Everyone is warmly invited to join us for Lone Star Lit at Malvern Books. This friendly, informal book club will focus on books by Texas writers (and with a bit of luck the authors themselves might sometimes be able to join us too!)

This meeting will take place virtually via Zoom. If you’d like to join in the online chat, PLEASE RSVP becky@malvernbooks.com with “lone star lit” in the subject line. The book can be purchased via our online store or at Malvern Books. (Call us on 512-322-2097 if you’d prefer curbside pick up.) We offer a 10% discount in-store on all current book club titles.

For our January meeting, we’ll be discussing Ghosts of Yokosuka by Britta Jensen, and the author will be joining us for part of the discussion!

From the award-winning author of the Eloia Born series, comes a new novella about identity, finding oneself in the midst of wandering spirits, and young love in a Japanese port city. Fourteen-year-old Annabelle’s only friends are ghosts. To make matters worse, her Japanese birth father left her family two years ago and her mother has recently remarried an American sailor. Her already difficult life on the backstreets of 1980s Yokosuka, Japan, has gotten a lot more complicated as she tries to navigate the complicated social strata between the Filipino, American, and Japanese cultures on the small naval base. When a motherless boy drifts into her world, her life changes in unexpected ways. The shifting weight of the adult responsibilities she has shouldered for far too long makes her question if life with only her ghosts caring for her is enough?

Britta Jensen’s debut YA novel Eloia Born won the 2019 Writer’s League of Texas YA Discovery Prize and was long-listed for the 2016 Exeter Novel Prize. The sequel, Hirana’s War, was released in October 2020. Many of Britta’s stories explore themes of persevering through disability, parental separation, and the intersection of various cultures on new worlds. Her stories have been shortlisted for the 2017 Henshaw Press and Fiction Factory prizes and she was published in Stories for Homes, Volume 2. Britta’s plays have been performed in New York City, Japan, and South Korea. She earned a BA in Acting Performance from Fordham University and an MA in Teaching of English Literature from Columbia University. For the past seventeen years she has taught creative writing and edited books for both traditional and indie authors. She has received numerous awards, including the General Sharp Award from the US Army, for her innovative teaching of creative writing in New York City, South Korea, and Germany. Friends often refer to her as a polyglot—which is a product of living twenty-two years overseas in Japan, South Korea, and Germany, before settling in Austin, Texas. She enjoys mentoring writers and editing books with The Writing Consultancy and Yellowbird Editors. In her spare time she dances Argentine Tango, sings, and volunteers with the Relief Society, SCBWI, and the Writer’s League of Texas.

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Join Zoom meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85300738955?pwd=MCs0TjN4UmZubHRXSjBWZllUYjNRZz09