Lauren Willig's Blog

It’s my first DC area event in over a decade!

Come join me on Thursday, September 25th at 7pm at Wonderland Books in Bethesda, where I’ll be in conversation with the wonderful Stephanie Dray, author of My Dear Hamilton, as we dive into historical fiction, true crime, and all things Hamilton.

No reservations required– just show up!

See you there!

The post See you in Bethesda! appeared first on Lauren Willig.

The Girl from Greenwich Street and I are hitting the road this fall!  I usually don’t tour much after the month a book comes out– but this one is the exception.

Come join me in Long Island, Maryland, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Westchester as I talk all things Hamilton, true crime, and America’s first fully recorded murder trial!

Saturday, September 13, 2pm
Mineola Memorial Library
195 Marcellus Road
Mineola, NY

Thursday, September 25, 7pm
Wonderland Books
7920 Norfolk Ave
Bethesda, MD

Saturday, October 11
Morristown Festival of Books
Details to come.

Friday, October 17, 10:45am
Litchfield Books Luncheon
Pink Lakes Country Club
5603 Granddaddy Drive
Myrtle Beach, SC
Buy your ticket here.

Saturday, October 18
Meet the Authors Day
Harrison Public Library
2 Bruce Avenue
Harrison, NY

The post Maryland and South Carolina and New Jersey, Oh My! appeared first on Lauren Willig.

Calling all 2025 Pinkorama participants to take a bow!  It’s time for the 2025 Pinkorama Round Up!

This year, we’ve got a unicorn with a taste for raspberry jam, the Yale swim team jumping on a table, and Eliza Hamilpeep giving wise counsel to her Alexander.

Before we go further– I know, I know, you’re waiting for the peeps!– I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to all the Pinkorama participants.  Thank you for being so generous with your time, your energy, your creativity.  Thank you for creating this oasis of sugary joy.

And now, without further ado, the Peeps!  (Presented in the order in which I received them.)

1.”The Elusive Peepicorn”, by Carla and Rowan (from The Temptation of the Night Jasmine)

Robert, Duke of Dovedale, and Charlotte go unicorn hunting using a plate of jam tarts as bait– and I think they’ve found one!

Click here for a full description and more pictures of the scene.

2. “2 Peeps”, by Candace and Cassandra (from Two L)

As faculty and student at Harvard Law, Cliff and Julia can’t go out for dinner without the campus going wild– but what if they’d met when they were both undergrads at Yale?  A distraction by the Swim Team in Yale’s Commons keeps this meet cute from being any kind of meet.  (Except maybe a swim meet.)

Click here for a full description and more pictures of the scene.

3. “The Girl from Peepwich Street”, by Maddie, with crocheted Peep by Laura (from The Girl from Greenwich Street)

Arriving home in the wee hours after the long first day of the Levi Weeks trial, Alexander Hamilton receives some snacks and wise advice from his wife, Eliza (now and always his Peep).

Click here for a full description and more pictures of the scene.

A huge round of applause to all the participants!  Carla, Rowan, Candace, and Cassandra, I am in awe of your Peep-craft.  It’s amazing to me how much expression and character you manage to convey with confections.  Thank you so much for bringing Night Jasmine and Two L gloriously to Peep!

As far as I’m concerned you’re all winners and I owe each team an ARC of What Happens at Nightfall!  (I’ll keep you posted on when those are expected.)

Start preparing your ideas– and your Peeps– for the 2026 Pinkorama!

The post The 2025 Pinkorama Round Up appeared first on Lauren Willig.

Join me and fellow W Beatriz Williams this coming Wednesday, 5/21, at the Darien Public Library for a lively discussion of The Girl from Greenwich Street!

After a whirlwind three months, this will be my last event of the season.  I’ll be taking the summer off from touring to hunker down with my 2027 book.  So please do help us make it a banner night!

Where: Darien Library, 1441 Post Road, Darien CT

When:  Wednesday, May 21, 7pm

The event is free but registration is required.  You can register here.  Books will be available for purchase at the event from Barrett Bookstore.

