The Murano Notebooks: A Glassblower's Verse

About this book:

In the furnaces of 1623 Murano, glass is not merely crafted—it is conjured from sand, ash, and breath, guarded by the Venetian Republic as fiercely as gold. Master Orsino has spent a lifetime mastering the silent dance of heat and gravity, his hands scarred by the fire that turns silica into *cristallo* clear as mountain ice. But beneath the floorboards of his workshop, hidden among the pine logs, lie leather-bound notebooks filled with something far more dangerous than forbidden formulae: verses that speak of a noblewoman's shadow at the canal gate, a coded summons sealed with a lily, and a passion that burns hotter than any furnace.

When the Council of Ten's inspectors come calling and a Contarini messenger arrives at dusk, Orsino's carefully calibrated world begins to fracture. Caught between the Guild's death grip on trade secrets and a poetry that refuses to stay silent, he must navigate a lagoon where spies row gondolas, recipes are worth killing for, and a single miscalculation— in the batch or in the heart—shatters everything.

*The Murano Notebooks* is a luminous fusion of historical immersion and literary suspense, where the alchemy of glassmaking mirrors the alchemy of the soul. For readers who crave the sensory richness of *The Glassblower of Murano* and the tense elegance of *The Miniaturist*, this is a novel forged in fire, written in verse, and sealed with a secret that could destroy a master—or set him free.