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A delightfully funny and steamy debut novel about music, fate, redemption, and love from beloved songwriter and Bangles co-founder Susanna Hoffs that is "part British romcom, part Jane Eyre, and one hundred percent enjoyable" (Tom Perrotta).

Jane Start is thirty-three, broke, and recently single. Ten years prior, she had a hit song—written by world-famous superstar Jonesy—but Jane hasn’t had a breakout since. Now she’s living out of four garbage bags at her parents’ house, reduced to performing to Karaoke tracks in Las Vegas. Rock bottom.

But when her longtime manager Pippa sends Jane to London to regroup, she’s seated next to an intriguing stranger on the flight—the other Tom Hardy, an elegantly handsome Oxford professor of literature. Jane is instantly smitten by Tom, and soon, truly inspired. But it’s not Jane’s past alone that haunts her second chance at stardom, and at love. Is Tom all that he seems? And can Jane emerge from the shadow of Jonesy’s earlier hit, and into the light of her own?

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

Don't just take our word for it...

“A little bit romance, a little bit rock-and-roll—this isn’t just a book, it’s a love song, and it should come as no surprise that Susanna Hoffs has crafted the perfect one to put on your playlist.”
– Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners

“A total knockout . . . The smart, ferocious rock-star redemption romance you didn’t know you needed.”
– New York Times Book Review

“Hoffs’ immense writing talent isn’t just confined to songs. . . .This Bird Has Flown is a love story, a sweet and tender romance, but not just one between Jane and Tom — it’s Hoffs’ valentine to music.”
– NPR

Taste the very first page

Elevators are like life, when you think about it: You’re either going up or going down. I was dressed like a whore and descending fast, alone, for a “private” in Last Vegas I should never have agreed to. There’s always something a bit creepy about privates. But I was desperate. For so many reasons. If only my luck would change, and this would be the last dodgy gig I’d have to face for a while.

I was wearing a tiny scrap of fabric posing as a dress, half-hidden beneath my ex-boyfriend’s vintage cardigan, the one possession I’d pinched, for sentimental reasons, when he’d left me for a twenty-three-year-old lingerie model. Two months ago.

Don’t you dare cry. Not about him, not about this, not now.

I caught sight of myself reflected in the mirrored doors and flinched. Who the hell is that? Oh right. It’s her. She dances, she sings, she entertains.

“Hang in there,” I murmured, rallying. “You can do this. A gig is a gig is a gig. The show must go on!”

The doors slide open on Mezzanine, and Pippa appeared in silhouette, late-afternoon sun flooding in from an outlandish wall of glass, creating the impression of a shimmering halo above her tousled blond hair. Pippa, my angel, best friend, and manager…

May 2023