Mint condition.Touchstone Books,2008.First US edition-first printing(10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1).Grey hardback with blue borders(gilt lettering to the spine) with Dj(a couple of small nicks and crease on the edges of the Dj cover),both in mint condition.Illustrated with a b/w map:France at the Time of the Sun King,The Royal Families(abbreviated genealogy).The book is new with a crease on the edge of the last blank page of the book.387pp including Author's note,glossary.Price un-clipped. This is another paragraph From Publishers Weekly: As she did for Napoleon's wife (The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.), Gulland skillfully blends fact and fiction to imagine the life of Louise de la Valli?re (1644?1710), mistress to Louis XIV, France's Sun King. Louise loses her father early and spends her childhood in a convent run by her aunt, Sister Angelique. When Louise's mother, Fran?oise, marries a marquis, she takes Louise home, where, by chance, she meets King Louis. As she secures a position at court about 100 pages in, the plot finally begins to bubble with intrigue: the king has married for political reasons, but, as a young and pious man, he has not kept a mistress before Louise. Their secret love eventually comes to light, but not without exacting a price. A supernatural element threaded throughout adds color to Gulland's vivid period imaginings.
