The Mirror Thief

Authors: Seay, Martin
Publisher: Melville House
BISAC/Subject: FIC014000, FIC022060, FIC039000
ISBN: 9781612195155, Related ISBNs: 1612195148, 1612195156, 1612195598, 9781612195148, 9781612195155
Classification: Fiction
Number of pages: 592,
Audience: General/trade
Synopsis: A New York Times NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
An NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A Publishers Weekly BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
 
A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "Audaciously well written … the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it."
 
Set in three different eras, and in three different locations—all, coincidentally, named Venice—this “startling, beautiful gem of a book” (NPR) calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado.
 
The core story is set in sixteenth-century Venice, where, on the island of Murano, the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascinationwas it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?the Venetian mirrors were state-of-the-art technology, subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. Thus, for the skilled craftsmen that made them, any attempt to leave the island—to steal the technology—was a crime punishable by death. One man, howevera world-weary war hero with nothing to losehas a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten . . .
 
Meanwhile, in two other VenicesVenice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa todaytwo other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret . . .

All three stories weave together into a spell-binding tour de force that is impossible to put downan old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice . . . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art.
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