House Of Mirrors

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From #1 internationally bestselling author Eva Stachniak comes this rich, engrossing tale of love, deception and scandal in eighteenth-century France. During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favourite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. When the time is right, each girl is smuggled into the palace of Versailles, with its legendary Hall of Mirrors. There they meet a mysterious but splendidly dressed man who they’re told is merely a Polish count, a cousin of the Queen. Living an indulgent life of silk gowns, delicious meals and soft beds, the students at this “school of mirrors” rarely ask questions, andwhen Louis tires of them, they are married off to minor aristocrats or allowed to retire to one of the more luxurious nunneries. Beautiful and impressionable Véronique arrives and quickly becomes a favourite of the King. But when she discovers her lover’s true identity, she is whisked away, sent to give birth to a daughter in secret, and then to marry a wealthy Breton merchant. This is also the story of the King’s daughter by Véronique—Marie-Louise. Well provided for in a comfortable home, Marie-Louise has never known her mother, let alone her father. Capable and intelligent, she discovers a passion for healing and science, and becomes an accredited midwife, one of the few reputable careers for women like her. Eventually Véronique comes back into her daughter’s life, bringing with her the secret of Marie-Louise’s birth. But it’s a volatile time in France . . . and those with royal relatives must mind their step very carefully. Gorgeously written and with a breathless pace, this is the story of a mother and a daughter—at the centre of cataclysmic personal and public turmoil.

A girl discovers the beauty in herself by looking into her Nana's eyes.

House as a Mirror of Self presents an unprecedented examination of our relationship to where we live, interwoven with compelling personal stories of the search for a place for the soul. Marcus takes us on a reverie of the special places of childhood--the forts we made and secret hiding places we had--to growing up and expressing ourselves in the homes of adulthood. She explores how the self-image is reflected in our homes/ power struggles in making a home together with a partner/ territory, control, and privacy at home/ self-image and location/ disruptions in the boding with home/ and beyond the "house as ego" to the call of the soul. As our culture is swept up in home improvement to the extent of having an entire TV network devoted to it, this book is essential for understanding why the surroundings that we call home make us feel the way we do. With this information we can embark on home improvement that truly makes room for our soul.

There's a mid-sized trailer that sets its wheels down on the fairground every year, and on that trailer is a little room. In that little room, there are about thirty mirrors that are designed to be a confusing maze, and a challenge to escape from, once entered. The object of this house of mirrors is to see if you can walk through the maze of mirrors and get out on the other end without getting lost inside that maze of illusions. When I was a young child, I would get stuck in that maze so many times. I would always get fooled by the illusion that there was a way out right in front of me. But again, I would walk straight ahead, and bam! I would hit another mirror! Clearly, not the way out! Every year, I would go back to the fair to try it again. Each time I would ultimately find my way out, but not without a few knots on my forehead and a few tears of frustration. Why did I keep torturing myself, you may ask? Well, that's an easy answer for me. I would think about this House of Mirrors all year long between fairs, and I just really wanted to figure this out! I was pretty bent on knowing there must be an easier way to do this. A rocket scientist, I'm not; however, there are always great lessons to be learned in the process of figuring things out. Even though I spent many tickets at the fair during my childhood years trying to continually master this House of Mirrors, I just never felt like I really conquered it as a kid. There was always something missing. I haven't been in one of those House of Mirrors for many years now. It's been a couple of years since God showed me what I'm about to tell you, but the message came at a very opportune time in my life--when I really needed it, of course, because that's how God is and that is when He talks to me! Because He's cool like that.

Eleven-year-old twins Jason and Julia, along with their friend Rick, match wits with Peter Dedalus, the elusive inventor who created Kilmore Cove's Mirror House, as they try to uncover the secret hidden somewhere inside before Oblivia Newton can find it.

After the death of her little brother, Thomasine's youngest cousin makes a discovery: a wardrobe, filled with all the mirrors missing from the big house of her great-great-aunt. Through the mirrors, the cousins discover a different world -- one in which you can find not what you most wish for, but perhaps what you most need.

An elegant, page-turning thriller in the vein of Night Film and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, this tautly crafted novel is about stories: the ones we tell, the ones we keep hidden, and the ones that we’ll do anything to ensure they stay buried. When literary agent Peter Katz receives a partial book submission entitled The Book of Mirrors, he is intrigued by its promise and original voice. The author, Richard Flynn, has written a memoir about his time as an English student at Princeton in the late 1980s, documenting his relationship with the protégée of the famous Professor Joseph Wieder. One night just before Christmas 1987, Wieder was brutally murdered in his home. The case was never solved. Now, twenty-five years later, Katz suspects that Richard Flynn is either using his book to confess to the murder, or to finally reveal who committed the violent crime. But the manuscript ends abruptly—and its author is dying in the hospital with the missing pages nowhere to be found. Hell-bent on getting to the bottom of the story, Katz hires investigative journalist John Keller to research the murder and reconstruct the events for a true crime version of the memoir. Keller tracks down several of the mysterious key players, including retired police detective Roy Freeman, one of the original investigators assigned to the murder case, but he has just been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Inspired by John Keller’s investigation, he decides to try and solve the case once and for all, before he starts losing control of his mind. A trip to the Potosi Correctional Centre in Missouri, several interviews, and some ingenious police work finally lead him to a truth that has been buried for over two decades...or has it? Stylishly plotted, elegantly written, and packed with thrilling suspense until the final page, The Book of Mirrors is a book within a book like you’ve never read before.