A nameless woman's sexually mutilated corpse is unearthed in a Carmelite abbey. A penniless aristocrat has his lover's wife poisoned. A cardinal poisons a communion wafer. A banker poisons a travestied castrato. A priest breaks the seal of Confession to reveal a plot to poison the King of France. A fortune-teller brags about her aristocratic clients.
Mundane incidents galvanize historic events.
The worst impulses of human nature-sordid sexual perversion, murderous intrigues, witchcraft, Satanic cults-thrive within the shadows of the Sun King's absolutism and will culminate in the darkest secret of his reign: the infamous Poison Affairs, a remarkably complex web of horror, masked by Baroque splendor, luxury and refinement.
In the eye of the storm is the king's German sister-in-law, Lislelotte, a creative, compelling and much too prolific writer. In turns humorous, serious, self-effacing and scatological-yet always keenly observant-she has an opinion on any-and-everything: social and religious conventions, life at Court, political intrigues, but most especially, on the insane cast of characters who populate the story.
Discover this wholly original, yet plausible, solution to the mysterious Poison Affairs.
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