Local author and New York Transplant Emma Riva will read from and sign her Pennsylvania-set debut novel.

Set in an out of the way corner of Pennsylvania Emma Riva's debut novel explores the relationship between its two misfit main protagonists, which spans from late-night blue raspberry Slurpees to fasting on Yom Kippur.

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Lance Miller and Ellen Kostopoulou don’t have much in common, but they’re both awake between two and five in the morning. Lance is a Postmates delivery guy with a broken down car, and during the day, he lives alone with his five dogs, insecure that he’s one of the few Jewish people in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. Ellen is an overworked graveyard shift waitress and an insomniac wracked with guilt over the fact that she didn’t complete her education. One night, Ellen offers Lance a ride. From there, two night owl misfits discover they each can offer the other something to heal their wounds and ease their loneliness. This is a book for anyone who’s ever stayed up too late, but with thirteen original paintings by Coyote Jacobs accompanying the story, it will resonate any time of day.

Emma Riva is a novelist and fine arts journalist who has been writing for as long as she can remember. Her first “novel” was a tale dictated to her father about a tiger in her washing machine at age two. She is a graduate of The New School, and her fiction has received accolades from the UK-based Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation and Rainy Day, Cornell University's literary magazine. Her reporting on Washington Heights graffiti legends, Brooklyn's first Hasidic art gallery, and murals from Miami to Chattanooga appears online in UP Magazine. Night Shift in Tamaqua is her first novel and features 13 illustrations by New York-based artist Coyote Jacobs.