The Mirror Maker's Secret
A Snow White Retelling

About this book:

Joseph has spent a lifetime coaxing truth from sand and fire. On the wind-lashed cliffs of Oakhaven, he harvests silver sand from the jaws of the tide—quartz and crushed shell that yields mirrors of terrifying clarity, panes that show not flattery but the cold architecture of every line and shadow. His craft is solitary, his standards exacting, and his latest creation hangs veiled in a corner of his workshop: a mirror so perfect it feels less like glass than an open window into an identical room. He tells himself it is merely chemistry. The sand remembers. The quicksilver binds. The result is truth.

Down the coast, the Royal Keep stirs. The old king fades behind a clouded mind, and his new queen—a woman of breathless beauty and reputed ice—has seized the council's reins. When a royal courier bearing a black-sealed missive detours to the bailiff's house instead of the garrison, the rumors Joseph ignores begin to knock at his workshop door. The court does not want window glass. They want a looking glass that will not lie, because the woman on the throne has built her power on an image that must never crack.

But a mirror that shows the truth does not discriminate between queen and craftsman. As Joseph is drawn into a commission he cannot refuse, he discovers that the silver sand holds more than clarity—it holds memory. And the reflection staring back from his masterpiece may not be his own. In a kingdom where vanity is a weapon and truth is treason, the most dangerous thing a mirror can reveal is the face behind the mask.