We are thrilled to welcome Emily Midorikawa to Blackwell’s to discuss her debut novel A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing, in conversation with Susan Barker, author of Old Soul. This cinematic thriller takes us into the nightlife of Osaka, where a young teacher becomes entangled with a mysterious acquaintence.

Doors: 6.30pm, Starts: 6.45pm

Tickets are £4. Admission is free when purchasing a copy of the book in advance.

About the book:

Anna has never met anyone like the enigmatic Loll: a British hostess at the Moonglow bar, in the Japanese city of Osaka. While Anna teaches bored students by day, Loll passes the nights in smoky, dim-lit rooms where she pours men’s drinks, lights their cigarettes and laughs playfully at their jokes.

With her blonde wigs, shimmering dresses and bejewelled nails, Loll cuts a mesmerising figure. But her skin bears unexplained bruises beneath its glittering facade, and Anna’s concern slowly begins to grow. She is troubled by the secret of the carved jade stone necklace that her glamorous new friend seems determined to protect; the mysterious identity of Loll’s best client with shadowy links to the city’s underworld crime bosses; and the sight Anna witnesses one afternoon: Loll teetering alone on the edge of a railway track, caught in the deafening rush as a train hurtles by.

Unlike Anna who has come to Osaka to learn more about her half-Japanese heritage, Loll seems to have no clear reason for being there and no easily discernible past. And so when she suddenly disappears, there are only the barest of clues as to where she might have gone. But, desperate to find her friend, Anna refuses to give up. Soon she is thrown onto a trail that will take her into the darkest corners of the neon-choked metropolis – hidden, forbidden places from which those who know the city best warn her to stay away.

About the author:

Emily Midorikawa is the author of the group biographies Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice and A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontё, Eliot and Woolf (cowritten with Emma Claire Sweeney). Emily is a winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. She has lived in Japan and the UK, and is now based in Washington DC.