My friend Isabella Valeri just published her first novel, Letters from the Dead, and it's fantastic! A girl grows up on the estate of her dynastic family, never setting foot on land her father doesn't own, until power struggles result in her being shipped off to a boarding school under an assumed name. In between there is tradecraft, statecraft, assassins, financial shenanigans, and a rogue's gallery of billionaire sociopaths.

Go buy.

I was fortunate enough to be a beta reader of this novel and its coming sequels, beginning almost a decade ago, so I got to see it evolve... Sometimes the road to publishing is a long one.

You may remember Isabella from her 2003/2004 blog, "She's a Flight Risk", where she documented her time as an international fugitive, having embezzled a small fortune from her family and then gone on the run with smugglers and other small-plane enthusiasts. I understand that those years will be covered in book three.

Now, I expect that right away some of you will get hung up on, "But is it true?"

My friend, this is 2025. Nothing is true.

It does say "a novel" right there on the cover, if that helps you out. She is fond of saying that her attorneys have made it clear to her that she is "no longer permitted to tell true stories."

Are we still doing "truthy"? It's definitely truthy.

And it's a great story.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.