Coming Fall 2026

Hearts on the Table

As World War I rages a seventeen-year-old English feminist with a penchant for thrashing men at cards finds herself stranded on an enemy-controlled island and tangled in the last mess she’d ever expect: love.

Dramatis Personae

Violet
A card-counting English feminist, determined to rescue her trans brother (and herself) from their father’s marital machinations

Teo
A melancholy Marxist with a penchant for bad love poetry, determined to save his island from poverty.

Olivia
The unwilling victim of the aforementioned bad love poetry, a well-read woman with her own secret dreams.

Mario
A villainous misogynist with designs on Olivia’s fortune and a hatred for anyone who defies convention.

Faustina
Olivia’s younger, autistic sister, who is done with ableist arse-rags and primed for revenge.

Dramatis Personae

Violet

A card-counting English feminist, determined to rescue her trans brother (and herself) from their father’s marital machinations

Teo

A melancholy Marxist with a penchant for bad love poetry, determined to save his island from poverty.

Olivia

The unwilling victim of the aforementioned bad love poetry, a well-read woman with her own secret dreams.

Mario

A villainous misogynist with designs on Olivia’s fortune and a hatred for anyone who defies convention.

Faustina

Olivia’s younger, autistic sister, who is done with ableist arse-rags and primed for revenge.

When a deadly U-boat attack hurls them all together on an idyllic island off the coast of Italy, hidden identities and unwelcome desires tangle them in a net of confusion, contradictions, and love triangles. The odds of everyone escaping this mess with their hearts intact are virtually nil.

Fortunately, playing the odds is Violet Farris’s speciality…