Toastrons in the Bay Area and surrounding environs! What are you doing tonight? Do you want to come to the Booksmith in San Francisco at 7:30 and listen to The Toast’s own Alexis Coe and self discuss lesbian murderesses?

Of course you do. [Miranda Priestly voice] Everyone wants that.

In 1892, America was obsessed with a teenage murderess, but it wasn’t her crime that shocked the nation – it was her motivation. Nineteen-year-old Alice Mitchell planned to pass as a man and marry seventeen-year-old Freda Ward, but when their love letters were discovered, they were forbidden to ever speak again. Desperate and isolated, Alice pilfered her father’s razor, and on a cold winter’s day, she slashed her ex-fiancée’s throat. ALICE + FREDA FOREVER is a tragic love story with more than a hundred original illustrations of primary source letters, maps, historical documents, and more. It marks a seminal point in the history of same-sex relationships in the U.S., and is not to be missed.

This book is so bonkers, you guys. I read it in one afternoon and then I yelled at Alexis for a solid hour about it. (My stance? I don’t think you should slit anyone’s throat, no matter how gay you are. But I still wanted them to end up together! Which is…that’s not how things turned out. But I am a relentless optimist; right up until Alice killed Freda I was still hoping things would work out between them. Or at least that they lived in a world where instead of attempted-murder-suicides, they could just have broken up and gone to college and found new girlfriends.)

Come see us tonight! We’ll have fun! Don’t kill anyone, ever!