Join us for another installment of Novel Night, a monthly celebration of all things prose! Here’s how it works: two published authors will read from their books and there’ll be an audience Q & A. And we’ll also have “Book Talk,” in which an intrepid Malvern staff member will introduce you to one of our favorite prose titles. Also worth noting: we’re offering 20% OFF ALL FICTION TITLES during Novel Night (from 6pm till closing).

This month’s Novel Night focuses on works of historical fiction and features S.D. Banks and Sugar Lee Ryder. S.D. will be reading from Transcendent Loyalties: A Novel of the American Revolution, and Sugar Lee will be reading from The Gaslight Gunslinger, book one of her Matthew Slade Western detective series.

S.D. Banks is a native Texan, and a long-time resident of Austin. For much of Banks’ adult life, her focus was on her husband, son and working at paying jobs. It was when she went back to college later in life to complete a degree that had been put on hold that encouragement from history and English professors convinced her that she should rekindle her writing dream, and pointed her toward a melding of her passion for history and love of writing. Banks graduated summa cum laude from Texas State University where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in history, with a minor in writing. She credits her history professors there with demonstrating that an understanding of history can give us the key we need to understand the present. “Many of the trials, conflicts, and dilemmas we face today are either continuations of situations that have gone on for centuries, or are so similar to past events that the relevance of the parallels cannot be ignored,” she says. “Knowing these things—understanding the ramifications of how they played out in the past—can keep us as a society from being manipulated or misled, and can help make us as individuals better citizens and wiser voters.” Banks adds what is essentially her mission statement. “If, through my novels, I can impart a few nuggets of historical knowledge in an entertaining way, then I feel I’ve been successful.”

Sugar Lee Ryder was born to a pair of Wild West rodeo show performers. It made for an interesting time growing up, to put it mildly. She lives in Austin, Texas. Her books include the bestselling contemporary romance Cowgirl Up, the lesbian-themed historical romance Sagebrush & Lace, and two western detective series—The Gaslight Gunslinger and Maddie Slade.