger, record producer led to work with some of the most acclaimed artists of our time, including Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, James Brown, Tina Turner, Cher and jazz icon Pat Metheny. He has worked on 20 Gold and 28 Platinum records. He has published many books on music including The Pat Metheny Interviews, The Invisible Artist, From Dreaming to Gigging, Piano Grooves, Songwriting – The 11-Point Plan, Adventures in Arranging, Adventures in Jazz Composition, What is Melody?, and How to be an Employable Musician. Dr. Niles' PhD is from Brunel University and he has lectured internationally.
One of the most legendary producers in music history, Visconti enabled the talent and genius of ground-breaking artists such as David Bowie, Iggy Pop, T Rex, Thin Lizzy, Wings, and U2.
This is an insider’s view from a brilliant musician and arranger, an intimate view from a man whose talent earned the trust of the talented. The book is filled with fascinating personal tales of his work, and photos from his private collection.
A name synonymous with ground-breaking music, Tony Visconti has worked with the most dynamic and influential names in pop, from T.Rex and Iggy Pop to David Bowie and U2. This is the compelling life story of the man who helped shape music history, and gives a unique, first-hand insight into life in London during the late 1960s and '70s.
This memoir takes you on a roller-coaster journey through the glory days of pop music, when men wore sequins and pop could truly rock. Featuring behind-the-scenes stories of big names such as Bowie, Visconti's unique access to the hottest talent, both…
Where Are Your Boys is the book I always wanted to write. Watching emo bands like My Chemical Romance and Paramore soar from suburbs to stardom during my high school years inspired me to take writing seriously, that a kid like me growing up in New Jersey with few connections to the media industry could find a backdoor in, because those bands did, too. With its dense population, adjacency to New York City, and a multitude of record stores and all-ages shows, New Jersey was the setting for much of emo's 2000s boom and the home of My Chemical Romance and many other important bands.
This book gave me a drive. Goodman’s account of the Strokes’ debaucherous rise in 9/11-era New York City ignited my passion for oral history and to tell the story of the music that made me. Downtown cool kid garage rock shaped popular culture immensely, but so did My Chemical Romance and their cohort (even more so, I’d argue). Up to this point (MMITB was published in 2017), 2000s emo was frequently misconstrued by those too old to have understood its impact or left out of the conversation entirely.
As I conducted interviews for my book, I challenged my own hypotheses (and personal biases) about these two scenes. I learned they intermingled more than I thought. I talked to Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz about DJing the ultra-hip downtown party Misshapes and My Chemical Romance’s Mikey Way about trying to catch a glimpse of Madonna at the same place.
A SUNDAY TIMES, ROUGH TRADE, ROLLING STONE, MOJO AND UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEAR LONGLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE
New York, 2001. 9/11 plunges the US into a state of war and political volatility-and heralds the rebirth of the city's rock scene. As the old-guard music industry crumbles, a group of iconoclastic bands suddenly become the voice of a generation desperately in need of an anthem.
In this fascinating and vibrant oral history, acclaimed journalist Lizzy Goodman charts New York's explosive musical transformation in the early 2000s. Drawing on over 200 original interviews, Goodman follows the meteoric rise…
Having spent seven years researching and writing about Prince (and another year updating the book), I spoke to as many people who worked and lived with him as I could. While my book is rich with information gleaned from interviews, alongside my own analysis, there were a few people who didn’t talk to me. Of the above, I did talk to Dez Dickerson, but the others were holding off (presumably because their own books were in the works). All the books below work as perfect compliments to mine and are all must-haves for any Prince fan’s purple library.
Prince was different things to different people and one of the things you’ll discover through these books is that they work as a mosaic showing different sides of him. Only two people will ever know what it was like to be married to Prince, and Mayte is one of them.
