Spill the Afternoon Tea Bookstore Romance Day event

As we reach the midpoint of Bookstore Romance Day, take a restorative tea break – a spill the tea break! – with some of your favorite Sourcebooks authors!  Grab a cuppa and join E L James (FREED), Susanna Kearsley (THE VANISHED DAYS), Sandra Kitt (WINNER TAKES ALL), Scarlett St. Clair (A TOUCH OF DARKNESS), Annabeth Albert (OUT OF CHARACTER) and Annika Sharma (LOVE, CHAI AND OTHER FOUR-LETTER WORDS), in a conversation moderated by editor Christa Désir, as they bring you into the inner sanctum of publishing and book fandom, sharing fun stories, giggle-worthy anecdotes and their favorite interactions with readers and other authors.  You’ll laugh, you’ll learn, you’ll love everything about this hi-caf BRD panel event!

Registration is free but is required.  You can also choose to purchase a signed (bookplate) copy of each authors' latest book below.  Please note that we can only ship to US addresses!  Please add the shipping ticket if you would like your book(s) mailed to you.

About the authors:

E L James is an incurable romantic and a self-confessed fangirl. After twenty-five years of working in television, she decided to pursue a childhood dream and write stories that readers could take to their hearts. The result was the controversial and sensuous romance Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. In 2015, she published the #1 bestseller Grey, the story of Fifty Shades of Grey from the perspective of Christian Grey, and in 2017, the chart-topping Darker, the second part of the Fifty Shades story from Christian’s point of view. She followed with the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Mister in 2019. Her books have been published in fifty languages and have sold more than 165 million copies worldwide. E L James has been recognized as one of Time magazine’s “Most Influential People in the World” and Publishers Weekly’s “Person of the Year.” Fifty Shades of Grey stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for 133 consecutive weeks. Fifty Shades Freed won the Goodreads Choice Award (2012), and Fifty Shades of Grey was selected as one of the 100 Great Reads, as voted by readers, in PBS’s The Great American Read (2018). Darker was long-listed for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award. She was a producer on each of the three Fifty Shades movies, which made more than a billion dollars at the box office. The third installment, Fifty Shades Freed, won the People’s Choice Award for Drama in 2018. E L James is blessed with two wonderful sons and lives with her husband, the novelist and screenwriter Niall Leonard, and their West Highland terriers in the leafy suburbs of West London.

Annabeth Albert grew up sneaking romance novels under the bed covers. Now, she devours all subgenres of romance out in the open—no flashlights required! When she’s not adding to her keeper shelf, she’s a multi-published Pacific Northwest romance writer.  She has penned many critically acclaimed and fan-favorite LGBTQ  romance series.  To find out what she’s working on next and other fun extras, be sure to join her reader group on Facebook! Also, be sure to sign up for her newsletter for free ficlets, bonus reads, and contests. Emotionally complex, sexy, and funny stories are her favorites both to read and to write. Annabeth loves finding happy endings for a variety of pairings and particularly loves uncovering unique main characters. In her personal life, she works a rewarding day job and wrangles two active children. She’s a compulsive knitter, late night reader, obsessive gamer, and happy bi-pride flag waver.

Born in Delhi and raised in central Pennsylvania, Annika Sharma followed her Penn State-loving heart to college in Happy Valley. There, she graduated with two Bachelor's degrees in Biobehavioral Health and Neuro-Psychology. She also holds two Master’s degrees from Penn State and George Washington University, respectively, in Early Childhood Special Education and Public Health. In addition to being an agented and published author, Annika is a co-founder and co-host of The Woke Desi podcast, one of the largest independently run South Asian podcasts in the world. She has been invited to keynote speak at multiple events. Her freelance work with FemHealth Project focuses on women's health topics. She currently lives in New York City and works as a health communications manager by day, while juggling her writing and podcasting careers by night. She is a lover of endless conversations, college football, social justice, traveling, books, all things related to England, dancing, superhero movies, and coffee.

Sandra Kitt is the author of more than twenty novels as well as numerous short stories. She is the recipient of the Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award and the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Award. A native New Yorker, she previously worked as a graphic designer, illustrating books and exhibiting her own work, which is included in the collection of the Museum of African American Art. She formerly served as the managing director of the Richard S. Perkin Collection in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

New York Times, USA Today and Globe and Mail bestselling author Susanna Kearsley is a former museum curator who loves restoring the lost voices of real people to the page, often in twin-stranded stories that interweave present and past. Her award-winning novels are published in translation in more than 25 countries. She lives near Toronto.

Scarlett St. Clair is the bestselling author of the HADES X PERSEPHONE SAGA, the HADES SAGA, KING OF BATTLE AND BLOOD, and WHEN STARS COME OUT. She has a Master's degree in Library Science and Information Studies and a Bachelors in English Writing. She is obsessed with Greek Mythology, murder mysteries, and the afterlife.