First up this month: an event! Murder by Memory is out in a few short weeks (have you preordered yet?) and on March 25th I’ll be signing in-person at the splendid Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park! Wear a mask (all the cool kids are doing it these days), get a signed book, and support a local bookstore! Full details here.

Linkery

• Story of the week is the discovery that the eruption of Vesuvius turned one Roman victim’s brain into glass. The neural structures are still preserved! It also looks so cool and sparkly! This is my favorite kind of historical artifact: we learn a lot but also it is beautiful and unique. A+ glass brain, no notes, we thank this long-ago human for his gift.
• If, like me, you’ve been reading lots of things about illegal printing and subversive book history and spies — for, um, Reasons — then you’ll dig this story about how the CIA fought communism by supporting [book production] (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/feb/22/it-allowed-us-to-survive-to-not-go-mad-the-cia-book-smuggling-operation-that-helped-bring-down-communism). You definitely don’t have to hand it to the CIA, who should have stuck with the book thing instead of all the other hideous projects they undertook.
• Are you ready for the real-life love story of Peter S. Beagle? I guarantee you’re not.
• Becky Stone at Diamonds in the Library is always finding the coolest things — and this time it’s pieces of transatlantic cable turned into souvenir jewelry pieces by Tiffany. People can make anything beautiful if they’ve a mind to.

Crafty

I am still knitting the Big Brioche Sweater, and am in that strange realm of indecision where I either have to block it and seam it, or seam it and then block it. And when to pick up and knit the sleeves and collar? There’s no perfect answer to I struggle to just choose and push forward. Hopefully I’ll have better updates — and pics! — in the next newsletter.

In the meantime, for Art reasons, here is a shot of a jeweler for Van Cleef and Arpels at work on a hummingbird for their Rêveries de Berylline automaton.

Reading recs

For this month’s column (gift link) I reviewed Adriana Herrera’s Belle Epoque Paris romance between a woman doctor doing illegal medicine and a duke who just wants to support (and bang) her properly; a contemporary where a social media manager has to fake date his ex to land a huge promotion at his dad’s event company; and a darling little romcom about a Black ballerina in need of social media boosting and a hockey player with a playboy reputation to live down.

The Book Review also published my list of queer historical romances (gift link) from as broad a selection of time periods as I could find — because now more than ever it’s important to stand up for queer history and queer loves and queer lives.

I hope you find a few new favorites to enjoy, and I’ll see you again next month!

Olivia