If you can’t make the event, but live in the area and would like a signed and personalized book, let the folks at Barrett Bookstore know and I can sign it for you at the event for you to pick up at your convenience at the store!

See you on Wednesday!

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Here we are, our third and final Pinkorama of 2025!  This Pinkorama is brought to you by my eleven year old, and it’s something of a twist on the classic Pinkorama.  You’ll see why once you look at the photo….

Yes, that is, in fact, a giant crocheted Peep, given to me in early 2020 by our very own past Pinkorama champion, Laura.  There’s something wonderfully meta about having a crocheted Peep given to me in commemoration of the Pinkorama being then used to create a Pinkorama (also, less sugar on the floor of my daughter’s bedroom, says the person who vacuums that bedroom).

In this scene, from Chapter Twenty-Seven of The Girl from Greenwich Street, Hamilton returns home in the wee hours after the first, long day of the Levi Weeks trial, feeling considerably discouraged for reasons I can’t tell you because they would be a spoiler.  He finds his Eliza also awake (and strangely pink and long-eared).  She’s been up with their teething infant, but finds her husband some food, sits with him as he shares his concerns about the case– and manages to crack the case for him.

The food in this scene may be somewhat fancier than the cold roasted mutton, turnips, and potatoes Eliza provides Alexander in the book.

Notice what’s just outside their cozy dining area?  Yes, the body of a woman.  I’d like to claim she did this on purpose– putting Elma Sands back at the heart of the story!– but the truth is that I didn’t even notice that was there until after I’d been presented with the scene and took a picture of it for her.  But how accidentally perfect is that?  All that’s missing is a well….

Before we go, here’s a close up of Laura’s amazing Peep.  She usually wears a Regency tippet that Laura crocheted, but for this occasion, she donned an American Girl Doll nightgown for her appearance as Eliza Hamilton.

As fun as it was to see this take shape (among all the other places my daughter has posed my Hamilton doll recently!), I feel like the real credit goes to Laura for creating this marvelous Peep.

Here’s part of the relevant scene from The Girl from Greenwich Street:

“I never thought I’d be grateful for a trial that ran into a second day—but I always knew enough to be grateful for you.” Alexander caught Eliza’s hand, looking up at her as she stood above him, with the light of the candle casting a glow about her white nightdress. “I am much more in debt to you than I can ever pay.”

 

She shook her head at him. “This isn’t your bank. There are no accounts and no lines of credit in a marriage.”

 

“Aren’t there?” Alexander said wryly. “All the same. Once this is over, I mean to pay my debt to you with a house all our own. Once he’s free, Levi Weeks can design it for us and Ezra Weeks will build it.”

 

And with any luck, his gratitude would extend to a substantial reduction in fee.

 

Eliza took up the candle. “Are you coming to bed?”

 

“Not just yet.” Suddenly, the mutton seemed extremely appetizing. He was, Alexander realized, tremendously hungry. “But I’ll be up shortly.”

 

Eliza took a candle from above the hearth, lighting it from her own. She set it down beside him, to light his way back to her.

 

“Don’t be too long,” she said. “You have important work to do tomorrow.”

 

A woman to be avenged, a murderer to be accused, and Burr to be put entirely out of countenance when Alexander delivered one of the best speeches he had ever penned.

 

Outside the window, the night’s black was beginning to lighten to gray. “Not tomorrow,” he said. “Today.”

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in this year’s Pinkorama!  I’ll be posting the traditional Pinkorama Round Up on Monday….

 

The post Pinkorama #3: The Girl from Peepwich Street appeared first on Lauren Willig.

It is my delight to share with your our second Pinkorama of 2025– which is thematically appropriate, since this Pinkorama, by returning champions Candace and Cassandra, is brought to you by the number 2.

Two L, in fact.  Or, in this case, “2 Peeps”.

(For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Two L was my 3L project at Harvard Law: a novella based on the plot of Measure for Measure, set at Harvard Law in the early 2000s.  This is the very first time it’s been brought to Peep!)

Candace and Cassandra explain:

It is an imaging of a speculation by Cliff in Chapter 7 of Two L. We present to you what may have happened when Cliff and Julia bumped trays in Yale’s Commons Dining Hall.

