All she wants is a token of his affection. It's 1987 and fifteen-year-old Shira Spektor lives with her father in a funky apartment building on Miami's South Beach. More comfortable wearing retro '40s clothing than the current fashions, Shira doesn't belong—which is why her best friend is a bawdy, brassy eighty-year-old, and Shira herself has never even been kissed properly. It would have helped to have a mother to turn to for advice, but Shira and her dad have been doing all right on their own since she was three. And then her father falls in love with his secretary, and suddenly Shira isn't his special girl anymore. Bruised by her father's constant criticism and the barbed attention from the popular girls at school, Shira finds comfort in a dangerous new hobby—shoplifting. But when she gets caught by a dark-eyed, streetwise boy from Spain, Shira discovers an unexpected friend and ally. And then friendship grows into something more thrilling...and less safe.
Authors
Joëlle Jones is an American comic book artist based in Los Angeles. Jones attended the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland and has worked with a number of comics publishers, including DC, Marvel, Boom, Oni Press. She wrote and drew her own series Lady Killer, published by Dark Horse comics. Jones has also provided illustration work for a number of clients, including Prada and the New York Times.
I'm the author of YA, graphic novels and novels for adults who still feel young, at least most of the time. Recent works include GILT, a graphic novel about time-traveling women of a certain age; Cadaver & Queen, a YA Feminist Frankenstein meets Grey's Anatomy tale, and Mystik U from DC Comics, which features Zatanna and other magical characters in their first year at college. I also co-host a Sandman podcast, The Endless, with Lani Diane Rich. My first novel, Till the Fat Lady Sings, is also about college and romance and eating disorders. (It was my thesis at Columbia University's MFA Program, where I felt like an outlier for liking comic books and romance as much as literature.) I was an editor at Vertigo, the mature/dark fantasy branch of DC Comics, before going freelance. (I've also written two hormonal werewolf books as Alisa Sheckley.) I live near the Vanderbilt Estate in Hyde Park, NY, with two dogs and a frightening number of books. aka Alisa Sheckley
