Join us at Yardstick as we welcome back Milwaukee author, Zhanna Slor for her latest thriller, BREAKFALL. Zhanna will read from her book, answer questions and sign copies.
Mina Banksy, a 32-year-old writer and mother of a rambunctious toddler, is still reeling from a tumultuous divorce and a very challenging year when two Chicago detectives show up at her door looking for her friend, Dylan. Or, more accurately, the van that she allowed him to register in her name, because Dylan, a friend from her former Jiu Jitsu gym, is a recovered addict and convicted felon. The van quickly becomes the least of her problems, as Dylan, too, is nowhere to be found. His disappearance triggers a series of events that turn everyone at the close-knit gym into suspects or victims, and somehow all roads lead back to Mina Banksy. Part unlikely romance and part murder mystery, set inside the eclectic subculture of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, BREAKFALL is an exploration of sexual desire, motherhood, and marriage in modern times.
Zhanna Slor was born in Ukraine and moved to the Midwest in the early 1990s. Her debut novel, At the End of the World, Turn Left, was called "elegant and authentic" by NPR and named by Booklist as one of the "Top Ten Crime Debuts" of 2021. Her second novel, BREAKFALL, is a domestic thriller surrounding a mysterious death at a close-knit Jiu Jitsu gym. And while the mysterious circumstances of the murder are fabricated by Slor, the story is inspired by her experience training in martial arts. “Jiu Jitsu is a practice of self-defense where you can literally learn to kill somebody with your bare hands,” says Slor. “It’s easy to get caught up in it, and grow obsessive.”
