The Mirror of History explores the Thames's geology, early history and mythology with wonderful facts and anecdotes. The Thames has been a highway, a frontier and an attack route; it has been a playground and a sewer, a source of water and a source of power.
In Venice, Frances Croy is working to leave the previous year behind: another novel published to little success, a scathing review she can't quite manage to forget, and, most of all, the real reason behind her self-imposed exile from London: the incident at the Savoy. Sequestered within an aging palazzo, Frankie finds comfort in the emptiness of Venice in winter, in the absence of others. And then Gilly appears.