In The Most Beautiful, a title inspired by the hit song Prince wrote about their legendary love story, Mayte Garcia for the first time shares the deeply personal story of their relationship and offers a singular perspective on the music icon and their world together: from their unconventional meeting backstage at a concert (and the long-distance romance that followed), to their fairy-tale wedding (and their groundbreaking artistic partnership), to the devastating losses that ultimately dissolved their romantic relationship for good. Throughout it all, they shared a bond more intimate than any other in Prince's life. No one else can tell…
I was born in 1954, the same year as rock and roll. I am a product of the era that spawned me. I was that kid at school who would rather read his music mags than his school books. Over a rich and varied career, I have turned those passions into my profession. I have been a singer in a band, a music journalist, a broadcaster with the BBC national radio network, and have had several music related books published by major publishers. I have also been an academic specialist in my field and have managed to turn all those lifelong interests into a Ph.D. and an M.Phil.
I grew up with the Beatles. I went from 8 to 16 in the time it took the band to go from Love Me Do to Let It Be. I measure my own growth from infancy to adolescence during their lifespan.
The Beatles were more than a band to anyone of my age. They were a planet we all lived on. There have been hundreds of books about them, but few are more insightful than this one by their suave and urbane press officer.
Derek started off his career as a hard-bitten newspaper hack of the old school. Working with the Beatles changed his life. I can relate to that. The Fab Four changed all our lives.
'The sharpest memoir written by one of the Beatles' inner circle.' Observer
Derek Taylor's iconic memoir is a rare opportunity to be immersed in one of the most whirlwind music sensations in history: Beatlemania. As Time Goes By tells the remarkable story of Taylor's trajectory from humble provincial journalist to loved confidant right at the centre of the Beatles' magic circle. In charming, conversational prose, Taylor shares anecdotes and reminiscences so vivid and immediate that you find yourself plunged into the beating heart of 1960s counterculture. Whether watching the debut performance of 'Hey Jude' in a country pub or hearing…
I became a young man near the end of the sixties, and I have always been enthralled by the era's various idiosyncrasies, both good and bad. For instance, I loved the complex yet pleasant rock music and the freewheeling lifestyle. On the downside, the war in Vietnam cast its pall over the times, and I narrowly escaped being drafted and sent off to Southeast Asia. Overall, it was an era in which good and evil were starkly defined, and many people were attempting to create a better, more peaceful world. There is still much we can learn from this time.
In my opinion, the Grateful Dead's music forms an important part of the soundtrack of the psychedelic sixties–and into the seventies and beyond.
They first performed under this name at Ken Kesey's acid tests in San Francisco and gained an exponentially-growing reputation as cutting-edge performers of acid rock–so much so that loyal "Dead Heads" would follow them around from concert to concert. McNally was the band's official historian, and his inside track gave him access to fascinating details about the individual band members, their music, their drug trips, their metaphysical meanderings, and much more.
This book brings me back to the days of my youth when I lived for a time in the San Francisco Bay Area and saw the Dead perform at Fillmore West.
The complete history of one of the most long-lived and legendary bands in rock history, written by its official historian and publicist—a must-have chronicle for all Dead Heads, and for students of rock and the 1960s’ counterculture.
From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture. The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels…
We all know Little Richard’s great hits like "Long Tall, Sally", "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly Miss Molly" and Little Richard’s life was as wild as his records. It’s excess all areas as Spencer Leigh tells the story of Little Richard in Send Me Some Lovin. It is a biography of someone who transformed popular music. Spencer Leigh was born in 1945 and hearing Little Richard for the first time in 1956 changed his life. He is a world expert on the Beatles and he has written a series of music-based biographies – Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel – all of which are full of facts and opinions.
I love seeing the scraps of paper on which George wrote his songs like "Something" or "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".
I love seeing all his crossings-out and he offers some good commentary too. George comes over as a thoroughly nice person, but you do need strong wrists to read this book. (Gosh, I’m recommending heavy books!)
"For me, the essence of this book is the lyrics and I believe they stand the test of time because they are written about man's eternal quest, dilemmas, joys and sorrows. George's lyrics were, in my opinion, the most spiritually conscious of our time" - Olivia Harrison
Cherished by fans and collectors, I Me Mine is the closest we will come to George Harrison's autobiography. This new volume has been significantly updated since the 1980 original. For the first time I Me Mine - The Extended Edition covers the full span of George Harrison's life and work, exploring his upbringing…
