From the author of the international bestseller The Instrumentalist

Paris. Winter, 1705. Marie, beautiful, shy, arrives to paint the mysterious and difficult La Maupin - the legendary opera star who has not been seen in public for months. Both women have much to hide, and as a storm brews outside, their tightly wound performances give way to their desires. Marie isn't here to simply paint La Maupin. She's here for the real woman behind the fame, the girl who was known once as Julie.

Paris. Autumn, 1687. Nicolas La Reynie is about to retire from a shining career as the first ever police chief of the City of Light. So, when a silly girl flees her marriage - a fourteen-year-old called Julie - returning her sounds like a simple final task. But as wives begin poisoning their husbands en masse, and the threat of uprising bubbles ever hotter, one woman's escape becomes an epic cat and mouse chase, a fight for the honour of decent men.

The international bestseller Harriet Constable's dazzling evocation of eighteenth-century Paris will lead you into a hall of mirrors where nothing is as it seems - and into the dark heart of a nailbiting battle for freedom.