 

So, for lunchtime in Commons, we imagined they were both walking down an aisle next to a line of tables when they both happened to come near each other at the same time the freshmen on Yale’s swim team happened to jump on a table in their speedos to advertise for their upcoming meet and kick over any food, table tents, and napkins.

 

In this scene we find Julia rocking a coral sheath dress with a denim shirt being used as a jacket, and a pair of Dr. Martens. Cliff is conquering his day in a white Yale ringer tee, khaki pants, and sneakers. Around them are a few other students and the three swimmers. Unfortunately for Cliff, Julia is transfixed by the hairless swimmers and doesn’t notice him or that their trays have bumped.  So, our untimely lovers miss a chance that could have changed their lives and careers.

 

Just two Peeps passing in the dining hall!  I love Julia’s late 90s outfit– and how incredibly detailed the contents of their trays are!But let’s be honest.  It’s the swim team that really steals the show here.  You can see why Julia completely misses Cliff with all those Peeps in Speedos jumping on tables.  (Although Cliff does look pretty cute in this close-up here.)

That candy paneling does look uncannily like an actual Yale Dining Hall….  Were those walls always made of chocolate and I just never realized?

Huzzah to Candace and Cassandra for another sweet masterpeep!

Here’s the paragraph from Two L they so creatively expanded upon:

At the time, it had all seemed so harmless.  That was one of the dangers of legal training; he could argue any side with equal facility, whether it had intrinsic merit or not.  In this case, it hadn’t even taken much mental slight of hand.   Julia wasn’t a dewy-eyed little twenty-two year old, and he—or, at least, so he would prefer to think—wasn’t a perverted old lecher, even if his hairline was beginning to recede a bit under the rigors of an intellectual regime. 

Julia had been only a year behind him at Yale, class of ’98 to his ’97.  They hadn’t known each other back in their bulldog days.  His world had revolved around the Political Union and the Yale College Dems, hers around the bio labs and the Yale Glee Club.  She had been in Pierson, he in Calhoun.  Like the solar system, university life moved in dozens of separate orbits, moving in parallel, but never meeting, a world of worlds contained within the casual rubric of college.  They had probably passed each other a dozen times on Cross Campus, bumped trays at lunchtime in Commons, and elbowed past each other through the drunken Friday throngs in the God Quad.

The addition of the Swim Peeps to this was sheer brilliance, and my life would have been poorer for not knowing exactly why they never met in the dining hall.  Thank you, Candace and Cassandra!

Head back here tomorrow for our third and final Pinkorama of 2025….

The post Pinkorama #2: “2 Peeps” appeared first on Lauren Willig.

Welcome to the 2025 Pinkorama!  It is my great delight to present to you this year’s Pinkoramae, starting with an entry from returning mother/daughter champions, Carla and Rowan.

This year, Carla and Rowan have chosen as their subject Pink Carnation #5, The Tempeeption of the Night Jasmine: specifically the bit where Charlotte and Robert go hunting for unicorns using jam tarts as a lure.  (I think this comes under the heading of If You Know You Know.)

Here they are, out in the meadow!

You can see Charlotte remembered to wear her princess hat and a very Charlotte floral frock.  Robert, meanwhile, is holding the platter of jam tarts (and from his jam-free countenance, I think we can safely say that he has nobly refrained from sampling any of them.)

And look!  I believe they’ve succeeded in enticing a unicorn!

It’s a shy creature, but unable to resist those jam tarts.

Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Note the rainbow horn.  Let’s hope it’s always rainbows and jam tarts for Charlotte and Robert!

Now, let’s take a closer look at the exquisite workmanship on these Peeple!

He’s no dandy, that Robert.  His blond hair is all tousled.  But you can see he’s dressed for the occasion in a neatly tied cravat and very proper coat and waistcoat.

Our Charlotte, of course, is in full princess mode in a floral frock, conical hat, and pure joy all over her sugary countenance.

And because Carla and Rowan are wonderful, they’ve included the relevant scene for us:

From The Temptation of the Night Jasmine:

Robert smiled at the sudden recollection of one of those fancies.  “Do you still believe in unicorns?”

Charlotte’s cheeks flared with color.  “I can’t believe you remember that after all these years!”

He hadn’t, until now.  “How could I forget?  It’s not everyone who goes unicorn hunting with a plate of jam tarts.”

“I thought it might be hungry,” protested Charlotte.  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It was.”  Robert smiled reminiscently.  “Those were excellent tarts.”

“You told me the unicorn had come for them!”

“I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

Charlotte folded her arms across her chest, trapping her book in front of her breasts.  “You mean you liked raspberry tarts.” 

“That, too.”  Robert grinned down at her, watching as she struggled to keep up her air of mock reproof and failed miserably.  He was surprised to hear himself saying, “Perhaps we should go unicorn hunting again sometime.”

Charlotte beamed at him.  “Only if you leave some of the tarts for me this time.”

“We’ll have the kitchen make up a double batch.”

“Triple,” corrected Charlotte.  “We’ll want some for the unicorn.”

Looking down at her shining face, her hair glinting like a personal halo in the light of the setting sun, Robert could almost believe she might find her unicorn, somewhere out in the gardens of Girdings House.  In the army, overseas, he would have scoffed at the notion that such radical innocence could still exist, even tucked away in the remote corners of an English country house.  It was a bit like stumbling upon a unicorn, or some other creature generally believed extinct.

Reaching forward, Robert tucked one of her flyaway curls back behind her ear.   “You look like a lady in a medieval tapestry.  All you need is the unicorn at your feet.”

“And one of those big, conical hats,” suggested Charlotte, tilting her head in a way that he remembered from all those years ago.  “I believe those are de riguer for unicorn-hunting maidens.”

“We’ll have to find you one,” said Robert.  “There must be one somewhere in this great pile.”   

I love these tiny outfits (and the plate of jam tarts!) so much!  Take a bow and a jam tart, Carla and Rowan!  Thank you so much for bringing Charlotte and Robert to peep.  It makes me so happy to know that Charlotte and Robert have found their rainbow-hued unicorn.

Head back here tomorrow for Pinkorama #2….

The post Pinkorama #1: The Elusive Peepicorn appeared first on Lauren Willig.

The Girl from Greenwich Street wouldn’t have been possible without the documents preserved at historical societies– so it seems very appropriate to be speaking about this book at a fundraiser for the Rye Historical Society!

If you’re in the New York/Connecticut area, grab your ticket for this Thursday’s Rye Historical Society boutique and luncheon!  The boutique starts at 10am (lots of time to buy gorgeous things) and I’ll be speaking about the Manhattan Well Murder and Levi Weeks trial at the luncheon, which kicks off at noon.

You can buy your tickets here!

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See you tonight at the legendary FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, GA, where I’ll be in conversation with Karen White!

When: 6:30pm
Where: FoxTale Book Shoppe, Woodstock, GA

Purchase of a book acts as an admission ticket.  Purchase your book here.

The post Atlanta: Tonight! appeared first on Lauren Willig.

Whether you’re here, there, or anywhere, I have a slew of events coming up this next month or so– including ones with each of my fellow Ws, Karen White and Beatriz Williams!

Virtual:

Monday, April 21, 12pm
Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law
Virtual Event
Free for members; $25 non-members.
Register here.

 

Tuesday, April 22, 7pm ET
Historical Happy Hour with Jane Healey
Free and open to anyone anywhere.
Register here.

In person with Ws:

Thursday, April 24, 6:30pm/
In conversation with Karen White
FoxTale Book Shoppe
105 E Main Street
Woodstock, GA
Free and open to the public

 

Wednesday, May 21, 7pm
In conversation with Beatriz Williams
Darien Library
1441 Post Road
Darien, CT
Free and open to the public
Register here.

Ticketed events:

Thursday, May 8, 10am
Rye Historical Society
Boutique and Luncheon
Purchase your ticket here.

 

Saturday, May 17
CrimeConn
2pm Panel Discussion
4pm Keynote
Ferguson Library
Stamford, CT
Register here.

More events are in the works, so stay tuned!

The post Virtual, In Person, and Luncheon Events, Oh My! appeared first on Lauren Willig.